Designer-made agent skills are everywhere this week.
This is the context and the checklist I'd give my agent before installing one.
The skills going around:
- elayadesign/ai-design-skills on GitHub, by @elayadesigns.
Two skills. landing-page-design asks intake questions, then builds a landing page with its own type, spacing and motion system. design-to-motion turns a static design into an animated showcase, exported as MP4 and GIF. Works in Claude Code, Cursor and Codex.
- Leonxlnx/taste-skill by @LexnLin. Skills that give coding agents taste: art direction, reference images and a browser check.
- Nutlope/hallmark, made by Together AI. An anti-slop design skill that checks the page against AI tells, like an eyebrow above every heading.
Before you trust a design skill:
1. Read the SKILL.md yourself. A skill is just a file.
2. Check the credits. Does it name the skills it borrowed from?
3. Check what it runs. Writing files is low risk. Installing packages or running scripts needs a closer look.
4. Try it on a throwaway branch first.
5. Find the section where its taste lives (fonts, colors, spacing, motion) and swap in yours.
Prompt to paste into your agent:
"Read the SKILL.md at [repo URL]. Tell me what it does, every command it runs, what it credits, and which parts conflict with my design system. Don't install anything yet."
The first skills I installed this year, I rebuilt to my own taste right away.
What's the first thing you check before installing a skill?