Refactor UI

Overview

Refactor interfaces by diagnosing visual communication first, then applying focused changes to hierarchy, spacing, typography, color, depth, imagery, states, and polish. Favor small, high-leverage improvements that make the UI easier to understand and more deliberate.

This skill is an original operational playbook inspired by Refactoring UI by Steve Schoger and Adam Wathan. It is not affiliated with the authors and does not reproduce the book text; use the references here as working heuristics.

Core Workflow

1. Confirm the task is about auditing, polishing, or refactoring an existing interface. If the user is asking for new UI from scratch, do not use this skill unless they explicitly request a refactoring-style review of an existing draft or screen.
2. Identify the user's job, the main object on the screen, and the one or two primary actions.
3. Read references/heuristics.md before auditing any screen, component, or screenshot.
4. Audit the current UI in this order: hierarchy, grouping, spacing, typography, action priority, color, depth, imagery, states, and final polish.
5. Read references/recipes.md before implementing fixes for common weak UI patterns.
6. Read references/examples.md when the guidance feels too abstract or you need a concrete before/after pattern.
7. Implement changes in the codebase using existing design tokens, components, CSS utilities, and local conventions first.
8. Verify at desktop and mobile widths. If a browser or preview is available, inspect screenshots for overlap, cramped spacing, weak contrast, broken line lengths, awkward empty states, and unintended layout shifts. If preview is unavailable, ask the user for desktop and mobile screenshots; if screenshots are not available, report that visual validation was limited.
9. Report the most important visual changes and any remaining tradeoffs.

Scope Control

• Prefer the smallest diff that achieves the visual goal.
• Do not restructure components, data flow, routes, state management, or behavior for polish alone.
• Restructure markup only when hierarchy, accessibility, or responsive layout requires it.
• Preserve functional behavior, test selectors, public component APIs, and existing product density.
• When a broad redesign seems tempting, first make the primary object, grouping, spacing, and action priority clearer within the current architecture.

Refactoring Priorities

Use this priority order unless the user asks for a specific visual area:

1. Clarify importance: make the primary content/action visually dominant and de-emphasize supporting material.
2. Make grouping obvious: use spacing, background contrast, and structure before adding borders.
3. Constrain choices: reuse a small scale for font sizes, spacing, radii, shadows, and colors.
4. Improve readability: control line length, line height, alignment, labels, and numerical data.
5. Make color systematic: use palette shades intentionally and preserve accessible contrast.
6. Add depth only when it communicates layering, elevation, focus, or interaction.
7. Handle images deliberately: crop, size, mask, overlay, and protect text contrast.
8. Polish default states: empty, loading, disabled, selected, hover, focus, error, and success states.

Implementation Guidance

• Prefer removing competition over adding decoration.
• Use semantic markup for accessibility, then style independently for visual hierarchy.
• Avoid arbitrary one-off values when an existing spacing, type, color, radius, or shadow scale exists.
• For Tailwind projects, prefer existing theme tokens and utility patterns; add custom values only when the local system clearly lacks a needed step.
• For component libraries, extend nearby variants and states instead of creating parallel styling systems.
• Keep dense operational UIs efficient. Better polish does not mean larger hero-like sections, oversized cards, or decorative clutter.
• Preserve functional behavior and test selectors while changing presentation.

Output Expectations

When auditing only, lead with the highest-impact issues and concrete fixes. When implementing, make the UI visibly cleaner, run the relevant checks, and summarize the finished changes briefly.