Which Apple design skill should you use with Claude Code?

Ask Claude Code for an Apple-style screen and you usually get frosted glass and a big bold headline, while the motion stays linear and the gestures feel dead. The right fix depends on where the code runs. A web app wants the apple-design skill, and a SwiftUI app wants a Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) skill.

Key takeaways

• Emil Kowalski's apple-design has 256,021 installs and 51,689 stars (skills.sh registry, GitHub), the most of any Apple design skill compared here.
• apple-design targets the web. Its SKILL.md maps Apple's WWDC design talks onto CSS, Pointer Events, requestAnimationFrame and spring libraries such as Motion.
• For native iOS work, wshobson's mobile-ios-design has the most installs of the HIG skills at 23,998, while the ios-hig-design skill (8,415 installs) adds a scored 10-point screen diagnostic (skills.sh registry, GitHub).
• apple-hig-expert (669 installs) ships a Python checker for contrast ratios and 44x44 pt tap targets, so its audits come with measured numbers.
• OpenDesign's apple-hig (3,290 installs) is a 43-line pointer to the upstream raintree-technology/apple-hig-skills bundle, so it adds little on its own.

Why does Claude Code get Apple design wrong without a skill?

Without a skill, the model copies how Apple interfaces look and skips how they behave. The apple-design SKILL.md puts behavior first. It calls interruptibility "the single most important principle" and tells the agent to start every new animation from the element's current on-screen value, so a user can grab a closing sheet mid-flight and pull it back. It also rules out CSS transitions and @keyframes for anything gesture-driven, since those cannot be reversed smoothly. The file credits most of this to Apple's Designing Fluid Interfaces talk from WWDC 2018.

What is the best Apple design skill for Claude Code?

For web interfaces, the best Apple design skill is apple-design from emilkowalski/skills, with 256,021 installs and 51,689 stars (skills.sh registry, GitHub). The repo is MIT-licensed and was created on 2026-03-16 (GitHub). The README install command is:

npx skills@latest add emilkowalski/skills

Where most design prompts stay vague, this file gives numbers. Default springs are critically damped (damping 1.0), and bounce (damping around 0.8) is kept for gestures that carried momentum, like a flick. You also get Apple's momentum projection function for picking where a flicked card lands, a rubber-band formula for edges, and backdrop-filter recipes for translucent toolbars. Reduced motion is covered through prefers-reduced-motion, prefers-reduced-transparency and prefers-contrast.

For native apps, a strong alternative is ios-hig-design from wondelai (8,415 installs, MIT on GitHub), installed with npx skills add wondelai/skills/ios-hig-design --global. Both sit in the wider ranking of Best Skills for Design, Web and UI.

How do the Apple HIG skills differ from apple-design?

The HIG skills write SwiftUI and UIKit and judge the result against Apple's platform rules, while apple-design writes web code. The source rules are Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines, and each skill packages a different slice of them.

• mobile-ios-design from wshobson/agents (23,998 installs) is the most-installed HIG skill. It is a SwiftUI pattern reference for HIG principles, NavigationStack, TabView and sheets, SF Symbols, Dynamic Type and Dark Mode, with notes for iPad and visionOS.
• ios-hig-design (8,415 installs) scores a screen out of 10: one point per row of a six-row diagnostic, plus up to four for native idiom. It pins numbers such as a 44pt minimum touch target and a 49pt tab bar.
• The apple-hig-expert skill (669 installs) has a design mode and an audit mode. Its hig_checker.py script tests contrast and tap targets, then scores from 100 down, 10 points per failed check. It also covers Liquid Glass and the SwiftUI glassEffect modifier.
• apple-hig-designer by jamesrochabrun (1,056 installs) is a 946-line reference of SwiftUI snippets for navigation, forms, Dynamic Type, dark mode and app icons. Its repo was last pushed on 2026-01-14 (GitHub).
• design from rshankras/claude-code-apple-skills (685 installs) routes to seven sub-skills, including Liquid Glass, SF Symbols and typography, and its frontmatter targets iOS 27 and macOS 27.
• apple-ui-designer by heyman333 (882 installs) is a short redesign prompt that prefers native components, bottom sheets, and no bounce unless the system would bounce.

The apple-hig skill from OpenDesign (3,290 installs) needs a caveat. Its SKILL.md tells you to install the upstream raintree-technology/apple-hig-skills bundle to get the full workflow, so on its own it adds little.

Can you use an iOS HIG skill for a web app?

You can, but most of the output will not fit. HIG skills talk in points, safe areas and modifiers like .ignoresSafeArea(), and apple-hig-designer writes its motion advice as withAnimation(.spring()) calls. None of that ports to a React component. apple-design covers the same ground in browser terms, with Pointer Events and setPointerCapture for 1:1 drag, transform and opacity for smooth frames, and rem spacing so layouts grow with the user's text size. If you ship a web app and an iOS app, install one skill of each kind and name the target in your prompt. The native side gets more depth in How to Design a Mobile App UI with Claude Code.

Which skills pair well with apple-design?

Emil Kowalski's animation skills pair best, because apple-design sets the physics and they handle review and wording. review-animations has 267,010 installs and animation-vocabulary has 248,692 (skills.sh registry, GitHub). The guide to Emil Kowalski's Claude Code skills walks through the rest of the set, and the animation and motion hub lists options from other authors.

A complete starter stack

• apple-design (256,021 installs) for any web UI that should move and layer like Apple software.
• animation-vocabulary (248,692 installs) so your feedback on motion uses precise terms.
• review-animations (267,010 installs) as the motion check before merge.
• ios-hig-design (8,415 installs) if you also ship a native iPhone or iPad app.
• apple-hig-expert (669 installs) when you want a scored, script-checked HIG audit before release.

Common pitfalls

• Copying the look onto the web. A blurred toolbar animated with fixed-duration CSS transitions still feels stiff, and apple-design treats springs and velocity handoff as the core of the effect.
• Stacking translucent layers. apple-design says never to put a light translucent surface on another, and apple-hig-expert flags low contrast over glass without being asked.
• Ignoring platform conventions on iOS. ios-hig-design puts a screen that leaks Android idioms or hardcodes color and size at 5 or 6 out of 10.

Use apple-design when the code runs in a browser and a HIG skill when it runs in SwiftUI, and read the source in emilkowalski/skills before you trust any summary of it, this one included.

Common questions