---
slug: "mies"
source_type: "readme"
source_url: "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/deeflect/mies@main/README.md"
repo: "https://github.com/deeflect/mies"
source_file: "README.md"
branch: "main"
---
<p align="center">
  <a href="https://mies.design"><img src="https://mies.design/media/og.jpg" alt="The word /mies set over the Barcelona Pavilion." width="100%"></a>
</p>

# /mies

[![Skills installs](https://www.skills.sh/b/deeflect/mies)](https://www.skills.sh/deeflect/mies)
![Claude Code skill](https://img.shields.io/badge/Claude%20Code-skill-1c1b17?style=flat-square)

A design-taste skill that removes what an interface doesn't need, then perfects what's left.

Mies van der Rohe spent a career taking things out. Ornament first, then walls, until a building was barely more than structure, glass, and light. This skill points that instinct at screens. It asks one question of every element: why is this here? Whatever can't answer is removed. What survives gets made exact — proportion, spacing, alignment, type, color, state, motion, the words.

Less is not cold. The warmth lives in the small decisions: sensible defaults, copy written for an actual person, screens that hold together when the data turns ugly. That's the part most reduction forgets.

## Install

```sh
npx skills add deeflect/mies
```

Or drop this repo into your agent's skills directory by hand.

## Use

Type `/mies` in [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) whenever you're making, redesigning, critiquing, or cutting back a screen people actually use. For new work it runs `Frame → Set → Compose`. For a small fix, it tells you what it sees and gets on with it.

## Modes

- **Frame** — Decide what you're building and why, and reject the obvious version of it, before any code.
- **Set** — Lay the foundation once: type, color, spacing, the tokens and states everything else inherits.
- **Compose** — Build the screen, or rebuild it, to match how it's actually used.
- **Inspect** — Critique what already exists. Worst problems first, no padding.
- **Refine** — Cut, tune, then prove it. Polish what's left and make sure it survives real data, edge cases, and a screen reader.
- **Move** — Motion and feel, but only when they make the state clearer. Otherwise it holds still.
- **Word** — Interface copy: warm, clear, nothing excessive, no overexplaining, no AI tells.

Under all of it runs one loop: notice, frame, try a few directions, choose a structure, build, tune in the real interface, critique, cut, prove.

## Structure

```text
skills/mies/
  SKILL.md
  references/
    copy.md
    critique.md
    design-system.md
    motion-and-tuning.md
    patterns.md
    refine.md
    registers.md
    workflow.md
  templates/
    design-foundation.md
    exception-record.md
    primitive-spec.md
    token-table.md
```

`SKILL.md` is the lean router. It loads only the references the current mode needs.

## License

MIT.

---

Designed and built by [Dee Kargaev](https://www.deeflect.com). An independent, non-commercial homage — not affiliated with or endorsed by the estate of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or the Fundació Mies van der Rohe.