law-of-proximity

law-of-proximity is a skill for Claude Code from Owl-Listener/designer-skills. It costs 54 tokens per session (552 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A visual design guideline in which nearby elements are perceived as belonging together, while extra space separates groups.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to group labels with fields, headings with their content, and action buttons with the content they control.
Why use it?
It makes relationships clear through spacing, reducing the need for borders, labels, or other visual explanations.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the ui-design plugin — 19 skills, 5 commands shipped together

not rated 2.6krepo +89 7d ago A scan Socket: passSnyk: passSkillSpector: pass 54 tokens original MIT

Good fit Use it to group labels with fields, headings with their content, and action buttons with the content they control.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/owl-listener/designer-skills/law-of-proximity
About the project

Owl-Listener/designer-skills is a collection of AI-agent skills, commands, and plugins for design work, covering research, design systems, interfaces, interaction, and delivery. Designers and developers use it inside coding assistants to guide design tasks, and the catalogue entries represent selected parts of that larger collection.

Owl-Listener/designer-skills · 2,619 stars · on GitHub

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 Owl-Listener/designer-skills --skill law-of-proximity
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Owl-Listener/designer-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install ui-design, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 19 skills, 5 commands.

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 law-of-proximity

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/owl-listener/designer-skills/law-of-proximity/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/owl-listener/designer-skills/law-of-proximity)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/owl-listener/designer-skills/law-of-proximity"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/owl-listener/designer-skills/law-of-proximity/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 law-of-proximity

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/owl-listener/designer-skills/law-of-proximity"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/owl-listener/designer-skills/law-of-proximity.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 552 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
  • Socket pass 6 May 2026
  • Snyk pass 6 May 2026
  • 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 $0.00054 $0.00552
Opus 5 $0.00027 $0.00276
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00110
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00055

Measured 9d ago against content hash 1aa0145463d8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

law-of-proximity 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.

ui-design/skills/law-of-proximity/SKILL.md · 37 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 37 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Law of Proximity

You are an expert in Gestalt visual organization and spatial grouping.

What You Do

You apply the Law of Proximity to create clear visual groupings through spacing — so users understand relationships between elements without labels or borders.

The Principle

Elements that are close together are perceived as belonging to a group. Whitespace creates separation; tightness implies relationship. This is the most fundamental layout grouping tool:

  • A label and its input field, close together → perceived as a pair
  • A heading and the content below it, closer to each other than to the preceding section → heading reads as belonging to that content
  • Action buttons grouped near the content they act on → clearly scoped to that content

How It Works in Layouts

  • Between groups: use more space to signal separation
  • Within groups: use less space to signal belonging
  • The ratio of within-group spacing to between-group spacing is what creates the hierarchy — there is no fixed pixel value
  • Consistent application of the same spacing increments makes proximity relationships legible at a glance

Common Applications

Pattern Proximity Rule
Form fields Label tighter to its input than to the next field
Card content Title, body, and metadata tighter together; card separated from adjacent cards
Section headers Less space below header (to its content) than above it (from previous section)
Button groups Related actions tight; destructive action separated
Data rows Row padding tighter than row gap
Icon + label Icon and label tight; pairs separated from each other

Relationship to Other Principles

  • Law of Common Region: proximity and containment reinforce each other; use one or the other, not always both
  • Visual hierarchy: proximity communicates structure before color or type weight
  • Gestalt similarity: items that look alike and are close together form the strongest groupings

Best Practices

  • Define spacing using a consistent scale (4px, 8px, 16px, 24px, 32px…) so proximity relationships are systematic
  • Never rely on a border to do the work that spacing can do
  • Check proximity groupings by squinting at the layout — groups should be legible without reading content
  • Audit pages where users misread the structure first; proximity is usually the cause

Read the full file on GitHub · 37 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 · 37 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A 1aa0145463d8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

law-of-proximity is a skill published in the GitHub repository Owl-Listener/designer-skills (2,619 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 552 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 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

ui-review

Review UI code for StyleSeed design-system compliance, accessibility, mobile ergonomics, spacing discipline, and implementation quality.

LiHongwei-cn/lihongwei-cn · 26 tokens

design-system

Use this skill BEFORE writing or restyling ANY user-facing interface in WrongStack. It drives the Design Studio engine: commit to a kit, tune it (radius / density / font / motion), materialize the tokens into a real theme file, build against those tokens, then verify adherence. Trigger it whenever the user asks to…

WrongStack/WrongStack · 248 tokens

accessibility-a11y

Semantic HTML, keyboard navigation, focus states, ARIA labels, skip links, and WCAG contrast requirements. Use when ensuring accessibility compliance, implementing keyboard navigation, or adding screen reader support.

BlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard · 44 tokens

tailwind-shadcn

Tailwind CSS utility patterns with shadcn/ui component usage, theming via CSS variables, and responsive design. Use when styling components, installing shadcn components, implementing dark mode, or creating consistent design systems.

BlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard · 50 tokens

anti-slop-frontend

A mechanical, countable anti-slop checklist for AI-generated frontend. Catches the specific signatures an undirected model defaults to: AI-purple glows, Inter-everywhere, em-dashes, div-based fake screenshots, eyebrow-on-every-section, beige+brass "premium" palettes, generic Jane Doe / Acme data. Advisory layer that…

BlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard · 147 tokens

frontend-mockup-loop-dashboard

Dashboard-specific adapter on the generic frontend-mockup-loop skill: binds the 7-step design loop to pi-agent-dashboard component sources, theme-system tokens, and isolated verification. Use when designing/redesigning any pi-agent-dashboard client surface. Triggers: "design a dashboard screen", "mockup a dashboard…

BlackBeltTechnology/pi-agent-dashboard · 83 tokens