Go deeper: from working to repeatable
The distance between one good run and consistently good runs isn't prompt technique. It's a few pieces of infrastructure: how capability gets captured, how brand gets reused, how quality gets caught automatically, how artifacts enter version control, and what it all costs.
These nine chapters don't need reading in order. Take the one you're stuck on.
What's here
| Chapter | What it covers | Read it when |
|---|---|---|
| 01 · Skills | What a SKILL.md is and how to write one | You've done the same kind of job three times |
| 02 · Systems | 152 brand systems, and extracting your own | Output doesn't look like your company |
| 03 · Templates | Finding, installing, and contributing to 479+ plugins | You keep starting from blank |
| 04 · Craft | 12 rules no brand overrides | Output looks good and doesn't work |
| 05 · Anti-slop | The form, the critique, and the linter | It reads as AI-made at a glance |
| 06 · Export | HTML / PDF / PPTX / MP4 / ZIP, and git | Someone else has to pick it up |
| 07 · Media | Image generation, code motion, HTML video | You need more than static pages |
| 08 · Cost and teams | BYOK, managed tiers, teams and enterprise | You need to justify or contain the spend |
Three layers
The key to understanding OpenDesign is seeing that "how to make it" splits into three layers, each minding its own business:
| Layer | File | Governs | Decided by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skill | SKILL.md | What kind of thing, built which way | The skill you pick |
| Design system | DESIGN.md | What it looks like — colour, type, spacing, voice | The system you pick |
| Craft | craft/*.md | What counts as acceptable — a11y, states, motion discipline | The project. Brands don't override it. |
A generation is those three stacked: the skill says "a landing page, with these sections", the system says "in this palette and this type", and Craft says "the button needs a disabled state and the motion must respect prefers-reduced-motion".
All three are Markdown, all three fork, all three travel. That's the substantive difference from a hosted product — what you accumulate isn't locked in anyone's account.
A suggested ramp
Week one: use what ships. Pick skills and systems from the library, run a few real jobs, build a feel for it. Don't start by writing your own skills.
Week two: extract your brand. Pull a DESIGN.md out of a screenshot or a Figma export and commit it. Highest return per hour in the whole tool — pay once, benefit on every generation after.
Week three: turn the repeat work into a skill. You'll notice one kind of job always gets roughly the same prompt. Freeze it into a SKILL.md.
After that: wire it into the process. Artifacts into git, exports into your hand-off flow, spend into the budget.
Don't skip week one
Start by writing skills and systems and you won't know what to put in them. Run the shipped ones a few times, read how they're written, then adapt.