Design Shotgun — Workflow

Overview

How the design-shotgun skill works, step by step.

Source Workflow

Claude skill workflow.

Step-by-step Workflow

design-shotgun — Workflow

Auto-generated from SKILL.md. The skill itself is the source of truth; this is a human-readable map of what it does and how it runs.

What it does & when to use

Design shotgun: generate multiple AI design variants, open a comparison board, collect structured feedback, and iterate. Standalone design exploration you can run anytime. Use when: "explore designs", "show me options", "design variants", "visual brainstorm", or "I don't like how this looks". Proactively suggest when the user describes a UI feature but hasn't seen what it could look like. (gstack)

Triggers

  • explore designs
  • show me options
  • design variants
  • visual brainstorm
  • I don

How it works

Workflow outline (sections of SKILL.md):

  1. Preamble (run first)
  2. Plan Mode Safe Operations
  3. Skill Invocation During Plan Mode
  4. Skill routing
  5. AskUserQuestion Format
  6. Artifacts Sync (skill start)
  7. Model-Specific Behavioral Patch (claude)
  8. Voice
  9. Context Recovery
  10. Writing Style (skip entirely if EXPLAIN_LEVEL: terse appears in the preamble echo OR the user's current message explicitly requests terse / no-explanations output)
  11. Completeness Principle — Boil the Lake
  12. Confusion Protocol
  13. Continuous Checkpoint Mode
  14. Context Health (soft directive)
  15. Question Tuning (skip entirely if QUESTION_TUNING: false)
  16. Completion Status Protocol
  17. Operational Self-Improvement
  18. Telemetry (run last)
  19. Plan Status Footer
  20. DESIGN SETUP (run this check BEFORE any design mockup command)
  21. UX Principles: How Users Actually Behave
  22. Step 0: Session Detection
  23. Step 1: Context Gathering
  24. Step 2: Taste Memory
  25. Step 3: Generate Variants
  26. Step 4: Comparison Board + Feedback Loop
  27. Step 5: Feedback Confirmation
  28. Step 6: Save & Next Steps
  29. Important Rules

Components

Single-file skill — all instructions live in SKILL.md.

Invoke

  • Slash: /design-shotgun
  • Or a natural-language request matching the triggers above.

Source: SKILL.md in this directory.

Execution Logic

The skill executes when its trigger fires (slash command, natural-language match, or direct invocation). It reads its references, applies its rules, and produces the documented outputs.

Edge Cases

See the source skill's references/ and scripts/ folders for edge-case handling.

Failure Handling

A skill failure surfaces as a tool error or a partial output; never a silent skip. Re-run with --verbose (where applicable) for diagnostics.

Integration Notes

  • Claude — invoked via the Skill tool with skill: "design-shotgun".
  • Codex — referenced from AGENTS.md if mirrored.
  • Antigravity — referenced from the workspace agent rules if mirrored.
  • HQ Project — listed on the landing page Skills section + post-login sidebar.
  • MD Project (md.sgnk.ai) — file rendered from Skills/Design Shotgun/workflow.md.
  • Obsidian — file rendered with frontmatter + tags.

Usage Examples

Invoke via slash command or natural language matching the skill description.

Source: ~/.claude/skills/design-shotgun/WORKFLOW.md