Six Skills That Give AI Taste: Methods Can Be Installed, Taste Has to Be Your Own

Ask AI to build a web page or a proposal, and some people get something polished while others get something that’s obviously AI-made. A lot of the time, the difference isn’t the model—it’s whether a sense of taste has been installed in it; and websites, pitches, reports, anything outward-facing, are the face of the company. I read through all twenty-odd aesthetics and design skills among the top 600 on the install leaderboard, picked six, and arranged them in the order of building a page from start to finish.

When building a page from scratch, the biggest risk is ending up with something that looks like everyone else’s. This step calls for a design director to set the direction first: frontend-design, made officially by Anthropic. It has one requirement I fully agree with: the design must belong uniquely to this client and match their own brand and overall style; if swapping in another company’s name would let it work just as well elsewhere, it never really thought about this client and has to be redone. So a request should spell out who it’s for, what feeling is wanted, and roughly what colors; just saying “make a landing page” rarely produces anything distinctive.

When even the style isn’t settled, there’s a design handbook organized by industry: ui-ux-pro-max, open source on GitHub. Ask for a medical data analytics dashboard, and it lays out, by industry, how to divide the page and which colors and fonts to use; for a beauty and wellness salon it proposes soft pink with sage green and a touch of gold, and specifically says to avoid neon. These requirements can be saved and reused for later pages.

For pages meant to be shown to people, like product pages or personal portfolios, AI’s output all looks the same: a big headline in the middle and three identical cards underneath. taste-skill, open source on GitHub with over ninety thousand stars, exists to fix exactly this. Its most useful feature is three numbers, each set anywhere from one to ten: how bold the layout is, from centered to staggered; how much motion, from changes only on hover to everything moving as the page scrolls; how much goes on one screen, from a sentence or two with lots of white space to as dense as a data dashboard. Setting those three numbers before letting the AI build is far more precise than finishing and then complaining that it isn’t pretty enough.

Looking good isn’t the same as working well. On a sign-up page, the phone number won’t paste; tap submit and the button instantly grays out with no spinner; fill something in wrong and nothing says which field is the problem. The people who build it rarely notice, but a customer who hits one of these once may simply leave. This is where an inspector comes in: web-design-guidelines, made by Vercel, an American company that helps people put websites online. It carries a checklist of over a hundred items, and all of these are on it. Once the page is done, it checks item by item, points out which file and which line has a problem, and the AI then fixes them; it’s worth running before handing anything to a client and before going live.

After delivery come round after round of revisions, and by the tenth version it no longer looks like the same brand as the first. That’s what impeccable handles; its creator, Paul Bakaus, works at Google. It starts by asking who the product is for and what tone is wanted, writes that up as a spec, and checks the spec before every revision. It also turns revisions into a few simple commands: critique, to point out where the hierarchy is messy or things are hard to read; add some punch when it’s too bland, tone it down when it’s too busy; and a final polish before launch. Even someone who doesn’t know design can say clearly what change they want.

To go finer still, there’s the master craftsman for interfaces: Emil, a design engineer who builds interfaces at Linear, wrote years of experience into emil-design-eng. It handles details like how fast a pop-up animates and whether to use a soft shadow or a hard border, and it’s something to call in when needed rather than keep on all the time. I really like one of its methods: testing a page with an extra-long name, an empty list, or a huge number to see whether it breaks. Strung together, the six form one line: the design director sets the direction, the design handbook provides the recipe, taste-skill handles whether it looks good, the inspector handles whether it works well, impeccable handles whether it still looks like itself after ten rounds of revisions, and the master craftsman handles the details. There’s no need to install them all; fill in whichever link is missing.

As for me, the ones I use most aren’t these six. I did install frontend-design, but I don’t use it much; what I use most is PPVI, an aesthetics skill I developed myself and open-sourced in May. My approach was to take the best of each and set everything by my own aesthetic standards: gray as the base, a few tiers of font sizes, how much white space, whether to use that semi-transparent frosted glass effect. My meeting notes and proposal pages are all made with it. It also leaves room for flexibility: tables can be a bit denser, articles a bit airier, and the first screen and the amount of frosted glass can vary.

Our community’s daily AI news digest, sent every morning, is a web page with twenty or so news items a day, so it’s dense. This redesign didn’t reuse the meeting-notes style. The AI wanted to cut content or fold it away behind a click, and I said no: most people don’t click to expand, and the curated news would simply go unseen. What I wanted was nothing cut and nothing folded, with white space and sections separating each item, a clear contrast in color and font size between headlines and body text, and Zhixu Pai’s purple. It took five versions. The judgment call was how to lay out this much content so people actually want to keep reading.

So here’s what I think: skills can bring design methods in, but when it comes to what suits your own business, that taste still has to come from you. Don’t install too many skills; pick the ones that suit you. Even better is to take the best of each, build a skill of your own by your own aesthetic standards, and then spell out the requirements clearly for each specific scenario.

EP0116 · 2026-10-08 · 05:54. The picture uses a digital human, and the voice uses my cloned voice. This is an English translation of the approved Chinese script used to create the narration.

I went through every aesthetics-related skill out there. Ask AI to build a web page or put together a proposal, and some people get something that looks really polished, while others get something that’s obviously AI-made. Why? A lot of the time, the difference isn’t the model—it’s whether you’ve installed a sense of taste in it. For a business owner, that’s no small thing. Your website, your pitches, your reports—everything that faces the outside world is the face of your company, right? Among the top 600 on the install leaderboard, there are twenty-odd skills related to aesthetics and design, and I read every single one. Today I’ve picked six, and I’ll go through them in the order you’d build a page, start to finish—which one to use at each step.

So when you’re building a page from scratch, what’s the biggest fear? You toss out a vague request, and what comes back looks like everyone else’s. That’s when you need a design director—someone who sets the direction before anything gets built. This is frontend-design, made officially by Anthropic. There’s one requirement in it I really agree with: the design has to belong uniquely to this client and match their own brand and overall style. If you could swap out the client’s name, drop this version onto some other company, and it would still work, that means it never actually thought about this client, and it has to be redone. So when you make the request, say who it’s for, what feeling you want, and roughly what colors. You don’t need to rattle off dimensions and color codes right away, but if all you say is “make a landing page,” it’s hard to end up with anything distinctive.

And what if you haven’t even settled on a style? Then you can turn to a design handbook organized by industry: ui-ux-pro-max, open source on GitHub. Tell it to build a medical data analytics dashboard, and it’ll lay out, based on the industry, how to divide up the page and which colors and fonts to use. Its recommendation for a beauty and wellness salon is soft pink with sage green, plus a touch of gold—and it specifically says no neon. You can save that set of requirements and keep using it for later pages.

Once you have a direction, say you need a page you’ll actually show people—a product page, a personal portfolio. What’s the biggest problem with these when AI makes them? They all look the same. A big headline in the middle, three identical cards lined up underneath. After you’ve seen enough of them, you can tell at a glance that AI made it. taste-skill is built specifically to fix that. It’s open source on GitHub, with over ninety thousand stars. Its own description is a single line: give AI good taste, stop making cookie-cutter stuff. The most useful part is three numbers, each from one to ten, that you set yourself. The first controls how bold the layout is: turn it down and you get neat, centered, by-the-book layouts; turn it up and you get staggered, asymmetric arrangements. The second controls motion: turn it down and things only change when you hover over them; turn it up and everything moves as you scroll. The third controls how much goes on one screen: turn it down and you get a sentence or two per screen with lots of white space; turn it up and it’s as dense as a data dashboard. Set those three numbers first, then let the AI build—that’s far more precise than finishing and then saying “this isn’t pretty enough.”

So it looks good—but is it ready to hand over? Looking good isn’t the same as working well. Take a sign-up page. A customer on their phone wants to paste in their phone number, and it won’t paste. They tap submit, the button instantly grays out, no spinner, and they have no idea whether it went through. They fill something in wrong, and nothing tells them which field the error is in. The people who build the page rarely catch these little problems, but a customer who runs into one of them might just leave. That’s when you need an inspector: web-design-guidelines, made by Vercel. Vercel is an American company that helps people put websites online. This inspector carries a checklist of over a hundred items—don’t block pasting, show a spinner on submit, put the error right next to the field that’s wrong—they’re all in there. When the page is done, just tell it “check this for me,” and it goes through item by item and tells you which file and which line has a problem, and then you have the AI fix them. Before handing it to a client, before going live—it’s worth running it every time.

But once the product’s out the door, it’s going to go through round after round of revisions. And the more rounds there are, the most common problem is that it stops looking like itself. Today it’s “make it feel bigger,” tomorrow it’s “make it more lively,” and by the tenth version it doesn’t look like the same brand as the first. That’s what impeccable is for. The person who made it, Paul Bakaus, works at Google. Its first step is to ask a few questions—who is this product for, what tone do you want—and then write it all up as a spec. Every time you revise after that, it checks the spec first, so no matter how much you change things, it’s still the same brand. The second benefit is that it turns how to change things into a few very simple commands. Want feedback? Ask it to critique, and it’ll tell you where the hierarchy is messy and where things are hard to read. Too bland? Tell it to add some punch. Too busy? Tell it to tone it down. Before launch, have it do a final polish. Even someone who doesn’t know design can say clearly what kind of change they want.

If you want to get even more fine-grained, you need a master craftsman for interfaces. Whether a pop-up animates a bit faster or a bit slower, whether to use a soft shadow or a hard border—all of these affect how it feels. Emil, a design engineer who builds interfaces at Linear, wrote years of his experience into emil-design-eng. Call it in when you need it; you don’t have to keep it on all the time. It has another method I really like: test the page with an extra-long name, an empty list, a huge number, and see if it breaks. Normal content may look nice sitting there, but swap in what real usage looks like, and it still has to hold up.

So string these six together, and you get one line: the design director sets the direction, the design handbook gives the recipe, taste-skill handles whether it looks good, the inspector handles whether it works well, impeccable handles whether it still looks like itself after ten rounds of revisions, and the master craftsman handles the details. You don’t need to install them all—whichever link is missing, fill in that one.

Now, back to me. The ones I use most actually aren’t these six. Anthropic’s official frontend-design—I did install it, but I don’t use it much. What I use most is PPVI, an aesthetics skill I developed myself and open-sourced in May. My approach was to take the best parts from everyone else and then, by my own aesthetic standards, turn that into a skill of my own. Gray as the base color, a few tiers of font sizes, how much white space to leave, whether to use that semi-transparent frosted glass effect—all of it is set by my standards. My meeting notes and proposal pages are all made with it. And your own skill can leave room for flexibility too: tables can be a bit denser, articles a bit airier, and the first screen and the amount of frosted glass can all vary. It’s not something you slap on that makes everything look the same, right?

Take our community’s news digest. Every morning our community sends out a daily AI news digest. It’s a web page, with twenty or so news items a day, so the content is dense. For this redesign, I didn’t have it reuse the meeting-notes style. The AI wanted to cut content, or fold it away so people would have to click to open it—I said no. Most people don’t click expand, and then all the news we’d curated would never be seen. What I wanted was nothing cut and nothing folded, each item separated with white space and sections, a clear contrast in color and font size between headlines and body text, plus Zhixu Pai’s purple. We went through five versions. The judgment call here was how to lay out this much content so people actually want to keep reading.

So here’s what I think: skills can bring design methods in, but when it comes to what suits your own business, that taste still has to come from you. And my advice is, don’t install too many skills—pick the ones that suit you. Even better is to take the best of each, build a skill of your own by your own aesthetic standards, and then spell out your requirements clearly for each specific scenario. That’s it for today—see you tomorrow, bye.