Aesthetic Guide
Produce exhaustive, implementation-ready design system documentation for a named UI aesthetic. The output is a reference guide detailed enough that a coding agent can faithfully implement the aesthetic with minimal room for interpretation.
Workflow
- Identify the aesthetic from the user's request
- Check the catalog — read references/aesthetic-catalog.md to see if pre-researched data exists for this aesthetic
- Research if needed — if the aesthetic is not in the catalog or the user wants a custom variant, conduct web research to gather implementation-level specifics (exact CSS values, fonts, colors, timing functions)
- Load the output schema — read references/output-schema.md for the required structure
- Generate the guide — fill every section of the output schema with concrete, copy-pasteable values. No hand-waving, no "choose an appropriate value" — every property must have an exact value or a constrained range with rationale.
- Deliver as a markdown file — write the completed guide to the project (default:
.claude/docs/{aesthetic-name}-design-system.md)
Research Protocol
When researching an aesthetic not in the catalog:
- Search for "{aesthetic} CSS", "{aesthetic} UI design system", "{aesthetic} web design examples"
- Look for open-source implementations, CodePen examples, design system documentation
- Extract concrete values: hex codes, font names, px/rem values, cubic-bezier curves, shadow syntax
- Cross-reference multiple sources to identify the consensus properties that define the aesthetic
- Distinguish between essential properties (without these, it's not the aesthetic) and characteristic properties (common but optional)
Output Requirements
- Every color must be a hex or HSL value, never a name like "dark blue"
- Every font must be a specific family with fallback stack
- Every spacing value must be in px or rem
- Every transition must have duration + timing function
- Every interactive state (hover, active, focus, disabled) must have explicit CSS
- Every component must have all pseudo-states defined
- Include both CSS custom properties (variables) and Tailwind equivalents where applicable
Customization
The user may request:
- A specific framework (Tailwind, vanilla CSS, CSS-in-JS) — adjust output format
- A hybrid ("brutalist with soft shadows") — blend aesthetics, noting which properties come from which
- A variant ("dark mode cyberpunk" vs "light mode cyberpunk") — generate the specific variant
- Partial guide (just colors, just typography) — generate only the requested sections