design-is

design-is is a skill for Claude Code from skillmds/skillmd. It costs 91 tokens per session (4,466 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of design-is, MIT.

A design review tool that evaluates a website or interface against Dieter Rams' ten principles of good design. It produces evidence-based scores, a verdict, and a handoff plan for creating, refining, or redesigning the work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to audit an existing design, score each principle, document supporting evidence, and prepare a make-plan request for the next design changes.
Why use it?
It gives a structured way to find usability and visual design problems instead of relying only on subjective feedback.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Part of the agents-mcp plugin — 34 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to audit an existing design, score each principle, document supporting evidence, and prepare a make-plan request for the next design changes.

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

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install agents-mcp, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 34 skills.

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 design-is

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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/skillmds/skillmd/design-is"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/skillmds/skillmd/design-is.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 91 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,466 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 100% 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 5.1 $0.00091 $0.04466
Opus 5.5 $0.00036 $0.01786
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00893
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00447

Measured 4d ago against content hash eb30de4965d6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-23, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design-is 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 4d 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

100% identical to design-is — 2 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.

plugins/agents-mcp/skills/design-is/SKILL.md · 313 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 313 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Design Is

Do not use for

  • Routine UI code reviews → use /review
  • Pure copy edits → use a separate copy pass
  • Pre-design ideation with no artifact yet → start with /make-plan directly

You are an ORCHESTRATOR. Audit a design against Dieter Rams' ten principles, score each principle with evidence, decide the outcome verdict (NEW / REFINE / REDESIGN), and hand off to /make-plan with a ready-to-run prompt.

You do not write implementation code. You produce: evidence-cited scores, a verdict, and a /make-plan handoff prompt.

The Ten Principles (Dieter Rams)

Audit each principle in this exact order. Each gets a score 0–3 and ≥1 piece of evidence (file:line, screenshot region, copy excerpt, or measured value).

  1. Good design is innovative — Does it advance the form, or imitate? Innovation rides on technology; never an end in itself.
  2. Good design makes a product useful — Does it serve the primary task? Emphasizes usefulness; disregards anything that detracts.
  3. Good design is aesthetic — Is it beautiful? Only well-executed objects can be beautiful; aesthetic quality affects well-being.
  4. Good design makes a product understandable — Does the structure clarify function? Or is it self-explanatory at best?
  5. Good design is unobtrusive — Does it stay out of the way? Neither decorative objects nor works of art — leave room for self-expression.
  6. Good design is honest — Does it claim only what it is? No false promises, no manipulation, no inflated value.
  7. Good design is long-lasting — Will it age well? Avoids being fashionable; never appears antiquated.
  8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail — Are edges, empty states, errors, focus rings, motion curves all considered? Care and accuracy express respect for the user.
  9. Good design is environmentally friendly — Does it conserve resources? Minimizes pollution — in software: bundle weight, energy, attention, cognitive load.
  10. Good design is as little design as possible — Less, but better. Concentrates on essentials; back to purity, back to simplicity.

Read the full file on GitHub · 313 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. 4d ago First seen · 313 lines · 91 tokens per session scan A eb30de4965d6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design-is is a skill published in the GitHub repository skillmds/skillmd (1 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 91 tokens to every session and 4,466 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to design-is, differing in 2 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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