What is the find-animation-opportunities skill?
find-animation-opportunities is a read-only skill from Emil Kowalski's skills repository. It searches a codebase or UI for places that should animate, runs each candidate through a four-question gate on frequency, purpose, speed and function, and reports at most seven suggestions with exact values. It never edits source files.
find-animation-opportunities is one skill in Emil Kowalski's skills repository. It does one job: sweep an interface for moments that would benefit from motion and propose a precise recipe for each. It does not implement anything.
Its posture is restraint. The skill treats itself as a filter as much as a finder, and expects to reject most candidates, because a long wishlist produces the sluggish, over-animated interfaces the repository exists to prevent.
The four-question gate
- Frequency. Actions repeated 100+ times a day, such as keyboard shortcuts and command palettes, are rejected outright. Occasional and rare moments are eligible.
- Purpose. The reason must be feedback, spatial consistency, state indication, preventing a jarring change, explanation or delight. "It looks cool" is not accepted.
- Speed. The motion must fit the UI budgets, for example 100 to 160ms for press feedback and 200 to 500ms for modals and drawers.
- Function. Data the user is reading or acting on should not move for style.
What the report contains
- A table of surviving suggestions with location, what happens today, purpose, frequency and a suggested motion with exact values.
- A required list of two to five rejected candidates, each with the gate question that ruled it out.
- A short verdict on how much motion the interface needs and which single suggestion has the highest payoff.
Who the skill is for
Best for
- Teams that want to know where motion earns its place before anyone writes a keyframe.
- Developers who suspect a product is over-animated and want a filter, not a wishlist.
- Anyone who needs suggestions with exact curves, durations and properties to hand to another agent.
Not for
- Fixing animations that already exist. The README points to its sibling skills for reviewing and improving existing motion, and emil-design-eng covers the wider animation and design philosophy.
- Getting code written. The skill is read-only and hands implementation off.
- Performance problems in animation code. fixing-motion-performance targets that.
Use it with UiChemy
This skill advises on motion in front-end code you own. To get an AI-built page into WordPress as editable pages, UiChemy AI to WordPress imports it, and Composer edits the result in Elementor or Gutenberg. Click Get Started on uichemy.com.
How to install Find Animation Opportunities Skill: Motion Audit for UI
git clone https://github.com/emilkowalski/skillsClone the repository
Run
git clone https://github.com/emilkowalski/skillsin any working folder. The skill is the skills/find-animation-opportunities folder inside the clone.Copy the skill folder
Copy skills/find-animation-opportunities into the folder your AI coding agent loads skills from. The README does not name an agent folder, so check your agent's documentation.
Ask for an audit
Invoke the skill with a request such as: what could be animated in this settings screen? Without a question, it replies only with a short ready message.
Check that it loaded
Ask the agent to audit one view. The reply should be an opportunities table with exact values, a list of rejected candidates, and a short verdict, with no source files changed.
Key features
- Read-only by designThe skill never modifies source code. If you ask it to build a suggestion, it hands off to a planning skill or lets you take the recipe to any agent.
- Four-question gateEvery candidate must pass frequency, purpose, speed and function checks, in order, and the answers go into the report.
- Hard cap on outputAt most five to seven suggestions for a whole app and fewer for a single view, ordered by payoff rather than by how fun they are to build.
- Frequency tiers100+ uses a day is rejected, tens a day gets near-imperceptible motion at most, occasional moments are eligible, and rare first-time moments hold the delight budget.
- Named purposes onlyA suggestion must be justified as feedback, spatial consistency, state indication, preventing a jarring change, explanation or delight.
- Seam hunting listIt sweeps feedback gaps, teleporting state, missing spatial story, group entrances, gesture seams and rare high-emotion moments.
- Exact valuesSuggestions carry the curve, duration and properties from the repo's shared vocabulary, with transform and opacity as the animated properties.
- Reduced motion and hover gatingSuggestions include gentler reduced-motion handling and gate hover effects behind a hover and fine-pointer media query.
- Required rejection listThe report must name places that were considered and refused, such as a command palette or a data chart, so it cannot turn into a wishlist.
Frequently asked questions
What is the find-animation-opportunities skill?
It is a read-only skill in the emilkowalski/skills repository. It searches a codebase or UI for places that should animate and rejects the rest, using a four-question gate on frequency, purpose, speed and function. It reports suggestions with exact values and never changes your source.
How do I install find-animation-opportunities?
Clone github.com/emilkowalski/skills and copy skills/find-animation-opportunities into the folder your agent loads skills from. The README also shows a skills-CLI command for the whole repository, but the copy route installs just this skill and needs no extra tool.
Does find-animation-opportunities change my code?
No. The skill's first hard rule is that it never modifies source code. It reports and proposes. If you ask it to build a suggestion, it points to a planning skill in the same repository, or you can give the recipe to any agent.
Why does it reject so many animations?
The skill is built on the idea that sometimes the best animation is none. It expects to reject most candidates, caps output at five to seven suggestions, and treats frequent actions such as keyboard shortcuts as a firm no, because motion makes repeated actions feel slow.
How is it different from emil-design-eng?
emil-design-eng is the repository's main skill, mostly about animation with some design advice. find-animation-opportunities is narrower: a search-and-filter pass that tells you where motion belongs and where it does not, and stops there.
Can I use find-animation-opportunities with Claude Code or Cursor?
The README presents the skills for designers and engineers building interfaces and does not publish a per-agent support list. Skills are folders with a SKILL.md, so copy it into whichever agent's skills folder you use and confirm it loads there.
What license does it use?
The emilkowalski/skills repository uses the MIT license, as GitHub shows. The 150K install figure shown on this page comes from a third-party skills listing, not from the repository itself, so treat it as a popularity signal only.