Emil Kowalski's skills
emilkowalski/skills
14 UI and animation skills from a designer engineer who has worked at Vercel and Linear.
Emil Kowalski's skills is an MIT-licensed set of 14 skills for building better user interfaces, written by the designer and engineer behind the Sonner toast library. They list the small mistakes agents make with animation and interface design and say how to fix each one. Skills cover animation, Apple-style design, mobile polish, prototyping and breaking your own UI with worst-case data.
Facts checked on against the sources listed at the end of this page.
- GitHub stars
- 42,883
- Skills in the pack
- 14
- Agents supported
- 3The README shows the skills CLI install and does not name specific agents
- Instruction size
- 32.5k wordsacross all SKILL.md files
How to install Emil Kowalski's skills
| Agent | Command | Copy |
|---|---|---|
| Any agent | |
Commands as given in the README on 3 October 2026.
What is inside Emil Kowalski's skills
| Skill | What it makes the agent do |
|---|---|
| emil-design-eng | The main skill, mostly about animation with some general design advice. |
| animate | Builds an animation from scratch, choosing the curve, duration and properties. |
| animate-expo | The same bar for React Native and Expo: gestures, sheets, haptics and screen transitions. |
| review-animations | Reviews your animations strictly against the author's rules. |
| improve-animations | Audits every animation in a codebase and writes prioritized plans any agent can run. |
| find-animation-opportunities | Finds places that would benefit from motion, and says what not to animate. |
| apple-design | Apple's interface and motion principles from WWDC talks, translated for the web. |
| mobile-native | Fixes that make a web app feel native on a phone, such as safe areas and the 100vh bug. |
| break-ui | Tries to break your UI with long names, empty lists and huge counts. |
| prototype | Builds several versions of a UI piece and lets you flip between them with a switcher. |
Ten of 14 skills are shown. The rest are animation-vocabulary, pick-ui-library, write-swift and ask-sonner, a guide to the author's Sonner toast library.
What Emil Kowalski's skills runs on your machine
| Hooks | None found in the repo. |
|---|---|
| Bundled scripts | None found. The repo holds Markdown skills. |
| Network calls | None named in the README. |
| API keys needed | None named in the README. |
These are facts read from the repo, not a security rating. Read the files before you install any skill.
How much context Emil Kowalski's skills uses
| All 14 skills | 32,456 words across every SKILL.md file |
|---|---|
| Largest skill | write-swift, 6,053 words |
| Loaded at start | Only each skill's name and description. The full text loads when a task needs that skill. |
Word counts are measured from the repo every day. Reference files a skill loads on demand are not counted.
How Emil Kowalski's skills works
The README says agents often pick the wrong ingredients for an animation, such as an ease-in curve on an enter animation, or a solid border where a semi-transparent shadow looks better. The skills write those mistakes down so the agent can avoid them.
The author says the skills come from years of experience at companies including Vercel and Linear. pick-ui-library tells the agent to choose from libraries the author uses and trusts, instead of hand-rolling a toast component or installing an abandoned package.
A good fit for
- Front-end developers who want agents to choose better easing, duration and motion properties
- Designers who ship UI code and want a strict animation review
- Teams building React Native or Expo apps that need native-feeling motion
- Projects that use the Sonner toast library, since one skill covers its setup and fixes
Skip it if
- Back-end or data work, since every skill is about interface design or motion
- Teams that want a general coding workflow, because these skills cover UI polish only
- Anyone who expects the skills to replace design skill, as the author says they amplify expertise
Is Emil Kowalski's skills still maintained?
| Last commit | , 19 hours ago |
|---|---|
| Stars gained in 7 days | Shown after 7 days of tracking |
| Stars gained in 30 days | Shown after 30 days of tracking |
| Open issues and pull requests | 0 |
| Forks | 2,431 |
Tools Emil Kowalski's skills works with
Questions about Emil Kowalski's skills
How do I install Emil Kowalski's skills?
Run npx skills@latest add emilkowalski/skills. The README shows no other install route.
Is it free?
Yes. It is MIT licensed.
Does it cover React Native?
Yes. The animate-expo skill applies the same animation rules to React Native and Expo, including gestures, sheets and haptics.
Does it run any code?
No scripts or hooks were found in the repo. The skills are Markdown instructions.
Does it cover Swift?
One skill, write-swift, covers modern Swift, including value types, Swift 6 concurrency, generics and Swift Testing.