How to Do UX Design with Claude Code

Claude Code is strong at generating UI but weak at UX judgment - flow, hierarchy, and edge states - unless a skill supplies that reasoning. The most-installed UX reasoning engine is the ui-ux-pro-max family, whose design skills carry 88,743 GitHub stars (skills.sh registry, GitHub). This guide shows how to make Claude think about UX before it styles anything. Start from the UX design hub.

Key takeaways

• The ui-ux-pro-max design skills lead UX reasoning with 88,743 GitHub stars and 32,795 installs on the ckm:design-system variant (skills.sh registry, GitHub).
• A dedicated ux-designer skill exists at 3,647 installs and 113,803 stars (skills.sh registry, GitHub) for persona, flow, and journey work.
• UX and visual polish are different jobs: pair a UX skill with frontend-design (624,710 installs, skills.sh registry) so structure and aesthetics are both deliberate.
• Open-tool UX work is covered too: penpot-uiux-design has 11,434 installs (skills.sh registry) for the open-source Penpot workflow.
• Compare the full set on the design & UI/UX category and the best skills for frontend design pillar.

What is the difference between UI and UX skills?

UI skills decide how a screen looks; UX skills decide how the product behaves across a user's whole task. A UI skill styles a button, while a UX skill asks whether that button should exist, what happens on error, and how the empty state reads. The ui-ux-pro-max engine bundles 99 UX guidelines alongside its visual system (88,743 stars, GitHub), which is why it scores as a UX skill and not just a theming one.

What is the best skill for UX design with Claude Code?

The best UX skill is the ui-ux-pro-max design engine, whose ckm:design variant carries 88,743 stars and 32,495 installs (skills.sh registry, GitHub), because it loads explicit UX heuristics into context before any layout is drawn. Install it with:

/plugin marketplace add nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill

A focused alternative is ux-designer (3,647 installs, 113,803 stars - skills.sh registry, GitHub) for persona and journey mapping. See how both rank on the best skills for frontend design pillar and the UI design hub.

How do you get Claude to consider edge states and flows?

You load a UX skill that carries an explicit heuristics checklist, so Claude evaluates empty, loading, error, and permission states instead of only the happy path. The ui-ux-pro-max engine ships 99 UX guidelines (GitHub) that force these questions into the reasoning step; without such a skill the model defaults to a single ideal-case screen. Run the UX skill first, then hand its structure to a visual skill.

How do you turn UX decisions into polished screens?

You chain the UX skill into a visual-direction skill so the researched flow gets a deliberate look. frontend-design by Anthropic (624,710 installs, 147,832 stars - skills.sh registry, GitHub) takes the structured UX brief and applies typography, spacing, and color with intent rather than defaults. This two-stage pipeline - UX reasoning then visual polish - is the reliable pattern.

A complete starter stack

• ui-ux-pro-max design engine (32,795 installs) - UX heuristics and design system
• ux-designer (3,647 installs) - personas, flows, journeys
• frontend-design by Anthropic (624,710 installs) - visual direction
• penpot-uiux-design (11,434 installs) - open-source design-tool workflow

Common pitfalls

• Treating a theming skill as a UX skill and shipping unconsidered flows.
• Designing only the happy path with no empty or error states.
• Styling before the flow is settled, so polish hides a broken journey.

Begin on the UX design hub, reason about the flow first, then style it - the product feels considered, not just decorated.

Common questions