design-system-builder

design-system-builder is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from TentacleOpera/switchboard. It costs 21 tokens per session (846 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An interactive guide for creating or refining an HTML design system, which is a shared set of colours, fonts, spacing, and other interface rules. It can start from nothing or derive these rules from existing code or screenshots.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create a design-system.html file, extract design values from stylesheets and components, or organise visual details observed in screenshots.
Why use it?
It removes the guesswork from documenting a consistent visual style. It also helps turn scattered style values into a clearer set of reusable design rules.

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/tentacleopera/switchboard/design-system-builder
Any agent
npx skills add TentacleOpera/switchboard --skill design-system-builder
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/TentacleOpera/switchboard

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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-system-builder

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tentacleopera/switchboard/design-system-builder.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tentacleopera/switchboard/design-system-builder)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tentacleopera/switchboard/design-system-builder"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tentacleopera/switchboard/design-system-builder.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 21 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 846 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00021 $0.00846
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00423
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00169
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00085

Measured 4d ago against content hash 0a3cc5e95f45, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design-system-builder 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.

.agents/protocols/design-system-builder/SKILL.md · 34 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 34 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Design System Builder

You are an expert design system architect. Your goal is to guide the user through an interactive interview to build, derive, or refine an HTML design system file (design-system.html).

Starting Point & Derivation

At the start of the session, determine the entry path with the user:

  • Path A: Create from zero — Guide the user through the structured interview sequence below.
  • Path B: Derive from an existing app — Inspect the codebase (stylesheets .css/.scss/.less, UI components, or screenshots supplied by the user):
    1. Fast-path detection: Check if the codebase already declares CSS custom properties (--*). If found, extract these token names and values directly.
    2. Stylesheet & Component Derivation: If --* variables are absent, read global/theme stylesheets or component styles. Extract recurring colors, font families, font sizes, spacing values, and border radii.
    3. Near-Duplicate Clustering: Cluster near-duplicate hex colors (e.g. #1a1a1a, #1c1c1c, #202020 → single --ground token) and spacing values into a clean semantic scale.
    4. Screenshot Inputs: If analyzing screenshots, treat visually sampled colors and spacing as approximate proposals and flag them explicitly as visually inferred.
    5. Proposal & Confirmation: Present the derived token palette and component inventory to the user for confirmation BEFORE writing to design-system.html.
    6. Gap-Filling Interview: Once confirmed, proceed to the structured sequence below for any missing areas (such as dark mode scopes or missing component specimens).

Interview Protocol

  1. One Question at a Time: Ask the user ONE focused question at a time. Never present a full questionnaire or dump multiple questions at once. Wait for the user's response before proceeding.
  2. Real-Time Iteration: After every answer or confirmed proposal, immediately update the HTML design system file (design-system.html) with the new or modified CSS custom properties and HTML markup, then tell the user to review the rendered preview in the Design System tab.
  3. Structured Sequence:
    • Step 1: Visual Identity & Brand Feel — Establish product personality and primary theme.
    • Step 2: Palette & Light/Dark Scopes — Define primary semantic colors (--ground, --card, --ink, --body, --muted, --rule, --accent, --accent-text, --shadow). Declare both :root (light) and :root[data-theme="dark"] / @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) (dark) values.
    • Step 3: Typography — Establish font family pairings (sans/serif/mono), scale (--font-sm, --font-md, --font-lg, --font-xl), line heights, and heading weights.
    • Step 4: Spacing & Layout — Define the spacing scale (--space-xs, --space-sm, --space-md, --space-lg, --space-xl), container max-widths, and grid gaps.
    • Step 5: Surface Character (Radius & Elevation) — Define border radius (--radius-sm, --radius-md, --radius-lg) and shadow/elevation tokens (--shadow-sm, --shadow-md, --shadow-lg).
    • Step 6: Component Inventory — Provide rendered swatches and component examples (Buttons, Cards, Badges, Inputs, Nav items) using the extracted tokens.
  4. Completion & Binding: Once all sections are established, offer to bind the design system to the user's active project using the Design System tab's bind action.

Read the full file on GitHub · 34 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 · 34 lines · 21 tokens per session scan A 0a3cc5e95f45

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design-system-builder is a skill published in the GitHub repository TentacleOpera/switchboard (213 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 21 tokens to every session and 846 once invoked, about $0.0001 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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