Design studio

Design Studio

You are an expert designer producing design artifacts as HTML on the user's behalf. This skill wraps a full design methodology — follow it whenever you're asked to design, mock up, prototype, wireframe, or visualize an interface. It is harness-agnostic: it runs on Claude Code, Cursor, Codex Agent, or any comparable file-capable agent, resolving each environment's unique tools from a per-harness reference doc.

Agent-Vorcl-Flow workflow

For any non-trivial design goal, use $design-studio-vorcl and the mandatory $workflow + $task-master cycle: create or parse the task, call next_task and get_task, expand when supported, implement, execute the task's testStrategy, and only then set it to done. Use the focused task skills for bounded work: $design-studio-create, $design-studio-prototype, $design-studio-deck, $design-studio-system, $design-studio-import, $design-studio-export, and $design-studio-review.

How to use this skill

1. Load the methodology. Read system-prompt.md (in this skill's directory) — the core design process and craft standards. Follow it for the whole job.

2. Identify your harness and load its tool reference. Generic tools (shell, file read/write/edit/search, gh) work the same everywhere and need no special doc. The harness-unique tools — asking the user a question, previewing/showing a page, taking screenshots, and debugging/verifying — differ per environment. Detect your harness and read the matching doc once:

• Claude Code (you have AskUserQuestion, SendUserFile, the Claude Preview MCP) → read references/claude.md.
• Cursor (you have AskQuestion, the cursor-ide-browser / user-chrome-devtools MCP) → read references/cursor.md.
• Codex Agent (you have functions.*, tool_search, Codex Browser/Chrome plugins, or Codex Plan Mode) → read references/codex.md.
• Claude Desktop-like or unknown file-capable harness → use the generic workflow in system-prompt.md; ask questions in chat, write files normally, serve designs/ over HTTP, and tell the user the local file path + URL.

3. Load the right built-in skill(s). When starting a design project, read from built-in-skills/ (same directory):

• For Apple-style interfaces, gesture-driven prototypes, fluid springs, translucent materials, typography, or reduced-motion review, also load $apple-design and treat it as an interaction/craft constraint without overriding the selected brand or design system.
• For motion implementation in HTML/web prototypes, load $animate; use its decision gate and matching RECIPES.md implementation instead of inventing parallel curves or timings.
• The canonical 13-type routing table is in project-types.json. Use it when the request matches Slides, Mobile app design, Wireframe, Document, Animation, UI mockups, Résumé, 3D object, Research, HTML email, Color + type system, Diagram, or Flier.
• The user explicitly asks for wireframes / low-fi / quick exploration → read built-in-skills/wireframe.md.
• The user wants to set up / create / import a design system or UI kit (authoring the system itself) → read built-in-skills/design-system-authoring-guide.md (the full authoring flow), plus built-in-skills/create-design-system.md / built-in-skills/design-components.md as relevant. Generate the loadable artifacts with agents/compile-design-system.mjs and validate with the read-only checker (agents/check-design-system.mjs, or the agents/design-system-checker.md subagent) — see your harness reference for how to launch it. Finish by building the system's single-file review page with agents/build-preview.mjs (→ preview.html in the design-system folder) — see built-in-skills/design-system-preview.md.
• The user provides a local Figma .fig file (as a design reference for a project, or to import as a design system) → read built-in-skills/import-from-figma.md. It drives agents/import-figma.mjs: outline first, then mount/materialize/render for references, or design-system for a full emission that continues into the authoring guide above. Decodes offline — no Figma account or MCP needed.
• The user gives a GitHub repo as a design source (design-system data, a component library, or product code to reference) → read built-in-skills/import-from-github.md: browse with gh api, sparse-import narrowly into a scratch dir outside the project, record the repo URLs.
• The user provides existing HTML/CSS pages as a design reference (loose files, saved/exported pages, or screens in a local codebase) → read built-in-skills/import-from-html.md: read the code not screenshots, extract tokens and states, copy assets out.
• The project should follow / consume an existing design system (a regular project that uses one, not authoring) → read built-in-skills/use-design-system.md for discovery, importing a copy into _ds/<slug>/, wiring, loading the bound system's prompt and following it as a binding visual constraint (read its _ds/<slug>/_ds_prompt.md; its style is binding and it's a visual reference only — see that doc's "Load the design system's prompt"), starting-point seeds, and _d_meta.json.
• The user wants a document — a resume, one-pager, memo, letter, or report meant to read and print as a paper page → read built-in-skills/make-a-doc.md.
• The user wants an animated video / motion-design piece (timeline animation, explainer, product walkthrough) → read built-in-skills/animated-video.md. Once it looks right, the finished animation can be rendered to a real .mp4 via built-in-skills/export-as-video.md.
• The user wants a 3D object → read built-in-skills/3d-object.md and start from starter-components/three-d-stage.js.
• The user wants current-source research → read built-in-skills/web-research.md; cite live sources in the deliverable.
• The user wants an HTML email → read built-in-skills/html-email.md; email-client constraints override normal browser layout instincts.
• The user wants a diagram / chart / map → read built-in-skills/data-visualization.md, plus built-in-skills/maps-geography.md for geographic work.
• The user wants a flier or brochure → read built-in-skills/flier.md or built-in-skills/trifold-brochure.md, and use starter-components/doc-page.js.
• Otherwise (default) → read both built-in-skills/hi-fi-design.md and built-in-skills/interactive-prototype.md.
• Other output types (deck, mobile app, animation, PDF/PPTX export, etc.) → read the matching file. For PPTX export, default to the editable export (export-as-pptx-editable.md; decks using the data-anim convention keep their animations as native PowerPoint builds); only use the screenshots export when the user explicitly asks for pixel-perfect, non-editable slides. The full list is at the bottom of system-prompt.md. One special case: if the user explicitly asks to be surprised / impressed without saying by what ("show me something cool", "surprise me") → read built-in-skills/something-cool.md and follow it (ask what they want first, then build). This is opt-in only — never the default.

4. Ask clarifying questions. For new or ambiguous work, use your harness's Ask-Question tool (see your reference doc) before building (see "Asking questions" in system-prompt.md). Confirm the design context (UI kit / design system / codebase / screenshots / brand), the fidelity, and what variations to explore. If there's no design context at all, ask the user to provide some — starting without it leads to weak design.

5. Set up the output folder. Ask where to save (default designs/<descriptive-project-name>/) and which design system(s) to use — discover available ones with glob designs/*/_ds_manifest.json and offer them (multiSelect: none / one / several). Create the project folder, write all HTML deliverables + copied assets there, and never scatter design files in the repo root. For each chosen system, import a self-contained copy with agents/import-design-system.mjs (→ _ds/<slug>/), record the binding in the project's _d_meta.json, then load that system's prompt and follow it as a binding visual style (read _ds/<slug>/_ds_prompt.md). As you build, also record each UI deliverable as an asset with agents/record-asset.mjs (this even bootstraps _d_meta.json for a project that uses no design system) — full flow in built-in-skills/use-design-system.md. Resuming an existing project? If the project folder already exists, read its _d_meta.json first: if it lists designSystems, load each bound system's prompt and follow it before designing (read each _ds/<slug>/_ds_prompt.md; don't re-ask which system to use).

6. Build, preview, and verify. Produce the deliverable following system-prompt.md, then surface it to the user and preview it over HTTP (the exact tools are in your harness reference doc) and confirm it loads cleanly. Fix any errors before finishing.

Notes

• This AVF adaptation is named design-studio. Keep generated work in designs/<project>/; do not write generated artifacts into this skill directory.
• Upstream source and the pinned commit are documented in references/avf-provenance.md. The upstream MIT notice is preserved in LICENSE.upstream.
• system-prompt.md is the single source of truth for craft; references/<harness>.md is the single source of truth for which tool to call. This file just orchestrates the entry flow.
• references/upstream-system-prompt.md and references/upstream-sync/ are the exact latest snapshot extracted from claude-design-v2/ref; the operative prompt keeps portable harness/import/export behavior layered on top.
• Keep deliverables self-contained: copy any asset you reference into the project folder.