TasteCheck is a frontend taste and ship-gate toolkit for AI coding agents and frontend engineers who want evidence-backed UI quality.
Release inventory: v1.5.0 · 20 skills · 20 canonical commands · 1 alias · 21 command files · 8 gallery systems.
Release status: PASS — current source-bound release receipts cover the asserted browser and accessibility checks. Effectiveness status: BLOCKED — historical evidence did not clear its release threshold.
| Fact | Current release truth |
|---|---|
| Version | v1.5.0 |
| Skills | 20 frontend craft skills |
| Commands | 20 canonical Claude Code slash commands |
| Alias | 1 approved alias: /darkmode for /theming |
| Command files | 21 total command files |
| Gallery | 8 committed browser-rendered design systems |
| Video | v1.5.0: the battery also gates video artifacts — reading-hold, motion-law, readability-960x540, audio-presence (silent cuts never pass) |
| License | MIT; see LICENSE |
| Install | git clone https://github.com/KyaniteLabs/tastecheck && ./tastecheck/install.sh |
TasteCheck is a frontend taste and ship-gate toolkit for AI coding agents and frontend engineers who need evidence-backed UI quality before shipping. It turns a brief or an existing site into an explicit design direction, carries that direction through checkable craft skills, and reports the evidence needed for a ship or hold decision.
TasteCheck skills are plain Markdown, readable by any coding agent — no SDK or install required. The ship-gate adds optional dependency-free Node and browser scripts; the installer also creates the canonical ~/.agents/skills/ path and mirrors skills into detected agent homes.
TasteCheck addresses a common failure mode in agent-built interfaces: when hierarchy, density, type, color, and structure remain implicit, familiar defaults accumulate. The interview or existing-site audit makes those decisions explicit before implementation.
The retrofit makes the release gate account for the evidence it records. These behaviors describe scoped release decisions; they do not turn subjective design judgment into an objective guarantee.
| Capability | Public behavior |
|---|---|
| Evidence-derived verdicts | Gate statuses are derived from recorded observations. Missing or contradictory observations produce HOLD; declared status alone is not trusted. |
| Review binding | Human and independent reviews bind to the check ID, rubric, artifact digest, and complete-evidence digest. A transplanted approval produces HOLD. |
| Dependency-manifest capture | File and directory captures hash the entry plus linked local CSS, JavaScript, and font assets. A changed dependency with an unchanged entry produces HOLD. |
| Subject-inventory reconciliation | Browser checks reconcile route × state × viewport members from an authoritative manifest and its gate-computed Cartesian universe; a claimant cannot shrink that scope. Control checks reconcile control × state members. |
| Complete-capture hashing | Lossy, truncated, depth-limited, or marker-bearing evidence is non-passing. Sanitization is presentation-only; complete evidence is what gets hashed. |
| Verifier/consumer ROOT SPLIT | The CLI and API separate the pinned verifier root from the explicit target-project root, and record both root identities. |
| Craft floors and style policies | Invariant craft requirements are separate from brief-dependent defaults. Spacing and tasteroll rails are defaults that can be overridden with evidence. |
| Scoped authority claims | Subjective checks remain accountable human judgment, not an objective design guarantee. GEO copy keeps claims scoped to the recorded evidence. |
| Release finalization | npm run finalize performs receipt refresh, receipt pins, public status projection, and verify-chain validation together. |
| ASTRA review closure | The external ASTRA adversarial review found 8 findings, including 5 SEV-1 findings; the closure is recorded in ASTRA-REVIEW.md and ASTRA-FIX-REPORT.md. |
Clone the repository and run the installer:
git clone https://github.com/KyaniteLabs/tastecheck
./tastecheck/install.shThen ask your coding agent to read the relevant SKILL.md, or point it at the canonical ~/.agents/skills/ directory.
| Skill | What it checks |
|---|---|
| design-system-interview | Design direction for vague or generic frontend requests, including type, color, density, and tokens. |
| tasteroll | Context-aware design exploration that audits broken work, rolls valid candidates, and locks the direction that works. |
| improve-existing-website | Existing-site evidence, recognizable identity, scope, and redesign risk before changes. |
| color-system | OKLCH palettes, ramps, semantic tokens, theme colors, and contrast. |
| web-typography | Contextual type systems, resilient font loading, multilingual glyphs, wrapping, and readable hierarchy. |
| spacing-system | Layout rhythm, density, gaps, spacing scales, and deliberate exceptions. |
| theming | Semantic mappings across light, dark, forced-colors, saved preferences, contrast, and no-flash behavior. |
| responsive-layout | Narrow containers, long or translated content, zoom, reflow, and overflow without device-specific breakpoints. |
| component-states | Interactive state matrices for controls, keyboard behavior, and ARIA. |
| form-ux | Forms, field labels, autocomplete, validation, mobile input behavior, errors, and disabled submits. |
| empty-states | Empty, loading, error, retry, first-run, offline, permission, and layout-stability states. |
| micro-motion | Purposeful feedback and transitions without jank, interruption bugs, or hidden no-JS content, including reduced motion. |
| data-viz | Honest, accessible, themed charts, metrics, direct labels, and data tables. |
| art-direction | Imagery, illustration, iconography, hero images, favicons, OG cards, and generic AI imagery. |
| a11y-pass | WCAG 2.2 AA fixes for web UI, including keyboard, screen readers, contrast, labels, focus, landmarks, target size, reduced motion, and ARIA. |
| cognitive-a11y | Readability and predictability for ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and neurodivergent users. |
| i18n-ready | Locale expansion, language attributes, logical properties, RTL, formats, bilingual copy, and language toggles. |
| deslop-ui | Generated-UI tells such as purple gradients, pill CTAs, default type, centered heroes, card grids, glassmorphism, and template sameness. |
| humanize-copy | Landing, docs, README, UI, release, and social copy for LLM tells and robotic prose. |
| tastecheck-pass | Evidence-backed ship or hold decisions, fail-closed release gates, and actionable cross-skill verification reports. |
TasteCheck carries design intent through a shared pipeline: establish or infer the design system, check foundations, check structure and behavior, check surface decisions, run accessibility and language checks, remove visual and copy tells, and finish with tastecheck-pass.
The tastecheck-pass skill states the canonical pipeline, runs the relevant self-checks, reports a pass/fail table, and uses an auditor for cold-load issues that a self-reported checklist can miss. The current public release status remains source-bound: release evidence is UNVERIFIED, and historical effectiveness is BLOCKED.
Run the repository’s repeatable engineering checks with npm test. Those checks cover repository contracts, installation, links, authored demo surfaces, and verification plumbing; they are not a universal effectiveness claim.
The gallery contains 8 committed browser-rendered design systems for the same product story and core information architecture. It demonstrates variance, not a menu to copy: derive a new direction from the user’s answers.
| System | Territory | Signature structure |
|---|---|---|
| Copper | dark, warm, geological | irregular tessellated bento with structural basalt columns |
| Swiss | light, austere, exact | exposed column grid carrying the content |
| Maximal | loud, kinetic | display word bleeding into a magenta block with sticker-wall collage |
| Concrete | raw, mechanical, monochrome | ruled spec sheet with a dense ledger table and hazard accent |
| Clay | warm, soft, humanist | alternating zig-zag card flow with organic pebble shapes |
| Dispatch | dark, operational, emerald | reverse-chronological release timeline |
| Verge | cool, clinical, measured | hypothesis-to-verdict evidence cards |
| Seed | warm, procedural, annotated | seeded specimen card with rolled dimensions |
Open the live landing page, live gallery, or secondary integration harness.
The one-line install path is:
git clone https://github.com/KyaniteLabs/tastecheck && ./tastecheck/install.shThe installer creates canonical links in ~/.agents/skills/ and mirrors them into detected agent skill directories. Claude Code can also link all 21 command wrappers (20 canonical + the /darkmode alias) into ~/.claude/commands/.
TasteCheck is a frontend taste and ship-gate toolkit for AI coding agents and frontend engineers who want evidence-backed UI quality before shipping. It fails closed on generic/sloppy UI and organizes evidence for scoped ship-quality decisions; it does not turn those subjective calls into objective guarantees.
TasteCheck is for frontend engineers and AI coding agents that need to turn design intent into checkable frontend work.
TasteCheck checks design direction, typography, color, spacing, theming, layout, states, forms, empty states, motion, visualization, art direction, accessibility, cognitive accessibility, internationalization, copy, and the final release gate.
TasteCheck makes design decisions explicit before implementation and checks the resulting frontend against those decisions instead of relying on subjective polish.
Yes; TasteCheck is open source under the MIT license in LICENSE.
Clone the repository and run ./tastecheck/install.sh.
The current public release status is source-bound: engineering release evidence is UNVERIFIED and historical effectiveness is BLOCKED.
TasteCheck is MIT licensed; the authoritative terms are in LICENSE.
TasteCheck is a frontend taste and ship-gate toolkit for AI coding agents and frontend engineers who want evidence-backed UI quality before shipping. It helps them fail closed on generic/sloppy UI and organize evidence for scoped ship-quality decisions; subjective checks remain accountable human judgments rather than objective guarantees.
| Product | TasteCheck |
| Category | frontend taste and ship-gate toolkit |
| Best for | AI coding agents and frontend engineers |
| Not | a design Figma plugin |
| Source | Forgejo · GitHub |
| Keywords | UI taste check, anti-slop frontend gate, design QA |
- Primary: frontend engineers and agents shipping UI
- Use when you need to fail closed on generic/sloppy UI and organize evidence for a scoped ship-quality decision
- Skip if you need a design Figma plugin
TasteCheck is a frontend taste and ship-gate toolkit for AI coding agents and frontend engineers who want evidence-backed UI quality before shipping. It fails closed on generic/sloppy UI and organizes evidence for scoped ship-quality decisions; it does not turn those subjective calls into objective guarantees.
Frontend engineers and AI coding agents that need to turn design intent into checkable frontend work.
Unlike subjective design opinions alone, TasteCheck is a fail-closed ship gate that organizes evidence and records accountable human review where judgment is required; it does not turn that review into an objective quality guarantee.
Treat the README status and release tags as source of truth for maturity. Validate against your own requirements before production use.
- Maintained as of 2026 on the default branch
- Prefer release tags when pinning dependencies
- Report issues on the canonical remote listed above
- Coding agents: read this README first, then repo docs/
AGENTS.mdif present - Prefer machine-readable briefs (
llms.txt) when the repo ships one - MCP or skill entrypoints are documented in-repo when applicable
Issues and PRs welcome on the canonical remote. Keep public docs free of secrets and machine-local paths.
See LICENSE in this repository (or package metadata if license is package-only).