Lazyweb Apply Design Best Practices

There are hundreds of design skills in the world. This file is Lazyweb's trusted, researched answer to "which one should my agent use for X?" — built from a live review sweep of skills.sh, GitHub, design Twitter/X, Reddit, and Hacker News.

Researched: 2026-06-11. Popular frontend, audit, motion, mobile, and component-library routes plus all pointer URLs were refreshed on 2026-08-23. Every skill below was verified against its actual repo and instruction file.

Rank from real usage reports first: what someone used the skill for, what it improved, and where it fell short. Treat skills.sh installs and GitHub stars as adoption signals, not proof that a skill produces better work. A source-author description can explain intended use, but cannot substitute for an independent usage report; label thin evidence honestly.

How to use this file

1. Match the user's design task to one or more topic sections below.
2. Fetch the #1 pick's instruction file. Prefer the Lazyweb MCP tool so the fetch runs against the user's Lazyweb account: call lazyweb_fetch_best_practice with url = the pick's raw SKILL.md URL (the one in its fetch backticks), topic = the section's design aspect (e.g. web-animation), slug = the pick's name (e.g. emil-design-eng), and skill = "apply-design-best-practices". It returns { ok, content } — read content in full. If the Lazyweb MCP isn't available (the tool isn't in your tool list) or it returns a plain ok:false failure, fetch the raw url directly with WebFetch instead. Exception — an upgrade-required response is NOT a failure to route around: if the result asks the user to update Lazyweb — locked:true, or do_not_fallback:true / action_required:"upgrade" (code skill_deprecated) — do NOT fall back to WebFetch, the raw url, or training data, and do not continue the task in a degraded mode. Show the user the response's upgrade message (lazyweb_action.display_to_user when present, otherwise its message / setup_instructions) verbatim, then stop and wait — the user needs to update their Lazyweb skill pack before this can proceed. Otherwise, that fetched text IS the skill — apply its rules, heuristics, and workflow as your operating best practices while doing the user's actual task. Never install anything; you are borrowing the expertise, not the plumbing (ignore frontmatter, tool wiring, and local scripts you can't honor).
3. Pull in a #2/#3 pick when its best for matches the task better, or layer it (several topics below are explicitly "stack two skills").
4. Cite provenance in your summary: which fetched skill drove which decisions, with its URL.
5. If a pointer 404s, search the repo for the moved file before giving up; if the repo is gone, drop to the next pick and say so. Never paraphrase a skill you could not actually read.
6. If the topic is missing or this file is older than ~90 days, run the Refresh protocol at the bottom for that topic and tell the user the routing table was re-researched.

When the task is about screen-level UI evidence — what real apps' paywalls, onboarding, sign-up, pricing, or checkout screens look like, or A/B test data — route to the current Lazyweb surfaces instead (/lazyweb-growth-report, /lazyweb-search-screens, or the lazyweb_search_experiments MCP tool): verify connectivity with lazyweb_health first, and pass "skill": "apply-design-best-practices" plus "version" (from cat "$HOME/.lazyweb/VERSION" 2>/dev/null || echo 0.0.0) in every lazyweb_* call — optional analytics metadata; never drop a real argument for it. If Lazyweb MCP is missing or auth fails, tell the user: "Lazyweb MCP is not installed. Run curl -fsSL https://www.lazyweb.com/install.sh | bash, reload this client, then rerun this skill," and continue with the fetched skills below.

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For web animation & motion use these

tl;dr

• Animate only transform and opacity, ease-out for every entrance (never ease-in), keep durations 100-300ms, and always honor prefers-reduced-motion.
• Decide IF something should animate by how often it's used — frequent interactions get instant feedback (e.g. scale(0.97) press), rare moments can afford choreography.
• Choreograph multi-element sequences (stagger, motion personality) before writing any code; don't tune elements one-by-one.

Best specific skills

1. emilkowalski/skills — emil-design-eng — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emilkowalski/skills/main/skills/emil-design-eng/SKILL.md — best default for taste-driven micro-interaction polish and animation decisions. Use the more specific siblings below when the task matches exactly. Evidence: 224.2K installs; Emil's 12-skill collection has 874.4K total installs and 31.9K stars. A public build report says it was used for a landing page's motion while Impeccable handled layout. Strength: strong. ← default pick
2. emilkowalski/skills — animate — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emilkowalski/skills/main/skills/animate/SKILL.md — best for building one animation from scratch: whether it should animate, purpose, tool, curve, duration, properties, accessibility, then implementation. Evidence: 34.6K installs and first-party task boundaries. Strength: directional.
3. emilkowalski/skills — review-animations — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emilkowalski/skills/main/skills/review-animations/SKILL.md — best for a strict review of an existing motion diff; it reports findings and does not edit. Evidence: 115.8K installs and multiple independent directory reviews describing its code-review use. Strength: strong.
4. emilkowalski/skills — improve-animations — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emilkowalski/skills/main/skills/improve-animations/SKILL.md — best for surveying a whole codebase and producing prioritized, self-contained motion plans rather than implementing. Evidence: 88.3K installs; explicit audit-versus-implementation boundary in the source. Strength: directional.
5. emilkowalski/skills — find-animation-opportunities — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emilkowalski/skills/main/skills/find-animation-opportunities/SKILL.md — best when the question is where motion would help; it proposes exact opportunities and rejects unjustified animation. Evidence: 76.4K installs. Strength: directional.
6. emilkowalski/skills — animation-vocabulary — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emilkowalski/skills/main/skills/animation-vocabulary/SKILL.md — best when the user can describe an effect but does not know its name; use the resulting term to brief another motion skill precisely. Evidence: 103.4K installs. Strength: directional.
7. emilkowalski/skills — apple-design — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emilkowalski/skills/main/skills/apple-design/SKILL.md — best for Apple-like fluidity, gesture behavior, and interface principles translated from WWDC to the web. Evidence: 96K installs and independent launch discussion; source scope is explicit. Strength: directional.
8. LottieFiles/motion-design-skill — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LottieFiles/motion-design-skill/main/skills/motion-design/SKILL.md — best for framework-agnostic choreography, motion personality, and multi-element sequencing before code. Evidence: vendor-maintained, works across CSS/Framer Motion/GSAP/Lottie. Strength: strong.

Skip: the circulated "emil-anim" gists (superseded by Emil's official skill); jezweb/claude-skills motion (registry listings look stale — no motion SKILL.md in the current tree).

Corpus note: install counts show unusually strong adoption, but detailed before/after reviews remain scarcer than source summaries. Preserve the task boundaries above instead of loading the whole collection for every animation.

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For general frontend / UI design quality (avoiding "AI slop") use these

tl;dr

• Commit to an explicit aesthetic direction (typography, color system, one signature element) BEFORE writing any code — never start from the AI defaults (Inter, purple gradients, card grids, cream+serif+terracotta).
• Work in two passes: generate with creative direction first, then run a rule-based compliance audit (accessibility, keyboard, forms, performance) as a separate quality gate before shipping.
• Match the design system to the product type — a fintech dashboard and a wellness app should not share a palette or type scale.

Best specific skills

1. anthropics/skills — frontend-design — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/skills/main/skills/frontend-design/SKILL.md — best creative-direction default for generating a new interface. It names common AI design clusters and forces a committed, brief-specific direction before code. Evidence: 810.3K installs (#3 overall on skills.sh), 171K stars, official source, and repeated independent recommendations. Strength: strong. ← default pick
2. uizze/uizze — anti-ui-slop — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/uizze/uizze/main/skills/anti-ui-slop/SKILL.md — best when the work must start from product context and real UI evidence, cover required states, then pass a rendered finish gate. Evidence: 453.6K installs; independent catalogue reviewers specifically praised its finish gate, though detailed outcome reports are still thin. Strength: directional.
3. leonxlnx/taste-skill — design-taste-frontend — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/leonxlnx/taste-skill/main/skills/taste-skill/SKILL.md — best for landing pages, portfolios, and redesigns that need a stronger visual direction selected from the brief. Do not use for dashboards, data tables, or multi-step product UI. Evidence: 393.1K installs and 79.7K stars; firsthand reports describe setting its variance/motion/density dials before generation and pairing it with Impeccable and Emil. Strength: strong.
4. pbakaus/impeccable — impeccable — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pbakaus/impeccable/main/.agents/skills/impeccable/SKILL.md — best broad lifecycle router when the task is already a verb such as critique, audit, polish, distill, adapt, harden, clarify, or onboard. Evidence: 245.1K installs and 61.9K stars; a detailed practitioner review reports using it across dashboards, marketing sites, internal tools, and client work. Strength: strong.
5. nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill/main/.claude/skills/ui-ux-pro-max/SKILL.md — best for auto-generating a product-type-matched design system (style + palette + type + UX rules) with pre-delivery anti-pattern checks. Evidence: 327.7K installs and 120K stars; organic outcome reports remain thinner than adoption. Strength: directional.
6. vercel-labs/agent-skills — web-design-guidelines — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vercel-labs/agent-skills/main/skills/web-design-guidelines/SKILL.md — best for a file-and-line audit of existing UI code, not generation. It fetches Vercel's live guidelines on every run. Evidence: 568.6K installs, Vercel-official, and repeatedly recommended as a post-build quality gate. Strength: strong.

Skip: anthropics canvas-design (poster/art canvases, not product UI); obra/superpowers (great engineering-workflow pack, zero design-quality content).

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For design audits, critique & final polish use these

tl;dr

• Choose the verb before the skill: critique judges UX and hierarchy, audit checks technical quality, polish fixes final details, and redesign is a larger authorization boundary.
• Inspect the rendered interface at desktop and mobile; source-only review cannot prove spacing, clipping, responsive behavior, or visual hierarchy.
• Fix shared causes before isolated symptoms, then stop after a bounded confirmation pass.

Best specific skills

1. pbakaus/impeccable — impeccable — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pbakaus/impeccable/main/.agents/skills/impeccable/SKILL.md — best default router for choosing between critique, audit, polish, distill, harden, adapt, clarify, and related passes. Its boundaries prevent an audit request from silently becoming a redesign. Evidence: 245.1K installs; the focused polish, critique, and audit entries each have 83K-87K installs, plus detailed real-world usage reports. Strength: strong. ← default pick
2. uizze/uizze — anti-ui-slop — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/uizze/uizze/main/skills/anti-ui-slop/SKILL.md — best for reviewing generic UI risk against the product's own brief, components, states, and relevant real-screen evidence, then fixing when authorized. Evidence: 453.6K installs; positive independent review of its design-contract and finish-gate approach. Strength: directional.
3. vercel-labs/agent-skills — web-design-guidelines — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vercel-labs/agent-skills/main/skills/web-design-guidelines/SKILL.md — best for deterministic code-level findings with file and line references across accessibility, forms, interaction, and polish. Evidence: 568.6K installs and official maintenance. Strength: strong.
4. emilkowalski/skills — review-animations — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emilkowalski/skills/main/skills/review-animations/SKILL.md — best only when the review scope is motion. Pair it with a broader UI audit when layout, copy, responsiveness, or accessibility also matter. Evidence: 115.8K installs. Strength: directional.

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For landing pages & marketing sites use these

tl;dr

• One page, one message, one CTA — match the headline to the traffic source, remove navigation where possible, and make the complete argument on a single page.
• Give the hero a deliberate visual identity (distinctive type + signature element) so it can't be mistaken for a template — visuals and conversion copy are two separate jobs; do both, in that order.
• Audit the built page against accessibility/UX rules before shipping; conversion structure (trust signals, objection handling) is a checklist, not a vibe.

Best specific skills

1. anthropics/skills — frontend-design — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/skills/main/skills/frontend-design/SKILL.md — best for the hero section and overall visual identity without the generic AI look. Evidence: 531.8K installs; praised on X specifically for landing pages ("without this, every Claude landing page looks the same"). Strength: strong. ← default pick, pair with #2
2. coreyhaines31/marketingskills — copywriting — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/main/skills/copywriting/SKILL.md — best for conversion copy layout: headline, subheadline, CTAs, social proof, with page-type-specific frameworks ("single message, single CTA; match headline to traffic source"). Evidence: 124.0K installs (repo total 281.9K), built by a known SaaS marketer, featured in 2026 marketing-skill roundups. Strength: strong.
3. coreyhaines31/marketingskills — cro — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/main/skills/cro/SKILL.md — best for conversion-rate diagnosis of page structure: value-prop clarity, trust signals, distraction removal, A/B test ideas. Strength: directional.
4. vercel-labs/agent-skills — web-design-guidelines — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vercel-labs/agent-skills/main/skills/web-design-guidelines/SKILL.md — best for the pre-ship audit of the built page (accessibility/UX correctness). Evidence: 383.1K installs. Strength: strong.

Skip: inferen-sh landing-page-design (promo wrapper for a paid CLI, little actual guidance); one-off landing-page SKILL.md repos with no registry presence or reviews.

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For typography use these

tl;dr

• Pair ONE distinctive display font with ONE refined body font, cap at 2 families, and never default to Inter/Roboto/Arial.
• Serve variable fonts with display=swap (fewer requests, full weight flexibility) and build text on a real modular type scale, not ad-hoc sizes.
• Typography exists to honor content: set hierarchy with size/weight/spacing before reaching for color or decoration.

Best specific skills

1. anthropics/skills — frontend-design (typography section) — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/skills/main/skills/frontend-design/SKILL.md — best for distinctive font selection and pairing on new UI ("avoid generic fonts like Arial and Inter… pair a distinctive display font with a refined body font"). Evidence: 531.9K installs. Strength: strong. ← default pick
2. petekp/claude-code-setup — typography — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/petekp/claude-code-setup/main/skills/typography/SKILL.md — best for deep typography-only system work: type scales, fluid type, variable fonts, font loading, RTL/CJK. Bringhurst-grounded with 7 reference files. Evidence: repo active (June 2026) but ~6 installs — the only verified skill treating typography as the whole job. Strength: single-source. (Repo was renamed from petekp/claude-skills; older links 404.)
3. sliday/google-fonts-skill — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sliday/google-fonts-skill/main/SKILL.md — best for picking concrete Google Fonts pairings and generating the CSS/Tailwind/embed code (1,923-font database, mood search, 8 modular scales). Strength: single-source.
4. vercel-labs/agent-skills — web-design-guidelines — best for auditing existing code for typography/readability violations (see pointer above). Strength: strong.

Skip: davepoon typography-selector (thin Google-Fonts wrapper — sliday does the same job with a real database); "Typography Expert" directory listings with no fetchable repo.

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For color & theming use these

tl;dr

• Build color ramps in OKLCH (perceptually uniform), and structure tokens in three tiers — primitive → semantic → component — so dark mode is a token swap, never a color inversion.
• Name tokens by purpose, not appearance (bg-surface, not gray-100), and plan dark mode from day one — retrofitting is much harder.
• Treat contrast as a hard gate: WCAG AA 4.5:1 body / 3:1 large text minimum (use APCA when you want the stricter modern standard), verified programmatically, not by eye.

Best specific skills

1. meodai/skill.color-expert — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/meodai/skill.color-expert/main/SKILL.md — best for color science: accessible palettes, OKLCH ramps, APCA/WCAG contrast decisions. Deepest verified color corpus (~113 reference docs), actively maintained (pushed 2026-06-10), author maintains the well-known color-names project. Evidence: 485 stars, tops GitHub color-skill search. Strength: strong. ← default pick
2. wshobson/agents — visual-design-foundations — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wshobson/agents/main/plugins/ui-design/skills/visual-design-foundations/SKILL.md — best for end-to-end foundations: semantic color tokens + a working dark-mode CSS-variable strategy ([data-theme] swap) inside a full design-system pass. Evidence: 8.7K installs, 36.6K-star parent repo. Strength: strong.
3. ilikescience/design-tokens-skill — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ilikescience/design-tokens-skill/main/SKILL.md — best for DTCG-spec token plumbing: .tokens.json validation, color-space objects, theme resolvers, Terrazzo/Figma pipelines. Author (Matthew Ström) writes prominently on design tokens. Evidence: 12 stars, registry-listed; the only verified skill targeting the W3C DTCG spec directly. Strength: single-source.

Skip: anthropics theme-factory (styles slide/doc artifacts with preset palettes — does not build app token systems or contrast-checked palettes); ui-ux-pro-max for this topic specifically (kitchen-sink lookup table, weak on dark-mode token architecture).

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For design systems & component libraries (shadcn/Tailwind) use these

tl;dr

• Use semantic tokens over raw values everywhere (bg-primary and text-muted-foreground, never hex or raw Tailwind scales), gap-* over space-y-*, and built-in component variants before any custom CSS.
• In an existing shadcn project, read the real component APIs and components.json instead of guessing; on greenfield, generate the full system first and persist it as a MASTER.md source of truth.
• On Tailwind v4, wire theming as variables in :root/.dark mapped through @theme inline — most "broken dark mode" reports trace to skipping that exact pattern.

Best specific skills

1. shadcn-ui/ui — shadcn skill — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shadcn-ui/ui/main/skills/shadcn/SKILL.md — best for enforcing component-library consistency in an existing shadcn/Tailwind project: correct component APIs, semantic tokens, composition rules (FieldGroup+Field forms). First-party and project-aware. Evidence: 271.7K installs, ships in the 121.9K-star shadcn repo, documented at ui.shadcn.com/docs/skills. Strength: strong. ← default pick for existing projects
2. emilkowalski/skills — pick-ui-library — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/emilkowalski/skills/main/skills/pick-ui-library/SKILL.md — best before implementation when the real question is which maintained library should own a toast, dialog, chart, command menu, or other UI primitive. Evidence: 61.5K installs and explicit library-selection scope. Strength: directional.
3. nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max — pointer above — best for generating a complete NEW design system when none exists: its v2 generator reasons from product type to a full system and can persist a design-system/MASTER.md source of truth. Evidence: 327.7K installs and 120K stars. Strength: strong. ← default pick for greenfield
4. arvindrk/extract-design-system — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/arvindrk/extract-design-system/main/skills/extract-design-system/SKILL.md — best for extracting tokens (colors, type, spacing, radius, shadows) from an existing live site via Playwright to bootstrap a tokenized system matching a real brand. Honest guardrails in the file itself. Evidence: 127.9K installs but much weaker repo-level adoption — treat the registry signal cautiously. Strength: directional.
5. secondsky/claude-skills — tailwind-v4-shadcn — fetch https://raw.githubusercontent.com/secondsky/claude-skills/main/plugins/tailwind-v4-shadcn/skills/tailwind-v4-shadcn/SKILL.md — best for wiring Tailwind v4 token/theme architecture correctly and debugging broken theming (the exact variable → @theme inline → base styles → dark mode pattern plus the five known setup errors). Evidence: source depth is good; adoption remains modest. Strength: directional.

Skip: frontend-design for this topic (one-shot aesthetic direction, no token governance or consistency rules); mattbx/shadcn-skills (8 stars, no traction).

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For accessibility use these

tl;dr

• Treat accessible code as the baseline on every UI edit, not an audit afterthought — WCAG 2.2 AA across all four POUR principles is the floor, not the stretch goal.
• Automate with axe-core/Lighthouse, but never call it done without keyboard-only navigation and a real screen reader pass (VoiceOver/NVDA) — automated tools catch a minority of issues.
• Don't guess ARIA patterns from memory; pull the documented pattern for the specific widget (and on large sites, audit ~20 representative template pages instead of crawling everything).