The Designer Skills Pack

Design skills for the agent era, written so an AI agent can actually use them.

273 skills and 76 commands across 33 plugins, in five collections, for Claude Code and Gemini CLI.

Not sure which skill you need? Start with the skill index — every skill in this repo arranged by the situation you're in, plus the pairs most often mistaken for each other.

Getting started (no coding needed)

These skills run inside an AI coding assistant. The easiest place to use them is Claude Code, and it takes three steps. No terminal required.

1. Get Claude Code. It's a free app from Anthropic (claude.com). Download it, sign in, and open it. You only do this once.

2. Add the suite. In Claude Code, type this and press enter:

/plugin marketplace add Owl-Listener/designer-skills

This just tells Claude where the skills live. Nothing installs yet.

3. Pick what you want. Type /plugin and press enter, then open the Discover tab. You'll see all the collections. Move with the arrow keys, press space to tick the ones you want, and enter to install. That's it.

4. Don't know which skill you need? Type /designer-toolkit:start-here and say what you're working on. It names the stage you're at, gives you one command to run now and the two that follow it, and tells you what you can skip. Use it whenever you're unsure where a piece of work begins.

I only want the design skills, not everything

Same three steps. On the Discover list in step 3, just tick the design ones, design-research, design-systems, ui-design, interaction-design, and so on, and leave the rest. Install as few or as many as you like, and come back for more any time.

I only want one specific collection

Each collection also has its own door. Swap the command in step 2 for the one you want, for example:

/plugin marketplace add Owl-Listener/inclusive-design-skills

Then do step 3 the same way.

Prefer Gemini CLI?

Each plugin is also a Gemini CLI extension. From your project root:

git clone https://github.com/Owl-Listener/designer-skills /tmp/designer-skills
mkdir -p .gemini/extensions
cp -r /tmp/designer-skills/.gemini/extensions/. .gemini/extensions/

The five collections

The other four collections each live in their own repo, with their own stars and full detail, and this marketplace pulls their plugins in for you — so the one install above covers all five. This repo is the front door, and the home of the design-practice collection below.

Design practice (this repo)

Agentic skills, commands, and plugins for design, from research to systems, UI, interaction, and delivery. 111 skills and 34 commands across 9 plugins.

Plugins

These nine plugins ship from this repo — none of them has a separate repo, and there is nothing to clone. After adding the marketplace, install one by name:

/plugin install ux-strategy@designer-skills

All commands

What are skills and commands?

Skills are domain knowledge units — nouns. They teach Claude about a design topic: how to create a user persona, how to define design tokens, how to write a non-leading interview question.

Commands are workflows — verbs. They chain skills together to do a complete job: /design-research:discover runs personas, empathy map, and journey map in one go.

You'll mostly reach for commands. The skills run underneath them.

Pick your starting point

I'm starting a new product from scratch

Start with research, even if you think you know the users.

/design-research:discover

Tell Claude: what you're building, who you think the users are, and what problem you're solving. It will run a full discovery cycle — personas, empathy map, journey map — and surface the gaps in your assumptions.

From there, move in sequence:

• /ux-strategy:frame-problem — structure the design challenge before you start designing
• /ui-design:design-screen — when you're ready to build
• /interaction-design:design-interaction — for any flows that have meaningful state or motion
• /design-systems:create-component — when patterns start repeating and you need to systemise them

Minimum install for this path: design-research, ux-strategy, ui-design, interaction-design

I'm working on an existing product

Start with a critique, not new work.

/visual-critique:critique-screen

Drop a screenshot. Get a prioritised fix list covering hierarchy, brand consistency, composition, and typography. This tells you what's actually broken before you add anything new.

Then:

• /prototyping-testing:evaluate — run a heuristic evaluation if you want a fuller audit
• /design-ops:handoff — if you're in a delivery phase and need specs
• /design-systems:audit-system — if you suspect system debt is the root cause

Minimum install for this path: visual-critique, prototyping-testing, design-ops

I have a specific deliverable to produce

Go directly to the plugin that covers it. You don't need everything.

That covers the most common asks. For all 107 skills — including the ones without a command in front of them — see the skill index.

I'm building with AI and need to design the AI experience

This collection covers conventional design. For designing AI products specifically — model interaction, alignment reasoning, error personality, agent orchestration — use the companion collection:

/plugin marketplace add Owl-Listener/ai-design-skills

The two collections are designed to work alongside each other.

Recommended install for most designers

If you're not sure where to start, install these five and you'll have coverage across the full design cycle, plus the router that tells you where to begin:

/plugin install design-research@designer-skills
/plugin install ux-strategy@designer-skills
/plugin install ui-design@designer-skills
/plugin install design-ops@designer-skills
/plugin install designer-toolkit@designer-skills

designer-toolkit is the one carrying /start-here, so install it even if you want nothing else from it.

Add others as you need them. The plugins are lightweight — installing more doesn't slow things down.

A note on sequence

The plugins aren't a strict pipeline, but there's a natural grain to them:

design-research → ux-strategy → ui-design / interaction-design → design-systems → design-ops

Research informs strategy. Strategy shapes UI decisions. Patterns in UI become system components. Systems flow into ops. Working against this grain is fine — but if something feels hard, it's often because a step earlier in the sequence was skipped.

Why this exists

Most design knowledge is written for humans to read and interpret. An agent gets none of that nuance. It reads what we wrote literally, and guesses where we left the meaning out, and the guesses pile up into something hollow. This suite writes the judgment down: what a thing is for, when to use it, and what to never do. Taste, made legible.

Questions?

Open an issue. If something isn't working the way you expected, or if a skill output feels wrong for your context, that's signal worth capturing.

Contributing

Contribute to a collection in the repo that hosts it. The nine design-practice plugins live here, so skills and fixes for them — ux-strategy included — are PRs against this repo. The other four collections take contributions in their own repos, linked in the table above. Add a skill, ship its plugin manifest in the same commit, and open a PR.
PRs for new skills or structural changes without a corresponding open issue will be closed without review.

Community Integrations

Tools and plugins built on top of designer-skills:

IntegrationDescriptionMaintainerdesign-library-pluginClaude Code plugin exposing designer-skills via /design-process, with keyword activation across wireframe, prototype, user research, design sprint, and handoff workflows@zeta92

If you've built something on top of this collection and want it listed here, open an issue.

License

MIT.

By MC Dean · MC Percolates on Substack

{
  "$schema": "https://anthropic.com/claude-code/marketplace.schema.json",
  "name": "designer-skills",
  "version": "2.0.0",
  "description": "The Designer Skills suite: agentic skills, commands, and plugins for design in the agent era — design practice, AI product design, UX program management, design leadership, and inclusive design. One install surfaces every collection: the design-practice plugins ship from this repo, and the other four collections are pulled in from their own repos.",
  "owner": {
    "name": "MC Dean",
    "url": "https://marieclairedean.substack.com/"
  },
  "plugins": [
    {
      "name": "design-research",
      "description": "User research skills for designers: personas, empathy maps, journey maps, interview scripts, usability testing, card sorting, behavioural analytics, and reconciling data with research.",
      "source": "./design-research",
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "design-systems",
      "description": "Design system skills: component specs, design tokens, naming conventions, spacing and grid systems, accessibility standards, and documentation.",
      "source": "./design-systems",
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "ux-strategy",
      "description": "UX strategy skills: information architecture, content strategy, navigation patterns, user flows, task analysis, and competitive UX audits.",
      "source": "./ux-strategy",
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "ui-design",
      "description": "UI design skills: color palettes, typography systems, layout grids, responsive breakpoints, dark mode specs, visual hierarchy, and brand alignment.",
      "source": "./ui-design",
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "interaction-design",
      "description": "Interaction design skills: micro-interactions, animation principles, state machines, gesture patterns, error handling UX, and feedback patterns.",
      "source": "./interaction-design",
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "prototyping-testing",
      "description": "Prototyping and testing skills: wireframe specs, usability heuristics, heuristic evaluations, accessibility audits, A/B test design, and benchmark analysis.",
      "source": "./prototyping-testing",
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "design-ops",
      "description": "Design operations skills: handoff specs, design critique facilitation, design sprint planning, team workflows, QA checklists, and design debt audits.",
      "source": "./design-ops",
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "designer-toolkit",
      "description": "Designer utility skills: design rationale, case study structure, design presentations, UX writing, design system adoption, and design negotiation — plus the /start-here router.",
      "source": "./designer-toolkit",
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "visual-critique",
      "description": "Visual critique skills: hierarchy analysis, brand consistency checks against mood/voice/tokens, composition evaluation, and typography audits — with a /critique-screen command that compiles a prioritised fix list.",
      "source": "./visual-critique",
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "program-planning",
      "description": "Plan and scope UX programs: roadmaps, dependency maps, capacity planning, prioritisation.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ux-pgm-skills.git",
        "path": "program-planning"
      },
      "category": "product"
    },
    {
      "name": "stakeholder-comms",
      "description": "Stakeholder mapping, status reporting, executive updates, alignment workshops, escalation.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ux-pgm-skills.git",
        "path": "stakeholder-comms"
      },
      "category": "product"
    },
    {
      "name": "delivery-execution",
      "description": "Cycle orchestration, risk registers, blocker triage, launch readiness, retrospectives.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ux-pgm-skills.git",
        "path": "delivery-execution"
      },
      "category": "product"
    },
    {
      "name": "cross-functional-alignment",
      "description": "Intake, decision logs, working agreements, RACI, and OKR linkage across functions.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ux-pgm-skills.git",
        "path": "cross-functional-alignment"
      },
      "category": "product"
    },
    {
      "name": "measurement-ops",
      "description": "Program health: KPIs, dashboards, research ops, design ops metrics, impact reporting.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ux-pgm-skills.git",
        "path": "measurement-ops"
      },
      "category": "product"
    },
    {
      "name": "process-design",
      "description": "How the team works: workflows, governance, rituals, scaling playbooks, retrospectives.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ux-pgm-skills.git",
        "path": "process-design"
      },
      "category": "product"
    },
    {
      "name": "people-management",
      "description": "1:1s, feedback, growth plans, performance reviews, career ladders, difficult conversations.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/design-leadership-skills.git",
        "path": "people-management"
      },
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "team-building",
      "description": "Hiring loops, job specs, portfolio review, onboarding, team topology, psychological safety.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/design-leadership-skills.git",
        "path": "team-building"
      },
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "design-strategy",
      "description": "Design vision, strategy docs, org-level principles, investment cases, portfolio prioritisation.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/design-leadership-skills.git",
        "path": "design-strategy"
      },
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "org-influence",
      "description": "Executive narrative, influence mapping, advocacy, securing resources, managing up.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/design-leadership-skills.git",
        "path": "org-influence"
      },
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "operating-cadence",
      "description": "Design reviews at scale, planning cadence, decision frameworks, delegation, operating rhythm.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/design-leadership-skills.git",
        "path": "operating-cadence"
      },
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "leadership-craft",
      "description": "Self-leadership, change leadership, conflict resolution, mentorship, leadership ethics.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/design-leadership-skills.git",
        "path": "leadership-craft"
      },
      "category": "design"
    },
    {
      "name": "model-interaction-design",
      "description": "Interaction patterns for AI products: mixed-initiative flow, handoff protocols, error personality.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ai-design-skills.git",
        "path": "claude-plugin/model-interaction-design"
      },
      "category": "ai"
    },
    {
      "name": "ai-alignment-reasoning",
      "description": "Alignment reasoning and harm anticipation translated into practitioner design skills.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ai-design-skills.git",
        "path": "claude-plugin/ai-alignment-reasoning"
      },
      "category": "ai"
    },
    {
      "name": "system-behavior-shaping",
      "description": "Shape system behaviour: defaults, guardrails, refusals, and behavioural contracts.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ai-design-skills.git",
        "path": "claude-plugin/system-behavior-shaping"
      },
      "category": "ai"
    },
    {
      "name": "evaluation",
      "description": "Evaluate agentic experiences: behaviour evals, trust calibration, failure analysis.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ai-design-skills.git",
        "path": "claude-plugin/evaluation"
      },
      "category": "ai"
    },
    {
      "name": "design-agent-orchestration",
      "description": "Design how agents collaborate, hand off, and stay legible to people.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ai-design-skills.git",
        "path": "claude-plugin/design-agent-orchestration"
      },
      "category": "ai"
    },
    {
      "name": "prompt-architecture",
      "description": "Structure prompts and context as a design material, not an afterthought.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/ai-design-skills.git",
        "path": "claude-plugin/prompt-architecture"
      },
      "category": "ai"
    },
    {
      "name": "cognitive-accessibility",
      "description": "Design for how people actually think: cognitive load, plain language, wayfinding, focus, memory, error recovery.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/inclusive-design-skills.git",
        "path": "cognitive-accessibility"
      },
      "category": "accessibility"
    },
    {
      "name": "inclusive-interaction",
      "description": "Multi-modal interactions that adapt to how people move, perceive, and communicate.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/inclusive-design-skills.git",
        "path": "inclusive-interaction"
      },
      "category": "accessibility"
    },
    {
      "name": "accessible-content",
      "description": "Structure content that works for screen readers, cognitive differences, and diverse literacy levels.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/inclusive-design-skills.git",
        "path": "accessible-content"
      },
      "category": "accessibility"
    },
    {
      "name": "inclusive-personas",
      "description": "User stories, personas, and scenarios that include disability from the start.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/inclusive-design-skills.git",
        "path": "inclusive-personas"
      },
      "category": "accessibility"
    },
    {
      "name": "adaptive-interfaces",
      "description": "Design systems that respect user preferences and adapt to individual needs.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/inclusive-design-skills.git",
        "path": "adaptive-interfaces"
      },
      "category": "accessibility"
    },
    {
      "name": "accessibility-decisions",
      "description": "Document, communicate, and maintain accessibility decisions across teams and time.",
      "source": {
        "source": "git-subdir",
        "url": "https://github.com/Owl-Listener/inclusive-design-skills.git",
        "path": "accessibility-decisions"
      },
      "category": "accessibility"
    }
  ]
}