design-theory

design-theory is a skill for Claude Code from Abhinavbwj/Skills-Architects. It costs 25 tokens per session (7,936 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A reference for architectural movements, design philosophies, critical theory, composition, precedent analysis, and design critique.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to study architectural ideas, analyze precedent projects, develop design reasoning, and structure critiques of building concepts.
Why use it?
It helps explain why design decisions are made and gives a structured way to compare and critique architectural proposals.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: user-invocable in frontmatter. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Part of the Skills-Architects plugin — 29 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to study architectural ideas, analyze precedent projects, develop design reasoning, and structure critiques of building concepts.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/abhinavbwj/skills-architects/design-theory
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.

Any agent
npx skills add Abhinavbwj/Skills-Architects --skill design-theory
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Abhinavbwj/Skills-Architects

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install Skills-Architects, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 29 skills.

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.

agentmods badge for design-theory

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abhinavbwj/skills-architects/design-theory/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/abhinavbwj/skills-architects/design-theory)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/abhinavbwj/skills-architects/design-theory"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abhinavbwj/skills-architects/design-theory/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for design-theory

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/abhinavbwj/skills-architects/design-theory"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/abhinavbwj/skills-architects/design-theory.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 25 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 7,936 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00025 $0.07936
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.03968
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.01587
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00794

Measured 13d ago against content hash 30546c4e5c2b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design-theory 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 13d 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.

skills/design-theory/SKILL.md · 551 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 551 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Design Theory

Comprehensive knowledge base for architectural design philosophy, critical theory, compositional principles, precedent analysis methodology, and design critique frameworks. Invoke this skill when addressing questions about design philosophy, architectural movements, theoretical underpinnings of design decisions, or structured critique of architectural proposals.


Section 1: Architectural Design Philosophies

1.1 Rationalism — Structure as Expression

Rationalism holds that architectural form should derive from logical structural and programmatic reasoning. The building's truth lies in its clarity of organization and the honest expression of its constructive logic.

Core Tenets:

  • Form follows structural logic and material behavior
  • Spatial order derives from geometric and mathematical systems
  • Ornament is secondary to tectonic clarity
  • Repetition and modular coordination create visual coherence

Key Figures: Auguste Perret, Pier Luigi Nervi, Louis Kahn, Aldo Rossi, Giorgio Grassi

Canonical Works:

  • Kimbell Art Museum (Kahn, 1972) — cycloid vault shells spanning 30.5 m (100 ft), natural light slits at vault crowns
  • Palazzetto dello Sport, Rome (Nervi, 1957) — 58.5 m diameter ribbed dome, 1,620 precast concrete V-elements
  • Gallaratese Housing, Milan (Rossi, 1974) — archetypal column-and-lintel repetition, 182 m long block

Design Application: Begin with the structural bay as the generative unit. Derive spatial hierarchy from column grid spacing (typically 6.0 m, 7.5 m, 9.0 m, or 10.8 m grids in reinforced concrete). Express the load path visually. Eliminate non-structural partitions where possible to reveal the primary order.

1.2 Empiricism — Experience-Driven Design

Empiricism prioritizes direct human experience, sensory engagement, and contextual observation over abstract theory. Design decisions arise from studying how people actually inhabit and move through space.

Core Tenets:

  • User observation and post-occupancy data drive design
  • Spatial sequences are composed for experiential richness
  • Material selections respond to tactile and visual perception
  • Context (climate, culture, daily rituals) shapes form

Read the full file on GitHub · 551 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files 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. 13d ago First seen · 551 lines · 25 tokens per session scan A 30546c4e5c2b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design-theory is a skill published in the GitHub repository Abhinavbwj/Skills-Architects (285 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 25 tokens to every session and 7,936 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

webgl-holographic-foil

A self-contained WebGL2 hero: thin-film interference over a crushed-foil surface whose palette shifts with the viewing angle; move the cursor to tilt the film.

nexu-io/open-design · 41 tokens

html-ppt-hermes-cyber-terminal

OpenDesign + BYOK: choosing and wiring your own model, hands-on — cost, quality, and the routing decision. Built as a decision-grade AI literacy deck for engineers, IT, applied-AI teams.

nexu-io/open-design · 53 tokens

html-ppt-taste-brutalist

16:9 HTML deck in tactical-telemetry / CRT-terminal taste. Deactivated-CRT charcoal slides, white-phosphor monospace, hazard-red accent, scanline overlay, ASCII syntax, density over decoration. Distilled from Leonxlnx/taste-skill brutalist-skill (Tactical Telemetry mode).

nexu-io/open-design · 78 tokens

visual-ralph

Visual Ralph orchestration for frontend UI from generated references, static references, or live URL targets, using $ultragoal with built-in visual verdict and pixel-diff evidence until the implementation matches and leaves a reproducible design system.

Yeachan-Heo/oh-my-codex · 52 tokens

accessibility

Consolidated accessibility skill entrypoint for WCAG 2.2, ARIA Authoring Practices, cognitive accessibility, Section 508, EN 301 549, design intent verification, and the Accessibility Planner workflow.

microsoft/hve-core · 47 tokens

make-resume

A Chinese-language tool for creating editable HTML resumes that can be changed in a browser and printed to PDF. It uses available resume templates when they are installed and otherwise provides a simpler fallback.

Hisn00w/ASu-skills · 86 tokens