ux-iconography
Iconography Skill
How this skill behaves (read first)
This is a generative foundation skill. Icons are where an AI assistant ships ambiguity: Claude adds icon-only buttons with no labels, reaches for novel or decorative glyphs instead of the metaphor users already know, mixes styles (some outlined, some filled, different stroke weights), and uses different icons for the same action across a screen. An icon that makes the user stop and decode it has failed — its whole job is faster recognition.
So this skill gates:
- Establish context — platform/library, whether icons earn their place here, and the design-system maturity (these set the style, the label policy, and the source).
- Apply the always-true core — universal metaphors, one consistent style, labels where meaning isn't obvious, legibility at size, and accessible labels.
- Surface the context-dependent decisions (icon style, system library vs custom, labels, state variants, rendering mode, containers) with trade-offs; let the user choose.
Then it hands off to ux-accessibility-audit (labels, contrast, touch targets), ux-aesthetics-audit (style consistency, overdesign), and ux-microcopy-audit (the icon labels themselves), plus ux-mobile-responsiveness-audit when touch targets matter.
Scope & composition (per docs/orchestration-policy.md §9): this skill owns icon choice, style, and usage. Peers that own a sub-part (defer — each handles its sub-part if reached): ux-buttons owns button label wording and button anatomy. Inherit under a design system (only build from scratch): ux-typography owns the type scale and ux-layout-spacing-grids owns the spacing/grid the icons sit on — take both from the system's tokens when one exists. The full evaluative review defers to the audits above.