dembrandt

Manage user expectations during wait times with appropriate loading states — from simple spinners to complex skeleton screens and staggered animations. Perceived performance is often more important than actual load time. Use when designing data-heavy components, handling API calls, building hero sections, or improving the feel of a slow interface.

In large applications, information architecture determines whether users can find, understand, and act on data. Naming matters. The UI should mirror the data model and signal how data can be transformed. Dangerous or irreversible changes always require a confirm dialog. Use when designing navigation, naming entities, structuring large feature sets, or modelling data-driven UI.

Pipeline skill — turns a URL or DESIGN.md into a concrete UI structure with decisions already made. Extracts live design tokens, normalizes them into a semantic system, applies UX principles, and outputs an actionable UI spec. Use when building UI for an existing brand from scratch, auditing a design system, or refactoring visual inconsistency.

Mobile, tablet, and desktop are different interaction paradigms — not the same layout scaled up or down. Sections can be hidden, repositioned, or made sticky on mobile. Navigation and primary actions move. Use when designing responsive layouts, adapting desktop UI for mobile, or deciding what to show on each breakpoint.

Derive a full UI colour palette algorithmically from one or two brand colours. Darker and lighter variants for interactive states, desaturated greys from the brand hue for borders and backgrounds, and semantic colours that feel coherent with the brand rather than generic. Use when building a colour system from scratch or expanding a limited brand palette for UI use.

When something goes wrong, the user must be able to recover or try again. Toasts, inline errors, banners, and notification patterns each have a specific role. Use when designing error states, success confirmations, async feedback, in-place editing, or any system that communicates state changes to the user.

The most important actions and content in a UI should be visually prominent — through size, colour, weight, and position. Visual hierarchy guides the user's eye to what matters most and signals which action is primary. Use when designing button groups, CTAs, dashboards, cards, or any layout where actions or content have different importance levels.

Micro-interactions are small, purposeful animations and responses that reward the user and make the interface feel alive — an animated icon, a satisfying toggle, a subtle reveal. Borrowed from the natural world, they add delight without distraction. Use when designing interactive components, success states, toggles, loaders, or any moment worth celebrating.

Typography feels cohesive and intentional when font sizes follow a modular scale — a ratio-based sequence where every size is mathematically related to the others. Use when defining type scales, setting up design tokens, reviewing font size choices, or when typography feels inconsistent or arbitrary.

UI layout and grouping should follow Gestalt principles so users immediately understand which controls, commands, and elements belong together. Use when designing or reviewing component layout, navigation, toolbars, forms, dashboards, or any UI where visual grouping communicates relationships.

Complex data deserves multiple view modes — grid, list, table — chosen by the user based on their task. Row and item selection should use large hit areas (the whole row or card, not just a checkbox). Selected state is communicated through a subtle background colour shift. Mass actions appear when items are selected. Use when designing data tables, product listings, file browsers, or any multi-item

Semantic HTML5, SEO fundamentals, alt texts, progressive enhancement, SPA considerations, device capability detection, and user context awareness. Good HTML is the foundation of accessibility, SEO, and resilient UI. Use when building any web UI, reviewing markup quality, or optimising for search and accessibility.