Paperclip is a Node.js server and React application for coordinating AI agents as a business team, with goals, organizational roles, budgets, governance, and work tracking in one interface. It is used by people managing multiple agents or autonomous agent organizations across tools such as OpenClaw, Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. The catalogue includes skills, agents, an MCP add-on, and an instruction for working with Paperclip.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to paperclipai/paperclip. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/paperclipai/paperclip/master/.claude/skills/design-guide/SKILL.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclipWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/paperclipai/paperclip/design-guide)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/paperclipai/paperclip/design-guide"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/paperclipai/paperclip/design-guide/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/paperclipai/paperclip/design-guide"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/paperclipai/paperclip/design-guide.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- Snyk pass
- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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 | $0.00105 | $0.03017 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00042 | $0.01207 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00021 | $0.00603 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00011 | $0.00302 |
Grade A, and why
design-guide 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 1mo 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.
Copies of this mod
2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:
- design-guide — 100% identical, 0 lines differ
- design-guide — 98% identical, 8 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 352 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Paperclip Design Guide
Paperclip's UI is a professional-grade control plane — dense, keyboard-driven, dark-themed by default. Every pixel earns its place.
Always use with: frontend-design (visual polish) and web-design-guidelines (web best practices).
1. Design Principles
- Dense but scannable. Maximum information without clicks to reveal. Whitespace separates, not pads.
- Keyboard-first. Global shortcuts (Cmd+K, C, [, ]). Power users rarely touch the mouse.
- Contextual, not modal. Inline editing over dialog boxes. Dropdowns over page navigations.
- Dark theme default. Neutral grays (OKLCH), not pure black. Accent colors for status/priority only. Text is the primary visual element.
- Component-driven. Prefer reusable components that capture style conventions. Build at the right abstraction — not too granular, not too monolithic.
2. Tech Stack
- React 19 + TypeScript + Vite
- Tailwind CSS v4 with CSS variables (OKLCH color space)
- shadcn/ui (new-york style, neutral base, CSS variables enabled)
- Radix UI primitives (accessibility, focus management)
- Lucide React icons (16px nav, 14px inline)
- class-variance-authority (CVA) for component variants
- clsx + tailwind-merge via
cn()utility
Config: ui/components.json (aliases: @/components, @/components/ui, @/lib, @/hooks)
3. Design Tokens
All tokens defined as CSS variables in ui/src/index.css. Both light and dark themes use OKLCH.
Colors
Use semantic token names, never raw color values:
| Token | Usage |
|---|---|
--background / --foreground |
Page background and primary text |
--card / --card-foreground |
Card surfaces |
--primary / --primary-foreground |
Primary actions, emphasis |
--secondary / --secondary-foreground |
Secondary surfaces |
--muted / --muted-foreground |
Subdued text, labels |
--accent / --accent-foreground |
Hover states, active nav items |
--destructive |
Destructive actions |
--border |
All borders |
--ring |
Focus rings |
--sidebar-* |
Sidebar-specific variants |
--chart-1 through --chart-5 |
Data visualization |
What ships with it
1 file 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.
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 352 lines · 105 tokens per session scan A 07781469e7a3
design-guide is a skill published in the GitHub repository paperclipai/paperclip (107,044 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 105 tokens to every session and 3,017 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.
Other skills, from other repositories
mcp-host-styling-integration
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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…
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.
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.
frontend-mockup-loop
Plan, build, and iterate UX-friendly frontend mockups via a ground→contract→mockup→test→fix→learn loop, acting as an expert UX designer who grounds every decision in externally documented public design rules (Nielsen heuristics, Laws of UX, WCAG, GOV.UK/USWDS/Material). Uses the bundled servemockup, scoremockup, and…
web-design-system-foundation
Use when the repository has no design system yet (no tokens, no component library - a new site/app, an "Apply design system" task, or a task that asks for one), before building any page section - writes the approved design system's generated files from getdesignsystem (files true) and builds the tokens on them when…