A research step for a new user-interface component that records user needs, related patterns in a Figma design system, and accessibility requirements. Accessibility means making an interface usable by people with different abilities.

Use it to research a component before designing it, especially when you only have its name or a rough idea.

It prevents design work from starting with guesses and helps uncover existing patterns and requirements early.

empathize — Skill for Claude Code by bromso/metapowers

Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add bromso/metapowers

Claude Code

/plugin install design

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install design, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 8 skills, 1 MCP server.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bromso/metapowers/empathize/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/bromso/metapowers/empathize)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bromso/metapowers/empathize"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bromso/metapowers/empathize/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bromso/metapowers/empathize"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bromso/metapowers/empathize.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 54 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 574 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00054	$0.00574
Opus 5.5	$0.00022	$0.00230
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00011	$0.00115
Haiku 4.5	$0.00005	$0.00057

Measured 3d ago against content hash 474942068508, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

empathize 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 3d 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.

plugins/design/skills/empathize/SKILL.md · 50 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 50 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Empathize

Research the problem space for "$ARGUMENTS" before any design work begins. Gather user needs, existing patterns, accessibility requirements, and contextual constraints.

Arguments. $ARGUMENTS may contain the project name and optional flags. Take the first token as <project> and treat --skip-checks as a flag; never include flags in file paths. All paths below use <project>. If --skip-checks is present, skip the prerequisite check and, before writing any artifact, append one line to .metapowers/design/<project>/skip-log.md: - <ISO timestamp> — <skill name> skipped prerequisite check for <artifact file> — reason: <reason or "none given">.

Prerequisites

None — this is the first phase.

Process

Read the design system via MCP tools:
- Call figma_get_design_system to fetch existing components, tokens, and styles
- Call figma_get_components to list all published components
- Identify components that overlap with or relate to ""
Inspect existing components (if found):
- Call figma_get_component and figma_get_component_for_dev for related components
- Call figma_export_image to get visual references
- Document what exists, what works well, and what's missing
Review accessibility requirements:
- Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/shared/wcag-criteria.md for applicable WCAG criteria
- Call figma_a11y_contrast_check on any existing color pairs used in related components
- Note specific accessibility requirements for this component type
Synthesize findings into a research brief covering:
- User needs and common use cases for this component type
- Existing patterns found in the design system
- Accessibility requirements and considerations
- Contextual constraints (design tokens available, conventions established)
- Gaps and opportunities
Write the artifact to .metapowers/design/<project>/01-empathize.md

Output

The research brief written to .metapowers/design/<project>/01-empathize.md. Present a summary to the user highlighting:

Key user needs identified
Existing components found (if any)
Critical accessibility requirements
Recommended approach for the Define phase

Read the full file on GitHub · 50 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.

3d ago First seen · 50 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A 474942068508

Subscribe to this mod's changes

empathize is a skill published in the GitHub repository bromso/metapowers (2 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 574 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-10-21.

Claude Code Design and UX Research claude-agent claude-code-plugin claude-skills context-design context-engineering

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