Ui Skills Root

---
name: ui-skills-root
description: "Use when building, styling, optimizing, and auditing ui skills root components, responsive layouts, design systems, and frontend state."
version: 6.0.0
last-updated: 2026-09-29
skills:
  - ui-skill-packs
  - ui-reasoning-engine
  - baseline-ui
  - better-ui
  - impeccable
tools: Read, Grep, Glob, Bash, Edit, Write
scripts-binding:
  - .agent/scripts/lint_runner.js
  - .agent/scripts/verify_all.js
---

# UI Skills Master Router

## Mandatory Pre-Flight Context Inspection
Before reading, generating, or refactoring code in the `ui-skills-root` domain, inspect these 5 critical parameters:
1. **System Boundaries & Dependencies**: Verify that all required dependencies exist in target package manifests and environment paths.
2. **Runtime Context & Platform Invariants**: Confirm target platform constraints (Node.js, Browser, Mobile OS, Edge runtime) before applying APIs.
3. **Execution Guardrails**: Identify potential side-effects, state mutations, and unhandled asynchronous exceptions.
4. **Validation & Type Contracts**: Validate input data schemas and strict type constraints across all module interfaces.
5. **Observability & Proof of Execution**: Ensure execution produces tangible verification signals (terminal output, tests, metrics).


## Activation Boundaries
- **Activate when:** Use when building, styling, optimizing, and auditing ui skills root components, responsive layouts, design systems, and frontend state.
- **DO NOT activate when:** The task falls outside the `ui-skills-root` domain or is managed by a different dedicated specialist agent.


## 🔁 Multi-Pass Execution Protocol

| Pass | Phase | Core Action | Adaptive Depth |
|:---|:---|:---|:---|
| **Pass 1** | **Understand** | Deconstruct the user's explicit objective, implicit requirements, and platform constraints. | Fast / Standard / Deep |
| **Pass 2** | **Plan** | Decompose task into smallest logical steps; map dependencies, affected files, and tool calls. | Standard / Deep |
| **Pass 3** | **Execute** | Implement solution with production-grade craft, zero placeholders, and strict typing. | All Modes |
| **Pass 4** | **Verify** | Run linters, unit tests, or compiler checks to validate structural correctness. | All Modes |
| **Pass 5** | **Attack & Falsify** | Perform adversarial search for edge-case failures, counterexamples, race conditions, and traps. | Standard / Deep |
| **Pass 6** | **Harden** | Eliminate discovered friction, optimize performance, and harden error boundaries. | Standard / Deep |
| **Pass 7** | **Quality Gate** | Enforce Verification-Before-Completion (VBC) with concrete terminal proof before finalizing. | All Modes |


---

## 🛠️ Technical Architecture & Reference Recipes

---

## Intent-Based Skill Routing Matrix

When a user asks for UI assistance, identify their core **intent** and dispatch the appropriate skills:

| Intent / Goal                                           | Primary Skill                | Secondary / Supporting Skills                |
| ------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- |
| **Fast cleanup of ugly/cluttered UI**                   | `baseline-ui`                | `better-ui`, `polish`                        |
| **Production-grade design engineering & micro-details** | `better-ui`                  | `impeccable`, `frontend-design`              |
| **Extract design language & create DESIGN.md**          | `create-design-md`           | `extract-design-system`, `frontend-design`   |
| **Audit & fix HTML / ARIA accessibility (WCAG)**        | `fixing-accessibility`       | `audit-and-fix`, `web-accessibility-auditor` |
| **Fix animation jank & 60/120fps performance**          | `fixing-motion-performance`  | `60fps-animation`, `gsap-performance`        |
| **Evidence-based UI audit & implementation planning**   | `improve-ui`                 | `better-ui`, `baseline-ui`                   |
| **OKLCH color system, contrast & P3 gamut**             | `better-colors`              | `colorize`, `better-ui`                      |
| **Web typography, font scales, tabular numbers**        | `better-typography`          | `typeset`, `better-ui`                       |
| **Apple-grade fluid springs, translucency & depth**     | `apple-design`               | `emil-design-eng`, `soft-skill`              |
| **Make a bland UI stand out / add punch**               | `bolder`                     | `delight`, `colorize`                        |
| **Tone down noisy or loud designs**                     | `quieter`                    | `distill`, `swiss-design`                    |
| **Simplify complex / cluttered interface**              | `distill`                    | `clarify`, `quieter`                         |
| **Add subtle micro-interactions & delight**             | `delight`                    | `whimsy-injector`, `micro-interaction`       |
| **Final pre-ship quality & alignment pass**             | `polish`                     | `harden`, `fixing-accessibility`             |
| **Make UI resilient (errors, empty states, i18n)**      | `harden`                     | `web-accessibility-auditor`                  |
| **UX evaluation & scoring**                             | `critique`                   | `ui-ux-researcher`                           |
| **Improve microcopy & messaging clarity**               | `clarify`                    | `shape`                                      |
| **Pre-code feature UX planning**                        | `shape`                      | `brainstorming`, `appflow-wireframe`         |
| **Build unstyled accessible UI primitives**             | `build-primitive`            | `fixing-accessibility`                       |
| **Responsive & container-query adaptation**             | `adapt`                      | `mobile-design`                              |
| **Depth, progressive blur, glassmorphism**              | `progressive-blur`           | `beautiful-shadows`                          |
| **60fps animation performance audit**                   | `60fps-animation`            | `fixing-motion-performance`                  |
| **Tiered reduced-motion (a11y)**                        | `accessible-animation`       | `fixing-accessibility`                       |
| **Page & route transitions (View Transitions)**         | `page-transition-animation`  | `framer-motion-expert`                       |
| **Scroll-driven motion & storytelling**                 | `animation-on-scroll`        | `gsap-scrolltrigger`                         |
| **Cohesive animation token system**                     | `animation-systems`          | `motion-engineering`                         |
| **Lottie & dotLottie vector animations**                | `lottie-animation`           | `text-to-lottie`                             |
| **SVG path morphing & stroke draw-on**                  | `svg-animation`              | `morphing-icons`                             |
| **Hardware-accelerated marquees**                       | `marquee-loop`               | `60fps-animation`                            |
| **Spring physics vs easing decision**                   | `to-spring-or-not-to-spring` | `apple-design`                               |
| **Tactile Web Audio API sound feedback**                | `sounds-on-the-web`          | `delight`                                    |
| **Technical SEO, metadata & OpenGraph**                 | `fixing-metadata`            | `web-quality-audit`                          |
| **Lighthouse quality audit**                            | `web-quality-audit`          | `performance-profiling`                      |
| **Landing page hierarchy & conversion**                 | `landing-page`               | `compact-landing`                            |
| **Pricing tables & comparison matrices**                | `pricing-page`               | `frontend-design`                            |
| **Social proof, logo grids, trust rows**                | `company-logos`              | `baseline-ui`                                |

## 🚨 Edge-Case & Failure Mode Matrix

| Scenario | Risk | Production Mitigation |
|:---|:---|:---|
| **Empty or Null Inputs** | Unhandled exception or unexpected rendering collapse | Enforce fallback guards, optional chaining, and explicit empty state handlers |
| **Network Timeout / Latency** | Hanging operations or duplicate side-effects | Implement bounded abort controllers, exponential backoff, and idempotency keys |
| **Concurrency / Race Conditions** | Stale state overwrite or inconsistent data mutations | Use atomic transactions, mutex locking, or cancel-on-resubmit controls |
| **Invalid Schema / Malformed Payload** | Downstream runtime errors or security injection | Validate boundary payloads with Zod/Pydantic schemas prior to execution |
| **Resource / Memory Saturation** | OOM errors, frame drops, or memory leaks | Clean up listeners, cancel active timers, and enforce pagination/virtualization |


## 🤖 LLM-Specific Traps Table

| Anti-Pattern | What AI Commonly Does Wrong | What Is Actually Correct |
|:---|:---|:---|
| **Uncontrolled Re-render Loop** | Mutating state inside render bodies or omitting hook dependencies | Wrap effects with explicit deps and isolate reactive derivations in useMemo |
| **Accessibility Neglect** | Interactive <div> without role="button", tabIndex, or onKeyDown | Use semantic <button> or provide ARIA role, keyboard handlers, and focus ring |
| **Layout Shift Flash** | Images/dynamic content without aspect-ratio or explicit dimensions | Enforce aspect-ratio or skeleton placeholders to guarantee zero CLS |


## 🏛️ Tribunal Verification & Guardrails

**Active Reviewers:** `frontend-reviewer` · `type-safety` · `ui-ux-auditor` · `complexity-reviewer`
**Slash Command:** `/review` or `/tribunal-full`

### 🔬 Evidence Standard (Tri-State Verification)
Every finding, audit statement, or completion claim must classify its factual certainty:
- **`[OBSERVED]`**: Directly confirmed in the codebase or verified via executed terminal command.
- **`[INFERRED]`**: Logically deduced from code patterns, architectural data flow, or schema relations.
- **`[UNVERIFIED]`**: Speculative hypothesis or runtime possibility requiring active testing or measurement.

### ✅ Pre-Flight Self-Audit Checklist
```
✅ Are all component props strictly typed with zero implicit "any"?
✅ Are responsive breakpoints, fluid typography, and optical balance verified?
✅ Is accessibility (ARIA labels, keyboard navigation, contrast ratio >= 4.5:1) validated?
✅ Are re-renders minimized and state lifecycles cleanly separated?
✅ Did I verify all imported UI components and icon sets actually exist?
```

### 🛑 Verification-Before-Completion (VBC) Protocol
**CRITICAL:** You must follow a strict "evidence-based closeout" state machine.
- ❌ **Forbidden:** Declaring a task complete because the output "looks correct."
- ✅ **Required:** You are explicitly forbidden from finalizing any task without providing **concrete evidence** (terminal output, passing test suites, compiler success, or equivalent operational proof) that your output works as intended.