emilkowalski / skills
★ 4,800A skill package that teaches your agent 4 capabilities — every one documented and browsable below, no GitHub required · by emilkowalski.
Each skill below is one capability this package teaches your agent. Install the whole package, or open a skill to install just that one.
Reverse-lookup glossary that turns a vague description of a web animation or motion effect into its exact term ("the bouncy thing when a popover opens" → Pop in; "the iOS rubber-band scroll" → Rubber-banding). Use when the user asks "what's it called when…", or describes a motion effect without knowing its name and wants the right word to prompt an AI or designer with. For naming an effect, not designing or building one.
1 file — installable on its own
This skill encodes Emil Kowalski's philosophy on UI polish, component design, animation decisions, and the invisible details that make software feel great.
1 file — installable on its own
This skill encodes Emil Kowalski's philosophy on UI polish, component design, animation decisions, and the invisible details that make software feel great.
1 file — installable on its own
Reviews animation and motion code against a high craft bar derived from Emil Kowalski's design engineering philosophy. Default to flagging; approval is earned.
2 files — installable on its own
Skills For Design Engineers
For designers and engineers to help them build better user interfaces.
Knowing whether you made a right choice when it comes to animations, or design in general, is hard. These skills aim to help you get to those right decisions faster.
They are based on my years of experience working at companies like Vercel and Linear.
All the skills here are a side-effect of domain-expertise. AI doesn’t replace such expertise, it amplifies what you can get out of it and makes you way better relative to others.
So learn to code, design, or develop expertise in any other field. It’s extremely valuable.
You’ll build animation expertise here:
Install
npx skills@latest add emilkowalski/skillsWhy use it?
Agents don’t have great taste
I have seen plenty of times that agents don’t pick the right ingredients for an animation. An ease-in easing for an enter animation when it’s supposed to be ease-out (here’s why). Or they choose a solid border instead of a semi-transparent shadow.
All these little things compound and make your interface either amazing, or just... not that great.
As explained in Agents with Taste, these skills list all the little mistakes agents can potentially make and explain how to fix them.
This is your shortcut to great interfaces. A shortcut to stand out in a sea of slop.
Reference
- emil-design-eng — The main skill that consinsts of mostly animation, but also some design advice.
- review-animations — Review your animations in a strict way, based on my rules.
- animation-vocabulary — Get better animations from an AI by telling it exactly what you want by using the right words.
Install the whole package (4 skills):
npx skills add https://github.com/emilkowalski/skillsOr install a single skill:
npx skills add https://github.com/emilkowalski/skills --skill <name>Pick the skill name from the Skills tab — each entry there installs independently.