{"id":"6309d0e2-ab82-46f5-ab16-62077aed8ab5","slug":"design-register-commit","kind":"skill","name":"design-register-commit","summary":"Taste as commitment, not restraint. A Claude Code design skill that forces commitment to a named cultural register, with 9 extensible register templates.","owner":"Raylinkh","repoUrl":"https://github.com/Raylinkh/design-register-commit","license":"MIT","licenseTier":"permissive","trust":"community","stars":0,"match":null,"fewStars":true,"format":"skill","createdAt":"2026-04-21T16:36:28.000Z","addedAt":"2026-10-21T13:15:54.180Z","logoUrl":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/36728738?v=4","linkOnly":false,"collection":null,"skillPath":null,"categories":["design-media","developer-tools"],"tags":["claude-code","design-system","design-tokens","frontend-design","ui-ux"],"runtime":"binary","local":true,"cloudCapable":false,"cloudCapability":"unknown","cloudReadyOnPlatform":false,"needsApiKey":false,"reviewed":false,"syncedAt":"2026-10-23T19:49:16.219Z","sample":false,"url":"https://conduits.dev/tools/design-register-commit","language":"HTML","transports":["stdio"],"install":{},"requirements":{"env":[],"upstreamMayCharge":false},"tools":null,"readme":"# design-register-commit\n\n**Taste is commitment, not restraint.** A Claude Code skill that forces commitment to a named cultural register (a \"world\") before any UI output, then gates output against that register's closed token budget and refusal list.\n\nBuilt because existing design skills (frontend-design, uiux-pro-max, etc.) optimize for *defensible* output — competent and polished but interchangeable with every other SaaS app from 2024. This skill optimizes for *authored* output: committed, specific, refused-into-a-shape.\n\n---\n\n## Why this exists\n\nWhen you ask an AI to \"design a meditation app,\" most design skills match *product-type* to *style* — wellness → pastel palette + soft sans + rounded corners. The result is competent and forgettable. It belongs to every meditation app, which means it belongs to none.\n\nThis skill flips the process:\n\n1. **Name the register first** — not a vibe (\"minimal wellness\") but a cultural world with real anchors (\"a Kyoto teahouse at dawn\" / \"a Scandinavian therapist's reading room\"). Each world has real products, books, and buildings you can point to.\n2. **Declare a closed token budget** — 3 colors or 30, but sealed. New values require explicit revision.\n3. **Write down what the register refuses** — Memphis refuses serifs. Brutalism refuses rounded corners. Refusals are grep-able patterns.\n4. **Build inside the budget** — every `color:`, `border-radius:`, `font-family:` must resolve to a declared token.\n5. **Gate before shipping** — four automated checks: token conformance, refusal conformance, hero presence (≥1.6× next element), specificity (no lorem ipsum, no \"Elevate your X\").\n\nAny output that violates its own declared register's refusal list is tasteless — regardless of how beautiful each individual element is. Internal consistency to a chosen world beats objective prettiness.\n\n---\n\n## Install\n\nThe skill follows the [Agent Skills](https://agentskills.io/) open standard and is host-agnostic. It works out of the box with **Claude Code, OpenAI Codex CLI, and OpenCode** — and any other agent that adopts the same spec (Cursor, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, JetBrains Junie, Copilot, Aider, Windsurf, Kilo, etc.).\n\n### Claude Code\n\n```bash\n/plugin marketplace add Raylinkh/design-register-commit\n/plugin install design-register-commit@design-register-commit\n```\n\n### Codex CLI\n\n```bash\n# User-global\ngit clone https://github.com/Raylinkh/design-register-commit.git /tmp/drc\ncp -R /tmp/drc/.agents/skills/design-register-commit ~/.agents/skills/\ncp -R /tmp/drc/.agents/skills/uiux-improvement-fixes ~/.agents/skills/\n```\n\nOr clone into a project as `.agents/skills/` — Codex walks up from your CWD to the repo root looking for `.agents/skills/`, so in-repo adoption works too.\n\n### OpenCode\n\nOpenCode reads `~/.claude/skills/`, `~/.agents/skills/`, and `~/.config/opencode/skills/` automatically. Any of the install methods above will make the skills discoverable to OpenCode.\n\n### Manual (symlink into your global skills dir)\n\n```bash\ngit clone https://github.com/Raylinkh/design-register-commit.git ~/Documents/projects/design-register-commit\n\n# Claude Code\nln -s ~/Documents/projects/design-register-commit/.agents/skills/design-register-commit ~/.claude/skills/design-register-commit\nln -s ~/Documents/projects/design-register-commit/.agents/skills/uiux-improvement-fixes ~/.claude/skills/uiux-improvement-fixes\n\n# Codex CLI\nln -s ~/Documents/projects/design-register-commit/.agents/skills/design-register-commit ~/.agents/skills/design-register-commit\nln -s ~/Documents/projects/design-register-commit/.agents/skills/uiux-improvement-fixes ~/.agents/skills/uiux-improvement-fixes\n```\n\nOpenCode picks up either location automatically.\n\n### What's in the package\n\nTwo skills ship together:\n\n- **`design-register-commit`** — the main skill. Commit-first design with 9 registers + automated gates.\n- **`uiux-improvement-fixes`** — complementary task-first UX skill. Run *after* a register is chosen to fix whether the screen actually works (task clarity → information architecture → interaction logic → visual hierarchy → system consistency → emotional tone → polish). Refuses dashboards on child focus screens, cards-everywhere, multiple primary buttons, SaaS-voice copy.\n\n---\n\n## What ships\n\n- **`SKILL.md`** — the main skill entry; the six-step ritual and the four automated gates\n- **`PRIMER.md`** — a taste/UX cheat sheet for humans (what taste is, the canon, the practice, 10 traps to refuse). Read this first if you're new to deliberate design practice.\n- **`references/`** — deeper reading on the four pillars, the grep methodology, register-vs-effect distinction\n- **`commands/`** — slash commands that operate on registers (`export-designmd`, etc.)\n- **`templates/`** — 9 starter registers, each with 6 source files (tokens.css, refusals.md, push.md, references.md, diegesis.md, demo.html). Two registers (`paper-editorial`, `arcade-neon`) also ship a pre-generated `DESIGN.md` as community-standard exemplars.\n\n### The 10 starter registers\n\nEach template is a complete commitment kit — tokens + refusals + references + diegetic rules + a working `demo.html` reference screen. Open any demo.html in a browser to see the register in its shipped form.\n\n| Register | World | Demo subject |\n|---|---|---|\n| `paper-editorial` | A careful Chinese notebook on a wooden desk | Tea shop / notebook publisher |\n| `arcade-neon` | Tokyo arcade at 2 AM in 1985 | Kabukicho arcade operator console |\n| `luxury-restrained` | A concierge note slipped under a hotel door at 11 PM | Spa / hotel concierge |\n| `brutalist-gallery` | Wim Crouwel meets the 1972 Munich Olympics system | Exhibition archive |\n| `trading-terminal` | Bloomberg terminal at 4 AM with five people watching | Commodities / ops dashboard |\n| `field-notebook` | On-call engineer's project log at 3 PM | Linear-style task view |\n| `children-picturebook` | Picture book on a lamp-lit bedside table | Read-aloud app home |\n| `memphis-postmodern` | Milano 1981 Memphis Group debut | Design-furniture catalog |\n| `zine-punk` | Riot Grrrl zine photocopied at 2 AM | Zine issue page |\n| `industrial-monochrome` | A piece of well-engineered hardware on a designer's desk | Audio-interface monitor screen |\n\nTwo deliberately contrasting extremes (`paper-editorial` quiet ↔ `arcade-neon` maximalist) plus eight in between prove the thesis: **commitment intensity**, not restraint intensity, is the real taste dial.\n\n---\n\n## Using the skill\n\nIn Claude Code:\n\n```\nI want to build a meditation app. Use /design-register-commit.\n```\n\nClaude will:\n1. Refuse to proceed until you name a register (push back if you say \"minimal\" or \"modern\")\n2. Walk you through the 5-question register qualifier\n3. Load the chosen template's 5 files as the ceiling\n4. Build inside the budget\n5. Run the four gates before declaring done\n\n---\n\n## Adding a new register\n\nDrop a new folder under `templates/` with 6 files. The skill auto-discovers it.\n\nSee `templates/README.md` for the template spec and the register qualifier (5 questions that decide whether a proposed name is a *register* or just an *effect*).\n\nContributions welcome — see `CONTRIBUTING.md`.\n\n---\n\n## Complementary skills\n\nThese skills solve adjacent problems. Install together for the strongest stack.\n\n### impeccable · [github.com/pbakaus/impeccable](https://github.com/pbakaus/impeccable)\n\n20+ slash commands for frontend polish (`/polish`, `/distill`, `/audit`, `/typeset`, `/overdrive`, `/critique`, `/arrange`, `/colorize`, `/delight`, `/onboard`, `/quieter`, `/bolder`, `/normalize`, `/harden`, `/extract`, `/clarify`, `/adapt`) plus an enhanced `frontend-design` skill with curated AI-slop anti-patterns. Same plugin-ecosystem install pattern as ours.\n\n**How it stacks:** our skill sets the commitment (the ceiling); impeccable commands operate *inside* the declared register to polish specific surfaces. Run `/register-declare` first to lock the register, then use impeccable commands as you build.\n\n### web-design-engineer · [github.com/ConardLi/web-design-skill](https://github.com/ConardLi/web-design-skill)\n\nDistilled from Anthropic's Claude Design system prompt into a portable skill. Six-step workflow (understand → gather → declare → v0 draft → build → verify), OKLCH-based color derivation, and its own anti-cliché catalog (purple-pink-blue gradients, left-border accent cards, rounded-card-with-shadow defaults).\n\n**How it stacks:** raises the *baseline* quality of any AI-generated web artifact — works on any project, no register required. Ours enforces the *ceiling* of a chosen register. Run web-design-engineer as your default floor; escalate to design-register-commit when the output must feel authored rather than merely competent.\n\n### uiux-pro-max · [github.com/nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill](https://github.com/nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill)\n\nCatalog-based design skill with 50+ styles, 161 palettes, 57 font pairings, 161 product types, and a reasoning engine that matches product type to style.\n\n**How it stacks:** fast-path catalog for projects where \"defensible and competent\" beats \"authored and committed\" — admin dashboards, internal tools, MVP landings. Ours is the escalation path when output needs a point of view. Run them together and uiux-pro-max proposes; design-register-commit enforces.\n\n### nothing-design-skill · [github.com/dominikmartn/nothing-design-skill](https://github.com/dominikmartn/nothing-design-skill)\n\nA single-register skill crystallizing Nothing's industrial-monochrome design language — Braun + Teenage Engineering + Swiss type + OLED black + dot-matrix. Per-platform output mappings (HTML/CSS, SwiftUI, React/Tailwind, paper).\n\n**How it stacks:** they are a focused *single-register* skill; we ship it as one of our 10 templates (`industrial-monochrome`) inside the broader register-commitment framework. If you only ever want this one world, install theirs. If you want the same world plus 9 contrasting ones plus the four automated gates, use ours. Their `platform-mapping.md` pattern is adopted as our optional 7th template file (see `templates/platform-mapping-spec.md`).\n\n### Stack recommendation\n\nFor authored consumer products where feel matters: install all three. `web-design-engineer` as the craft baseline, `impeccable` for polish commands, `design-register-commit` for register enforcement. For internal tools and admin surfaces: `uiux-pro-max` alone is often enough.\n\n---\n\n## Cross-tool interop: DESIGN.md\n\nEvery register can export to [Google Stitch's DESIGN.md format](https://github.com/google-labs-code/stitch-skills/tree/main/skills/design-md) — the emerging community standard ([awesome-design-md](https://github.com/VoltAgent/awesome-design-md)) for plain-markdown design specs readable by any AI coding agent (Stitch, Cursor, Antigravity, Gemini CLI, Codex, Claude Code).\n\n```\n/export-designmd paper-editorial\n/export-designmd arcade-neon\n```\n\nOutput: a 9-section `DESIGN.md` at your project root, readable by any tool without this skill installed.\n\nTwo exemplars shipped in-repo:\n- [`templates/paper-editorial/DESIGN.md`](.claude/skills/design-register-commit/templates/paper-editorial/DESIGN.md)\n- [`templates/arcade-neon/DESIGN.md`](.claude/skills/design-register-commit/templates/arcade-neon/DESIGN.md)\n\n**The division of labor.** `DESIGN.md` tells any agent *what the project should look like*. This skill *enforces* that it stays there — the four automated gates (token conformance, refusal conformance, hero presence, specificity) are the linter for what DESIGN.md specs.\n\nShip both `DESIGN.md` and `.design-register.md` at your project root. They complement.\n\n---\n\n## How it differs from uiux-pro-max / frontend-design\n\n| | frontend-design / uiux-pro-max | design-register-commit |\n|---|---|---|\n| **Unit of extension** | A style or palette (neumorphism, \"sunset palette\") | A **register** — a named cultural world with anchors and refusals |\n| **Optimizes for** | Breadth of coverage, fast defensible output | **Depth of commitment** — refuse anything off-register |\n| **Rules as...** | Aspirational checklists | **Automated gates** — grep your output against the token budget and refusal list |\n| **Good at** | Admin dashboards, internal tools, \"give me a working wellness app\" | Consumer / creative / taste-sensitive products where \"looks AI-generated\" would kill it |\n\nThey are complementary. Run this skill **before** catalog skills to set the register ceiling those skills must respect.\n\n---\n\n## When NOT to use this\n\n- Admin dashboards where speed-to-defensible beats authored feel\n- Internal tools where nobody will ever see it outside the team\n- When the brief is genuinely \"just ship the standard thing\"\n\nFor everything else — anything a user will judge on identity, feel, or authorship — start here.\n\n---\n\n## Inspiration + prior art\n\n- **[impeccable](https://github.com/pbakaus/impeccable)** by Paul Bakaus — the skill pattern, anti-pattern vocabulary, command family (`/polish`, `/distill`, `/overdrive`). If you use this skill, install impeccable too. They compose.\n- **[ui-ux-pro-max-skill](https://github.com/nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill)** — the catalog approach this skill deliberately contrasts against.\n- **[Anthropic's agent-skills](https://github.com/anthropics/skills)** — canonical format and the skill-creator spec.\n- **Frank Chimero's *The Shape of Design*** — philosophical grounding for \"commitment as taste.\"\n\n---\n\n## License\n\nMIT. See [LICENSE](./LICENSE).\n\n---\n\n## Contributing\n\nNew register templates welcome. Improvements to the existing ones welcome. See [CONTRIBUTING.md](./CONTRIBUTING.md).\n\n**The bar:** any template you submit must pass its own refusals.md when grepped against its own demo.html. Register templates that fail their own gate get rejected. That's the whole game.\n"}