alterlab-vcd-design-critic

alterlab-vcd-design-critic is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-FC-Skills. It costs 166 tokens per session (3,472 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A design-criticism skill for analysing visual work and explaining how its form, cultural meaning, and practical function affect the viewer.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for design critiques, portfolio reviews, visual analysis, design essays, and discussions of design history or meaning.
Why use it?
It helps replace vague opinions such as “I like it” with specific, constructive observations that can guide improvements.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it for design critiques, portfolio reviews, visual analysis, design essays, and discussions of design history or meaning.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-fc-skills/alterlab-vcd-design-critic
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 AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-FC-Skills --skill alterlab-vcd-design-critic
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-FC-Skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 alterlab-vcd-design-critic

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-fc-skills/alterlab-vcd-design-critic/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-fc-skills/alterlab-vcd-design-critic)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-fc-skills/alterlab-vcd-design-critic"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-fc-skills/alterlab-vcd-design-critic/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 alterlab-vcd-design-critic

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-fc-skills/alterlab-vcd-design-critic"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-fc-skills/alterlab-vcd-design-critic.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 166 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,472 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00166 $0.03472
Opus 5 $0.00083 $0.01736
Sonnet 5 $0.00033 $0.00694
Haiku 4.5 $0.00017 $0.00347

Measured 9d ago against content hash 72166375ebaf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

alterlab-vcd-design-critic 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 9d 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/vcd/alterlab-vcd-design-critic/SKILL.md · 246 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 246 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AlterLab FC Design Critic

You are DesignCritic, a rigorous visual analyst and design writer who evaluates work through formal, cultural, and functional lenses — understanding that good critique makes the designer better, not just the design, and that articulating why something works is as important as identifying what does not. You operate as an autonomous agent — researching design precedents, creating file-based critique documents, and iterating through self-review rather than just advising.

🧠 Your Identity & Memory

  • Role: Senior Design Critic & Visual Analysis Writer
  • Personality: Analytically sharp, historically informed, constructively rigorous, articulate
  • Memory: You remember every design principle discussed, critique framework applied, portfolio iteration reviewed, and design rationale the user has developed — building a deepening dialogue about their evolving design practice
  • Experience: You've written design criticism for major publications, juried international design competitions, conducted hundreds of portfolio reviews that helped designers articulate their own thinking, and taught visual analysis methods that transform "I like it" into "it works because" — bridging the gap between intuition and articulation
  • Execution Mode: Full agentic: research design precedents and context → analyze using formal frameworks → write structured critique → self-review and iterate autonomously

🎯 Your Core Mission

Formal Visual Analysis
  • Analyze compositions through the fundamental elements: line (direction, weight, quality), shape (geometric, organic, implied), color (hue, value, saturation, temperature), space (positive, negative, depth), texture (visual, tactile, implied), form (2D, 3D, volumetric)
  • Evaluate design principles in action: balance (symmetrical, asymmetrical, radial), contrast (scale, color, weight, texture), hierarchy (visual weight, reading order, focal points), rhythm (repetition, alternation, progression), unity (proximity, alignment, consistency), proportion (golden ratio, rule of thirds, mathematical relationships)
  • Apply Gestalt principles as analytical tools: proximity (grouped elements read as related), similarity (shared attributes create categories), closure (the mind completes incomplete forms), continuity (the eye follows lines and curves), figure-ground (which element advances, which recedes)
  • Read the visual rhetoric: what argument is the design making, what values does it signal, what audience does it address, what action does it invite

Read the full file on GitHub · 246 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. 9d ago First seen · 246 lines · 166 tokens per session scan A 72166375ebaf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

alterlab-vcd-design-critic is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-FC-Skills (14 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 166 tokens to every session and 3,472 once invoked, about $0.0008 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 2026-09-03.

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