ERA OF MINDS

What is Taste-Skill? The Claude Code skill that kills generic AI landing pages

By Era of Minds ·

Short answer

Taste-Skill is an open-source Agent Skill by Leon Lin (@LexnLin / Leonxlnx). It steers Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and similar agents away from the purple-gradient, three-card landing page everyone can spot as AI. The default skill picks an art direction, pulls real photographs, then opens the page in a real browser and fails common slop patterns. Install with one npx skills add command. MIT-licensed. About 96,700 GitHub stars as of October 15, 2026.

Era of Minds cover: 'Agents now have taste.' Taste-Skill v2 Claude Code skill example coffee storefront page from Leonxlnx/taste-skill.
Figure: coffee storefront example from the Leonxlnx/taste-skill v2 examples (MIT). Stars and launch views as of Oct 15, 2026.

What is the Taste-Skill Claude Code skill?

Ask most coding agents for a landing page and you get the same thing: mesh gradients, three equal feature cards, eyebrow labels like "01 ยท Capabilities", and copy full of em dashes. Taste-Skill exists to stop that.

It is a set of Agent Skills (portable SKILL.md files) that give the agent design rules before it writes HTML or CSS. The default skill, install name design-taste-frontend, is built for landing pages, portfolios, marketing sites, product pages and redesigns. The README is explicit: not dashboards, not data tables.

Leon Lin launched Taste-Skill v2 on X on October 13, 2026. That post had drawn about 173,000 views and 2,560 likes when we checked on October 15. The GitHub repo (created February 19, 2026) is MIT-licensed and sits at about 96,700 stars and 6,560 forks as of the same day. Docs live at tasteskill.dev/docs.

How do you install Taste-Skill?

Default skill only:

npx skills add https://github.com/Leonxlnx/taste-skill --skill "design-taste-frontend"

Every skill in the repo:

npx skills add https://github.com/Leonxlnx/taste-skill

That uses the npx skills CLI and drops a SKILL.md the agent reads on its own. No extra config step.

Inside Claude Code you can also install it as a plugin:

/plugin marketplace add Leonxlnx/taste-skill
/plugin install taste-skill@taste-skill

Codex has a matching plugin path (codex plugin marketplace add Leonxlnx/taste-skill then codex plugin add taste-skill@taste-skill). Start a new Codex session after that so the skills load.

Requirements from the README and release notes: Node 22 or later, plus Chrome, Edge or Chromium installed. The skill installs nothing of its own and needs no API keys. Finding photographs needs network access.

What is new in Taste-Skill v2?

v2.0.0 shipped October 13, 2026. The release notes call it a new default skill, not a patch on v1. The old default stays available as design-taste-frontend-v1 if a project depends on the old behavior.

What changed, in the authors' own numbers:

  • A library instead of adjectives. Built from a study of 247 curated sites: 20 directions, 48 hero compositions, 172 section layouts, 44 type systems, 56 palettes.
  • Direction deal. scripts/draw.mjs deals three directions. The agent picks the one that can carry something only this client has.
  • Real pictures. scripts/assets.mjs finds photographs, maps and footage of the subject's world in open collections, downloads them and records the credits.
  • Browser inspector. scripts/inspect.mjs opens the page at 1440, 768 and 390 px and fails it on eyebrow labels, hairlines, gradients, resting shadows, headlines over two lines, empty screens and covered text.
  • Look-and-fix loop. The agent critiques its own screenshots and fixes the top three problems, up to three rounds.

Their published A/B on four test briefs: without the skill, 37 small labels and 249 hairline rules, and no photographs. With it, none of those labels or hairlines, and 48 photographs.

How does Taste-Skill decide what to build?

Docs at tasteskill.dev walk the v2 flow. First the agent reads the brief: page kind, vibe words, audience, references, brand assets. It writes a one-line design read before any code. If the brief maps to Material, Fluent, Carbon, Polaris, Primer, shadcn, Tailwind and similar, it reaches for that package instead of inventing a fake system.

Three locks stay fixed for the whole page: one accent color, one corner-radius system, one page theme (light, dark or auto). Hero rules are hard: headline at most two lines on desktop, subtext at most twenty words, primary CTA visible without scroll, nav a single line and at most 80 px tall.

Section 9 of the skill is a ban list. Em dashes and en dashes are out of every string. So are numbered eyebrows, hero version labels, fake photo-credit captions, mesh-blob gradients, three-equal-card feature rows, scroll-cue arrows, and hand-rolled window.addEventListener('scroll') for decoration. The agent is supposed to enforce those on every run.

If you already run Claude Code skills for other jobs, this sits next to Anatomy (interactive isometric explainers) and tools that turn agent code into motion like ManimGX or Claude Motion.

What else is in the Taste-Skill repo?

Besides the default, the docs list focused skills: redesign-skill (audit-first on existing sites), soft-skill, minimalist-skill, brutalist-skill, output-skill (blocks placeholder and half-finished output), stitch-skill, image-to-code-skill, and imagegen skills for web and mobile frames. There is also a stricter gpt-tasteskill variant aimed at GPT and Codex.

Separately, the README points to TasteCode, a desktop app that briefs, builds and visually reviews UI with the same idea. Source is on GitHub under Leonxlnx/tastecode. You do not need TasteCode to use the skill.

What are the limits?

v2 is still marked experimental on the docs site while it iterates toward a stable cut. The install name design-taste-frontend stays the same; section wording can still change.

It is for public pages, not product dashboards. The browser check needs a real Chromium-family browser on the machine. And Taste-Skill does not replace a designer. It stops the average AI page. You still brief it, review the result, and edit the SKILL.md if your brand rules conflict with the defaults.

If you burn a lot of Claude Code tokens on frontend work, the Claude Code cost calculator helps compare API spend with Pro and Max. Want prompt ideas for other agent jobs? Grab our 50 free AI prompts that actually work.

Key facts

  • Product: Taste-Skill, an Agent Skill pack for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other SKILL.md agents.
  • Author: Leon Lin, @LexnLin / Leonxlnx. v2 launch post October 13, 2026 (~173k views / ~2.56k likes when checked Oct 15).
  • Repo: Leonxlnx/taste-skill, created February 19, 2026. MIT. About 96,700 stars / 6,560 forks as of October 15, 2026.
  • Install: npx skills add https://github.com/Leonxlnx/taste-skill --skill "design-taste-frontend". Node 22+. Chrome, Edge or Chromium. No API keys.
  • v2 library: 247 curated sites; 20 directions; 48 hero compositions; 172 section layouts; 44 type systems; 56 palettes.
  • Docs: tasteskill.dev/docs. Related app: tastecode.dev.

FAQ

What is Taste-Skill?

Taste-Skill is an open-source set of Agent Skills by Leon Lin (@LexnLin / Leonxlnx) that steers coding agents away from generic AI landing pages. The default skill, install name design-taste-frontend, gives the agent an art direction, finds real photographs, and checks the rendered page in a real browser. It works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents that read SKILL.md files.

How do I install Taste-Skill for Claude Code?

Run: npx skills add https://github.com/Leonxlnx/taste-skill --skill "design-taste-frontend". That adds a SKILL.md the agent reads automatically. Or inside Claude Code: /plugin marketplace add Leonxlnx/taste-skill then /plugin install taste-skill@taste-skill. Needs Node 22+ and Chrome, Edge or Chromium. No API keys. Finding pictures needs network access.

What is new in Taste-Skill v2?

v2.0.0, released October 13, 2026, is a new default skill, not an edit of v1. It was built from a study of 247 curated sites (20 directions, 48 hero compositions, 172 section layouts, 44 type systems, 56 palettes). A draw script deals three directions; an assets script finds real photos; an inspect script opens the page at 1440, 768 and 390 px and fails common AI-slop patterns; then the agent fixes the top three problems up to three rounds.

Is Taste-Skill free and open source?

Yes. The Leonxlnx/taste-skill repo is MIT-licensed. As of October 15, 2026 it has about 96,700 GitHub stars. Docs live at tasteskill.dev. There is also TasteCode, a related desktop app at tastecode.dev, with source on GitHub.

What pages is Taste-Skill built for?

Landing pages, portfolios, marketing sites, product pages and redesigns. The README is clear it is not aimed at dashboards or data tables. A separate redesign-skill audits existing sites before changing them.

How is Taste-Skill different from Anatomy?

Both are open-source Claude Code skills installed with npx skills add. Anatomy builds interactive isometric machine explainers as SVG. Taste-Skill designs websites with art direction, real photos and a browser check so the page does not look like generic AI output. Different jobs: diagrams versus frontends.

Sources

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