CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to OpenDesign

Thanks for considering a contribution. OpenDesign is an open-source, skills-based version of Claude Design — the goal is parity with that experience, not feature creep. This repo ships a small, opinionated set of skills; quality bar is higher than coverage. Before adding a new skill, strongly consider whether an existing one can be extended instead.

Ground rules

• Every SKILL.md is written in direct imperative voice. No marketing language, no apologies, no emoji, no "as we discussed".
• Concrete beats vague. Specific rules, forbidden patterns, and measured constants beat aspirational prose.
• Skills describe behavior under specific conditions, not philosophies. If your skill body is abstract, it's not ready.

SKILL.md format

---
name: your-skill-name
description: Use when [specific triggering conditions]. [One-line summary of what it produces.]
---

Loaded when [restate trigger].

## [Section]

[Rules, constants, forbidden patterns, required paths. Be concrete.]

Rules:

• name uses lowercase and hyphens. Must match the folder name.
• description starts with "Use when..." and describes when the skill applies, not what it does internally. The agent reads this to decide whether to load the skill.
• Do not summarize the skill's workflow in the description — the skill body is authoritative.

Adding a new skill

1. Create skills/<name>/SKILL.md with frontmatter and body.
2. Add a row to the "Available skills" table in README.md.
3. Open a PR. In the description, state:
   • What the skill does.
   • Why existing skills can't cover this case.
   • Any risk of overlap with opendesign, frontend-design, create-design-system, or make-a-deck.

Editing an existing skill

• Keep the frontmatter name stable — changing it is a breaking change for users.
• If you're narrowing or widening the trigger, update the description in the same change.
• Bump the version in every host config for any user-visible change. Run bash validate-skills.sh to catch version drift.

Things I'll reject

• Skills that replicate what an existing skill covers with minor variation.
• Skill bodies that read like a blog post or pitch.
• Emoji, marketing adjectives, or aspirational prose.
• Frontmatter that summarizes the skill's workflow instead of its trigger.
• PRs that add a skill file but forget the README update.