Open Design — universal design-task substrate

This skill turns the Open Design catalogue (kept in a local clone of the OD repo) into a workflow you can follow inside any agent session. It mirrors what OD's own daemon does — bind a brand spec + a template, layer in craft rules, follow the workflow — without needing OD's daemon to be running. Preview / comment / slider features that live in OD's daemon are intentionally out of scope; use the agent's normal dev-server + browser-inspection tooling for that.

When to invoke

Trigger on requests like:

• "Make me a <artifact>" where <artifact> is deck / prototype / landing / dashboard / poster / brochure / video template / audio piece.
• "Apply <brand> design system" or "make this look like X".
• "Set up a design system / DESIGN.md".
• "Audit / critique my UI", "run a 5-dim review".
• Any request that mentions Open Design explicitly.

Do not invoke for non-design tasks (backend, infra, refactoring, bug fixes).

Cross-platform note

All helper scripts are Node.js (.mjs) and work the same on macOS, Linux, and Windows. The git clone step requires git on PATH. No bash dependency.

$SKILL_DIR — locating the helper scripts

The four list scripts live alongside this SKILL.md. When you invoke them, use the absolute path of the directory containing this SKILL.md as $SKILL_DIR. You already know this path — it is wherever the agent read this file from (e.g. ~/.claude/skills/open-design/ on Claude Code, ~/.codex/skills/open-design/ on Codex, etc.). Pass it explicitly to node in your Bash invocations.

$OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT — locating the OD content

ROOT = $OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT  (if set and non-empty)
     | ~/.open-design-skill/repo  (default)

The OD repo (https://github.com/nexu-io/open-design) is cloned here once and reused across all projects. The scripts default to ~/.open-design-skill/repo but honor OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT for users with an existing checkout.

Workflow

Three phases: setup → bind or pick → compose and execute.

Phase 1 — Setup (every invocation)

Check the OD content root:

ROOT="${OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT:-$HOME/.open-design-skill/repo}"
[ -d "$ROOT" ] && echo "OK: $ROOT" || echo "MISSING: $ROOT"

If missing, use AskUserQuestion to confirm the clone:

Clone Open Design content to ~/.open-design-skill/repo? (a few hundred MB)

Options (single-select): "Clone now" (recommended) / "Cancel".

On "Clone now", run:

mkdir -p "$(dirname "$ROOT")"
git clone https://github.com/nexu-io/open-design "$ROOT"

On "Cancel", tell the user to set OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT to an existing checkout and stop.

Phase 2 — Bind or pick

Check for .open-design.json in the user's project (the agent's current working directory):

test -f .open-design.json && cat .open-design.json

If it exists (bound case): parse it, jump straight to Phase 3 with designSystem.path and skill.path as the bodies to load. Do not offer the refresh prompt or run the list scripts. Mid-project iteration should not change template content under the user.

If the user explicitly asks to switch ("switch design system to X", "re-pick template", "change brand"), delete .open-design.json first, then continue into the unbound flow.

If it does not exist (unbound case):

(a) Refresh prompt. AskUserQuestion:

Refresh Open Design content first? (git pull in the local clone)

Options: "Pull latest" (recommended) / "Skip".

If "Pull latest":

git -C "$ROOT" pull --ff-only

(b) Narrow intent. AskUserQuestion (one question, four options):

What are we building?

Options:

• Deck / slides / presentation
• Prototype / landing / dashboard / page
• Image, video, or audio artifact
• Set up or apply a design system (no artifact yet)

If none fit, the user can pick "Other" and you ask a follow-up that maps to one of these or to a functional skill.

(c) Scan the relevant subset. Run the appropriate list script with node, passing $SKILL_DIR as the absolute path to this skill's directory:

All scripts emit TSV with a header line. Column count is stable; empty fields are written as -.

(d) Filter and present. Each list is too large to dump verbatim.

For design systems (150+): first AskUserQuestion for mood/brand keywords ("specific brand? minimal? bold? editorial? warm? technical?"), then grep-filter the TSV by that keyword across the title, category, and description columns, and only present the matches.

For templates (110+) and skills (130+): filter to the intended subset first, then show the top ~6 matches as a compact list inline (slug + one-line description) and use AskUserQuestion with three high-likelihood defaults plus "Other" for a free-text slug.

When presenting stub skills (rows with upstream != "-" from list-skills.mjs), explicitly mark them as "pointer to upstream — needs separate install" so the user can decide whether to install the upstream bundle or skip.

(e) Bind. Once the user has picked one design system and one template/skill, write .open-design.json to the agent's current working directory:

{
  "version": 1,
  "designSystem": {
    "slug": "bmw",
    "path": "design-systems/bmw"
  },
  "skill": {
    "slug": "html-ppt-pitch-deck",
    "path": "design-templates/html-ppt-pitch-deck",
    "kind": "design-template",
    "mode": "deck"
  },
  "boundAt": "2026-05-20T13:22:00Z"
}

Notes on this file:

• Paths are always relative to $OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT and use forward slashes (portable across OSes).
• skill.kind is "design-template" for entries under design-templates/, "skill" for entries under skills/.
• skill.mode mirrors the od.mode value from the chosen entry's frontmatter; omit if absent.
• If the template's frontmatter has od.design_system.requires: false (it ships its own baked-in style), set designSystem: null and skip the design-system pick entirely.
• boundAt is ISO 8601 in UTC.

Phase 3 — Compose and execute

Read the bound bodies from $OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT, not from this skill's directory:

1. Read "$OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT/<designSystem.path>/DESIGN.md" — full file (skip this step if designSystem is null).
2. Read "$OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT/<skill.path>/SKILL.md" — full file. Look at its frontmatter for:
   • od.craft.requires — a list of craft slugs the chosen entry opts into (may be absent).
   • od.design_system.sections — which DESIGN.md sections actually matter for this template (use to focus attention; the full DESIGN.md stays loaded).
3. For each slug in od.craft.requires: Read "$OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT/craft/<slug>.md".
4. If the template ships assets/ or references/ subdirectories, treat those as files to read on demand when the workflow body references them. Do not eagerly load.

Then execute the composed workflow with this authority order on conflict:

1. DESIGN.md — brand tokens win.
2. craft/*.md — universal rules cover what DESIGN.md does not override.
3. SKILL.md body — the workflow specific to the artifact type (clarify brief → write files → self-check).

Write artifacts into the user's project (cwd), not into the OD clone or this skill's install dir. If the template specifies an output filename (typically index.html), write it relative to cwd.

Subsequent turns in the same project

Bound turns short-circuit Phase 2: read .open-design.json, re-read the same DESIGN.md + SKILL.md + craft bodies, follow the same workflow. The refresh prompt is not offered on bound turns — that would change template content under the user mid-project. To refresh OD content without re-picking, the user can manually git -C "$OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT" pull between sessions.

Edge cases

• Stub skills under skills/: ~half of entries are curated stubs that point at upstream repos (their od.upstream frontmatter field is set, and the body says "go install upstream at X"). Surface the upstream URL when offered, and ask whether to install upstream separately or use the stub's metadata as design context only.
• od.design_system.requires: false: the template is self-contained and does not need a DESIGN.md (e.g. guizang-ppt). Skip the design system pick and bind with designSystem: null.
• No DESIGN.md in the user's cwd: this skill never copies DESIGN.md into the user's project. It reads from $OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT and feeds the contents through prompts. If the user explicitly wants a tangible DESIGN.md in their repo, copy it after binding: cp "$OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT/<designSystem.path>/DESIGN.md" ..
• Out-of-process preview / comment mode: these live in OD's daemon and are not in scope for this skill. For preview/debug, use the agent's standard tools — start a dev server, use chrome-devtools MCP or playwright to inspect.

What .open-design.json does (recap)

Per-project record of "we chose X design system and Y template/skill". Plain JSON, hand-editable, intended to be committed to git so design choices persist across collaborators. It does not cache the bound bodies — those are always re-read from $OPEN_DESIGN_ROOT on every turn, so a git pull in the clone takes effect immediately on the next turn.

Maintained at https://github.com/sugarforever/open-design-skill. Open Design upstream: https://github.com/nexu-io/open-design.