Frontend Design Direction

Frontend Design Direction

Use this skill when the work is not just making UI function, but making it feel purposeful, polished, and appropriate to the product domain.

Source: salvaged from stale community PR #1659 by linus707.

Note: ECC intentionally does not rebundle the canonical Anthropic frontend-design skill. Install that from anthropics/skills when you want the official upstream skill. This skill is the ECC-specific design-direction salvage of the useful local guidance from #1659.

When to Use

• The user asks to build a web page, app, dashboard, artifact, component, or UI.
• The user asks to make an interface more polished, distinctive, beautiful, or less generic.
• The implementation needs visual hierarchy, typography, color, motion, layout, and interaction choices.
• The current UI works but reads as flat, generic, templated, or mismatched to the audience.

Design Direction

Before coding, choose a specific direction:

1. Purpose: what job does the interface do?
2. Audience: who repeats this workflow, and what do they need to scan first?
3. Tone: utilitarian, editorial, playful, industrial, refined, technical, maximal, minimal, dense, calm, or another explicit direction.
4. Memorable detail: one design idea that makes the result feel intentional.
5. Constraints: framework, accessibility, performance, responsiveness, and existing design system.

Match the direction to the domain. A SaaS operations tool should usually be dense, quiet, and scannable. A portfolio, launch page, game, or editorial piece can be more expressive. Do not force a landing-page composition onto a tool that needs repeated daily use.

Implementation Guidance

Evidence contract and content states

Before implementation, record the product surface, user's job, primary action, hierarchy, target viewports and the reference observation behind each important choice. Make these constraints checkable; a palette alone is not evidence. Use local product references when external research is unnecessary or unavailable.

For each relevant state, record its trigger, visible feedback and safe next action:

Record a reason when a state does not apply. Unavailable test access is an untested state, not a reason to mark it not applicable.

Build from the contract

• Build the actual usable experience as the first screen unless the user explicitly asks for marketing copy.
• Use existing project components, tokens, icon libraries, and routing patterns before introducing a new visual system.
• Use real or generated visual assets when the interface depends on images, products, places, people, gameplay, charts, or inspectable media.
• Prefer contextual typography and spacing over generic oversized hero text.
• Keep palettes multi-dimensional: avoid a UI dominated by one hue family.
• Use CSS variables or existing design tokens so the direction remains coherent across states.
• Design responsive constraints explicitly: grids, aspect ratios, min/max sizes, stable toolbars, and fixed-format controls should not shift when labels or hover states appear.
• Use motion sparingly but deliberately. Prefer high-signal transitions that clarify state over decorative animation.
• Verify text fit on mobile and desktop. Long labels must wrap or resize cleanly rather than overflowing.

Anti-Patterns

• Do not default to common generated patterns: purple gradients, decorative blobs, oversized cards, vague hero copy, or stock-like atmospheric media.
• Do not add UI cards inside other cards.
• Do not use a single decorative style everywhere when the domain calls for restraint.
• Do not hide the primary product, tool, object, or workflow behind generic marketing sections.
• Do not add a new dependency for a design flourish unless it clearly pays for itself.
• Do not describe the UI's features inside the UI when the controls can speak for themselves.

Review Checklist

• The first viewport immediately communicates the product, workflow, or object.
• The visual hierarchy supports scanning and repeated use.
• Typography fits the container and does not overlap adjacent content.
• Color choices have contrast and do not collapse into a one-note palette.
• Icons are used for familiar tool actions where available.
• Responsive layout has stable dimensions for boards, grids, toolbars, controls, tiles, and counters.
• Assets render and carry the subject matter instead of acting as filler.
• Motion improves orientation and does not mask sluggishness.
• The result matches the repo's existing frontend conventions unless there is a clear reason to depart.