Design Swarm
Orchestrate 10 specialized design agents — each embodying a different skill/lens — to run holistic audits, ideation sessions, and implementations in parallel.
Orchestration Flow
When invoked, follow these steps exactly:
1. Parse Arguments
Extract from the invocation:
- Modes: One or more of
audit,ideate,implement(default:auditif none specified) - Target: The thing to evaluate — one of:
- Screenshot path (
.png,.jpg,.webp) - URL (
http://orhttps://) - File path (code file)
- Text brief (quoted description of an interface)
- Screenshot path (
2. Detect Target Type
| Signal | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
.png, .jpg, .webp, .gif | screenshot | Read the image directly |
http://, https:// | url | Use browser tools to snapshot the page |
| Existing file path | code | Read the file(s) |
| Everything else | brief | Treat as text description |
3. Load Orchestration Context
Read these files:
modules/orchestrator.md— synthesis logic, conflict resolution, final report templatereferences/scoring-rubric.md— universal 1-10 scalereferences/agent-weights.md— default weights for composite scoring
4. Create Team
TeamCreate(team_name: "design-swarm", description: "Holistic design audit/ideation/implementation")
5. Execute Phases
For each requested mode, in order (audit → ideate → implement):
Phase: Audit
-
Determine participating agents (see orchestrator.md Phase Gating):
- Screenshot-only: skip
baseline-ui - Code-only: all 10
- URL: all 10 (snapshot first, then inspect code if accessible)
- Brief: all 10 (theoretical assessment)
- Screenshot-only: skip
-
Create tasks via TaskCreate — one per participating agent
-
Spawn agents in parallel via Task tool. For each agent:
a. Read the agent template:
modules/agents/<agent-name>.mdb. Read the source knowledge file(s) listed in the template's "Source Knowledge" section c. Construct the agent prompt by combining:- The full agent template (structure + evaluation criteria)
- The full source knowledge content
- The target context (screenshot/URL snapshot/code/brief)
- Mode: "audit"
- The scoring rubric content
- Instructions to mark task complete and send report via SendMessage to "team-lead"
Task( name: "<agent-name>", team_name: "design-swarm", subagent_type: "general-purpose", run_in_background: true, prompt: [constructed prompt above] ) -
Wait for all agents to complete (they'll send reports via SendMessage)
-
Synthesize per orchestrator.md:
- Collect all reports
- Deduplicate findings
- Aggregate by severity
- Compute weighted composite score
- Identify and resolve conflicts
- Generate the final audit report
-
Present the synthesized audit report to the user
Phase: Ideate
-
Create tasks for each agent (blocked by audit synthesis if audit was run)
-
Spawn agents with the same process as audit, but:
- Mode: "ideate"
- Include the synthesized audit findings in each agent's prompt
- Each agent proposes improvements through their specific lens
-
Synthesize ideation proposals:
- Merge overlapping proposals
- Categorize by impact/effort matrix
- Produce prioritized improvement roadmap
-
Present the improvement roadmap to the user
Phase: Implement
-
Spawn a single
general-purposeagent with:- The full synthesized audit report
- The prioritized improvement roadmap
- References to all relevant source skill files
- Instructions to implement changes in priority order (critical → serious → moderate → minor)
-
Present implementation results to the user
6. Shutdown
After all phases complete:
- Send
shutdown_requestto all active agents - Call
TeamDeleteto clean up
Agent Reference
| Agent | Lens | Weight | Template | Source Knowledge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| craft-philosophy | Principled reasoning, tiebreaker | 1.5 | modules/agents/craft-philosophy.md | ~/.claude/skills/design-craft/modules/craft-philosophy.md, ~/.claude/skills/craft-philosophy/SKILL.md |
| foundations | Color, type, spacing, tokens | 1.0 | modules/agents/foundations.md | ~/.claude/skills/design-craft/modules/foundations.md |
| interaction | Forms, gestures, physics, a11y | 1.0 | modules/agents/interaction.md | ~/.claude/skills/design-craft/modules/interaction.md |
| composition | Layout, IA, content strategy | 1.0 | modules/agents/composition.md | ~/.claude/skills/design-craft/modules/composition.md |
| critique | 5-step systematic evaluation | 1.2 | modules/agents/critique.md | ~/.claude/skills/design-craft/modules/critique.md |
| interface-craft | Animation DSL, polish | 0.8 | modules/agents/interface-craft.md | ~/.agents/skills/interface-craft/SKILL.md |
| baseline-ui | Constraint enforcement | 1.0 | modules/agents/baseline-ui.md | ~/.agents/skills/baseline-ui/SKILL.md |
| frontend-design | Visual aesthetics | 1.0 | modules/agents/frontend-design.md | ~/Documents/samos/.claude/skills/frontend-design/SKILL.md |
| accessibility | WCAG, ARIA, focus | 1.2 | modules/agents/accessibility.md | ~/.agents/skills/fixing-accessibility/SKILL.md, ~/.claude/skills/design-craft/modules/interaction.md |
| motion | Motion principles + performance | 0.8 | modules/agents/motion.md | ~/.local/share/claude-tools/design-motion-principles/skills/design-motion-principles/SKILL.md, ~/.agents/skills/fixing-motion-performance/SKILL.md |
Usage Examples
/design-swarm audit ~/Desktop/screenshot.png
/design-swarm audit ideate https://example.com
/design-swarm audit ideate implement ./src/components/Settings.tsx
/design-swarm ideate "dark mode settings panel with toggle, theme preview, and schedule"
/design-swarm audit implement ./src/pages/Dashboard.tsx
Important Notes
- Runtime knowledge loading: Agent templates are compact. Source knowledge is read fresh from canonical skill files at spawn time. This prevents knowledge duplication and ensures agents always use the latest skill content.
- Parallel execution: All agents within a phase run simultaneously. Phases run sequentially when chained.
- Conflict resolution: The craft-philosophy agent (weight 1.5) serves as tiebreaker. See orchestrator.md for the full protocol.
- Partial modes: Any combination of modes is valid.
ideatewithout prioraudituses the target directly (no findings context).implementwithoutideateapplies audit findings directly.