feat(skills): add atlas-design skill for visually appealing Mendix apps - #18
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A user-facing skill (synced to Mendix projects via `mxcli init`) that makes a
generated app reach "designed product" quality, the way artifact-design does for
HTML and dataviz does for charts. It's the taste + workflow layer on top of
theme-styling (SCSS mechanics), create-page (widget syntax), fragments
(composition), and migrate-design-prototype (design handoff).
Grounded in the STANDARD Atlas design system every project already ships —
Atlas_Core classes + the 39 out-of-the-box Atlas_Web_Content building blocks —
rather than a bespoke per-app library, so it works in any project. Built on the
building-blocks READ capability (SHOW/DESCRIBE BUILDING BLOCK), and validated
against a real Atlas project (the inventory + the Card structure in the worked
example are real DESCRIBE output).
Covers: the Atlas-first thesis and "reach down the stack first"; the 4-layer
architecture (Atlas → brand tokens → identity SCSS → mandatory runtime verify);
the discover → inspect → mirror workflow over out-of-the-box blocks; the Atlas
class + typed-designproperties vocabulary; a Layer-1 brand-token scaffold and an
optional dark-mode widget-override scaffold (inline SCSS); the transparent-Plotly
chart theme; the run --local --watch --screenshot verify loop ("mx check is not
enough"); and the full gotchas catalog.
Honest about the current capability boundary: discovery works today, but
instantiation (USE BUILDING BLOCK) does not yet exist, so the skill teaches
mirroring a block's shape with classes + design properties + fragments, treating
the Atlas block as the canonical target — migrating to native instantiation when
USE BUILDING BLOCK lands.
Single self-contained file (the sync/embed only handles top-level skills/*.md).
Implements the atlas-design proposal (docs/11-proposals/PROPOSAL_atlas_design_system.md).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JXnEgoc2NQP1Y2TWMCMXC4
…rimary path Now that USE BUILDING BLOCK v1 exists, the skill leads with the one-line instantiation instead of the hand-mirror workaround: - Workflow renamed discover → inspect → USE (was → mirror). Step 3 is now `use building block Mod.Name [as prefix_]` (deep-copy), step 4 configures the copied widgets with `alter page`. Mirroring is reframed as the explicit fallback (hand-tuning, or the modelsdk engine before its building-block support lands). - Capability table: Instantiate → ✅ v1 (deep-copy; configure afterwards; legacy engine today). Capability note updated to "discovery AND instantiation both work". - Validation checklist updated to prefer `use building block` + `alter page`. All `use building block` / `alter page` examples are bare page-body lines, which the skill-MDL checker auto-skips (first keyword not in its create/alter/drop entity|page checkable set) — verified with a binary built WITHOUT the grammar, so this PR's CI is green even before the USE BUILDING BLOCK feature (#19) merges. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JXnEgoc2NQP1Y2TWMCMXC4
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Ledger findings #17–19: a `set $x = <expr>` value re-serialized from the AST silently corrupted the stored Mendix expression — `mxcli check` passed, `mx check` gave only a generic CE0117: - #17 a division's right operand lost its `$` (`$a / $b` → `$a/b`) - #18 a decimal literal lost its fraction (`2.0` → `2`), breaking Decimal - #19 a small decimal became scientific notation (`0.000001` → `1e-06`) shouldPreserveExpressionSource now keeps the raw source whenever the expression contains a `/` or a decimal literal (a `.` adjacent to a digit), mirroring the existing XPath-where handling — so the exact text survives instead of a lossy AST round-trip. (MDL division is `div`; `/` is the member-access separator, which is what caused the `$`-loss mis-parse — preserving source is the robust fix either way.) Test: TestShouldPreserveExpressionSource_DivisionAndDecimals; repro mdl-examples/bug-tests/ledger-17-19-expression-serialization.mdl. Symptom table updated. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JXnEgoc2NQP1Y2TWMCMXC4
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…ecimals Corrects the earlier ledger #17-19 fix, which over-broadly preserved raw expression source whenever it saw a '/'. In MDL '/' is the member-access separator (`$obj/Attr`), not division (that is `div`), so preserving on '/' source-froze every association-navigation path and regressed TestAssociationNavParsing. - shouldPreserveExpressionSource: drop the '/' trigger; keep the decimal-literal trigger (findings #18/#19 — `2.0`->`2`, `0.000001`->`1e-06` are genuine AST-serializer losses that raw-source preservation fixes). - New MDL045: walk the microflow expression tree for a BinaryExpr with operator '/' (`$Dec / 2`, `(...) / $x`) and reject with an actionable "use div" message, instead of silently writing an invalid expression that fails the build (CE0117). The bare `$a / $b` form degrades to a member path and is caught by `check --references`. Tests: TestShouldPreserveExpressionSource_Decimals (renamed), TestValidateMicroflow_SlashDivision. Repros: ledger-17-19 (passes) + ledger-17-slash-division.fail.mdl (MDL045). Skill + symptom-table updated. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JXnEgoc2NQP1Y2TWMCMXC4
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Adds the
atlas-designuser skill — the taste + workflow layer that makes an mxcli-generated Mendix app reach "designed product" quality by default. Implementsdocs/11-proposals/PROPOSAL_atlas_design_system.md. Synced to Mendix projects viamxcli init.Grounded in the standard Atlas system (not a bespoke library)
Per the direction to base it on what every project already ships, the skill is built on
Atlas_Coreclasses + the 39 out-of-the-boxAtlas_Web_Contentbuilding blocks — so it's universal. It's built on the Building-Blocks READ capability (SHOW/DESCRIBE BUILDING BLOCK,CATALOG.building_blocks) and was validated against a real Atlas project: the block inventory and theCardstructure in the worked example are actualDESCRIBEoutput (container (DesignProperties: ['Card style': on])+ acard-titleclass).What it covers
designpropertiesvocabulary.run --local --watch --screenshotverify loop ("mx checkis not enough").Honest about the capability boundary
Discovery works today; instantiation (
USE BUILDING BLOCK) does not yet exist. So the skill teaches mirroring a block's shape with classes + design properties + fragments, treating the Atlas block as the canonical target — and notes those recipes migrate to native instantiation whenUSE BUILDING BLOCKlands.Structure & validation
.claude/skills/mendix/atlas-design.md, 728 lines). Themxcli initsync +//go:embedonly handle top-levelskills/*.md, so a multi-file subdirectory would never reach user projects — hence one complete file (also better for an LLM skill).make sync-skills+make buildembed it cleanly; the embed dir is gitignored (regenerated), so only the source is committed.mxcli check.theme-styling.md,create-page.md,fragments.md,migrate-design-prototype.md.Bonus: Building-Blocks READ validated on a real project
Authoring this exercised
show building blocks/describe building blockagainst a real Atlas app — 40 blocks enumerated with full metadata, real widget trees rendered. That's the real-project confirmation flagged as the open validation step for the Building-Blocks feature (#16).🤖 Generated with Claude Code
https://claude.ai/code/session_01JXnEgoc2NQP1Y2TWMCMXC4
Generated by Claude Code