Agent skill

Design Retrospective

by Owl-Listener in Owl-Listener/designpowers

Use after shipping or completing a design project — structured reflection on what worked, what didn't, and what taste decisions landed.

MITAuto-check passedProduct & Project Management

Install Design Retrospective

skills CLI
$ npx skills add Owl-Listener/designpowers --skill design-retrospective -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install Owl-Listener/designpowers design-retrospective --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Owl-Listener/designpowers.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/skills/design-retrospective .claude/skills/design-retrospective && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
design-retrospective
GitHub stars
251
Token cost
~2.3k tokens
SKILL.md length
629 words
Files
1
Skills in repo
33
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Use after shipping or completing a design project — structured reflection on what worked, what didn't, and what taste decisions landed.

  • Works in 10 steps: Gather Evidence → Evaluate What Worked → Evaluate What Didn't Work → …
  • Tasks that involve Retrospectives
  • SKILL.md covers When to Use, Process, Integration and Anti-Patterns
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md

What it does

Design Retrospective is an agent skill from Owl-Listener/designpowers. Use after shipping or completing a design project — structured reflection on what worked, what didn't, and what taste decisions landed. Adds observations to the design record (design-memory) about how the user designs — a descriptive journal, not preferences applied to future projects

Its SKILL.md is about 2.3k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. It is a single SKILL.md file with no bundled scripts.

It sits in Product & Project Management, covering Retrospectives. The repository describes itself as: An agent design team you control: 10 agents that run an inclusive design process while you direct. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks that involve Retrospectives

Example prompts

  • “/design-retrospective”

Workflow steps

10 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Gather Evidence
  2. Evaluate What Worked
  3. Evaluate What Didn't Work
  4. Process Evaluation
  5. Design Debt Review
  6. Taste Evolution
  7. Carry-Forward Items
  8. Write the Retrospective
  9. Add to the Design Record
  10. Present to User

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit cb00757. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are markdown).

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Design Retrospective loads about 2.3k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 77 tokens; SKILL.md has 629 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~77
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~2.3k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from Owl-Listener/designpowers at commit cb00757, republished under its MIT licence (© Owl-Listener). 629 words, ~2,306 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/design-retrospective/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder).
name
design-retrospective
description
Use after shipping or completing a design project — structured reflection on what worked, what didn't, and what taste decisions landed. Adds observations to the design record (design-memory) about how the user designs — a descriptive journal, not preferences applied to future projects

Design Retrospective

A retrospective is not a post-mortem. Post-mortems examine failures. Retrospectives examine the whole process — wins, misses, surprises, and taste evolution. This skill runs after a project ships and turns hindsight into foresight for the next one.

When to Use

  • After verification-before-shipping passes and the project is declared complete
  • When the user says "let's reflect" or "what did we learn?"
  • At natural project milestones (end of a major phase, end of a sprint)
  • When restarting work on a project after a break — retrospect on what came before

Process

Step 1: Gather Evidence

Before reflecting, assemble the full record:

  1. Read design-state.md — the decisions log, handoff chain, and open questions
  2. Read the taste profile — what was known at the start vs now
  3. Review user overrides — every correction, redirect, and override from the handoff chain
  4. Review critique findings — what the design-critic and accessibility-reviewer flagged
  5. Review fix rounds — how many, what was fixed, what kept coming back
  6. Check the original brief — compare what was asked for vs what was delivered
Step 2: Evaluate What Worked

For each major design decision that survived to shipping:

markdown
### What Worked

| Decision | Why It Worked | Evidence |
|----------|--------------|----------|
| [Decision from state log] | [Why this was the right call] | [User approved, critic passed, no fix rounds needed] |
| ... | ... | ... |

Look for:

  • Decisions that sailed through critique without issues
  • Choices the user explicitly praised
  • Patterns that emerged naturally and felt right
  • Accessibility approaches that enhanced rather than constrained the design
  • Moments that revealed something characteristic about how the user designs (to note in the record — not to apply later)
Step 3: Evaluate What Didn't Work

For decisions that required rework, debate, or user correction:

markdown
### What Didn't Work

| Decision | What Went Wrong | Root Cause | Fix Rounds |
|----------|----------------|------------|------------|
| [Original decision] | [What happened] | [Why it happened — misread brief? ignored taste? wrong assumption?] | [How many iterations to fix] |
| ... | ... | ... | ... |

Look for:

  • Decisions the user overrode — what signal did we miss?
  • Findings that came back in multiple fix rounds — why wasn't it caught earlier?
  • Accessibility issues that should have been caught in design, not review
  • Moments where agents converged on a direction too quickly (a debate might have helped)
  • Taste profile mismatches — did we apply an old preference to a new context?
Step 4: Process Evaluation

Evaluate the workflow itself, not just the output:

markdown
### Process Assessment

**Pipeline efficiency:**
- Agents dispatched: [X of 10]
- Agents skipped: [list and why]
- Fix rounds: [count] — [were they necessary or preventable?]
- Mode used: [direct/auto/mixed] — [did the mode serve the project?]

**Handoff quality:**
- Were handoff messages specific enough?
- Did any agent miss context from the previous agent?
- Were there gaps where information was lost between agents?

**Debate moments:**
- Were there decisions that should have been debated but weren't?
- Were debates held that didn't need to be?
- Did debate outcomes hold, or were they revisited?

**User engagement:**
- How often did the user override or redirect?
- Were overrides concentrated in one area? (signals a systematic gap)
- Did the user switch from auto to direct? (signals the system missed something)
Step 5: Design Debt Review

Review the Design Debt Register from design-state.md:

markdown
### Design Debt

**Register status:**
- Total items created: [count]
- Resolved: [count] ([percentage])
- Accepted: [count] — [were these the right trade-offs?]
- Still Open: [count] — [should any escalate?]
- Escalated during project: [count]

**Debt patterns:**
- Most affected persona: [name] — [X items affect them]
- Most common source: [design-critic/accessibility-reviewer]
- Average age of open items: [duration]

**Debt health:**
- [ ] Are we resolving debt faster than we create it?
- [ ] Are the same types of issues recurring? (signals a systemic problem)
- [ ] Did any accepted debt turn out to matter more than expected?
Step 6: Taste Evolution

Note what this project revealed about how the user designs, to add to the observational record. This is describing the user's habits, not setting rules for future work:

markdown
### What this project revealed (observations for the record)

**Recurring decisions reinforced:**
- [Observation] — now seen in [N] projects, per [evidence]

**New habits or inclinations noticed:**
- [Observation] — first seen here, per [evidence]

**Things the user moved away from:**
- [Observation] — corrected/reversed because [reason]

**Surprises:**
- [What was characteristic or unexpected about how they decided] — e.g. chose [X] over [Y]

_(All recorded as descriptions of how the user designs — never as preferences to apply to future work.)_
Step 7: Carry-Forward Items

What should the next project know?

markdown
### Carry Forward

**For the next project:**
- [Lesson learned that applies broadly]
- [Process improvement to try]
- [Taste insight to remember]

**For specific agents:**
| Agent | Lesson |
|-------|--------|
| **design-lead** | [e.g., "User prefers to see colour options before committing — show swatches, not descriptions"] |
| **design-strategist** | [e.g., "Spend more time on the navigation model early — it affected everything downstream"] |
| **content-writer** | [e.g., "User reads everything — content quality matters more than expected"] |
| ... | ... |

**Open questions for next time:**
- [Unresolved question that might be relevant in future projects]
Show full SKILL.md (250 more words)Show less
Step 8: Write the Retrospective

Compile everything into a single document:

markdown
# Design Retrospective: [Project Name]

**Date:** [YYYY-MM-DD]
**Duration:** [How long the project ran]
**Mode:** [direct/auto/mixed]
**Agents used:** [X of 10]

## Summary
[3-5 sentences: what was built, what worked, what was hard, what we learned]

## What Worked
[From Step 2]

## What Didn't Work
[From Step 3]

## Process Assessment
[From Step 4]

## Design Debt
[From Step 5]

## Taste Evolution
[From Step 6]

## Carry Forward
[From Step 7]

Save to: [project-root]/design-retrospective.md

Step 9: Add to the Design Record

After the retrospective is written:

  1. Invoke design-memory to add this project's observations to the record
  2. Record them as descriptions of how the user designs (habits, inclinations), with evidence — never as preferences to apply to future work
  3. Update the project history in the record
Step 10: Present to User

Show the retrospective to the user as a summary:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  DESIGN RETROSPECTIVE: [Project Name]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  WINS:
  • [Top 2-3 things that worked well]

  MISSES:
  • [Top 2-3 things that needed rework]

  TASTE LEARNED:
  • [Key taste insights from this project]

  DESIGN DEBT:
  • Open: [count] | Resolved: [count] | Accepted: [count]
  • Most affected: [persona]

  CARRY FORWARD:
  • [Top 2-3 lessons for next time]

  EFFICIENCY:
  • Fix rounds: [count]
  • User overrides: [count]
  • Agents used: [X of 10]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Your taste profile has been updated.
  Next project starts smarter.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Integration

  • Called by: using-designpowers (after project completion or on user request)
  • Reads from: design-state.md (including Design Debt Register), taste profile, critique documents, verification results
  • Writes to: [project-root]/design-retrospective.md
  • Calls: design-memory (to update taste profile with learnings)
  • Pairs with: design-memory, verification-before-shipping, designpowers-critique

Anti-Patterns

PatternWhy It Fails
Skipping retrospective because the project "went fine"Even smooth projects teach you something. "Why did this go well?" is as valuable as "why did this go wrong?"
Blaming agents for wrong decisionsAgents are tools. If the output was wrong, the question is what context they were missing, not what they did wrong
Only looking at what failedWins are data too. Understanding what worked is how you replicate it
Not adding observations to the design recordEach project should leave the user a richer mirror of how they design. The record isn't applied to future work, but it's only honest if it's kept current
Running retrospective in auto modeRetrospectives need user reflection. Always run in direct mode with pauses for user input

© Owl-Listener, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in skills/design-retrospective of Owl-Listener/designpowers.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit cb00757

Compare with similar skills

Design Retrospective next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Design Retrospective compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Design Retrospective this skillOwl-Listener/designpowers251—~2.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Weekly Engineering Retrogarrytan/gstack136k—~2.4kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Dough Execute Planterryyin/lizard2.5k—~4.3kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence
Oral Paper SkillAdkid-Zephyr/oral-paper-skill357—~1.9kAutomated safety check: PassNone
Deck Retroasheshgoplani/agent-deck1.1k—~1.8kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Dough Execution Retrospectiveterryyin/lizard2.5k—~4kAutomated safety check: PassCustom licence

Similar skills

  • Builds a weekly engineering retrospective from git history: commit counts, per-person contributions, work patterns and code quality numbers over a chosen window.

    136k GitHub stars~2.4k tokensUpdated today
    Product & Project ManagementAuto-check passed
  • Dough Execute Plan

    terryyin/lizard

    Executes one selected story or bounded retrospective correction through an executable plan, or one authorized planless slice from a selected simple story or a contextual instruction, with…

    2.5k GitHub stars~4.3k tokensUpdated today
    Product & Project ManagementAuto-check passed
  • Oral Paper Skill

    Adkid-Zephyr/oral-paper-skill

    Help authors learn from exemplary ICLR, ICML, and NeurIPS papers through source-linked manuscript comparisons, concrete writing and experiment suggestions, and guided reflection.

    357 GitHub stars~1.9k tokensUpdated 23 days ago
    Product & Project ManagementAuto-check passed
  • Deck Retro

    asheshgoplani/agent-deck

    Run a fully local agent-deck retrospective over the user's own transcripts, Recall index and logs.

    1.1k GitHub stars~1.8k tokensUpdated yesterday
    Product & Project ManagementAuto-check passed
  • Reviews planned, completed planless quick, or quick-to-planned execution against original intent, aggregate commits, current whole-product architecture, and tests, including after cleanup.

    2.5k GitHub stars~4k tokensUpdated today
    Product & Project ManagementAuto-check passed
  • Criticism Self Criticism

    HughYau/qiushi-skill

    批评与自我批评:在工作完成、阶段验收、收到批评或同类错误反复出现时,对成果和过程做诚实、具体、基于事实的审视,输出可执行的改进项,并处理外来批评而不辩解。触发信号包括 review、复盘、审查、"帮我看看有没有问题"、"你确定吗";任务刚开始或只是单步查询时不触发。

    3.8k GitHub stars~423 tokensUpdated 10 days ago
    Product & Project ManagementAuto-check passed

More from Owl-Listener/designpowers

All 33 skills in this repo
  • Adaptive Interfaces

    Owl-Listener/designpowers

    A skill your agent uses when designing for user preferences — motion sensitivity, contrast needs, colour schemes, text sizing, information density, or any interface behaviour that should adapt to…

    251 GitHub stars~1.1k tokensUpdated 3 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Design Debate

    Owl-Listener/designpowers

    A skill your agent uses when a design direction is uncertain, when the team could go multiple ways, or when the user wants to see competing approaches argued before committing — orchestrates…

    251 GitHub stars~2.1k tokensUpdated 3 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Design Debt Tracker

    Owl-Listener/designpowers

    A skill your agent uses when critique or review produces deferred findings, when checking accumulated design compromises, or when deciding what to address in the next iteration.

    251 GitHub stars~2.2k tokensUpdated 3 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Design Discovery

    Owl-Listener/designpowers

    You MUST use this before any creative or design work — building features, creating components, designing interfaces, modifying user-facing behaviour.

    251 GitHub stars~2.1k tokensUpdated 3 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Design Handoff

    Owl-Listener/designpowers

    A skill your agent uses when design work is complete and needs to be communicated to engineering — creates specifications, documents rationale, accessibility requirements, and interaction details in…

    251 GitHub stars~1.1k tokensUpdated 3 mo ago
    Auto-check passed
  • Design Review

    Owl-Listener/designpowers

    A skill your agent uses when the user wants to evaluate something that ALREADY EXISTS rather than build something new — "review this", "audit this screen", "what's wrong with this page", "is this…

    251 GitHub stars~1.7k tokensUpdated 3 mo ago
    Auto-check passed

Questions about Design Retrospective

What does Design Retrospective do?

Use after shipping or completing a design project — structured reflection on what worked, what didn't, and what taste decisions landed. Design Retrospective is an agent skill from Owl-Listener/designpowers. Use after shipping or completing a design project — structured reflection on what worked, what didn't, and what taste decisions landed.

When should I use Design Retrospective?

Design Retrospective fits situations like: tasks that involve Retrospectives.

How do I install Design Retrospective in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add Owl-Listener/designpowers --skill design-retrospective -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/design-retrospective in Owl-Listener/designpowers) into .claude/skills/design-retrospective in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Design Retrospective in Codex?

Run `npx skills add Owl-Listener/designpowers --skill design-retrospective -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (skills/design-retrospective in Owl-Listener/designpowers) into .agents/skills/design-retrospective in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Design Retrospective in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add Owl-Listener/designpowers --skill design-retrospective -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/design-retrospective, .gemini/skills/design-retrospective, .github/skills/design-retrospective and .opencode/skills/design-retrospective in your project.

What does Design Retrospective need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Design Retrospective is instructions for the agent only.

Does Design Retrospective access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Design Retrospective safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Design Retrospective use?

Design Retrospective is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Design Retrospective use?

About 2.3k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 9.2k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Design Retrospective?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Design Retrospective: Weekly Engineering Retro (garrytan/gstack, 136k stars), Dough Execute Plan (terryyin/lizard, 2.5k stars), Oral Paper Skill (Adkid-Zephyr/oral-paper-skill, 357 stars) and Deck Retro (asheshgoplani/agent-deck, 1.1k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Design Retrospective?

Owl-Listener (a GitHub user) maintains it in Owl-Listener/designpowers, which has 251 GitHub stars. The repository holds 33 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on June 23, 2026.

Source: Owl-Listener/designpowers on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.