bolder

A design adjustment guide for making an interface more distinctive when it feels bland, generic, or too cautious, while keeping it usable.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to increase visual impact in an existing interface by examining its audience, purpose, brand personality, constraints, typography, color, scale, contrast, and motion.
Why use it?
It identifies weak visual hierarchy, low contrast, timid sizing, static presentation, and other reasons a design may lack character.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/resciencelab/tryskills/bolder
Any agent
npx skills add ReScienceLab/TrySkills --skill bolder
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ReScienceLab/TrySkills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 51 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,484 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 72% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00051 $0.01484
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00742
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00297
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00148

Measured 2d ago against content hash 2d4df2c1a6ff, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

bolder 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 2d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

72% identical to bolder — 31 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.agents/skills/bolder/SKILL.md · 117 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 117 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Increase visual impact and personality in designs that are too safe, generic, or visually underwhelming, creating more engaging and memorable experiences.

MANDATORY PREPARATION

Invoke /impeccable — it contains design principles, anti-patterns, and the Context Gathering Protocol. Follow the protocol before proceeding — if no design context exists yet, you MUST run /impeccable teach first.


Assess Current State

Analyze what makes the design feel too safe or boring:

  1. Identify weakness sources:

    • Generic choices: System fonts, basic colors, standard layouts
    • Timid scale: Everything is medium-sized with no drama
    • Low contrast: Everything has similar visual weight
    • Static: No motion, no energy, no life
    • Predictable: Standard patterns with no surprises
    • Flat hierarchy: Nothing stands out or commands attention
  2. Understand the context:

    • What's the brand personality? (How far can we push?)
    • What's the purpose? (Marketing can be bolder than financial dashboards)
    • Who's the audience? (What will resonate?)
    • What are the constraints? (Brand guidelines, accessibility, performance)

If any of these are unclear from the codebase, ask the user directly to clarify what you cannot infer.

CRITICAL: "Bolder" doesn't mean chaotic or garish. It means distinctive, memorable, and confident. Think intentional drama, not random chaos.

WARNING - AI SLOP TRAP: When making things "bolder," AI defaults to the same tired tricks: cyan/purple gradients, glassmorphism, neon accents on dark backgrounds, gradient text on metrics. These are the OPPOSITE of bold—they're generic. Review ALL the DON'T guidelines in the impeccable skill before proceeding. Bold means distinctive, not "more effects."

Plan Amplification

Create a strategy to increase impact while maintaining coherence:

  • Focal point: What should be the hero moment? (Pick ONE, make it amazing)
  • Personality direction: Maximalist chaos? Elegant drama? Playful energy? Dark moody? Choose a lane.
  • Risk budget: How experimental can we be? Push boundaries within constraints.
  • Hierarchy amplification: Make big things BIGGER, small things smaller (increase contrast)

Read the full file on GitHub · 117 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. 2d ago First seen · 117 lines · 51 tokens per session scan A 2d4df2c1a6ff

Subscribe to this mod's changes

bolder is a skill published in the GitHub repository ReScienceLab/TrySkills (2 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 51 tokens to every session and 1,484 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 72% identical to bolder, differing in 31 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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