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How to give Codex or Cursor the design rules before it writes UI with Refactoring UI Skill

Install the rulebook as an AGENTS.md or Cursor rule so the assistant follows it while generating styles.

Who it is forA developer who uses Codex or Cursor to generate front-end code and keeps getting centered-everything layouts, one spacing value, and indigo buttons.

The problemGenerated UI is built piece by piece, so global design problems are not caught while the code is being written.

The outcomeThe assistant reads the design rules at session start, uses placeholder color tokens instead of hard-coded palette colors, and labels extension rules that come from outside the book.

What you need first

  • Claude Code, or another AI coding assistant that can read files in the project
  • Git, to clone the repository
  • Python 3.9 or newer for the scripts (no third-party packages needed)
  • A web project with HTML, CSS, or a framework such as Tailwind, for the review and token steps

Steps

  1. Clone the repository into the project folder with git clone https://github.com/edisonmbli/refactoring-ui-skill.git .refactoring-ui.
  2. For Codex or other tools that read AGENTS.md, run cp .refactoring-ui/templates/AGENTS.md AGENTS.md, or merge the file into your existing AGENTS.md.
  3. For Cursor, run mkdir -p .cursor/rules && cp .refactoring-ui/templates/cursor/refactoring-ui.mdc .cursor/rules/.
  4. Start a new session and ask the assistant to build a small screen, then check that it uses token names such as bg-{primary}-600 rather than a fixed palette class.
  5. Ask for a review pass after generation to catch issues the generator missed.

Prompt for your agent

Using the design rules in the .refactoring-ui folder from the edisonmbli/refactoring-ui-skill repo, build the screen described in <screen-brief> in <project-path>. Return the changed files and a short list of which rules were applied. Verify that no hard-coded palette color classes appear in the output.

Caveat. The README says Cursor loads the rule by file-type matching and that these paths change often, so check the current tool documentation if the file is not picked up.

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