Agent Skill
Animate skill
animateemilkowalski/skillsskills/animate/SKILL.md
Build an animation from scratch, making the decisions in the order that determines whether it feels right — should it animate at all, what purpose, which tool, which properties, which curve and duration, how it interrupts, how it exits. Writes the implementation. Use when asked to animate something, add motion, make a component feel alive, or build a transition. For critiquing existing motion use review-animations; for auditing a whole codebase use improve-animations.
always on
96 tokname + description
once used
2,827 tokSKILL.md body
bundled files
18 KB
installs
162kskills.sh
Install the Animate skill
Skills CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and others)
npx skills add https://github.com/emilkowalski/skills --skill animate
Claude Code, by hand (all projects)
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/emilkowalski/skills.git /tmp/skills mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills cp -R /tmp/skills/skills/animate ~/.claude/skills/animate
For one project only, copy the folder into .claude/skills/ in that project instead. The agent picks it up when a task matches its description.
What it costs your context
Agent Skills load in three steps. Tokens counted with the o200k tokenizer; your model's count will differ a little.
| When | What loads | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Every session | Name and description | 96 tok |
| When the agent uses it | The SKILL.md instructions | 2,827 tok |
| Only if opened | 1 bundled files (8 KB) | varies |
Until it is used, animate costs about 14× less than the median MCP server we measured (1,362 tokens on every turn). Installing all 15 skills from emilkowalski/skills would load 1,400 tokens of descriptions. Skills vs MCP study
Checks
Our checks found nothing to flag: it follows the Agent Skills specification's naming and size guidelines and doesn't pipe downloads into a shell.
Checked 2026-10-22 · method
What's inside
The headings of its SKILL.md. Read the full file on GitHub.
- Building Animations
- Initial Response
- Operating Posture
- Hard Rules
- The Build Sequence
- 1. Should this animate at all?
- 2. What is the purpose?
- 3. Pick the tool — cheapest that works
- 4. Pick the properties
- 5. Easing and duration — or a spring
- 6. Interruption and exit
- 7. Reduced motion and pointer gating
- Recipes
- Never Ship
- Output
- Tone
More skills from emilkowalski/skills
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This skill encodes Emil Kowalski's philosophy on UI polish, component design, animation decisions, and the invisible details that make software feel great.
376k35 tok idle · 6,015 in use - review-animationsemilkowalski/skills
Reviews animation and motion code against a high craft bar derived from Emil Kowalski's design engineering philosophy. Default to flagging; approval is earned.
246k34 tok idle · 1,928 in use - apple-designemilkowalski/skills
Apple's approach to interface design and fluid, physical motion, translated for the web. Use when building or reviewing gesture-driven UI, spring animations, drag/swipe/sheet interactions, momentum and interruptible transitions, translucent materials and depth, typography (optical sizing, tracking, leading), reduced-motion, or the design foundations (feedback, spatial consistency, restraint) behind Apple-style interfaces.
233k79 tok idle · 5,067 in use - animation-vocabularyemilkowalski/skills
Reverse-lookup glossary that turns a vague description of a web animation or motion effect into its exact term ("the bouncy thing when a popover opens" → Pop in; "the iOS rubber-band scroll" → Rubber-banding). Use when the user asks "what's it called when…", or describes a motion effect without knowing its name and wants the right word to prompt an AI or designer with. For naming an effect, not designing or building one.
229k98 tok idle · 2,859 in use - improve-animationsemilkowalski/skills
Survey a codebase's animation and motion code as a senior motion advisor, then produce a prioritized audit and self-contained implementation plans for other agents (or cheaper models) to execute. Read-only on source code — it plans improvements, it does not apply them. Use when the user asks to "improve the animations", "audit the motion", "make this app feel better", or wants a roadmap of animation fixes rather than a review of a single diff.
214k97 tok idle · 1,748 in use - find-animation-opportunitiesemilkowalski/skills
Search a codebase or UI for places that don't animate but should, and reject everything that shouldn't. Read-only; it proposes motion with exact values, it does not implement it. Use when the user asks "what could be animated here?" or wants to "make this feel more alive". For fixing existing animations, use improve-animations or review-animations instead.
199k78 tok idle · 2,206 in use - pick-ui-libraryemilkowalski/skills
Pick the right library for a given frontend task from a curated, opinionated list — numbers, OTP inputs, charts, command menus, virtualization, drag and drop, toasts, state, styling, and more. Only runs when explicitly invoked; it does not trigger on its own.
176k61 tok idle · 1,102 in use - prototypeemilkowalski/skills
Build multiple genuinely different versions of a UI piece you describe, rendered behind a visual picker so you can flip through them live and promote the one that feels right. Only runs when explicitly invoked; it does not trigger on its own.
165k48 tok idle · 1,637 in use