an agent skill for web designv1.0 · MIT · 99 sites measured

Taste,
measured.

claudestudio teaches coding agents to design websites like the studios that win. Every rule in it was measured from 99 live sites, not lifted from a mood board.

npx skills add arjunkshah12345-hash/claudestudio-skill

Works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and the other agents skills.sh supports. Read SKILL.md ↗

// 02 the gap

The difference is measurable. Agents ship the left column by default. The studios we measured ship the right.

PropertyAgent defaultMeasured on studio sites
Display weight700–800300–510 Stripe 300 · Linear 510
Display tracking0em−0.022em at 64px 53 of 94 sites go negative
Words in the h1114 median, p90 is 9
Accent colours4–61, under 5% of pixels Factory: 3 text nodes
Hero buttons3, equally loud2 at most solid + ghost
Body colour#000 on #FFF#171717 on #FAFAFA tinted, never pure
Revealfade up 40px, easeblur-in ≤12px, (.16, 1, .3, 1) 0.8s, the most common
Features3 icon cardschapters with real media 0 of 99 use icon tiles

// 03 method

Six steps, in order. The agent writes a design spine before any code and audits its own screenshots before it says done.

  1. 01Choose a direction
  2. 02Write the spine
  3. 03Tokens first
  4. 04Compose, don’t fill
  5. 05Craft pass
  6. 06Audit and look

One of ten directions, at one of three volumes.

Engineered Dark, Ledger Light, Warm Paper and seven more, each a full recipe of tokens, fonts, hero and section order. Then a register (Quiet, Confident or Loud) and five range axes, so two sites from the same skill never look alike.

groundtype genreimage mediumcompositionmotion feel

Fourteen lines, before a single div.

DIRECTION  6 Cinematic Place, the fjord is the hero
REGISTER   Quiet, space does the work
TYPE       Fraunces 250 · Inter Tight 400 · Plex Mono
PALETTE    paper #F3F1EC · ink #1F2A44 · accent #B8432F
HERO       H5 monumental word over the subject
MOTION     (.16,1,.3,1) · UI 200ms · reveal 900ms
VOICE      “Fourteen rooms. One fjord.”

Every value comes from a token.

A starter tokens.css with a fluid type scale, text-style bundles, a spacing ladder, one house ease and reduced motion built in. Plus motion.js: reveals, split text, tickers, letter-roll and scroll-spy, with no dependencies.

--display: clamp(2.5rem, 1.3rem + 3.2vw, 4.5rem);
--display-ls: -0.03em;  --display-wt: 500;
--ease: cubic-bezier(.16, 1, .3, 1);
--t-ui: 240ms;  --t-reveal: 850ms;

15 hero archetypes. 22 section patterns. 60 techniques.

Each one traced to a live site: the index as hero, the monumental word, the product rebuilt in HTML, sticky stacking cards, the live ticker. The agent picks two or three and builds one motif through all of them.

Craft lives in the boring places.

  • Tracking scales with size, labels go positive
  • Two-tone headings, one ink at two opacities
  • One radius camp, optical button padding
  • Mobile recomposed at 390px, not shrunk
  • A live clock, a status line, a designed 404

A script that measures the build like we measured the studios.

// 04 directions

Ten systems, each measured from the sites that define it. Set here in their own type and colour.

  1. 01

    Engineered Dark

    Dev tools, AI agents

    Linear · Raycast · Resend

  2. 02

    Ledger Light

    B2B SaaS, fintech, APIs

    Stripe · Vercel · Mintlify

  3. 03

    Warm Paper

    AI labs, founder-led tools

    Anthropic · Cursor · Daylight

  4. 04

    Editorial Motion

    Studios, architecture

    Studio D · Populous

  5. 05

    Quiet Luxury Commerce

    Fashion, fragrance, objects

    Aesop · Totême · Aman

  6. 06

    CINEMATIC PLACE

    Hospitality, travel

    White Desert · ERA

  7. 07

    Institutional

    Museums, foundations, civic

    AIC · Obama · Norton

  8. 08

    DEEP-TECH SPEC

    Robotics, aerospace, climate

    Terminal · Vast · Radian

  9. 09

    Playful System

    Consumer apps, community

    Family · MindMarket

  10. 10

    Immersive

    Launches, campaigns

    Lusion · Unseen · 14islands

// 05 evidence

We measured the work, not the agency homepages.

Live sites loaded, scrolled and read
99
Studios and in-house teams
40
Elements read per page
6,000
AI tells, each with its fix
38

basement.studio Factory, Mintlify, Daylight, Baseten · Work & Co Aesop, Obama.org, Steve Jobs Archive · AREA 17 Art Institute of Chicago, Pentagram, ElevenLabs · Exo Ape Studio D, Inversa · Locomotive Populous, The Drake, Scout · Lusion Atlas, Oryzo · Immersive Garden David Whyte · Unseen illoca, Symphony of Vines · Instrument Oura, AlphaSense · Malvah White Desert · OFF+BRAND Lando Norris · Rejouice Terminal, ICOMAT · in-house Linear, Stripe, Vercel, Raycast, Apple · and 27 more

Each site loaded in headless Chrome at 1440 and 390px, scrolled with real wheel events, and mined for computed type, colour, layout, eases, springs and Lenis settings. The raw notes and data are in the repo.

Stop shipping the purple gradient.

npx skills add arjunkshah12345-hash/claudestudio-skill
Star on GitHub

Then ask your agent for a website the way you normally would. It will write a spine, build tokens first, and audit itself.