UI/UX & Design · Blog Post
UI/UX Pro Max: the open-source skill that gives coding agents design taste
Coding agents write working UI that all looks the same. This MIT-licensed skill fixes that by making the agent generate a full design system — style, palette, typography, anti-patterns — before it writes a single component.
By Mehadi Hasan 7 min read
What it is
ui-ux-pro-max-skill by nextlevelbuilder is an installable skill for AI coding assistants — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, and roughly fifteen others. It packs a curated design database behind a small search engine that the agent queries whenever you ask it to build or fix UI. At the time of writing the repo sits at over 100k GitHub stars, and the core version is fully open source under MIT.
The pitch is simple: instead of letting the model improvise design decisions mid-implementation, the skill makes it decide first — one style direction, one palette, one type pairing, one list of anti-patterns — and then code against that contract.
What's in the database
The styles range from the expected (glassmorphism, minimalism, brutalism, bento grid) to niche sets for landing pages and BI dashboards. The 192 color palettes are aligned one-to-one with 192 product types, so a banking app and a beauty spa never get the same suggestion. Stack-specific guidelines cover 22 frameworks — HTML + Tailwind by default, plus React, Next.js, Vue, Nuxt, Svelte, Astro, Angular, Laravel, SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, React Native, Flutter, and a set of desktop targets (WPF, WinUI 3, JavaFX, Avalonia).
How the v2.0 reasoning engine works
The flagship feature of v2.0 is the design system generator. When you ask for, say, "a landing page for my beauty spa", the skill runs a four-stage pipeline:
- Multi-domain search — five parallel BM25 searches across product types (192 categories), styles (84), palettes (192), landing patterns (34), and typography (74 pairings)
- Reasoning engine — matches the product to UI category rules, ranks style priorities, and filters industry anti-patterns using 161 JSON decision rules
- Design system output — pattern, style, exact hex palette, Google Fonts pairing, key effects, and an explicit "avoid" list
- Pre-delivery checklist — SVG icons only, cursor feedback, 4.5:1 contrast, visible focus states, reduced-motion support, responsive at 375/768/1024/1440px
The anti-pattern filtering is the underrated part. The rules encode industry judgment like "no AI purple/pink gradients for banking" or "no dark mode for a wellness brand" — exactly the kind of taste call a model won't reliably make on its own.
Example output (condensed) — "beauty spa wellness"
STYLE: Soft UI Evolution — soft shadows, subtle depth, premium feel
COLORS: #E8B4B8 primary · #A8D5BA secondary · #D4AF37 CTA
#FFF5F5 background · #2D3436 text
TYPOGRAPHY: Cormorant Garamond / Montserrat — elegant, calming
PATTERN: Hero-centric + social proof, CTA above the fold
AVOID: Neon colors · harsh animations · dark mode
AI purple/pink gradients
Installation
In Claude Code, two commands install it straight from the plugin marketplace:
Claude Code marketplace
/plugin marketplace add nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill /plugin install ui-ux-pro-max@ui-ux-pro-max-skill
For every other assistant (and for Claude Code too, if you prefer), the npm CLI generates the correct file structure per platform:
npm CLI (any assistant)
npm install -g ui-ux-pro-max-cli
cd /path/to/your/project
uipro init --ai claude # or: cursor, windsurf, copilot,
# codex, gemini, continue, roocode …
uipro init --ai claude --global # install once for all projects
The only prerequisite is Python 3 for the search script — standard library only, no packages, no network calls. The README is explicit that agents should never install Python themselves; if it's missing, the skill tells the agent to ask you.
Using it day to day
On most platforms the skill auto-activates: you just ask for UI work ("build a landing page for my SaaS product", "create a healthcare analytics dashboard") and the design-system step happens before code generation. A few platforms (Kiro, GitHub Copilot, Roo Code) use an explicit /ui-ux-pro-max slash command instead.
You can also drive the generator directly, which is useful for exploring options before committing:
Direct CLI access
# Full design system for a project
python3 .claude/skills/ui-ux-pro-max/scripts/search.py \
"fintech banking" --design-system -p "MyApp"
# Domain-specific lookups
python3 … search.py "glassmorphism" --domain style
python3 … search.py "elegant serif" --domain typography
python3 … search.py "form validation" --stack react
The killer feature for real projects is persistence. Adding --persist writes the generated system to design-system/MASTER.md, with optional per-page override files under design-system/pages/. Commit that folder and every future agent session — page two, page ten, next month's redesign — reads the same source of truth instead of reinventing the palette.
Free vs paid
Everything described above — the full database, the reasoning engine, the CLI, all 22 stacks — is in the MIT-licensed repo. A separate premium tier (sold at uupm.cc) adds brand-identity work: logo generation, corporate identity programs, banners, slide decks, and custom iconography, plus an enterprise design-token architecture. For the core "make my agent design properly" workflow, the open-source version is the whole product.
My take
I run this skill in Claude Code on this very site — the live workflow panel on the homepage hero was redesigned with it active. What it changes in practice is the order of decisions: the agent states the design contract up front, which makes drift visible the moment it happens instead of three pages later. The pre-delivery checklist alone (contrast in both themes, no emoji icons, focus states, reduced motion) catches the failures I used to fix by hand after every AI UI build.
Where it won't help: projects with an existing brand system (follow that instead), pixel-perfect Figma implementation (decisions are already made), and anything without a UI. And its output is a recommendation, not a verdict — you still get final say on taste.
Frequently asked questions
How do I use it outside Claude Code?
The npm CLI generates the right file structure per assistant: npm i -g ui-ux-pro-max-cli, then uipro init --ai cursor (or windsurf, copilot, codex, gemini, continue, roocode, and a dozen more). The data layer — CSV datasets plus a Python search script — is the same for every platform.
Does it lock every project into the same look?
No — the design system is generated per project from product type, industry, and style keywords, using 161 industry-specific reasoning rules. Two different briefs produce two different systems; what it locks in is consistency within a project.
Is it free?
The core skill is MIT-licensed open source with the full 84-style/192-palette database included. A separate paid tier adds brand-identity generation (logos, banners, slides, iconography) and enterprise design-token architecture — not needed for the core design-system workflow.
Where does it come from?
It is published by nextlevelbuilder at github.com/nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill. This post documents the workflow I use with it; the skill itself and its datasets are theirs.