stark

Use this skill when the user asks for UI/UX design help, product-flow help, polished frontend/app UI, design audits, translating one platform's design language to another, or avoiding generic AI-looking interfaces.

If another frontend or app-building skill also applies, use Stark first for design direction, platform routing, anti-slop checks, and visual constraints. Then use implementation-specific skills only after Stark has chosen the route and reference material.

What Stark Can Do

• UX and product flow: user journeys, IA, onboarding, checkout, forms, dashboards, states, recovery paths, activation, retention, and repeated-use ergonomics.
• Platform UI: web, Windows, Apple, Android, and cross-platform app design with native idiom and stack tradeoffs.
• Originality: concept seeds, desktop app archetypes, composition archetypes, design recipes, anti-default rewrites, and creative direction.
• Frontend quality: implementation-track choice, responsive containment, hierarchy, density, component grammar, motion/library decisions, and visual QA guidance.
• Assets and references: image/asset planning, shipped-product reference extraction, screenshot proof, typography, icon systems, and generated bitmap asset planning when available.
• Tokens: W3C DTCG token generation, audit, and export to Tailwind, Compose, SwiftUI, and WinUI.

Routing

Before producing code, decide the route:

• Web UI, landing pages, dashboards, React/Vite/Next/Tailwind: read skills/web-design/SKILL.md.
• UX, product flows, onboarding, checkout, forms, dashboards, navigation, information architecture, or usability: read skills/ux-design/SKILL.md.
• Windows, WinUI, WPF, Fluent, desktop Windows apps: read skills/windows-design/SKILL.md.
• Apple, iOS, macOS, SwiftUI, UIKit, AppKit: read skills/apple-design/SKILL.md.
• Android, Material, Jetpack Compose: read skills/android-design/SKILL.md.
• Electron, Tauri, React Native, Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform, shared UI systems: read skills/cross-platform-design/SKILL.md.
• Design tokens, themes, colors, typography, spacing systems: read skills/design-tokens/SKILL.md.
• Ambiguous design requests: read skills/design-router/SKILL.md first.

For design audits, also check commands/stark-audit.md. For design translation requests, also check commands/stark-translate.md. For asset planning, also check commands/stark-assets.md. For shipped-product reference analysis, also check commands/stark-reference.md. For platform detection helpers, use scripts/detect_platform.py. For design-token export helpers, use scripts/token_export.py.

UI decision layer

After UX routing and before implementation, read:

• references/ui-patterns/surface-taxonomy.md
• references/ui-patterns/ui-decision-brief.md
• references/ui-patterns/desktop-app-archetypes.md
• references/ui-patterns/originality-engine.md
• references/ui-patterns/design-recipes.md
• references/ui-patterns/anti-default-contrasts.md
• references/ui-patterns/creative-direction.md
• references/ui-patterns/product-quality-bar.md
• references/ui-patterns/visual-hierarchy.md
• references/ui-patterns/responsive-containment.md
• references/ui-patterns/asset-selection.md
• references/ui-patterns/reference-analysis.md
• references/ui-patterns/motion-budget.md
• references/ui-patterns/interaction-techniques.md
• references/ui-patterns/cinematic-landing-system.md
• references/ui-patterns/web-implementation-tracks.md

Produce a compact UI decision brief when building or redesigning a screen, app, website, dashboard, editor, checkout, or agent run UI. Platform skills may add stricter native rules, but they should preserve the chosen surface type, hierarchy, component grammar, motion budget, and state visuals.

Behavior

• Ask a short clarifying question when the platform, product job, visual direction, or native vs cross-platform target is unclear.
• For workflow-heavy products, define UX flow and states before visual styling.
• When ux-design applies, preserve its UX decision brief through implementation. Do not let platform styling override the chosen job, primary action, state coverage, or recovery path.
• For UX-heavy work, use contextual briefs from references/ux-patterns/ when they match the product; avoid generic pattern application when the context does not fit.
• For UI-heavy work, use contextual briefs from references/ui-patterns/ to choose surface type, hierarchy, density, motion budget, and component grammar before code.
• For desktop app work, use references/ui-patterns/desktop-app-archetypes.md before platform components. Choose command center, library, workbench, monitoring cockpit, tray/menu-bar utility, media/consumer, document/knowledge, or setup/preferences so the app does not collapse into the same sidebar-plus-cards shell.
• For original, distinctive, memorable, non-generic, creative, polished, high-craft, campaign, or "actually designed" requests, use references/ui-patterns/originality-engine.md before visual styling. Require a subject-specific concept seed, composition archetype, one weird move, restraints, specific defaults banned for the brief, and a three-direction fork when useful.
• For higher-quality generation, use references/ui-patterns/design-recipes.md and produce a compact layout sketch before code. If the design drifts toward a familiar generated skeleton, use references/ui-patterns/anti-default-contrasts.md and choose a stronger replacement pattern.
• For polished, memorable, high-craft, campaign, or "best-looking" design requests, use references/ui-patterns/creative-direction.md before visual styling. Require a concrete world, metaphor, material language, repeated motif, forbidden defaults, and one tasteful risk.
• For polish or "make it better" requests, use references/ui-patterns/product-quality-bar.md so the output becomes more specific, stateful, and proof-led instead of merely more decorative.
• For animation, scrolling, transitions, command palettes, split panes, or rich interaction, use references/ui-patterns/interaction-techniques.md to choose CSS, Motion, GSAP, native scroll CSS, Lenis, or no animation by product surface.
• For cinematic, campaign, editorial, launch, or high-craft landing pages, use references/ui-patterns/cinematic-landing-system.md to separate key art from page design, define typography and section rhythm, and choose motion after the visual system is clear.
• For web implementation, use references/ui-patterns/web-implementation-tracks.md before choosing static HTML, Vite React, Next, Astro, or another stack. React is first-class for stateful and advanced interactive work, but it is not the default for simple static pages.
• When a design needs imagery, screenshots, icons, typography, textures, diagrams, or references, produce an asset plan from references/ui-patterns/asset-selection.md before implementation. If the user is using GPT/Codex and image generation is available, consider generated bitmap assets as a first-class source for fictional product visuals.
• When using real shipped products, Mobbin, Figma, docs, or screenshots as references, produce a reference extraction brief from references/ui-patterns/reference-analysis.md. Extract job, IA, hierarchy, states, interaction, recovery, responsive behavior, and asset usage; do not copy visuals.
• Prefer concrete UI decisions over generic "modern clean" styling.
• Use the references, examples, assets, and scripts in this folder when the routed skill points to them.
• Keep the user's existing app framework and conventions unless they explicitly ask for a redesign from scratch.
• Before final delivery, check the result against the routed skill's ban list or quality bar and fix obvious generic AI UI tells.