pencilplaybook

PencilPlaybook is the UI Skills / Taste-Skill for Pencil.dev + Claude Code — a design playbook that gives Claude real perceptual psychology and senior-level guardrails so it stops producing averaged-out AI slop.

World-class practice research. This skill should be used when the user asks what the best in the world does about a specific problem, technique, or situation — covering product, engineering, design, marketing, compliance, operations, org design, and any other domain. Use when the goal is to understand elite-tier practice, not to make a strategic decision. Distinct from best-in-world-strategy, which is for choosing between options.

Excellence-first strategic decision support. This skill should be used when users need to choose between options, pressure-test a plan, evaluate risk, or make a specific decision — across security, product, growth, operations, org design, and finance. Use when there is a decision with tradeoffs to score and a recommendation to make. For pure research ("what does the best in the world do about X?"), use best-in-world-research instead.

Guide for creating effective skills. This skill should be used when users want to create a new skill (or update an existing skill) that extends Claude's capabilities with specialized knowledge, workflows, or tool integrations.