Visual Design

Visual Design Skill

Overview

Generate publication-quality visual assets for component development:

• Style Guides: Color palettes, typography, spacing systems
• Component Mockups: Visual references to guide implementation
• Architecture Diagrams: Component dependencies, data flow
• Design System Documentation: Visual brand guidelines

100% Optional - All features work without this skill if OPENROUTER_API_KEY is unavailable.

When to Use This Skill

This skill should be used when:

• Creating a new design system or style guide
• Generating visual references for complex components
• Documenting design decisions visually
• Creating component mockups before implementation
• Generating architecture diagrams for documentation

Skip this skill when:

• OPENROUTER_API_KEY not available (plugin works normally)
• User prefers manual design (Figma, Sketch, etc.)
• Budget constraints for API usage

Quick Start

# Generate component mockup
python ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/visual-design/scripts/generate_mockup.py \
  "Modern React card component with header, content, and actions. Clean design." \
  --output mockups/card.png

# Generate style guide
python ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/visual-design/scripts/generate_style_guide.py \
  --framework react \
  --design-system custom \
  --output style-guide/

API Key Setup

Check before using:

# Check if OPENROUTER_API_KEY is available
if [ -z "$OPENROUTER_API_KEY" ]; then
  echo "Visual generation disabled (API key not set)"
  echo "To enable: https://openrouter.ai/keys"
  exit 0  # Gracefully skip
fi

User instructions (show once):

ℹ️  Visual Generation Features Disabled

To enable AI-powered visual generation:
1. Get API key: https://openrouter.ai/keys
2. Add to .env: OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your_key_here

You can still use all other features (Storybook setup, story generation, testing).

Use Cases

1. Style Guide Generation

Context-Aware Workflow:

// Phase 1: Analyze project
const framework = detectFramework();
const designSystem = detectDesignSystem();
const colors = extractColorsFromCSS();

// Phase 2: User collaboration
AskUserQuestion({
  questions: [
    {
      question: `What aesthetic matches your ${designSystem} design system?`,
      header: "Style",
      multiSelect: false,
      options: [
        {
          label: "Modern/Minimal (Recommended for your stack)",
          description: "Clean lines, lots of whitespace, professional"
        },
        {
          label: "Bold/Vibrant",
          description: "Strong colors, high contrast, energetic"
        },
        {
          label: "Professional/Corporate",
          description: "Conservative, trustworthy, business-focused"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      question: "Primary brand color?",
      header: "Color",
      multiSelect: false,
      options: [
        { label: "Blue (#2563eb)", description: "Trust, professionalism (detected in your CSS)" },
        { label: "Green (#10b981)", description: "Growth, sustainability" },
        { label: "Purple (#8b5cf6)", description: "Creativity, innovation" },
        { label: "Custom", description: "I'll specify" }
      ]
    }
  ]
})

// Phase 3: Generate visual assets
python generate_style_guide.py \
  --framework ${framework} \
  --aesthetic "modern-minimal" \
  --primary-color ${selectedColor} \
  --output style-guide/

Output:

• style-guide/colors.png - Color palette with hex codes
• style-guide/typography.png - Font scale and examples
• style-guide/spacing.png - Spacing scale visualization
• style-guide/components.png - Example component variants

2. Component Mockup Generation

When to Generate:

• Card components
• Modal dialogs
• Complex forms
• Tables with data
• Navigation menus
• Dashboards

Skip for:

• Simple buttons
• Basic inputs
• Icons
• Badges

Generation:

# Context-aware mockup
python generate_mockup.py \
  "${componentType} component for ${framework}. \
   Design system: ${designSystem}. \
   Variants: ${detectedVariants}. \
   Modern, professional, ${aesthetic} style." \
  --output mockups/${componentName}.png

Example:

python generate_mockup.py \
  "React data table component with sortable columns, pagination, row selection. \
   Material UI design system. Clean, modern interface." \
  --output mockups/data-table.png

3. Architecture Diagrams

Component Dependency Visualization:

# Analyze component relationships
components = scanComponents('src/components');
dependencies = buildDependencyGraph(components);

# Generate diagram (using Mermaid or AI)
generateDiagram({
  type: 'component-architecture',
  components: components,
  dependencies: dependencies,
  output: 'diagrams/component-deps.png'
});

AI Models

Supported Models:

• google/gemini-3-pro-image-preview (Default - High quality, recommended)
• black-forest-labs/flux.2-pro (Fast, high quality)

Model Selection:

# Use default (Gemini)
python generate_mockup.py "prompt" --output out.png

# Use FLUX.2 Pro
python generate_mockup.py "prompt" --model black-forest-labs/flux.2-pro --output out.png

Graceful Degradation

When OPENROUTER_API_KEY is unavailable:

1. Skip visual generation silently
2. Provide alternatives:
   • Text-based style guide templates
   • Link to Figma/Sketch
   • Mermaid diagrams for architecture
3. Continue with other features:
   • Storybook setup works
   • Story generation works
   • Testing works

Implementation:

async function generateStyleGuide(options) {
  if (!process.env.OPENROUTER_API_KEY) {
    console.log('ℹ️  Skipping visual generation (API key not set)');
    console.log('   Creating text-based style guide template instead...');

    // Generate markdown template
    createTextStyleGuideTemplate(options);
    return;
  }

  // Generate visual assets with AI
  await generateVisualStyleGuide(options);
}

Prompt Engineering for Components

Good Prompts:

✅ "Modern React card component with image header, title, description, and action buttons.
    Material UI design system. Subtle shadow, rounded corners. Light theme."

✅ "Vue 3 data table with sortable columns, pagination controls, and row selection checkboxes.
    Professional corporate style. Clean typography."

✅ "Svelte modal dialog with header, scrollable content area, and footer actions.
    Overlay background. shadcn/ui aesthetic."

Bad Prompts:

❌ "Button" (too vague)
❌ "Make a component" (no details)
❌ "Card thing" (unclear)

Context Enhancement: Automatically add context from project:

def enhance_prompt(user_prompt, context):
    return f"{user_prompt}. Framework: {context.framework}. \
             Design system: {context.designSystem}. \
             Color palette: {context.colors}. \
             Typography: {context.fonts}."

Quality Thresholds

Following claude-project-planner patterns:

Smart Iteration:

def generate_with_quality_check(prompt, threshold=8.0):
    image = generate_image(prompt)
    quality = review_quality_with_gemini(image)  # Gemini 3 Pro review

    if quality < threshold:
        print(f"Quality: {quality}/10 (below {threshold})")
        print("Regenerating...")
        return generate_with_quality_check(prompt, threshold)

    print(f"Quality: {quality}/10 ✓")
    return image

Integration with Other Skills

• storybook-config: Generate visual assets during setup
• component-scaffold: Generate mockups for new components
• style-guide-generator: Visual enhancement for documentation
• story-generation: Optional mockups for complex components

Best Practices

Do's

• Check for OPENROUTER_API_KEY before generation
• Provide context-aware prompts (framework, design system)
• Use quality thresholds for important assets
• Skip gracefully when API unavailable
• Generate only for complex components (not buttons/inputs)
• Use Mermaid for architecture diagrams when possible (faster, editable)

Don'ts

• Don't fail if API key missing
• Don't generate for every component (cost)
• Don't use generic prompts
• Don't skip quality review for critical assets
• Don't assume user wants visual generation

Error Handling

• API key missing: Skip gracefully, inform user once
• API timeout: Retry once, then fail gracefully
• Quality too low: Regenerate up to 2 times
• Rate limit: Wait and retry or skip
• Invalid response: Log error, skip generation

Cost Considerations

Typical Costs (OpenRouter):

• Gemini 3 Pro Image: ~$0.05-0.15 per image
• FLUX.2 Pro: ~$0.04-0.08 per image

Recommendations:

• Generate selectively (complex components only)
• Cache generated images
• Offer user control over what to generate
• Provide cost estimates before bulk generation

Example Integration

// In /create-component command
if (shouldGenerateVisuals && hasOpenRouterKey()) {
  AskUserQuestion({
    questions: [{
      question: "Generate visual mockup for this component?",
      header: "Visual Design",
      options: [
        { label: "Yes - Generate mockup (~$0.10)", description: "AI visual reference" },
        { label: "No - Skip", description: "Save cost, design manually" }
      ]
    }]
  });

  if (userWantsVisual) {
    generateMockup(componentDescription);
  }
} else {
  // Skip silently, continue with component scaffolding
}