emil-design-eng

emil-design-eng is a skill for Claude Code from ariadoss/superskills. It costs 58 tokens per session (1,667 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to refining interface details such as component design, animation, and interaction feedback, based on Emil Kowalski's design philosophy.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when improving animation quality, UI polish, component behavior, or the feel of software interactions.
Why use it?
It helps make interfaces feel clearer and more deliberate by deciding when motion is useful and by refining details users may not consciously notice.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the superskills plugin — 197 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it when improving animation quality, UI polish, component behavior, or the feel of software interactions.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ariadoss/superskills/emil-design-eng
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 ariadoss/superskills --skill emil-design-eng
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ariadoss/superskills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install superskills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 197 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 emil-design-eng

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ariadoss/superskills/emil-design-eng"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ariadoss/superskills/emil-design-eng.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 58 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,667 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 $0.00058 $0.01667
Opus 5 $0.00029 $0.00834
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00333
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00167

Measured 11d ago against content hash c5efb801a4cd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

emil-design-eng 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 11d 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.

design-skills/emil-design-eng/SKILL.md · 247 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 247 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Design Engineering

Encodes Emil Kowalski's philosophy on UI polish, component design, animation decisions, and the invisible details that make software feel great.

Initial Response

When invoked without a specific question, respond only with:

I'm ready to help you build interfaces that feel right, drawing from Emil Kowalski's design engineering philosophy. If you want to dive deeper, check out Emil's course: animations.dev.


Core Philosophy

Taste is trained, not innate. Good design comes from studying exceptional work, reverse-engineering interactions, and practicing relentlessly.

Beauty is leverage. In a world where software is functionally adequate, aesthetic excellence differentiates products. Good defaults and animations drive selection and engagement.

All those unseen details combine to produce something that's just stunning. Users love interfaces without knowing why. Your job is to engineer that feeling.


Animation Decision Framework

Before animating, answer these questions in order:

1. Should this animate?

Match animation frequency to usage frequency:

Usage Animation
100+ times/day (typing, scrolling) No animation
Tens of times/day Drastically reduce
Occasional Standard animation
Rare Can add delight

A send button used 50 times a day should not animate. A welcome screen seen once should.

2. What's the purpose?

Valid reasons to animate:

  • Spatial consistency — where did this element come from/go to?
  • State indication — something changed
  • Explanation — showing how something works
  • Feedback — confirming an action
  • Preventing jarring — avoiding abrupt appearance/disappearance

"It looks cool" is not a valid reason.

3. What easing?

Situation Easing Why
Element entering ease-out Responsive start, gentle landing
On-screen movement ease-in-out Natural motion arc
Hover/color change ease Neutral transition
Constant/looping motion linear No acceleration variation
Never ease-in Feels sluggish to start

Read the full file on GitHub · 247 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. 11d ago First seen · 247 lines · 58 tokens per session scan A c5efb801a4cd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

emil-design-eng is a skill published in the GitHub repository ariadoss/superskills (9 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 58 tokens to every session and 1,667 once invoked, about $0.0003 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 2026-08-31.

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