21st-ui-explore

A design-exploration workflow for creating several different website or app interface directions using the existing design system. A design system is the project's shared rules for colors, spacing, type, and components.

In plain words
What is it for?
Used to research references, define three meaningfully different UI concepts, generate previews, compare tradeoffs, and record the selected direction.
Why use it?
It helps when the right visual direction is unclear by making comparable options while keeping the project's technology, brand assets, accessibility, and responsive behavior in view.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/21st-dev/skill/21st-ui-explore
Any agent
npx skills add 21st-dev/skill --skill 21st-ui-explore
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/21st-dev/skill

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 98 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 450 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00098 $0.00450
Opus 5 $0.00049 $0.00225
Sonnet 5 $0.00020 $0.00090
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00045

Measured yesterday against content hash 4482d001cfe8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

21st-ui-explore 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to 21st-ui-explore — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/21st-ui-explore/SKILL.md · 52 lines

What it actually says

Explore grounded UI directions

Create real choices without abandoning the project's visual identity.

Workflow

  1. Read .21st/design.json and the relevant product UI. If context is missing, run 21st init --design-context.

  2. Search 21st for multiple relevant references before generating:

    21st search "<interface and product context>" --context auto
    
  3. Define three named directions. Each direction must differ on at least two meaningful axes such as hierarchy, information density, navigation model, content emphasis, interaction pattern, or composition. Color-only variants do not count.

  4. Keep shared constraints fixed: real stack, tokens, brand assets, required content, accessibility, and responsive behavior.

  5. Generate or implement comparable previews. Prefer:

    21st generate "<goal plus fixed constraints>" --context auto --variants 3
    
  6. Present the options together when the host supports a picker. Otherwise give each option a preview/deep link and a compact comparison.

  7. Recommend one direction with concrete tradeoffs, but let the user choose.

  8. After selection, remove abandoned local variants and record the decision in .21st/design.json.

Direction contract

For every direction provide:

  • a short, descriptive name;
  • the core idea and intended user effect;
  • the 21st/project references used;
  • what stays consistent with the project;
  • two or more meaningful differences;
  • accessibility or responsive risks;
  • the best-fit scenario.

Do not generate random style mutations. Every difference must support a product or usability hypothesis that a user can evaluate.

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 · 52 lines · 98 tokens per session scan A 4482d001cfe8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

21st-ui-explore is a skill published in the GitHub repository 21st-dev/skill (3 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 98 tokens to every session and 450 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to 21st-ui-explore, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

obra/superpowers · 37 tokens

chat-pet-sprite-creation

Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.

microsoft/vscode · 53 tokens

cpu-profile-analysis

Analyze V8/Chrome CPU profiles (.cpuprofile) and DevTools trace files (Trace-.json). Use when: profiling performance, investigating slow functions, comparing code paths, finding bottlenecks, analyzing timeToRequest, understanding call trees from sampling profiler data, analyzing layout/paint/rendering, investigating…

microsoft/vscode · 71 tokens

agent-host-chat-contributions

Build and review cross-cutting agent-host chat behavior through lifecycle contributions. Use when adding turn lifecycle side effects, prompt or context injection, restored-history transformation, protocol-action observation, or when reviewing changes that add code to AgentSideEffects or AgentService.

microsoft/vscode · 56 tokens

auto-perf-optimize

Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.

microsoft/vscode · 62 tokens