What is design-shell?

A command for designing an application shell: the persistent navigation and layout surrounding an app’s pages. It produces a screen design, not implementation code.

Use it to design navigation and the shared layout after a product overview and section roadmap exist, optionally using predefined colors and typography.

It helps define how users move between product sections and gives the design a consistent outer structure.

How buildermethods/design-os configures Claude Code

About the project

Design OS is a product-planning and interface-design tool that guides an idea through product definition, data modeling, design-system choices, screen design, and implementation handoff. Teams use it to give coding agents a clear specification before development begins. Its catalogue add-ons support the guided planning and design workflow.

buildermethods/design-os · 1,876 stars · on GitHub

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to buildermethods/design-os. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/buildermethods/design-os/main/.claude/commands/design-os/design-shell.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/buildermethods/design-os

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/buildermethods/design-os/design-shell/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/buildermethods/design-os/design-shell)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/buildermethods/design-os/design-shell"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/buildermethods/design-os/design-shell/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/buildermethods/design-os/design-shell"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/buildermethods/design-os/design-shell.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 0 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.

When invoked 1,692 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00000	$0.01692
Opus 5.5	$0.00000	$0.00677
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00000	$0.00338
Haiku 4.5	$0.00000	$0.00169

Measured 2mo ago against content hash e949ca680027, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design-shell scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/commands/design-os/design-shell.md · 239 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 239 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Design Shell

You are helping the user design the application shell — the persistent navigation and layout that wraps all sections. This is a screen design, not implementation code.

Step 1: Check Prerequisites

First, verify prerequisites exist:

Read /product/product-overview.md — Product name and description
Read /product/product-roadmap.md — Sections for navigation
Check if /product/design-system/colors.json and /product/design-system/typography.json exist

If overview or roadmap are missing:

"Before designing the shell, you need to define your product and sections. Please run:

/product-vision — Define your product
/product-roadmap — Define your sections"

Stop here if overview or roadmap are missing.

If design tokens are missing, show a warning but continue:

"Note: Design tokens haven't been defined yet. I'll proceed with default styling, but you may want to run /design-tokens first for consistent colors and typography."

Step 2: Analyze Product Structure

Review the roadmap sections and present navigation options:

"I'm designing the shell for [Product Name]. Based on your roadmap, you have [N] sections:

[Section 1] — [Description]
[Section 2] — [Description]
[Section 3] — [Description]

Let's decide on the shell layout. Common patterns:

A. Sidebar Navigation — Vertical nav on the left, content on the right Best for: Apps with many sections, dashboard-style tools, admin panels

B. Top Navigation — Horizontal nav at top, content below Best for: Simpler apps, marketing-style products, fewer sections

C. Minimal Header — Just logo + user menu, sections accessed differently Best for: Single-purpose tools, wizard-style flows

Which pattern fits [Product Name] best?"

Wait for their response.

Step 3: Gather Design Details

Use AskUserQuestion to clarify:

"Where should the user menu (avatar, logout) appear?"
"Do you want the sidebar collapsible on mobile, or should it become a hamburger menu?"
"Any additional items in the navigation? (Settings, Help, etc.)"
"What should the 'home' or default view be when the app loads?"

Read the full file on GitHub · 239 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 239 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A e949ca680027

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design-shell is a command published in the GitHub repository buildermethods/design-os (1,876 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,692 tokens. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Design and UX

design-shell next to 6 commands from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
design-shellbuildermethods/design-os	Command	1.9k	1mo ago	MIT	A	0	Claude Code
profilecathrynlavery/diagram-design	Command	65k	3d ago	MIT	A	16	Claude Code
erne-animateJubaKitiashvili/everything-react-native-expo	Command	50	29d ago	MIT	A	21	Claude Code
ui-flow-reviewMRCalderon3D/everything-game-dev-code	Command	104	28d ago	MIT	A	15	Claude Code
responsive-design-specialistimsaif/design-with-claude	Command	11	yesterday	MIT	A	36	Claude Code
design-auditw2ur/claude-code-setup	Command	2	3d ago	MIT	A	30	Claude Code
ppt-image2-editable-rebuildwwe-dog/ppt-image2-editable-rebuild	Command	204	5mo ago	Unlicense	A	15	Claude Code

design-os: Command for Claude Code