canvas-design
Create beautiful visual art in .png and .pdf documents using design philosophy. You should use this skill when the user asks to create a poster, piece of art, design, or other static piece. Create original visual designs, never copying existing artists' work to avoid copyright violations.
58
39%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
89%
1.48xAverage score across 3 eval scenarios
Failed to scan
The risk profile of this skill
Optimize this skill with Tessl
npx tessl skill review --optimize ./plugins/all-skills/skills/canvas-design/SKILL.mdQuality
Discovery
67%Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.
The description adequately communicates both what the skill does and when to use it, earning good marks on completeness. However, it suffers from somewhat vague language ('design philosophy', 'beautiful visual art') and could benefit from more specific capability listing and broader trigger term coverage. The second-person voice ('You should use this skill') should be penalized per the rubric guidelines, though the rest uses appropriate framing.
Suggestions
Replace vague phrases like 'using design philosophy' and 'beautiful visual art' with specific capabilities (e.g., 'Creates posters, illustrations, infographics, banners, and other static visual designs').
Expand trigger terms to include common user phrases like 'illustration', 'graphic', 'infographic', 'flyer', 'banner', 'visual artwork', 'image creation'.
Rewrite in third person voice ('Creates visual art...') instead of second person ('You should use this skill') to align with style guidelines.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Names the domain (visual art/design) and some actions (create posters, art, designs), but 'using design philosophy' is vague and the specific capabilities like file format handling aren't well elaborated beyond mentioning .png and .pdf. | 2 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both 'what' (create visual art in .png and .pdf documents) and 'when' ('when the user asks to create a poster, piece of art, design, or other static piece'), with explicit trigger guidance. | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Includes some natural trigger terms like 'poster', 'piece of art', 'design', and file formats '.png' and '.pdf', but misses common variations users might say such as 'illustration', 'graphic', 'infographic', 'flyer', 'banner', 'visual', or 'artwork'. | 2 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | The mention of 'static piece' and visual art helps distinguish it from general document creation, but 'design' is broad and could overlap with UI design, web design, or presentation skills. The .pdf output could also conflict with PDF-focused skills. | 2 / 3 |
Total | 9 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
12%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
This skill reads more like an inspirational creative brief than actionable technical instructions. It is extremely verbose and repetitive, particularly around the themes of craftsmanship and minimalism, while paradoxically lacking any concrete code, tool usage, or executable steps for actually producing PDF/PNG output. The philosophical framing dominates at the expense of practical guidance Claude would need to generate visual artifacts.
Suggestions
Add concrete, executable code examples showing how to generate PDF/PNG files (e.g., using reportlab, Pillow, or cairo) with specific rendering patterns like the geometric shapes and patterns described.
Eliminate redundant repetitions of 'expert craftsmanship,' 'masterpiece,' and 'minimal text' directives — state each principle once clearly instead of 5+ times.
Extract the philosophy examples into a separate reference file (e.g., PHILOSOPHY_EXAMPLES.md) and the canvas creation details into another (e.g., CANVAS_GUIDE.md) to improve progressive disclosure.
Add specific validation steps: e.g., verify PDF renders correctly, check that text doesn't overlap by inspecting bounding boxes, confirm fonts loaded from ./canvas-fonts directory.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | Extremely verbose and repetitive. The instruction to emphasize 'expert craftsmanship' is itself repeated at least 5-6 times across different sections. Concepts like 'minimal text,' 'visual expression,' and 'masterpiece quality' are restated redundantly throughout. The skill could be cut by 60%+ without losing actionable content. | 1 / 3 |
Actionability | Despite its length, the skill provides no concrete code, commands, or executable examples for actually generating PDF/PNG files. It references a `./canvas-fonts` directory but gives no code for rendering, no library usage, no specific tool invocations. The guidance is almost entirely abstract and philosophical rather than instructional. | 1 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | There is a discernible two-step workflow (create philosophy .md, then create canvas .pdf/.png) with a refinement pass at the end. However, there are no validation checkpoints, no error recovery steps, and the 'final step' refinement is vague. The sequence is present but lacks concrete verification gates. | 2 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | The entire skill is a monolithic wall of text with no references to external files for detailed guidance. The philosophy examples, canvas creation instructions, and multi-page options are all inlined despite being separable concerns. No bundle files exist to support progressive disclosure, and the content doesn't attempt to organize itself across files. | 1 / 3 |
Total | 5 / 12 Passed |
Validation
90%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 10 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
| Criteria | Description | Result |
|---|---|---|
frontmatter_unknown_keys | Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata | Warning |
Total | 10 / 11 Passed | |
- Repository
- davepoon/buildwithclaude
- Commit
d065ead
- Reviewed
Table of Contents
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