Atelier — cross-CLI design engine

The portfolio's authored design skill. Turns "make it look good" into mechanically checkable rules across the whole of UI/UX, and runs natively in Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Antigravity, and Cursor from a single source of truth.

Built 2026-07-21. Inspired by the taste-skill genre (Leonxlnx, Emil Kowalski, Bakaus, Vercel web-interface-guidelines, ui-ux-pro-max) but re-architected: thin router + progressive disclosure instead of one 87 KB file, and coverage of the whole product surface (dashboards, tables, forms, states, a11y) instead of marketing landing pages only.

Why it exists

Existing design skills fail two ways: they load a giant opinion file into context on every activation, and they only cover marketing landing pages. Atelier fixes both:

• Progressive disclosure. A ~1-page router (skills/design/SKILL.md) holds the dials, a decision tree, and a routing table. The ~35 reference modules load only when the task needs them — the pattern the Agent Skills spec mandates.
• Nothing missed. Foundations, accessibility (WCAG 2.2 / ARIA), every product surface, motion, UX process, content/i18n, implementation reality, and CI quality gates.
• Mechanically checkable. Rules are things you can verify (contrast ratios, target sizes, states present, tokens used), not "be original". Anti-slop is a named blocklist, not a vibe.

Structure

atelier/
├── AGENTS.md                     # always-on facts + routing (<8 KB; no procedures)
├── skills/
│   ├── design/                   # the router + references/ (foundations..gates, presets)
│   ├── design-review/            # audit an existing UI
│   └── redesign/                 # refresh/overhaul safely
├── workflows/                    # new-surface · design-review · redesign · token-setup
├── adapters/
│   ├── gen-links.ps1             # junction SSOT -> every CLI's discovery dir (Windows, no admin)
│   └── bmad-pack/                # pack-design wrapper for BMAD+ install
└── docs/                         # coverage-matrix · sources · changelog

Install

Atelier lives once (skills/) and links into every CLI's discovery directory. Links, not copies — no drift, and edits to a module appear everywhere instantly.

Recommended — cross-OS, via npx (Windows / macOS / Linux)

# global: available in every project you open, for all CLIs
npx design-skill link

# a single project
npx design-skill link --project .

# preview / remove
npx design-skill link --dry
npx design-skill unlink

The linker uses directory junctions on Windows (no admin / Developer Mode) and symlinks on macOS/Linux, from the same command. Idempotent. Links are per-machine (not committed) — re-run on a new machine.

Not published to npm yet? Run it straight from the repo: npx github:lrochetta/design-skill link, or clone and node bin/atelier.mjs link.

Ecosystem installer (skills CLI)

Atelier's skills/ are spec-compliant Agent Skills, so the standard installer works too:

npx skills add https://github.com/lrochetta/design-skill

No Node? PowerShell fallback (Windows)

.\adapters\gen-links.ps1            # global   ·   -DryRun   ·   -Scope project -ProjectPath <p>

Wire either into _brain\methodology\machine-config\deploy\deploy.ps1 for multi-machine.

Via BMAD+ (per-project, different channel)

If you use the bmad-plus framework, install the pack-design (Atelier) pack instead — bmad-plus install copies the skills into the project's .agents/skills/. In that mode you do not run the linker (the files are physically installed). See adapters/bmad-pack/.

So there are two distribution channels: linker/npx = one global install, everywhere; BMAD+ pack = shipped into each project as part of the BMAD+ stack.

Use

| Task | Claude Code | Codex | Gemini | Antigravity | |---|---|---|---|---| | Build new UI | /design | $design | activate_skill | @design | | Review a UI | /design-review | $design-review | activate_skill | @design-review | | Redesign | /redesign | $redesign | activate_skill | @redesign |

BMAD+: install the pack-design (Atelier) pack — see adapters/bmad-pack/.

Design decisions

See docs/ for the coverage matrix (what's covered vs the landscape), sources (the credible rule origins), and the changelog. The one-paragraph version: SSOT in .agents-style skills/, Claude bridged by documented junctions, AGENTS.md kept tiny to dodge Codex's 32 KB truncation, and every fast-moving fact deferred to live llms.txt/MCP sources rather than frozen into a module.