social-carousel-design

Social Carousel Design

Use this skill when the user wants to create, recreate, or systematize social media post/carousel design prompts.

The user's standard is not generic Canva-style output. Treat social post prompting like a Figma/build specification: exact layout, typography, colors, spacing, layer order, and reference-driven art direction.

Core principles

1. Do not jump straight to the final prompt.

   • First understand the content source and/or visual reference.
   • The user explicitly dislikes premature prompt-writing before the design logic is engineered.

2. A carousel is one continuous idea revealed across frames.

   • It is not seven separate posts.
   • The swipe is part of the product.
   • Every slide should create a reason to continue.

1. Social carousel work needs three systems:

   • Story system: what each slide does.
   • Design system: how it looks and stays consistent.
   • Swipe system: why the viewer keeps going.

2. For exact recreation, use measurable spec, not vibe.

   • “Similar style” is not enough when the user asks for exact.
   • Build a coordinate/component-level spec from the reference.

Workflow

0. For this user: keep the conversation short, make the artifact concrete

When the user asks whether a social prompt can drive actual output, answer directly and briefly. The preferred workflow is not just writing a prompt: create a strict build-spec prompt that can be executed into real HTML/CSS/React, exported as PNG/MP4, and visually verified. Avoid long conceptual explanations unless asked.

For brand-site-based social work, do not invent assets. First extract or accept real assets, then reference exact local paths/URLs in the prompt. The prompt should specify which logo/image/video file to use, placement, crop, size, layer order, colors, typography, button styling, export dimensions, and explicit “do not invent/replace assets” constraints.

1. Identify the input type

Common inputs:

• Long LinkedIn content calendar entry.
• Single social post reference image.
• Behance/Dribbble/social reference URL.
• Brand website plus rough post topic.
• Existing carousel copy that needs visual design.

2. If the input is a long LinkedIn post, distill first

The user's team often receives content calendars with long-form LinkedIn captions, hashtags, and “Design Team / Image caption” notes.

Before designing, extract:

• core argument
• strongest hook
• audience pain
• key insight
• proof/context
• final question/CTA
• best image-caption angle

Then convert into carousel/post structure.

Never do: long post → directly make slides.

Do: long post → editorial distillation → slide narrative → visual storyboard → production prompt.

3. Choose the carousel/post type

Useful types:

• Educational carousel
• Framework carousel
• Before/after carousel
• Myth vs truth carousel
• Case-study carousel
• Checklist carousel
• Point-of-view carousel
• Single announcement/product post

4. Build the narrative arc

For a 7-slide carousel, default arc:

1. Hook / poster slide
2. Tension or problem
3. Why it matters
4. Reframe or insight
5. Method, example, or proof
6. Takeaway
7. CTA / brand close

For a single post, default hierarchy:

1. visual hook
2. headline
3. support line / proof / feature list
4. product/image/motif
5. brand mark / CTA

5. Reverse-engineer visual references before prompting

Study:

• canvas size/aspect ratio
• logo placement
• logo size
• margins
• background color/texture
• headline position
• headline font style, size, weight, line-height
• subheadline/body placement
• text alignment
• color hierarchy
• image/mockup placement
• decorative elements
• borders/shapes
• footer/header system
• CTA/button/pill styling
• layer order
• what makes it feel premium or weak

6. Write spec-style prompts

A good social design prompt should specify:

• exact canvas dimensions
• object positions using x/y/width/height or percentages
• color values
• font families and weights
• type scale and line heights
• image/mockup crop, rotation, overlap
• margins and spacing rhythm
• layer order
• export format
• what not to do

The user showed a preferred prompt style that specified Tailwind classes, Google Fonts, animations, card dimensions, video placement, overlays, z-indexes, and exact copy. Match that implementation-level detail.

Pitfalls

• Do not use generic language like “clean, modern, premium” without translating it into concrete design instructions.
• Do not write a broad master prompt when the user asks to study a reference first.
• Do not interpret “exact” as “close.” Exact means measurable placement and component-level recreation.
• When the user asks for a prompt “taken from” a provided Motionsites/build-spec prompt, extract/adapt only the requested card/section and preserve the original prompt structure, concrete assets, fonts, animations, classes, URLs, and implementation details. Do not replace asset URLs with placeholders. Do not invent a new brand, concept, color system, or layout. If the exact source prompt is not available in context, ask for it again instead of reconstructing from memory.
• Do not rely on AI taste. Encode the taste in the prompt/spec.
• Do not produce Canva-style grids, random icons, blobs, stock-photo smiles, or disconnected slide templates unless specifically requested.
• When a prompt explicitly says “single card only” or “do not create a grid/other cards,” enforce it in the implementation and verify with DOM/browser checks: exactly one article/post, requested dimensions, requested border radius, and overflow: hidden.
• If the user names a card’s grid position (e.g. “CARD 3 (top-right)”) while only providing that card’s spec, treat the position as context only; render one centered card unless they explicitly ask for the full grid.
• For implementation prompts that require remote background/media assets, download and save assets to the specified local path before finalizing. If a signed/private URL returns AccessDenied/403, still wire the code to the requested local path, but clearly report the asset blocker and ask for a fresh/public URL; do not silently substitute a different image.
• When a new card prompt forbids elements that existed in the previous iteration (particles, icons, CTA, logo, paragraph, decorative gradients), rewrite/clean the files so old CSS/DOM does not leak into the new card.
• When the user gives a production-style HTML/CSS/Tailwind prompt, produce real files and browser-verify the rendered card instead of returning only a rewritten prompt/spec.
• Final replies for this user should be short and status-oriented: files changed, verified checklist, and blockers only.
• When the user stresses “no text issues, layout issues, or weird backgrounds,” treat that as a hard QA gate: render the final image/video, inspect it visually, and fix spelling, cropping, overlap, logo matte/white-box artifacts, image crop, button/footer placement, and invented-looking décor before saying done.
• For terminal-runnable social posts, prefer deterministic generation from exact assets (for example Python/Pillow or browser export) and save both the strict PROMPT.md and the generator script so the user can rerun the post creation command.

Reference files

• references/social-carousel-prompt-engineering.md — detailed notes from the Open Engine/social post prompt-engineering session, including long LinkedIn content calendar handling and exact Behance reference recreation lessons.
• references/single-animated-video-card-builds.md — reusable notes for building and verifying one-off animated video social cards from Tailwind/HTML prompts, including asset handling and DOM QA.
• references/html-social-card-mp4-export.md — Playwright + ffmpeg workflow for exporting animated HTML social cards as clean 384×384 H.264 MP4 files with preview-frame QA.
• references/behance-social-reference-extraction.md — how to extract, dedupe, and separate final social posts from Behance project pages; includes the Social Media Automation 9-post selection pattern.
• references/terminal-runnable-asset-based-posts.md — workflow for turning a strict social post prompt into a deterministic terminal-runnable PNG/MP4 generator using only supplied or extracted assets, with visual QA.
• references/public-asset-backed-social-prompts.md — workflow for extracting/hosting public brand assets, writing shareable HTTPS asset prompts, building a real terminal-rendered output, and QAing no text/layout/weird-background issues.

Templates

• templates/single-animated-video-card.html — starter structure for a single 384×384 video-backed animated card with outer background shell, z-index layers, and Tailwind font mappings.