addyosmani/agent-skills/frontend-ui-engineering
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- ext:[{"type":"hook","description":"Pre/post lifecycle hooks"}]
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Builds production-quality, accessible, responsive user-facing UIs. Use when building or modifying interfaces and pages, creating components, implementing layouts, meeting WCAG accessibility requirements, managing state, or when the output needs to look and feel production-quality rather than AI-generated.
Install
npx vskill@latest install addyosmani/agent-skills/frontend-ui-engineeringSemi-extensibleMentions customization, but needs skill-specific knowledge. Read the extensible skills standard
SKILL.md
Frontend UI Engineering
Overview
Build production-quality user interfaces that are accessible, performant, and visually polished. The goal is UI that looks like it was built by a design-aware engineer at a top company — not like it was generated by an AI. This means real design system adherence, proper accessibility, thoughtful interaction patterns, and no generic "AI aesthetic."
When to Use
- Building new UI components or pages
- Modifying existing user-facing interfaces
- Implementing responsive layouts
- Adding interactivity or state management
- Fixing visual or UX issues
Component Architecture
File Structure
Colocate everything related to a component:
Component Patterns
Prefer composition over configuration:
Keep components focused:
Separate data fetching from presentation:
State Management
Choose the simplest approach that works:
Avoid prop drilling deeper than 3 levels. If you're passing props through components that don't use them, introduce context or restructure the component tree.
Design System Adherence
Reference-led UI quality
When the product needs a distinct visual direction, collect evidence before choosing a layout:
- Search a trusted reference catalogue or use references supplied by the product team.
- Study two or three relevant screens. Record decisions about hierarchy, density, navigation, controls, responsive behavior, and interaction states.
- Turn those decisions into a short design contract before implementation. Name the screen's job, primary action, required states, responsive rules, and patterns to reject.
- Rebuild the useful structure in the product's own components, tokens, content, and visual language. Never copy another product's branding, proprietary text, imagery, or exact layout.
Use references as evidence, not as templates. If references are unavailable, document the assumptions and verify the result against the product's existing design system.
Avoid the AI Aesthetic
AI-generated UI has recognizable patterns. Avoid all of them:
| AI Default | Why It Is a Problem | Production Quality | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purple/indigo everything | Models default to visually "safe" palettes, making every app look identical | Use the project's actual color palette | |
| Excessive gradients | Gradients add visual noise and clash with most design systems | Flat or subtle gradients matching the design system | |
| Rounded everything (rounded-2xl) | Maximum rounding signals "friendly" but ignores the hierarchy of corner radii in real designs | Consistent border-radius from the design system | |
| Generic hero sections | Template-driven layout with no connection to the actual content or user need | Content-first layouts | |
| Lorem ipsum-style copy | Placeholder text hides layout problems that real content reveals (length, wrapping, overflow) | Realistic placeholder content | |
| Oversized padding everywhere | Equal generous padding destroys visual hierarchy and wastes screen space | Consistent spacing scale | |
| Stock card grids | Uniform grids are a layout shortcut that ignores information priority and scanning patterns | Purpose-driven layouts | |
| Shadow-heavy design | Layered shadows add depth that competes with content and slows rendering on low-end devices | Subtle or no shadows unless the design system specifies |
Spacing and Layout
Use a consistent spacing scale. Don't invent values:
Typography
Respect the type hierarchy:
Don't skip heading levels. Don't use heading styles for non-heading content.
Color
- Use semantic color tokens:
text-primary,bg-surface,border-default— not raw hex values - Ensure sufficient contrast (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text)
- Don't rely solely on color to convey information (use icons, text, or patterns too)
Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA)
Every component must meet these standards:
Keyboard Navigation
ARIA Labels
Focus Management
Meaningful Empty and Error States
Responsive Design
Design for mobile first, then expand:
Test at these breakpoints: 320px, 768px, 1024px, 1440px.
Loading and Transitions
See Also
For detailed accessibility requirements and testing tools, see ../../references/accessibility-checklist.md.
Common Rationalizations
| Rationalization | Reality | |
|---|---|---|
| "Accessibility is a nice-to-have" | It's a legal requirement in many jurisdictions and an engineering quality standard. | |
| "We'll make it responsive later" | Retrofitting responsive design is 3x harder than building it from the start. | |
| "The design isn't final, so I'll skip styling" | Use the design system defaults. Unstyled UI creates a broken first impression for reviewers. | |
| "This is just a prototype" | Prototypes become production code. Build the foundation right. | |
| "The AI aesthetic is fine for now" | It signals low quality. Use the project's actual design system from the start. |
Red Flags
- Components with more than 200 lines (split them)
- Inline styles or arbitrary pixel values
- Missing error states, loading states, or empty states
- No keyboard navigation testing
- Color as the sole indicator of state (red/green without text or icons)
- Generic "AI look" (purple gradients, oversized cards, stock layouts)
Verification
After building UI:
- [ ] Component renders without console errors
- [ ] All interactive elements are keyboard accessible (Tab through the page)
- [ ] Screen reader can convey the page's content and structure
- [ ] Responsive: works at 320px, 768px, 1024px, 1440px
- [ ] Loading, empty, error, success, and permission states handled when applicable
- [ ] Follows the project's design system (spacing, colors, typography)
- [ ] The rendered result passes a final UI-specific finish-gate review
- [ ] No accessibility warnings in dev tools or axe-core
Security
- Security scanPassed, 100 of 100Pattern checks on the skill's files.
- Model reviewPassed
Quality evaluation
- Task evaluationFailed, 55 of 100Degrading. 1 run. Evaluated 7 months ago.
Source
- SKILL.md in the repositoryCheckingskills/frontend-ui-engineering/SKILL.md
Popularity
- Repository stars
- 112
- Repository forks
- 7
- 7-day trend score
- 24
Stars and forks are for the whole GitHub repository, not this skill alone. Refreshed 23 Mar 2026, 7 months ago.
Extension points
hookPre/post lifecycle hooks
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