Agent Skill
Emil Design Eng skill
emil-design-engemilkowalski/skillsskills/emil-design-eng/SKILL.md
This skill encodes Emil Kowalski's philosophy on UI polish, component design, animation decisions, and the invisible details that make software feel great.
always on
35 tokname + description
once used
6,015 tokSKILL.md body
bundled files
0
installs
376kskills.sh
Install the Emil Design Eng skill
Skills CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and others)
npx skills add https://github.com/emilkowalski/skills --skill emil-design-eng
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/emil-design-eng ~/.claude/skills/emil-design-eng
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 | 35 tok |
| When the agent uses it | The SKILL.md instructions | 6,015 tok |
| Only if opened | No bundled files | — |
Until it is used, emil-design-eng costs about 39× 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
- The instructions are over 5,000 tokens, the Agent Skills specification's guideline for SKILL.md.
- The instructions are over 500 lines; the specification suggests moving detail into reference files.
Checked 2026-10-22 · method
What's inside
The headings of its SKILL.md. Read the full file on GitHub.
- Design Engineering
- Initial Response
- Core Philosophy
- Taste is trained, not innate
- Unseen details compound
- Beauty is leverage
- Review Format (Required)
- The Animation Decision Framework
- 1. Should this animate at all?
- 2. What is the purpose?
- 3. What easing should it use?
- 4. How fast should it be?
- Perceived performance
- Spring Animations
- When to use springs
- Spring-based mouse interactions
- Spring configuration
- Interruptibility advantage
- Component Building Principles
- Buttons must feel responsive
- Never animate from scale(0)
- Make popovers origin-aware
- Tooltips: skip delay on subsequent hovers
- Use CSS transitions over keyframes for interruptible UI
More skills from emilkowalski/skills
- 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 - animateemilkowalski/skills
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.
162k96 tok idle · 2,827 in use