Design First

Design First is an AI Engineering skill for Claude Code, published by techygarg in lattice.

185 stars13 forkson techygarg/latticeAdded 2026/09/06+1% in starsRepository updated 2026/09/04

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Install in seconds

Install Design First

Copy Design First into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/techygarg/lattice/tree/main/skills/design-first ~/.claude/skills/design-first

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/techygarg/lattice.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: skills/design-first/SKILL.md in techygarg/lattice
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/design-first
Collection: One of 25 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: AI Engineering — 3278 skills

What Design First does

Design First guides structured thinking through five levels before coding: capabilities, components, interactions, contracts, and implementation. Use it for new features, refactors, module design, or any request to plan or architect before writing code.

Design First is cataloged under AI Engineering on DirSkills. Design First comes from a repository tagged agent, agent-framework, agent-skills, agentic and agentic-ai.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

Design-First (Progressive Design Facilitation)

The 5 Levels

Level 1: Capabilities (The "What")

Purpose: Confirm scope. Surface the user-facing outcomes the system must deliver. Shared vocabulary check — ensure the human and the AI are talking about the same feature with the same boundaries.

Output format: Numbered list of user-facing capabilities, max 5. Each capability is a plain-language outcome, not an implementation detail.

Boundary: No components, no architecture, no technical detail. If a capability mentions a specific technology, class, or data structure, it belongs at a later level. This level answers only "what does the user get?"

Checkpoint: "Does this Level 1 (Capabilities) look correct? Should I proceed to Level 2 (Components)?"

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Design First

What else does techygarg publish alongside Design First?
Design First is one of 25 skills that DirSkills catalogs from techygarg/lattice, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Architecture, Architecture Compass and Architecture Refiner. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Design First does, and is maintained by techygarg in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the techygarg/lattice page.
How does Design First compare to other AI Engineering skills?
Design First ranks #3012 by stars among the 3278 AI Engineering skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Architecture Decision Records, AI-First Engineering and Agentic OS. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Design First against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.