You already ship real software with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot, Windsurf — whichever you use. The product works. And the UI looks like every other AI-generated app: default shadcn, a gradient hero, three cards with emoji, forty controls on one screen, no empty states. That is not a taste problem. It's a missing design system. Nobody told the model what "good" looks like in your repo, so it reached for defaults. Hand it the rules and it stops.
A drop-in rulebook that makes your AI design first: tokens before components, a clear primary action per screen, real states, honest verification before "done" — plus a /ui-review prompt for your worst screen. Free.
You already ship real software with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot, Windsurf — whichever you use. The product works. And the UI looks like every other AI-generated app: default shadcn, a gradient hero, three cards with emoji, forty controls on one screen, no empty states.
That is not a taste problem. It's a missing design system. Nobody told the model what "good" looks like in your repo, so it reached for defaults. Hand it the rules and it stops.
UI Kit for Builders is a folder you drop into your repo: a rulebook your AI loads at the start of every session, shipped under every filename AI tools look for — AGENTS.md (Codex, Cursor, most tools), CLAUDE.md (Claude), GEMINI.md (Gemini CLI), .github/copilot-instructions.md (Copilot), .windsurf/rules/ (Windsurf) — identical bodies, so it works with whichever one you use — plus a design-system template, a review prompt, and a license-checked repo list. It makes your AI design first:
DESIGN.md (template included) and the token block where your stack reads it (Tailwind v4 @theme / v3 config + shadcn variables): type scale, 8px spacing rhythm, one gray + one accent scale, radius and shadow scales, a motion language, locked primitives. Everything after composes those./ui-review. Paste it with a screenshot or URL of your worst screen: verdict, then the top 5 fixes with exact code changes.Tool-agnostic. The doctrine is framework-agnostic; the concrete defaults are React / Tailwind / shadcn — on another stack, apply the same rules with your stack's equivalents. No install, no dependency.
git clone) — then copy its files into your repo root — the rulebook is already there under your tool's filename (or paste it into your existing instructions file under a ## UI Kit heading).DESIGN.md + tokens before the first component — or run /ui-review on your worst screen and take the top 5 fixes.AGENTS.md — the rulebook (~500 lines), read automatically by most AI coding toolsCLAUDE.md · GEMINI.md · .github/copilot-instructions.md · .windsurf/rules/ — the same rules under the filenames the other tools look forDESIGN.template.md — the one-page design-system file your AI fills inUI-REVIEW-PROMPT.md — the standalone review prompt, paste-readyREPOS.md — the curated open-source list, every entry license-verified, each with "how to use it so it doesn't look default"VERSION.txt · LICENSE (MIT)Read the rulebook first if you like: https://github.com/iScale-Builders/ui-kit-for-builders/blob/main/AGENTS.md — and star/fork/open issues there; that's where the kit lives and evolves.
Current version: see the repo's Releases page (https://github.com/iScale-Builders/ui-kit-for-builders/releases); the version is at the top of the README and in VERSION.txt.
Run /ui-review on a screen, apply the top 5, and post the before/after here. If a rule produced worse UI in practice, that's the most useful feedback there is.
