Apply Aesthetic
Apply a design direction—archetype or brand system—to match a specific look and feel.
Installation
- Make sure Claude is on your device and in your terminal.
Skills load from
~/.claude/skills/when Claude Code starts up — so you need it on your machine first. If you don't have it yet, install it once with the command below, then runclaudein any terminal to verify.One-time setupnpm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-codeAlready have it? Skip ahead.
- Paste into Claude Code or into your terminal.
This copies the whole skill folder into
~/.claude/skills/apply-aesthetic-plugin87/— the SKILL.md plus any scripts, reference docs, or templates the skill ships with. Safe default: works for every skill.Faster alternative (instruction-only skills)
Skips the clone and grabs only the SKILL.md file. Don't use this if the skill ships Python scripts, reference markdowns, or asset templates — they won't be downloaded and the skill will fail when it tries to load them.
Quick install (SKILL.md only)Sign up to copy - Restart Claude Code.
Quit and reopen Claude Code (or any other agent that loads from
~/.claude/skills/). New skills are picked up on startup. - Just ask Claude.
Skills auto-activate when your request matches the skill's description — no slash command needed. Trigger phrases live in the skill's own frontmatter; you can read them in the “What this skill does” section above.
Prefer to read the source first? Open on GitHub.
When Claude uses it
Apply a visual direction — an archetype (high-end agency, editorial minimal, brutalist, soft-SaaS, dark-tech) or one of 138 named design systems (apple, linear-app, stripe, vercel, notion, material, shadcn, spotify, tesla…) — by resolving it into the token system. Use when the user wants a specific look/vibe/brand feel, or asks to make a design feel premium/expensive/non-generic.
What this skill does
Skill: Apply Aesthetic
Choose and apply a design direction without breaking accessibility.
Steps
- Brief Inference first (mandatory) — before any tokens, name it: industry/domain, audience & tone, the one mood adjective the result must earn, motion depth, and the layout-family sequence (
taste/design-taste.md→ Brief Inference + Variance Mandate). Generating before deciding = slop. - Pick a direction in
taste/aesthetic-systems.md:- An archetype (recipe mapped to our tokens), or
- A named library system — browse with
python3 scripts/design_systems.py list(orsearch <term>/show <name>); specs live indesign-systems/library/<name>/DESIGN.md.
- Apply the Library Contract (in
aesthetic-systems.md): re-pointsemantic.*tokens to the chosen system's color roles; map typography/spacing/radius/shadow/motion totokens/*.json. - Verify contrast of every mapped color pair (
scripts/contrast.py/a11y-audit). A brand value that fails must be adjusted — taste never overrides POUR. - Add motion per
taste/motion-choreography.md; run the pre-flight aesthetic check indesign-taste.md.
Output
Updated/overridden semantic tokens + notes on type/space/motion, then render via design-code. Confirm the result passes both the aesthetic check and accessibility.
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