OA Design

SkillDatabases & data

Open Analytics' design language, extracted from the shipped product: an ink-derived neutral system, squircle surface anatomy, one small spring vocabulary, pixel-matched skeletons, and a plain-spoken copy voice, with type-checked component recipes. Use this whenever you build or restyle a dashboard, SaaS app, analytics UI, settings screen, onboarding flow, or marketing/landing page that should feel calm, dense and native, and whenever the user mentions Open Analytics' look, 'clean SaaS design', cards, dropdowns, tab bars, empty states, skeletons, or UI animation quality, even if they never say the words 'design system'.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.

Then ask your AI: use the OA Design skill

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by openlabs-so/oa-design in skills/oa-design/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

The design language of Open Analytics, written down so an agent can reproduce it. Nothing here is aspirational: every value is lifted from the shipped product, springs and hex codes included.

The look in one sentence: white surfaces with continuous-curvature corners, resting on a quiet grey stage, drawn in a single ink, moved by a single spring.

Start by dropping _root.css into the project's global stylesheet: every recipe reads from those token names. Then read the recipe for what you are building. Build with real content, never lorem.

The ten rules

  1. One ink, everything derived. The entire neutral system is one color, --ink, mixed into transparency at fixed percentages: borders 12%, hover washes 5%, inputs 14%. Never introduce a second grey; when you need a new neutral, mix ink.
  2. Two layers, and the gap is the page. Surfaces are a white frame holding a recessed grey inset; sections are plates and the page background between them is the only divider. No horizontal rules.
  3. Squircles for surfaces, pills for actions. Cards get continuous-curvature corners; everything clickable that is not a card is a pill. A rounded-lg rectangle is the smell of a foreign component.
  4. One spring family. Seven named springs cover the entire product (table below). Do not invent an eighth.
  5. Chrome never waits. Layout and titles render instantly; only data swaps from a pixel-matched skeleton, arriving by blur, not by pop.
  6. Weight stops at 500. Inter Tight 300 to 500; no bold anywhere. Hierarchy comes from size, color and spacing. Data aligns with tabular-nums; code is Geist Mono.
  7. One accent, spent in one place. A single blue for primary actions and the primary chart line; semantic colors are text tints, never fills.
  8. States get pills, events end themselves. Standing conditions render non-dismissable strips or pills that live exactly as long as the state; one-off outcomes are toasts that retire alone.
  9. Copy is part of the design. Sentence case; buttons say what happens; errors name the cause and the way out, without blame. Read _copy.md.
  10. Quality floor, always. Focus rings, role="status", aria-hidden decorations, prefers-reduced-motion, no horizontal page scroll.

The springs

NameValueUsed for
PANEL550 / 38dropdowns, menus, boards, toggles
LAYOUT550 / 40measured height/width, traveling pills
POP400 / 26modal entrance
POP_EXIT380 / 28modal exit
BANNER400 / 30floating pills, page banners
FLICK900 / 50icon micro-moves
CHART300 / 28chart tooltips, crosshair

Micro fades: 0.1s out, 0.16s in, easeOut; nothing in app chrome tweens past 0.2s. The constants ship as code in components/_lib/springs.ts.

Component recipes

Each recipe is self-contained: when to use it, the load-bearing details, and the full type-checked source embedded.

FileWhat
01-squircle-card.mdthe surface system and the fixed-height mini card
02-button.mdpills that press, the bevel, honest loading
03-dropdown.mdmenus, selects, switchers; one anchored-panel pattern
04-tab-bar.mdthe traveling highlight and the label mask
05-modal.mdpop in, softer pop out
06-multi-step-dialog.mdthe measured-height choreography
07-skeleton.mdpixel-matched waits and the blur arrival
08-notice-strip.mdexplaining a standing state
09-floating-pill.mdthe app chrome's one word
10-toast.mdsuccess pulses, error shakes
11-header-morph.mdthe landing glass pill
12-reveal.mdscroll reveals in 80ms beats

Guides

FileWhat
_tokens.mdthe full palette, dark theme, type, radius, shadows
_layout.mdplates, widths, page anatomy, settings screens
_components.mdthe component patterns in prose, cross-referenced
_motion.mdthe vocabulary and the signature moves, with rules
_landing.mdmarketing pages: hero, reveals, furniture
_copy.mdvoice, buttons, errors, states, numbers
_root.cssthe installable token block every recipe reads from

Stack assumptions: React + Tailwind v4 + the motion package; but every value is plain CSS numbers and spring constants, so port freely. If the project already has a design system, theirs wins; use this to fill gaps, not to overwrite their identity.

Signals

GitHub stars
129
Forks
6
Last commit
Aug 2026
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
oa-design
Source
github.com/openlabs-so/oa-design