macos-design

macos-design is a skill for Claude Code from robzilla1738/roberts-skills. It costs 75 tokens per session (2,152 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for designing native macOS applications with SwiftUI or AppKit, Apple's frameworks for building Mac interfaces. It covers platform conventions, accessibility, window structure, menus, toolbars, and current visual patterns such as Liquid Glass.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design, review, or scaffold a Mac app interface and to decide when to use standard system components.
Why use it?
It helps an application fit the way Mac users expect software to work, including keyboard use, window behavior, and accessibility.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter.

Part of the macos-design plugin — 1 skill, 1 command shipped together

Good fit Use it to design, review, or scaffold a Mac app interface and to decide when to use standard system components.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/robzilla1738/roberts-skills/macos-design
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 robzilla1738/roberts-skills --skill macos-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/robzilla1738/roberts-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install macos-design, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill, 1 command.

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 macos-design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/robzilla1738/roberts-skills/macos-design/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/robzilla1738/roberts-skills/macos-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/robzilla1738/roberts-skills/macos-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/robzilla1738/roberts-skills/macos-design/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 macos-design

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/robzilla1738/roberts-skills/macos-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/robzilla1738/roberts-skills/macos-design.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 75 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,152 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00075 $0.02152
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.01076
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00430
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00215

Measured 9d ago against content hash e3a898f63b73, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

macos-design 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.

plugins/macos-design/skills/macos-design/SKILL.md · 128 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 128 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

macOS Design

Hub skill for designing, critiquing, and scaffolding native macOS applications. Read this file first, then open only the spoke files relevant to the task.

Mission

Create macOS applications that feel unmistakably native: powerful, spacious, precise, keyboard-friendly, accessible, and visually calm. Favor standard macOS structures and system components before custom UI. When custom UI is justified, make it harmonize with the system rather than compete with it.

This skill is written for an LLM. Use it as a design-generation and design-review checklist. It is not a substitute for Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, current SDK documentation, or testing in the latest Xcode/macOS, but it is structured to make generated macOS applications substantially more native and polished.

Non-negotiable design stance

A generated macOS app should assume the following unless the user explicitly asks otherwise:

  1. Use native app structure. A Mac app is not a web page in a resizable window. It has a menu bar, app menu, keyboard shortcuts, window management, settings, undo/redo where appropriate, contextual menus, help, accessibility, and standard system behaviors.
  2. Respect the content. The interface should frame, organize, and accelerate the user's work. Avoid decorative chrome, gratuitous backgrounds, and UI effects that compete with content.
  3. Prefer system components. SwiftUI and AppKit controls automatically adapt to appearance, accent color, accessibility settings, localization, input modes, and future OS updates. Custom controls inherit none of this unless you build it.
  4. Design for density and precision. Mac users expect fast scanning, accurate selection, keyboard access, multiwindow workflows, drag and drop, resize behavior, and visible structure.
  5. Use Liquid Glass selectively. In the current macOS design language, Liquid Glass belongs primarily to top-level controls, navigation, floating bars, and system-like chrome. Do not turn every card, table row, inspector, or content panel into glass.
  6. Treat the menu bar as part of the app. Commands belong in predictable menus. Context menus and toolbars are accelerators, not replacements for the menu bar.
  7. Honor safe areas and the camera housing. Never place essential content or controls where the menu bar, toolbar, rounded display corners, or camera housing can obscure them.
  8. Accessibility is part of the design, not a pass at the end. Every generated design should include keyboard, VoiceOver, contrast, Reduce Transparency, Increase Contrast, Reduce Motion, and localization considerations.
  9. Target OS matters. A design using macOS 26-era APIs should include availability checks and graceful fallbacks for earlier macOS versions.
  10. Do not imitate macOS superficially in standard app windows. Fake traffic lights, fake title bars, fake menu bars, fake notches inside normal window content, and web-style side navigation usually make apps feel less native. Dedicated notch-style utility apps are a separate case — see the macos-notch skill (separate plugin).

Read the full file on GitHub · 128 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 · 128 lines · 75 tokens per session scan A e3a898f63b73

Subscribe to this mod's changes

macos-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository robzilla1738/roberts-skills (5 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 75 tokens to every session and 2,152 once invoked, about $0.0004 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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