animate

Installation
SKILL.md

Animate — CSS-First On-Page Animation Skill

Generate production-quality on-page animations for React + Next.js + Tailwind sites. The core principle is CSS-first, Motion-surgical — use pure CSS and IntersectionObserver for 80-90% of animations, reach for Motion (Framer Motion) only when CSS genuinely cannot solve the problem.

Why CSS-first:

  • Zero bundle cost (CSS is free, Motion adds JS to the client bundle)
  • No "use client" boundary required (preserves React Server Components)
  • Compositor-thread animation (transform/opacity) — better performance than main-thread JS
  • 4/10 best-in-class SaaS sites (Linear, Stripe, Resend, Liveblocks) use zero JS animation libraries
  • The practitioner consensus: Emil Kowalski, Stripe engineering, WordPress Gutenberg all advocate CSS as default

Motion is irreplaceable for exactly 6 patterns:

  1. Exit animations on React unmount (AnimatePresence)
  2. Shared element transitions (layoutId)
  3. Gesture-driven animations (drag, swipe, pinch)
  4. Automatic layout animations (FLIP for size/position changes)
  5. Complex variant orchestration (parent→child cascading timing)
  6. Animating to height: auto (accordion expand/collapse) — CSS cannot interpolate to height: auto. The emerging interpolate-size: allow-keywords (Chrome 129+) will solve this but is not yet Baseline.
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Installs
5
GitHub Stars
10
First Seen
Mar 20, 2026