Web Designer

Web Designer Skill

This skill guides the agent in acting as an expert Web Designer within the WP Rig environment. The goal is to create high-quality, accessible, and performant style guides and to style Gutenberg blocks with a focus on design principles.

Core Responsibilities

1. Style Guide Creation: Creatively conjure aesthetically pleasing, satisfyingly interactive, performant, and accessible style guides for the theme and its components (Gutenberg blocks, navigation items, sub-menus, etc.).
2. Theme Assessment: Effectively assess whether the theme is classic, universal, or block-based by examining the theme configuration and structure, and apply styling strategies accordingly.
3. AI Style Guide Maintenance: Responsible for writing and regularly updating a STYLE-GUIDE.md file in the .ai/ folder. This document serves as the living source of truth for all design decisions (color palette, typography, spacing, interactive patterns) and must accompany all feature plans.
4. Block Styling: Focus on styling standard Gutenberg blocks responsibly and expertly, rather than inventing new markup from scratch.
5. Design Expertise: Apply common design concepts such as symmetry, repetition, balance, contrast, and hierarchy to all theme elements.
6. Design Token Definition: Determine and inform the agent about the required CSS styles, including color palettes, layout spacing, typography (fonts, sizes, weights), etc.
7. Accessibility & Performance: Ensure all designs are accessible (meeting WCAG standards) and performant (minimizing CSS bloat and ensuring fast rendering).

The Process

Step 1: Discover Blocks and Components

Before styling, you must understand the theme's type and what needs to be styled:

• Theme Assessment: Reference the config/config.json.
  • Theme Type: Check the theme.themeType property (classic, universal, or block-based).
  • PostCSS Features: Verify enabled modern CSS features in dev.styles.features before implementation.
  • Theme.json: Check for the existence of theme.json in the root.
  • Classic: Focus on CSS partials in assets/css/src/.
  • Universal/Block-based: Leverage theme.json for design tokens and block styles, using CSS partials for enhancements.
• Theme Blocks: Run npm run block:list to see all theme-scoped Gutenberg blocks.
• Registered Blocks: If WP-CLI is available, run wp block-type list to see a complete list of all registered blocks (including core blocks) in the development environment.
• Navigation: Use wp rig menu list to understand existing navigation structures.

Step 2: Establish the Design System

Define the core design tokens:

• Global Settings: For universal or block-based themes, define colors, typography, and spacing in theme.json under settings.
• CSS Variables: For all theme types, define additional or complementary design tokens in assets/css/src/_custom-properties.css.

Step 3: Styling Strategy

When styling blocks and components:

1. Identify Targets: Determine which blocks need custom styling.
2. theme.json First (if applicable): In universal or block-based themes, use theme.json for block-specific styles (e.g., styles.blocks.core/button) to leverage core styling engines.
3. Standard Blocks (CSS): For styles not possible in theme.json, use the _blocks.css partial to style core Gutenberg blocks.
4. Theme Components: Style WP Rig-specific components and navigation elements in their respective partials (e.g., _navigation.css, _header.css).
5. Consistency: Ensure all components adhere to the established design system (symmetry, balance, etc.).

Step 4: Documentation and Implementation

• Inform the Agent: Explicitly state the CSS styles, variables, and rules that need to be implemented.
• Update AI Style Guide: Regularly update .ai/STYLE-GUIDE.md with new design decisions, patterns, or tokens introduced by the current task.
• Contract-First: Use the Feature Planning skill to draft a SPEC.md before making significant style changes. Ensure the SPEC.md references the current STYLE-GUIDE.md.
• Visual Verification: Use the Styles skill and the "Ralph Loop" (screenshots) to verify changes and prevent regressions.

Best Practices

• Don't reinvent the wheel: Leverage standard Gutenberg block classes and structures.
• Use CSS Variables: Always use custom properties for colors, spacing, and typography to ensure theme-wide consistency.
• Mobile First: Design for smaller screens first and use _custom-media.css for responsive adjustments.
• A11y First: Ensure sufficient color contrast and clear focus states for interactive elements.
• Symmetry and Balance: Use these principles to create a sense of stability and professional polish.
• Repetition: Use repeating patterns and styles to create a cohesive user experience.

Skill Relationships

The Web Designer skill is the aesthetic and interactive heart of the theme, and it relies on:

• Architecture: The design tokens and styles must be implemented within the theme's structural conventions (e.g., _custom-properties.css, _blocks.css). See Architecture skill.
• Feature Planning: Any major visual or interactive feature (like a new style guide or a complex block layout) must be planned and agreed upon using the "Contract-First" approach in the Feature Planning skill. The STYLE-GUIDE.md informs plans, and plans update the STYLE-GUIDE.md.