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.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design navigation and the shared layout after a product overview and section roadmap exist, optionally using predefined colors and typography.
Why use it?
It helps define how users move between product sections and gives the design a consistent outer structure.

Command for Claude Code

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/buildermethods/design-os/design-shell
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/buildermethods/design-os

Made for: Claude Code.

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. Scan, not verified.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00000 $0.01692
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00846
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00338
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00169

Measured yesterday against content hash e949ca680027, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, 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 yesterday.

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:

  1. Read /product/product-overview.md — Product name and description
  2. Read /product/product-roadmap.md — Sections for navigation
  3. 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:

  1. /product-vision — Define your product
  2. /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:

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

  1. yesterday 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 (1,845 stars, last pushed 2d 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.