Use this skill when building user interfaces that need to look polished, modern, and intentional - not like AI-generated slop. Triggers on UI design tasks including component styling, layout decisions, color choices, typography, spacing, responsive design, dark mode, accessibility, animations, landing pages, onboarding flows, data tables, navigation patterns, and any question about making a UI look professional. Covers CSS, Tailwind, and framework-agnostic design principles.
Use this skill when building user interfaces that need to look polished, modern, and intentional - not like AI-generated slop. Triggers on UI design tasks including component styling, layout decisions, color choices, typography, spacing, responsive design, dark mode, accessibility, animations, landing pages, onboarding flows, data tables, navigation patterns, and any question about making a UI look professional. Covers CSS, Tailwind, and framework-agnostic design principles.
When this skill is activated, always start your first response with the 🧢 emoji.
Absolute UI
A comprehensive design system knowledge base for building UIs that feel crafted
by a senior designer, not generated by a prompt. This skill encodes specific,
opinionated rules - exact spacing values, proven color ratios, real typography
scales, and battle-tested component patterns. Every recommendation is actionable
with concrete CSS/Tailwind values, not vague advice like "make it clean."
The difference between AI slop and a polished UI comes down to constraint and
restraint - fewer colors used with intention, consistent spacing from a scale,
typography that creates hierarchy without screaming, and micro-interactions that
feel responsive without being distracting.
When to use this skill
Trigger this skill when the user:
Asks to build or style a UI component (button, card, form, table, nav)
Needs help with layout, spacing, or grid decisions
Wants to implement dark mode or theme switching
Asks about typography, font choices, or text styling
Needs accessible and WCAG-compliant designs
Wants landing page, onboarding, or conversion-focused layouts
Asks about animations, transitions, or micro-interactions
Needs help with responsive design or mobile navigation
Asks to make something "look better" or "more professional"
Do NOT trigger this skill for:
Backend logic, API design, or database schema questions
Brand identity or logo design (this is implementation, not branding)
Design thinking
Before writing CSS, commit to an aesthetic direction. The #1 cause of generic-looking UIs is starting with code instead of intent.
Start from user intent, not structure - Don't begin with headers, footers, or layout scaffolding. Ask: "What is the user trying to do?" If they're searching for accommodations, a search bar is the natural starting point. Only expand UI as user intent expands. For many pages, the core is a heading, an input, and a button - that's all you needed.
Choose a tone - Pick one that fits the context: brutalist, editorial, retro-futuristic, organic, luxury, playful, industrial, art deco, soft/pastel, minimalist-sharp. These are starting points - blend and invent your own. See references/style-catalog.md for 25 concrete options.
Define what's memorable - What's the one visual choice someone will remember? An unusual color, dramatic typography, a bold layout break, atmospheric texture?
Creativity is connecting, not inventing - Study top-tier existing designs in your domain. Gather 3-5 inspirations, note what you like about each, then combine those elements in your own way. Step away before designing - new ideas emerge when you return.
Vary between projects - Every design should feel different. If your last 3 outputs used the same fonts, colors, and layout patterns, you're producing slop.
Key principles
Use a spacing scale, never arbitrary values - Pick a base unit (4px or 8px) and only use multiples: 4, 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 96. Tailwind's default scale does this. Random padding like 13px or 27px is the #1 tell of amateur UI.
Limit your palette to 1 primary + 1 neutral + 1 accent - More colors = more chaos. Use 5-7 shades of your primary (50-900), a full neutral gray scale, and one accent for destructive/success states. Never more than 3 hues on a single screen.
Create hierarchy through contrast, not decoration - Size, weight, color, and spacing create hierarchy. You should never need borders, shadows, AND color differences simultaneously. One or two signals per level of hierarchy. Key insight: to emphasize something, often deemphasize competing elements instead of making the target louder.
Every interactive element needs 4 states - Default, hover, active/pressed, and disabled. If you skip any state, the UI feels broken. Focus states are mandatory for accessibility.
Whitespace is a feature, not wasted space - Generous padding makes UIs feel premium. Cramped UIs feel cheap. Workflow: start with too much spacing, view the design as a whole, then reduce until it feels right. Users scan the entire UI before focusing on details - space that feels excessive when you're zoomed into one element looks correct at page level.
Consistency within, personality across - Within a project, use the same border-radius, shadow scale, and transition timing everywhere. But each project should have its own distinct personality - different fonts, colors, and spatial feel. Consistency without character is how AI slop is made.
Use real icons, never emojis - Unicode emojis (e.g. ✅, ⚡, 🔥, 📊) render inconsistently across operating systems and browsers, cannot be styled with CSS (no size, color, or stroke control), break visual consistency, and hurt accessibility. Always use a proper icon library - Lucide React (recommended), React Icons, Heroicons, Phosphor, or Font Awesome. Icons from these libraries are SVG-based, styleable, consistent, and accessible.
Backgrounds need atmosphere - Flat solid-color backgrounds (#fff, #f9fafb) are the default of every AI-generated UI. Use subtle gradient meshes, noise/grain overlays, geometric patterns, or tinted surfaces to create depth. Texture should be felt, not seen - if you notice it consciously, it's too much.
Core concepts
The 8px grid - All spacing, sizing, and layout decisions snap to an 8px grid. Component heights: 32px (small), 40px (medium), 48px (large). Padding: 8px, 12px, 16px, 24px. Gaps: 8px, 16px, 24px, 32px. This single rule eliminates 80% of "why does this look wrong" problems.
Visual weight - Every element has visual weight determined by size, color darkness, border thickness, and shadow. A page should have one clear heavyweight (the CTA or primary content), with everything else progressively lighter. Squint at your page - if nothing stands out, your hierarchy is flat.
The 60-30-10 rule - 60% dominant color (background/neutral), 30% secondary (cards, sections), 10% accent (CTAs, active states). This ratio works for any color scheme and prevents the "everything is colorful" trap.
Optical alignment - Mathematical center doesn't always look centered. Text in buttons needs 1-2px more padding on top visually. Icons next to text need optical adjustment. Always trust your eyes over the inspector.
Progressive disclosure - Don't show everything at once. Start with the essential action, reveal complexity on demand. This applies to forms (multi-step > one long form), settings (basic > advanced), and navigation (primary > secondary > tertiary).
Gestalt: similarity and proximity - The brain processes the whole before the parts. Use consistent shape, size, and color to signal "these belong together" (similarity). Use spacing to group related elements and separate unrelated ones (proximity). If the design isn't scannable within seconds, the gestalt is broken.
Depth for character - Use shadows to replace solid borders, subtle gradients to replace flat fills, and cards to elevate bland elements. The closer something feels to the user (higher elevation), the more attention it attracts. One accent gradient or colored shadow can add excitement without complexity.
Context overrides tags - Not all H1s should be the same size. An H3 might be larger than an H2 in a different context. HTML tags define semantics; visual hierarchy depends on what the user needs to see first in that specific layout.
Common tasks
Style a button hierarchy
Every app needs 3 button levels: primary (filled), secondary (outlined), and ghost (text-only). Never use more than one primary button per visual section.
Limit to 2 font families max. Pair a distinctive display font with a refined body font - avoid defaulting to Inter, Roboto, or Space Grotesk. See references/typography.md for aesthetic-specific pairings.
Never just invert colors. Dark mode backgrounds should be dark blue-gray (#0f172a, #1e293b), not pure black. Reduce white text to #f1f5f9 (not #ffffff) to prevent eye strain. Shadows need higher opacity in dark mode.
Right-align numbers. Left-align text. Don't stripe rows AND add hover - pick one. Fixed headers for tables taller than the viewport. Add horizontal scroll wrapper for mobile, never let tables overflow.
Anti-patterns / common mistakes
Mistake
Why it's wrong
What to do instead
Using pure black (#000) on white (#fff)
Too harsh, causes eye strain, looks unnatural
Use #111827 on #fff or #f1f5f9 on #0f172a
Different border-radius on every component
Destroys visual consistency, looks auto-generated
Pick one radius (8px) and use it everywhere
Shadows on everything
Visual noise, no hierarchy, feels heavy
Reserve shadows for elevated elements (modals, dropdowns, cards)
Rainbow of colors
No hierarchy, overwhelming, unprofessional
Max 3 hues: primary, neutral, accent. 60-30-10 rule
Tiny click targets on mobile
Fails WCAG, frustrates users, increases errors
Minimum 44x44px touch targets (48px preferred)
Animating everything
Distracting, feels gimmicky, hurts performance
Only animate what changes state. 150-300ms transitions max
Centering everything
Kills readability, looks like a PowerPoint slide
Left-align body text. Center only hero headlines and CTAs
Inconsistent spacing
Most obvious tell of unpolished UI
Use a 4/8px spacing scale. Same gap everywhere for same context
Using emojis as icons
Render differently across OS/browsers, cannot be styled, break visual consistency, poor a11y
Use a real icon library: Lucide React, React Icons, Heroicons, Phosphor, or Font Awesome
Generic font stack (Inter, Roboto, Arial)
Screams "AI generated this", zero personality
Choose fonts that match an aesthetic direction. See references/typography.md
Every section is centered 3-column grid, looks templated
Use asymmetry, overlapping elements, and grid-breaking for marketing pages
Flat solid-color backgrounds
No atmosphere, no depth, feels like a wireframe
Add gradient meshes, subtle grain, or geometric patterns. See references/atmosphere-and-texture.md
Multi-hue gradients (blue+green, etc.)
Clashing colors, looks amateur
If using gradients, stick to lighter/darker shades of the SAME hue. Or just use a flat color
Redundant UI elements
Arrows that duplicate swipe, borders on already-differentiated elements
Remove anything that doesn't add function. Each element must earn its place
AI-repeated KPIs / metrics
Same stats shown 2-3 times on one page
Show each metric once, in the most relevant location
Every action as a visible button
Cards with 4+ exposed buttons, overwhelming
Collapse secondary actions into a triple-dot context menu
Gradient profile circles with initials
Screams "AI placeholder", never seen in production apps
Use real avatar upload with initials as fallback (flat bg, no gradient)
Sparse create forms as full pages
AI gives a form 3 fields but an entire page of space
Use a modal for simple forms, collapse advanced options by default
Landing pages with only text + icons
No visual proof the product exists, feels like a template
Use real product screenshots (skewed, shadowed) instead of generic icons
Gotchas
CSS custom properties in dark mode require explicit overrides at the right scope - Setting --bg-primary on :root works, but if a component is inside a portal or shadow DOM, it may not inherit the theme variables. Always test theme switching in modals, dropdowns, and third-party widget wrappers.
Tailwind's purge/content config missing component paths causes production CSS to be empty - In a monorepo or when UI components live outside the src/ directory, Tailwind will strip their classes from the production bundle. Every path that contains Tailwind classes must be listed in content in tailwind.config.js.
transform: scale() on buttons clips focus rings and overflow shadows - Using scale(0.98) on :active is a common polish trick, but if the button has box-shadow for a focus ring, the shadow gets clipped by the parent's overflow. Use outline-offset instead of box-shadow for focus indicators on transformed elements.
min-height: 100vh breaks on mobile Safari - Mobile browsers include the browser chrome in 100vh, causing content to be cut off below the fold. Use min-height: 100dvh (dynamic viewport height) for full-screen layouts on mobile. Add a 100vh fallback for older browsers.
Grid auto-fill vs auto-fit produces visually different results on sparse grids - auto-fill creates empty columns to fill the row; auto-fit collapses them so items stretch. Using auto-fill when you expect items to fill the width produces a grid that stops at the last item with empty whitespace. Use auto-fit for responsive grids that should expand to fill.
Design for real content, not perfect content - What happens when a title is 3x longer than expected? When an icon sits on a bright image? When a username has 40 characters? Truncate long text with text-overflow: ellipsis, add contrast backgrounds behind icons on images, and test with real-world data, not lorem ipsum. Edge cases are where amateur UIs break.
References
For detailed guidance on specific UI topics, read the relevant file
from the references/ folder:
references/buttons-and-icons.md - Button hierarchy, icon sizing, icon-text pairing, states
references/color-and-theming.md - Color theory, palette generation, dark/light mode, semantic tokens
Personality: Fonts match aesthetic direction (not generic defaults), colors fit the product context
States: Every screen has empty, loading, success, and error states - not just the happy path
Flow: Each screen answers "how did the user get here?" and "what do they need next?"
Companion check
On first activation of this skill in a conversation: check which companion skills are installed by running ls ~/.claude/skills/ ~/.agent/skills/ ~/.agents/skills/ .claude/skills/ .agent/skills/ .agents/skills/ 2>/dev/null. Compare the results against the recommended_skills field in this file's frontmatter. For any that are missing, mention them once and offer to install:
