art-direction

art-direction is a skill for Claude Code from SummerEngine/summer-engine-agent. It costs 72 tokens per session (2,946 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A process for defining a game's visual style in a shared art bible. It records visual references, colors, mood, lighting, post-processing, and rules for what belongs or does not belong in the style.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose references, set a color palette and mood, define a lighting plan, and document visual decisions for the rest of the project.
Why use it?
It helps keep characters, environments, interface elements, and effects visually consistent instead of mixing unrelated styles.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions Claude Code; mentions Codex.

Part of the summer plugin — 80 skills, 2 commands, 2 hooks, 1 MCP server shipped together

Good fit Use it to choose references, set a color palette and mood, define a lighting plan, and document visual decisions for the rest of the project.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/summerengine/summer-engine-agent/art-direction
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 SummerEngine/summer-engine-agent --skill art-direction
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/SummerEngine/summer-engine-agent

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install summer, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 80 skills, 2 commands, 2 hooks, 1 MCP server.

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 art-direction

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/summerengine/summer-engine-agent/art-direction/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/summerengine/summer-engine-agent/art-direction)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/summerengine/summer-engine-agent/art-direction"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/summerengine/summer-engine-agent/art-direction/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 art-direction

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/summerengine/summer-engine-agent/art-direction"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/summerengine/summer-engine-agent/art-direction.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 72 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,946 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
  • 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 $0.00072 $0.02946
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.01473
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00589
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00295

Measured 9d ago against content hash d429092891a2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

art-direction 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

skills/rendering-and-lighting/art-direction/SKILL.md · 283 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 283 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/art-direction — Define the Visual Style

Overview

A consistent art direction is what makes a low-budget game look like a finished game. Most solo devs lose this fight by mixing styles — a toon-shaded character on a photoreal terrain, a pixel UI over a smooth 3D world. This skill builds an art bible the rest of the project obeys: references, palette, mood, lighting plan, post-processing, and a do/don't list. It writes to .summer/art-bible.md — the file every rendering / shader / lighting / VFX skill reads later.

Core principle: Constraint produces style. A game with 15 colors total looks more intentional than a game with infinite-color textures. Pick the constraint, then defend it.

Steps

1. Open with references

Ask exactly this:

Two or three references — games, films, art books, anything visual. What's the vibe?

Don't suggest. Listen. References are the single most reliable signal of what they actually want. If they say one game, ask for one more — single-reference art bibles converge into a clone of that game.

If they freeze, offer 4 axes (not games):

Pick the one that feels right: a) painterly + warm + handcrafted (Sable, Tunic), b) crisp + saturated + toon (Hi-Fi Rush, Splatoon), c) dark + moody + grounded (Dishonored, Inside), d) lo-fi + nostalgic + crunchy (Dusk, Faith).

2. Read the brief if it exists

Read .summer/GameSoul.md

Brief might say "horror" — that constrains palette and lighting. Brief might say "cozy" — that forbids harsh contrast. Quote it back:

Brief is "cozy farming sim". That rules out harsh shadows and saturated reds. Confirming.

3. Pin the rendering technique

This is the technique question, not the mood question. Force a choice:

Technique When Pro Con
Toon / cel-shaded Stylized 3D, expressive characters Forgiving on textures, ages well Can feel generic without strong palette
PBR realistic Grounded sim, horror, military Lighting does the work Asset cost is brutal solo
Lo-fi PS1 Nostalgia, horror, indie cred Tiny assets, fast iteration Niche audience appeal
Flat / matte Minimalist puzzle, casual Cheapest to author Limited mood range
Painterly (textured-shaded) Story-led, fantasy Distinctive Requires consistent texture authoring
2D pixel Retro, platformer, RPG Mature pipeline Animation cost scales fast
2D hand-drawn Narrative, indie Distinctive, expressive Animation cost extreme

Read the full file on GitHub · 283 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 · 283 lines · 72 tokens per session scan A d429092891a2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

art-direction is a skill published in the GitHub repository SummerEngine/summer-engine-agent (59 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 72 tokens to every session and 2,946 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 2026-08-30.

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