refactoring-ui

name

refactoring-ui

description

Design advice grounded in the principles of "Refactoring UI" by Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger. Use this whenever someone is trying to make an interface look better, or asks about visual hierarchy, color palettes and greys, type scales, spacing systems, shadows and depth, images, empty states, borders, dark mode, motion and hover states, or the layout of a modal, form or table — including when they never say "design" and just paste a component asking why it looks off, or say it "feels cramped", "looks generic", "needs polish", "how do I make this look better?". Applies to any stack: Tailwind, plain CSS, React, Blade, mobile. Not for: writing the copy itself, logo or brand identity work, user research, or debugging CSS that renders wrong.

Refactoring UI Skill

Design advice grounded in the principles taught by Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger in their book Refactoring UI. The book itself contains the original prose, illustrations, side-by-side examples, and case studies — buy it at https://refactoringui.com for the full material. This skill provides reformulated guidance for use as an AI assistant reference.

Required workflow (read before responding)

The SKILL.md alone is an index of references. The detail you need to give accurate answers lives in the reference files. Reading this SKILL.md is not enough.

Step 1 — Open the relevant reference files

Task involves	Required reading
Project mindset: feature-first work, scope discipline, defining systems, picking a voice	references/01-foundations.md
Visual hierarchy, layout, white space, spacing scales, typography	references/02-page-mechanics.md
Color systems (HSL, shades, greys, contrast), depth and shadows, image handling	references/03-visual-treatment.md
Empty states, borders, accents, decorative defaults, finishing touches	references/04-polish.md
Motion, microinteractions, transitions, hover/press states, loading, prefers-reduced-motion — complementary, not from the book	references/05-motion.md
Dark mode, multi-theme color tokens, theme toggle, contrast strategy — complementary, extrapolates the book's HSL principles	references/06-dark-mode.md
Modals (focus, layout), forms (labels, validation), tables (density, alignment) — complementary, extends the book's principles	references/07-component-patterns.md

Step 2 — Output contract

Every design recommendation, ratio, value, or rule you cite MUST be backed by a citation in the form:

[source: references/<file>.md]

Example: "Use weight and color, not just font size, to establish hierarchy [source: references/02-page-mechanics.md]"

Step 3 — If you must answer from memory

If you write a claim without having read the reference that backs it, prepend FROM_MEMORY (unverified): to that claim. Do not hide it.

Banned behaviors

These four are where advice like this usually goes wrong, so they're worth naming:

• Inventing ratios, scale values, contrast numbers, or rules not in the references. A made-up number is indistinguishable from a real one once it's in someone's stylesheet.
• Reproducing the book's prose, illustrations, or examples verbatim. The references paraphrase on purpose — the original material belongs to its authors and is worth buying.
• Presenting advice from unrelated design systems (Material, HIG, Tailwind defaults) as Refactoring UI doctrine. Those systems are fine; attributing them here makes the citation meaningless.
• Marking the answer complete without listing which reference files you read. The list is what lets the reader tell a grounded answer from a plausible one.

Source

Inspired by 'Refactoring UI' by Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger — refactoringui.com

Anti-Patterns to Watch For

• Designing layouts/navs/shells before designing real features [source: references/01-foundations.md]
• Using font size as the only tool for hierarchy (ignoring weight and color) [source: references/02-page-mechanics.md]
• Using opacity to create grey text on colored backgrounds [source: references/02-page-mechanics.md]
• Starting with too little white space and adding it later [source: references/02-page-mechanics.md]
• Using em for type scales (compounds when nested) [source: references/02-page-mechanics.md]
• Using color as the only signal for a UI state [source: references/03-visual-treatment.md]
• Designing with placeholder images instead of real content [source: references/03-visual-treatment.md]
• Shrinking a logo down to use as a favicon [source: references/03-visual-treatment.md]
• Using preprocessor lighten() / darken() to derive shades [source: references/03-visual-treatment.md]
• Leaving an empty state as a bare "No data" rectangle — it's often the first thing a new user sees [source: references/04-polish.md]
• Rendering tabs, filters or pagination that have nothing to operate on (reads as broken) [source: references/04-polish.md]
• Reaching for a border when a shadow, a second background color, or more space separates better [source: references/04-polish.md]
• Shipping browser-default bullets, checkboxes and radios [source: references/04-polish.md]
• Animating layout properties (width, top, margin) instead of transform / opacity [source: references/05-motion.md]
• Inventing a duration per component instead of picking from a fixed motion scale [source: references/05-motion.md]
• Scaling a whole element up on hover (1.05×), or animating font size [source: references/05-motion.md]
• Showing a spinner before ~150ms of waiting [source: references/05-motion.md]
• Ignoring prefers-reduced-motion [source: references/05-motion.md]
• Pure #000 for the canvas, or pure white for text [source: references/06-dark-mode.md]
• Producing dark mode with filter: invert(1) [source: references/06-dark-mode.md]
• Reusing the light-mode brand color in dark mode without rechecking contrast [source: references/06-dark-mode.md]
• Applying the theme after first paint (flash of the wrong theme on every load) [source: references/06-dark-mode.md]
• Keeping every light-mode shadow unchanged on a dark canvas, where it's invisible [source: references/06-dark-mode.md]

Attribution

This skill summarizes design principles inspired by Refactoring UI by Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger. Concepts described here are paraphrased into the maintainer's own words; original text, examples, and illustrations remain the property of the authors and live in the book. Buy the book at https://refactoringui.com — it contains the full material with side-by-side visual examples and case studies that this skill does not reproduce.