MaybeMonad Design Polish
Use this skill as the final design quality gate. Polish is not a vague pass for "make it nicer"; it is a structured review, fix, and re-verification loop.
Workflow
- Confirm scope:
- File, route, screenshot, prototype, deck, app screen, component, or flow.
- Read referenced styles, tokens, components, and copy sources.
- Completion criterion: the reviewed surface and its source dependencies are named.
- Render before judging:
- Open the real file, route, preview, or app when possible.
- Check at relevant viewport sizes and states.
- Completion criterion: layout-sensitive claims come from rendered evidence, not static code reading alone.
- Run review passes:
- Source fidelity: tokens, components, brand rules, copy exactness, and medium fit.
- Accessibility: contrast, semantic controls, labels, headings, focus, keyboard path, hit targets, reduced motion, and color-only signaling.
- Generic-AI trope scan: decorative gradients, emoji filler, weak custom SVG illustration, generic card styling, arbitrary colors, off-scale spacing, and ungrounded font choices.
- Hierarchy and rhythm: primary/secondary/tertiary clarity, type scale, spacing scale, alignment, density, section rhythm, and scan path.
- Interaction states: default, hover, active, disabled, focus-visible, loading, success, error, selected, and empty states.
- Responsiveness and text fit: mobile/desktop constraints, overflow, clipping, wrapping, tap target size, and content overlap.
- Completion criterion: every relevant pass has findings or an explicit clean result.
- Prioritize:
- Blockers: accessibility failures, broken layout, dead controls, unreadable text, content overlap, misleading copy, or missing required states.
- Quality issues: weak hierarchy, generic tropes, arbitrary tokens, missing feedback, inconsistent component treatment.
- Polish recommendations: taste refinements that are safe but not required.
- Completion criterion: fixes are ordered by user impact, not ease.
- Fix and re-verify:
- Fix blockers and quality issues directly when in scope.
- Apply polish recommendations only when they preserve the user's direction.
- Re-render high-risk surfaces after edits.
- Completion criterion: no fixed issue is reported without a re-check or a named reason verification was blocked.
Output Shape
- Verdict: ready, ready after named decisions, or needs another design round.
- Changed files or reviewed files.
- Blockers fixed.
- Quality fixes applied.
- Open decisions for the user.
- Verification performed and remaining caveats.
Rules
- Lead with findings before taste commentary when reviewing someone else's design.
- Do not add new sections, claims, stats, or decorative content to fill space without user approval.
- Keep exact user-supplied copy unless the task is copy polish.
- Treat screenshots as insufficient for interaction-state claims unless the runtime was also checked.
- If the surface is still structurally unresolved, say polish is premature and name the design decision that must settle first.
Credit
Inspired by Trystan-SA/claude-design-system-prompt (MIT), adapted into a single Codex-friendly quality gate.