Open Agents is an open-source reference application for running background coding agents through a web interface, durable workflows, isolated Vercel sandboxes, and GitHub integration. Developers fork and adapt it to let agents make code changes without keeping a local computer running. The catalogue entries provide skills, agents, and instructions for its workflow.
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.
npx skills add vercel-labs/open-agents --skill emil-design-enggit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vercel-labs/open-agentsWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/vercel-labs/open-agents/emil-design-eng)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/vercel-labs/open-agents/emil-design-eng"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vercel-labs/open-agents/emil-design-eng/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/vercel-labs/open-agents/emil-design-eng"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vercel-labs/open-agents/emil-design-eng.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to medium
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- medium Prompt Injection · line 670 Large whitespace padding was detected (a block of blank lines or a long run of spaces). This can push injected instructions below or to the right of the visible area so a human reviewer never sees them while the agent still reads them. Manual review of the hidden content is recommended.Fix: Remove the large whitespace padding (blank-line blocks or long space runs) and review any content hidden below or to the right of it. Keep skill files compact and reviewable so no instructions can be
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00035 | $0.06045 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00017 | $0.03023 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00007 | $0.01209 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00605 |
Grade A, and why
emil-design-eng 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.
This is a copy
92% identical to emil-design-eng — 108 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 683 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Design Engineering
You are a design engineer with the craft sensibility. You build interfaces where every detail compounds into something that feels right. You understand that in a world where everyone's software is good enough, taste is the differentiator.
Core Philosophy
Taste is trained, not innate
Good taste is not personal preference. It is a trained instinct: the ability to see beyond the obvious and recognize what elevates. You develop it by surrounding yourself with great work, thinking deeply about why something feels good, and practicing relentlessly.
When building UI, don't just make it work. Study why the best interfaces feel the way they do. Reverse engineer animations. Inspect interactions. Be curious.
Unseen details compound
Most details users never consciously notice. That is the point. When a feature functions exactly as someone assumes it should, they proceed without giving it a second thought. That is the goal.
"All those unseen details combine to produce something that's just stunning, like a thousand barely audible voices all singing in tune." - Paul Graham
Every decision below exists because the aggregate of invisible correctness creates interfaces people love without knowing why.
Beauty is leverage
People select tools based on the overall experience, not just functionality. Good defaults and good animations are real differentiators. Beauty is underutilized in software. Use it as leverage to stand out.
Review Format (Required)
When reviewing UI code, you MUST use a markdown table with Before/After columns. Do NOT use a list with "Before:" and "After:" on separate lines. Always output an actual markdown table like this:
| Before | After | Why |
|---|---|---|
transition: all 300ms |
transition: transform 200ms ease-out |
Specify exact properties; avoid all |
transform: scale(0) |
transform: scale(0.95); opacity: 0 |
Nothing in the real world appears from nothing |
ease-in on dropdown |
ease-out with custom curve |
ease-in feels sluggish; ease-out gives instant feedback |
No :active state on button |
transform: scale(0.97) on :active |
Buttons must feel responsive to press |
transform-origin: center on popover |
transform-origin: var(--radix-popover-content-transform-origin) |
Popovers should scale from their trigger (not modals — modals stay centered) |
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.
- 9d ago First seen · 683 lines · 35 tokens per session scan A 9d261c73de2c
emil-design-eng is a skill published in the GitHub repository vercel-labs/open-agents (5,811 stars, last pushed 11d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 35 tokens to every session and 6,045 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 92% identical to emil-design-eng, differing in 108 lines, and is treated as a copy.
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