I’m like 98% sure that you should set `text-wrap: pretty;` by default globally in your app. It gives you nicer line breaks (avoids orphans),which is what you want most of the time. Then fix the edge cases where orphans are actually what you need like some headings (edge case!).↗

Currently I’m really into markdown graphs with one vibrant accent color↗

Why friction might actually be a thing we need: emilkowal.ski/ui/friction-as…↗

New skill: /animate Build an animation from scratch while choosing the right curve, duration, properties, and so on. Now you have the whole flow: /find-animation-opportunities → /animate → /review-animations github.com/emilkowalski/s…↗

New skill: /prototype Builds multiple different versions of an animation or UI element so you can go through them using a switcher. The version you select will be saved via query params so you can share it with your teammates. github.com/emilkowalski/s…↗

Something that AI unlocks is being able to try a few different variations of a feature quickly. I often ask my coding agent to come up with a few different variants and add a switcher so I can easily swap between them. It also saves your selection as a query param so I can show…↗

New skill: /pick-ui-library Have your agent pick the right UI library for the task based on libraries I use and trust, instead of letting AI hand-roll a toast component or install an abandoned package. Includes Sonner, cmdk, base-ui, Satori, and more. …↗

New skill: /find-animation-opportunities Search your UI for places that would genuinely benefit from motion, while also telling you what not to animate. github.com/emilkowalski/s…↗

New skill: /improve-animations Inspired by @shadcn’s improve skill I made one specifically for animations. Use your most capable model to audit animations in your project and hand the execution to cheaper models. Fable is available through July 12, so make good use out of it!↗

Some of my favorite UI libraries: NumberFlow for animating numbers. input-otp for one-time passwords. Liveline for real-time charts. Leva for customizable GUIs. cmdk for command menus. Virtuoso for virtualization. dnd kit for drag and drop. Sonner for notifications.↗

New skill: /animation-vocabulary Helps you get better animations from an AI by telling it exactly what you want by using the right words. "morph", "rubber-banding", "layout animation", and more.↗

I’ve been tinkering with some new skills for my skills repo over the weekend, and it seems like there’s so much untapped potential for design engineering skills. /emil-design-eng skill can already help you a ton, and it’s doing more than 100k installs already, but there’s mor…↗

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Given how impressed I was with Cursor’s Thermo-Nuclear Code Quality Review skill, I decided to create a similar one, but specifically for animations. /review-animations to review, and /emil-design-eng to build animations. They complement each other well emilkowal.ski/skill↗

Updated this Family-inspired trash interaction with Motion’s new `arc()` api↗

To get good animations from an AI you need to get good at telling it what you want: - "stagger this list of items" - "make this animation direction-aware" - "spacial consistency", "crossfade", "layout animation", I made a motion vocabulary for this: animations.dev/vocabulary↗

When it comes to more visual work, like animations, coding agents don’t quite know what great feels like yet. Here’s my way of fixing it: emilkowal.ski/ui/agents-with…↗

Quick demo of the animations.dev skill file. Improve any animation based on my knowledge and experience gathered over the years:↗

Al produces motion that works, but feels mediocre, and if you can't tell the difference, you'll ship it. You'll settle for good enough, and that's not good enough. Train Your Judgement emilkowal.ski/ui/train-your-…↗

New lesson for upcoming animations.dev enrollment. It’s about training your judgement. You’ll see two versions of the same animation, your job is to choose one and explain why it’s better. A great skill to have when working with coding agents like Claude Code and Codex↗

Wrote about how I built my animation course. How I thought about its content, design, marketing, and more. emilkowal.ski/ui/building-an…↗