Survey a codebase's animation and motion code as a senior motion advisor, then produce a prioritized audit and self-contained implementation plans for other agents (or cheaper models) to execute. Read-only on source code — it plans improvements, it does not apply them. Use when the user asks to "improve the animations", "audit the motion", "make this app feel better", or wants a roadmap of animation fixes rather than a review of a single diff.
Survey a codebase's animation and motion code as a senior motion advisor, then produce a prioritized audit and self-contained implementation plans for other agents (or cheaper models) to execute. Read-only on source code — it plans improvements, it does not apply them. Use when the user asks to "improve the animations", "audit the motion", "make this app feel better", or wants a roadmap of animation fixes rather than a review of a single diff.
Why we picked it
Summarized from the original emilkowalski/skills SKILL.md by Emil Kowalski; the original upstream instructions were used.
What it helps with
Use this workflow when the task matches the original Improving Animations instructions.
Before you use it
Read the original SKILL.md and referenced files in emilkowalski/skills.
Sources & references
Original sources are linked below. Practical starting points are editorial suggestions from SkillHey.
Prevent and remove generic AI-generated design defaults, incoherent visual choices, and established UI defects while creating, revising, or reviewing websites, apps, screenshots, mockups, and design code. Use as a passive quality gate during UI work or for an explicit anti-slop cleanup; preserve the chosen art direction instead of forcing a neutral redesign.
Structured UI design review — existing code (React/JSX, CSS, Tailwind) and, when behaviour matters, the running app in a real browser — reported as a prioritised Before / After / Why table. Covers visual hierarchy, spacing, typography, colour & contrast, component states, motion, responsiveness, accessibility, multi-page flow & navigation, and interaction continuity — grounded in Refactoring UI and Emil Kowalski's principles. For animation/jank/FPS, focus order, and cross-page UX it can drive Chrome via chrome-devtools-mcp to capture what a screenshot can't. Trigger when the user asks to "review this UI", "design review", "critique this component/screen/page or multi-page flow", asks why something "looks off", "looks AI-generated", or "looks like a wireframe", or wants to raise visual polish. For building UI from scratch use web-taste; for the full animation set see emilkowal-animations.
Audit and fix animation performance issues including layout thrashing, compositor properties, scroll-linked motion, and blur effects. Use when animations stutter, transitions jank, or reviewing CSS/JS animation performance.
Deterministic design critique for HTML/CSS screens. Runs 73 slop guards extracted from the set of rules professional designers use in production-grade designs to catch the tells that make UI read as AI-generated (gradient-clipped headlines, the default indigo accent, puffy shadows, emoji icons, fake dot charts and decorated gauges, badges floated over the hero, eyebrow kickers above the H1, fake magazine mastheads, colored edge-stripe rails, two-tone headlines, over-designed list rows, layout-collapse bugs, em-dash copy, placeholder imagery), auto-fixes what can be safely rewritten, and reports the rest with concrete edits. Use whenever generated or hand-written HTML/CSS is about to be shown, exported, shipped, or committed, or when asked to critique a design, check it for slop, or give a second opinion on a generated screen.