Dev Design
Structured design-review phase: cross-checks a design doc against its requirements before you build.
Test report
- Verdict
- Tested · Works
- Score
- Tested
- Jul 20, 2026
- Environment
- Claude Code 2.x (agent harness)
- Upstream re-checked
- Aug 10, 2026 · 37f39e5
Fetched the tree, SKILL.md, agents/openai.yaml, and README raw. SKILL.md is a clean prose workflow (Phase Contract + Review Design steps); no secrets/base64/exfiltration; sibling skills it names and the openai.yaml all exist. Trigger phrasings — SHOULD: "Review my feature design doc against the requirements", "Validate the architecture before we build this feature", "Run dev-lifecycle phase 3 for the auth feature"; should NOT: "Design a logo for my startup", "Write the requirements doc for this feature" (that's dev-requirements) — all 5 judged correctly. On the mini-task, baseline gave ad-hoc feedback (suggest an algorithm, mention headers); skill-guided review produced a requirements-coverage matrix that flagged uncovered items (no distributed-limiting-across-instances design, no limiter-latency NFR), a completeness sweep over data model/API contract/NFRs, and a single recommended token-bucket-vs-sliding-window decision — clearly more thorough. Note: suggested category "design" is wrong (this is software design-review, not visual/UI); corrected to coding. Real friction: several steps assume the ai-devkit CLI/`.ai-devkit.json`, though a manual docs/ai fallback is documented.
Scored on four weighted criteria — install, triggering, output vs. baseline, docs. How scoring works
- Installs cleanly 4/5
- Triggers reliably 5/5
- Output vs. baseline 8/10
- Docs & honesty 5/5
What Dev Design does
Guidance skill for phase 3 of AI DevKit's dev-lifecycle: reviews a feature's design doc against its requirements, enforcing a goal/story/constraint coverage matrix, NFR/data-model/API-contract completeness checks, and one-decision-at-a-time trade-off resolution. Triggers when the user asks to validate architecture, review design docs, or resolve design trade-offs. Not a visual/UI design skill.
How to install Dev Design
Part of the AI DevKit suite. Copy skills/dev-design/ into your agent's skills directory (e.g. .claude/skills/), or run `npx ai-devkit@latest init` to install the full dev-lifecycle set. The lint/path-resolution steps call the `ai-devkit` npm CLI, but the core review guidance works as a pure prompt without it.
Skills live in ~/.claude/skills/ (global) or .claude/skills/
(per-project). Restart Claude Code after installing.
Commands — how to trigger Dev Design
-
/dev-designStructured design-review phase: cross-checks a design doc against its requirements before you build.
It also activates on plain-language prompts like these:
-
Validate this architecture against the requirements -
Review my design doc before implementation -
Resolve this design trade-off for the new feature
Frequently asked questions
- Is the Dev Design skill free?
- Yes. The skill itself is free from codeaholicguy/ai-devkit. SkillProof publishes the install command and an independent test verdict at no cost.
- Does Dev Design work with Claude Code?
- We tested it with Claude Code 2.x (agent harness) on Jul 20, 2026. Verdict: Tested · Works. Fetched the tree, SKILL.md, agents/openai.yaml, and README raw. SKILL.md is a clean prose workflow (Phase Contract + Review Design steps); no secrets/base64/exfiltration; sibling skills it names and the openai.yaml all exist. Trigger phrasings — SHOULD: "Review my feature design doc against the requirements", "Validate the architecture before we build this feature", "Run dev-lifecycle phase 3 for the auth feature"; should NOT: "Design a logo for my startup", "Write the requirements doc for this feature" (that's dev-requirements) — all 5 judged correctly. On the mini-task, baseline gave ad-hoc feedback (suggest an algorithm, mention headers); skill-guided review produced a requirements-coverage matrix that flagged uncovered items (no distributed-limiting-across-instances design, no limiter-latency NFR), a completeness sweep over data model/API contract/NFRs, and a single recommended token-bucket-vs-sliding-window decision — clearly more thorough. Note: suggested category "design" is wrong (this is software design-review, not visual/UI); corrected to coding. Real friction: several steps assume the ai-devkit CLI/`.ai-devkit.json`, though a manual docs/ai fallback is documented.
- What is the Dev Design SkillProof Score?
- 8.8/10 — installs cleanly 4/5, triggers reliably 5/5, output vs. baseline 8/10, docs & honesty 5/5.
- How do I install Dev Design?
- Copy the install command from this page, run it in your terminal, and restart Claude Code. Skills live in ~/.claude/skills/ (global) or .claude/skills/ inside a project.
- Can I use Dev Design with Cursor, Copilot, Gemini CLI, Codex or other AI tools?
- The SKILL.md format is native to Claude (Claude Code, Desktop, claude.ai). The instructions inside adapt to other assistants: Cursor rules, GitHub Copilot instructions, Windsurf rules, Custom GPTs, AGENTS.md for OpenAI Codex, and GEMINI.md for Google Gemini CLI — our conversion guides cover each, and the free converter on the tools page does the wrapping for you.