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Skillsappllama-design-skill

appllama-design-skill

Design & creation

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Updated 10-15 19:57

About this skill

Appllama Design Skill

You are building screens that will sit on a phone next to the best-designed apps in the world. The user will compare your output to those apps within seconds of launching it. This skill defines the bar and the method for clearing it.

The Prime Directive: study before you draw

Never design a screen from imagination when you can study how top apps solved the same screen. Real, shipping, revenue-ranked apps encode thousands of hours of design iteration and A/B testing. Your first move on any screen is research:

  1. If the Appllama MCP is connected, pull real screens for the category and screen type you are building (see the appllama-usage skill for the exact research playbooks). Study 20–30 screens before writing a line of UI code.
  2. Extract the pattern, not the pixels: layout skeleton, information hierarchy, control choices, spacing rhythm, where the primary CTA sits, what gets an illustration vs. plain text, how progress is communicated.
  3. Then design your screen: same proven skeleton, your product's voice. Copying a competitor's screen 1:1 is both lazy and legally risky; shipping a screen that ignores every convention users already know is worse.

Platform baseline

Default stack assumptions (override only if the project already differs):

  • Expo + Expo Router, React Native, TypeScript.
  • react-native-reanimated for motion, react-native-gesture-handler for gestures, @shopify/flash-list (or FlashList v2) for any list that can grow.
  • expo-image for images (and SF Symbols via source="sf:name" on iOS), expo-video / expo-audio (never the deprecated expo-av).
  • react-native-safe-area-context for insets. Never hard-code notch numbers.
  • process.env.EXPO_OS over Platform.OS for compile-time platform checks.

Native fidelity laws

These are the details that separate "web page in a wrapper" from "native app". Violating any of them is a finding, not a style preference.

  1. Semantic colors, both themes, day one. Use system/semantic color tokens (e.g. Color from expo-router on iOS: Color.ios.label, Color.ios.secondarySystemBackground; Material dynamic colors on Android). Every screen must render correctly in light AND dark before it is "done". Never pass semantic color objects into Reanimated animated styles — resolve to strings first.
  2. Native controls over rebuilt ones. Switch, Slider, SegmentedControl, context menus, date pickers: use the native control or a faithful wrapper. A rebuilt toggle that animates 50 ms differently than iOS's reads as fake instantly.
  3. SF Symbols / Material Symbols for iconography. On iOS prefer SF Symbols (expo-image with sf: sources, or expo-symbols); they inherit weight, optical size, and Dynamic Type behavior. Do not mix three icon families on one screen.
  4. Typography is hierarchy. Use the platform type ramp (Large Title / Title / Headline / Body / Footnote on iOS). One display size per screen. Tabular numerals (fontVariant: ['tabular-nums']) for anything that counts, times, or prices. Text selectable on data users may want to copy.
  5. Continuous corners. borderCurve: 'continuous' on every rounded rectangle. Squircles are the single cheapest "feels iOS" win that exists.
  6. Shadows via CSS boxShadow, not legacy shadow*/elevation props. Shadows are for elevation logic, not decoration — one elevation system per app.
  7. Spacing rhythm. Pick a base unit (4 or 8) and never leave it. Prefer flexbox gap over margin stacking. ScrollView padding goes in contentContainerStyle, never on the ScrollView itself.
  8. Safe areas and the Dynamic Island are part of the design. Screens must be verified with content scrolled under the island / status bar (does the blur/fade treatment hold?), with the home indicator (does the bottom CTA clear it?), and in landscape if supported.
  9. Navigation titles belong to the navigator. Use the stack's native title (and large-title collapse behavior on iOS) rather than a hand-rolled header whenever possible.
  10. Haptics are punctuation. Light impact on selection/confirm on iOS, success/warning notifications for outcomes. Never on scroll, never in loops. Guard with platform checks.
  11. Format numbers like a product, not a database: 1.4M, 38k, $4.99. Trim trailing zeros. Localize dates.
  12. Root scroll behavior: screens that can ever overflow wrap content in a ScrollView (first component in the route) with contentInsetAdjustmentBehavior="automatic". Use useWindowDimensions, never Dimensions.get().

Motion laws

Motion is the highest-leverage polish surface and the easiest to overdo.

  • Every animation needs a reason: continuity (element moves between states), causality (response to a gesture), or orientation (where did this come from). Decoration-only motion gets cut.
  • Reanimated worklets on the UI thread for anything tracking a gesture. Gesture → animation must never hop the JS thread.
  • Springs over durations for anything the user "touches"; gentle timing curves (250–350 ms, ease-out) for anything the system initiates.
  • Entering/exiting animations (FadeIn, SlideInDown, layout transitions) on list items, modals, and conditional content — subtle, 150–250 ms.
  • Respect Reduce Motion. Query the accessibility setting and collapse spatial animations to cross-fades.
  • The bar to hit: 60 fps on a mid-tier device, zero dropped frames during the hero transition of your flow. Measure, don't vibe — see references/performance.md.

State architecture

Screens that feel great are screens whose state is boring:

  • Server state in TanStack Query (or the project's equivalent): caching, retries, optimistic updates. Never useEffect+fetch.
  • Client state in a small atomic store (Zustand/Jotai). Broad "app state" contexts cause the re-render cascades that make UIs feel heavy.
  • Ephemeral UI state (open/closed, focus, scroll) stays local to the component.
  • Optimistic by default: taps reflect instantly, reconcile in the background, roll back loudly on failure.
  • Uncontrolled TextInputs for high-frequency typing surfaces; controlled inputs are a top-3 cause of typing jank.
  • Persist tiny client state in MMKV, not AsyncStorage, when latency shows.

Perceived performance

  • Skeletons only for content whose shape you know; otherwise progressive reveal. Never a full-screen spinner for a partial update.
  • FlashList for every list; give stable keys.
  • Preload the next screen's data on press-in, not on navigation-complete.
  • Images: right-size sources, expo-image with recyclingKey in lists, thumbhash/blurhash placeholders.
  • Cold-start TTI and bundle discipline live in references/performance.md — apply the measure → optimize → re-measure loop, never blind memoization.

Image & illustration assets

When a screen calls for illustration, empty-state art, hero imagery, or icons beyond the symbol set:

  • Generate assets with the best image model available to you (e.g. an imagegen tool or the Higgsfield MCP/CLI if connected) at the highest quality settings, then downscale to @1x/@2x/@3x. Never upscale.
  • One visual language per app: pick a style (gradient-mesh, flat-duotone, 3D-clay, hand-drawn, mascot style) and generate ALL assets in that same style, same palette, same lighting. A mixed-style asset set reads as template slop.
  • Prompt for transparent or solid-flat backgrounds matched to your surface color; composite artifacts (white halos, wrong-color mattes) are an automatic redo.
  • Full asset pipeline and prompt patterns: references/image-assets.md.

The simulator loop (non-negotiable)

A screen does not exist until you have seen it running. The loop:

  1. Implement → launch in the iOS Simulator (or Android emulator).
  2. Screenshot and actually look: alignment, optical centering, spacing rhythm, truncation with long content, dark mode, Dynamic Type at XL.
  3. Exercise the motion: record, scrub frame by frame if a transition looks off. Watch content pass under the Dynamic Island and behind the tab bar.
  4. Fix, relaunch, re-verify. Repeat until you cannot find a defect — then run the checklist in references/simulator-loop.md once more.

Do not declare a screen finished from code review alone. Do not stop at "looks fine" — stop at "cannot find a flaw at 100% zoom".

Definition of done, per screen

  • Studied 10+ real reference screens for this screen type (via Appllama MCP when available) and can name the pattern you adopted
  • Light + dark mode verified in the simulator
  • Safe areas / Dynamic Island / home indicator verified
  • Long-content, empty, loading, and error states designed — not defaulted
  • Motion: entrances, presses, and transitions feel native; Reduce Motion respected; 60 fps measured on the target device profile
  • Dynamic Type XL doesn't break layout; text is selectable where useful
  • All tap targets ≥ 44pt; contrast passes in both themes
  • Assets: single style family, crisp at @3x, no compositing halos
  • List surfaces virtualized; no controlled-input jank; no re-render storms (profiled, not guessed)

References

File Load when
references/native-controls.md Choosing/wiring iOS+Android native controls, menus, pickers, sheets
references/motion.md Any Reanimated work: gestures, transitions, springs, layout animations
references/performance.md Jank, slow TTI, big bundles, memory leaks, profiling method
references/image-assets.md Generating illustrations/icons/hero art with image models
references/simulator-loop.md Final verification checklist + device matrix