Design AI Skills and Plugins

How to use this list

These are useful, but they solve different jobs. Do not install all of them at once. Pick the one that matches the design problem in front of you.

• If the output looks generic, start with a taste or anti-slop skill.
• If the product decision is unclear, start with a product design thinking skill.
• If you need fast visual exploration, use a design-agent or prompt library.
• If the UI is already built and needs critique, use a targeted review plugin.

Taste and visual polish

Impeccable

Best for giving an AI coding agent stronger design vocabulary and a reusable visual critique loop.

Use it when:

• You are building real UI in a codebase, not just prompting for mockups
• You want anti-pattern detection for common AI-generated UI problems
• You want a portable design context such as PRODUCT.md or DESIGN.md
• You care about visual polish, browser review, and production implementation

Why it is useful: Impeccable combines design references, commands, critique, and anti-slop detection. It is strongest when you want the agent to keep improving a real page until the output stops feeling generic.

Taste Skill

Best for adding a broad anti-slop frontend skill pack to AI coding agents.

Use it when:

• You want a general-purpose taste layer for Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, v0, Lovable, or similar tools
• You need a fast default that improves layout, typography, motion, and visual specificity
• You want skill files you can inspect, adapt, and keep in your own workflow

Why it is useful: Taste Skill is a good default starting point when you do not yet have your own taste skill. Treat it as a baseline, then replace or extend it with your own rules.

Product design thinking

Layers

Best for moving AI-assisted design work below the surface layer.

Use it when:

• You are stuck on what the product should do, not how the screen should look
• You need help with user needs, domain language, conceptual models, flows, or product strategy
• You want artifacts such as job stories, strategy trees, object maps, and decision inventories

Why it is useful: Layers is less about visual polish and more about making product decisions explicit. It is especially useful before visual generation, when the risk is designing a polished answer to the wrong problem.

Design agents and prompt libraries

Superdesign

Best for visual exploration, style references, and prompt patterns.

Use it when:

• You want to browse or reuse design prompts for styles, components, animations, and page layouts
• You want multiple UI directions before committing to implementation
• You need a faster way to describe a visual direction to a coding agent

Why it is useful: Superdesign is more of a design-agent workspace and prompt library than a portable skill. It belongs in the research and exploration phase, especially when you need better visual language before asking an agent to build.

Targeted UI review

Refactoring UI Skills

Best for targeted reviews based on familiar UI design principles.

Use it when:

• You want focused critique around hierarchy, typography, spacing, color, buttons, contrast, empty states, grouping, shadows, or clutter
• You want a meta-review pass over an existing design
• You like the Refactoring UI way of thinking and want those ideas available inside Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor

Why it is useful: It turns a known UI critique framework into discrete agent skills. Use it for review and cleanup, not as a complete product design system.

Which one should I use first?

For most designers:

1. Start with Layers if the product problem is still fuzzy.
2. Use Superdesign if you need visual directions or style prompts.
3. Use Taste Skill or Impeccable when you are ready to generate or improve production UI.
4. Use Refactoring UI Skills after the first version exists and needs critique.

For design system teams:

1. Start with your own CLAUDE.md and design-system rules.
2. Use Impeccable or Taste Skill as inspiration for the structure of your skill layer.
3. Add Refactoring UI Skills for targeted review passes.
4. Use Layers when the team is arguing about concepts, flows, or product language rather than visual treatment.