/mies

A design-taste skill that removes what an interface doesn't need, then perfects what's left.

Mies van der Rohe spent a career taking things out. Ornament first, then walls, until a building was barely more than structure, glass, and light. This skill points that instinct at screens. It asks one question of every element: why is this here? Whatever can't answer is removed. What survives gets made exact — proportion, spacing, alignment, type, color, state, motion, the words.

Less is not cold. The warmth lives in the small decisions: sensible defaults, copy written for an actual person, screens that hold together when the data turns ugly. That's the part most reduction forgets.

Install

npx skills add deeflect/mies

Or drop this repo into your agent's skills directory by hand.

Use

Type /mies in Claude Code whenever you're making, redesigning, critiquing, or cutting back a screen people actually use. For new work it runs Frame → Set → Compose. For a small fix, it tells you what it sees and gets on with it.

Modes

• Frame — Decide what you're building and why, and reject the obvious version of it, before any code.
• Set — Lay the foundation once: type, color, spacing, the tokens and states everything else inherits.
• Compose — Build the screen, or rebuild it, to match how it's actually used.
• Inspect — Critique what already exists. Worst problems first, no padding.
• Refine — Cut, tune, then prove it. Polish what's left and make sure it survives real data, edge cases, and a screen reader.
• Move — Motion and feel, but only when they make the state clearer. Otherwise it holds still.
• Word — Interface copy: warm, clear, nothing excessive, no overexplaining, no AI tells.

Under all of it runs one loop: notice, frame, try a few directions, choose a structure, build, tune in the real interface, critique, cut, prove.

Structure

skills/mies/
  SKILL.md
  references/
    copy.md
    critique.md
    design-system.md
    motion-and-tuning.md
    patterns.md
    refine.md
    registers.md
    workflow.md
  templates/
    design-foundation.md
    exception-record.md
    primitive-spec.md
    token-table.md

SKILL.md is the lean router. It loads only the references the current mode needs.

License

MIT.

Designed and built by Dee Kargaev. An independent, non-commercial homage — not affiliated with or endorsed by the estate of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or the Fundació Mies van der Rohe.