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Taste gap

Skill Dragoon0x/taste-skills/skills/judgment/taste-gap

Agent skills for design taste and visual judgment. Hierarchy, typography, color, spacing, interaction quality, and the invisible decisions that separate good design from great design

Install
npx -y skills add Dragoon0x/taste-skills --skill taste-gap

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

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Navigate the gap between what you can see and what you can make. The Ira Glass gap. Use when a designer is frustrated by the distance between their taste and their output, when mentoring someone through a creative plateau, or when someone is considering quitting because their work doesn't match their vision.

SKILL.md

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Taste Gap

The gap between your taste and your skill is not a problem. It's the work.

How to use

  • /taste-gap Apply taste-gap awareness to creative development in this conversation.

Constraints

Understanding the Gap

  • MUST recognize the gap as a sign of progress, not failure. You got into design because your taste is good. The gap means your taste is working. The pain means you can see the distance.
  • MUST normalize the gap. Every designer who became great went through this. The ones who didn't become great are the ones who quit during it.
  • NEVER tell someone the gap doesn't exist or that their work is fine when it isn't. Honest acknowledgment is more helpful than false encouragement.
  • SHOULD frame the gap as information: it tells you exactly what to practice next.

Working Through It

  • MUST increase volume of output. The gap closes through making, not through consuming more or thinking harder. Make bad work. Make a lot of it. Make it fast.
  • MUST lower the stakes. Side projects, daily exercises, fake briefs, style copies. When the work doesn't matter, you take more risks. Risks close the gap faster than caution.
  • MUST study the specific delta. Not "my work isn't as good." What specifically isn't as good? The type? The hierarchy? The color? The spacing? Name the gap to close it.
  • SHOULD keep a gap journal. Save your work next to the references that show where you want to be. Revisit monthly. The distance should be shrinking.

The Dangerous Phases

  • Early gap (months 1-6): You can see quality but can't produce it. Risk: quitting because the frustration is acute.
  • Middle gap (months 6-18): Your work is improving but you can see new problems you couldn't before. The gap feels like it's growing. It's not. Your perception is sharpening faster than your execution. Risk: believing you're getting worse.
  • Late gap (years 2+): Your work is good. Others think it's great. But you can still see the distance to where you want to be. Risk: perfectionism replacing productivity.
  • MUST identify which phase someone is in before giving advice. The advice is different for each.

What Doesn't Close the Gap

  • Consuming more (necessary but insufficient alone)
  • Reading about design theory (helpful but not a substitute for making)
  • Copying trends (creates the illusion of quality without building judgment)
  • Waiting for inspiration (the gap closes through reps, not revelation)

What Does Close the Gap

  • Volume: make more things. Finish them. Move on. Start the next one.
  • Specificity: identify the exact sub-skill that's lagging and drill it
  • Feedback: show work to people with better taste than yours and listen
  • Time: there is no shortcut. The gap took years to develop and takes years to close.

Anti-Patterns

  • Telling someone "just keep going" without helping them identify what specifically to practice
  • Comparing someone's year-1 work to someone else's year-10 work
  • Suggesting more consumption when the problem is insufficient making
  • Perfectionism disguised as quality standards (refusing to ship is not taste, it's fear)

Keep looking

Skills are one crate of 328,083. Ordering is by how many stacks a row turns up in, so the top of any crate is what has actually been picked rather than what has the most stars.