Animations.dev
Emil Kowalski's interactive course and reference surface for animation taste: easing, timing, springs, performance, vocabulary, and the judgment behind motion that feels right.
The course matters to Kevin's stack because it teaches the decision layer behind UI motion: which easing and duration fit an interaction, when spring physics belong, what properties keep animation performant, and why a technically working animation can still feel wrong. The public page reports 11,632 designers and engineers improved their animation skills through the course and says the next enrollment opens on 2026-08-25 for 10 days. Source: animations.dev, checked 2026-07-01
Stack fit
Use Animation Vocabulary (Animations.dev) when the task is naming the motion pattern for an agent prompt. Use design-engineering-polish when reviewing or implementing the motion. Use this page when choosing the source authority: Emil's course is the higher-level taste and theory reference; the vocabulary page is the narrow prompt glossary.
The Gianluca bookmark starts as a joke about design engineers using gradient profile pictures, but the self-thread is a source map: follow Emil Kowalski, Vaun Blu, Vedant Lad, Atilla, Jakub Krehel, Vinoth Ragunathan, and Sasha for design-engineering taste and painfully polished interfaces. The useful point is curation: Kevin's design brain should collect exemplary taste sources, then encode the reusable decisions into skills and review checklists rather than merely imitate the look. Source: X/@GianlucaNDRT thread, 2026-06-23
Intro-animation ordering
The Linear intro-animation bookmark adds a reusable rule to the course/source page: sequence by semantic importance, not by physical position. Emil's example orders the reveal as headline, description, product demo, then changelog, even though the changelog sits higher on the page than the product. His follow-up applies the same rule to an animations.dev onboarding screen: utility controls can enter last even when they sit above the main content. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-06-16
That rule belongs in design-engineering-polish because it is executable design judgment. The page stays the source authority; the skill owns the repeated review behavior.
Practical skill-file tips
The March 2026 practical-tips artifact is the compact version of Emil's skill-file guidance: responsive buttons use scale(0.97) on press, entry states start near scale(0.95), transform jitter can use a narrow will-change hint, hover flicker is fixed by animating a child instead of the hit-area parent, origin-aware popovers scale from their trigger, sequential tooltips skip delay after the first one, tap targets stay at 44px minimum, subtle blur can smooth awkward transitions, and hover states must be gated behind @media (hover: hover) and (pointer: fine). The durable route is Design and Animation for the compiled style guidance and design-engineering-polish for the executable review behavior. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-03-11
AI skill expansion
Emil's June 2026 bookmark makes animations.dev a watch source for AI-assisted design-engineering work, not only animation theory. He said /emil-design-eng had crossed 100K installs and that the course's AI section would be fully updated in August with new skills and workflow notes on how he works with LLMs. For Kevin's stack, the stable routing decision stays the same: design-engineering-polish owns executable review behavior, while this page tracks Emil as a source authority. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-06-24
Current skill-repository snapshot
The June post is historical evidence, not a current inventory. On 2026-08-11,
the exact MIT repository at signed commit 78761e1 contains ten skills across
20 source blobs, with no tag, release, test, or eval files. GitHub reported
28,283 stars, 1,571 forks, one open issue, and an unarchived main branch.
skills.sh rendered 649.2K total installs; /emil-design-eng alone rendered
199.4K. The public animations.dev/skills route currently presents an email
notification/newsletter surface and login link rather than the skill bodies, so
the pinned repository is the code authority and skills.sh is an adoption
counter—not correctness evidence. [Sources: emilkowalski/skills@78761e1;
GitHub API; skills.sh and animations.dev rendered 2026-08-11]
| Current upstream skill | skills.sh installs | Kevin route |
|---|---|---|
emil-design-eng |
199.4K | Fold into design-engineering-polish as the general craft source. |
review-animations |
92.9K | design-engineering-polish bounded animation-review branch. |
animation-vocabulary |
80.6K | Animation Vocabulary (Animations.dev) source page plus the parent skill's naming branch. |
apple-design |
72.2K | Guarded parent branch; verify exact Apple/WWDC claims against primary Apple material. |
improve-animations |
65.5K | Parent's read-only codebase-audit and self-contained-plan branch. |
find-animation-opportunities |
54.2K | Parent's restraint-first opportunity/rejection branch. |
pick-ui-library |
40.5K | Component Library Sources and animated-component-libraries; treat picks as leads, not auto-installs. |
prototype |
29.7K | Existing prototype skill; do not create a competing global trigger. |
animate |
12.2K | Parent's build branch: decide whether motion belongs before implementing it. |
ask-sonner |
1.9K | Existing-app component first, then Sonner and current primary docs/source. |
The exact repository snapshot is preserved, but the ten upstream directories
are not installed as ten standalone skills. That would split global routing and
collide with existing prototype, component-source, Sonner, and vocabulary
owners. design-engineering-polish/references/upstream-branch-map.md instead
preserves current branch semantics, explicit overlap routes, and a common
motion receipt. Local trigger cases and rendered proof test whether the parent
actually fires and behaves; popularity cannot substitute for either.
Skill decision
No separate animations-dev skill and no ten-skill global bundle. The
executable owner is design-engineering-polish; this page is the source and
version authority. The pinned archive preserves all upstream content, while the
parent router folds unique motion branches and delegates overlapping prototype,
component-source, vocabulary, and Sonner jobs to their existing owners.
Timeline
- 2026-08-11 | Replayed the June source against the current signed repository, all ten skill bodies and support files, current GitHub state, skills.sh counters, and the rendered animations.dev skills surface. Pinned the exact snapshot, folded useful branch boundaries into
design-engineering-polish, added deterministic trigger coverage, and kept overlapping subskills on existing owners instead of installing ten competing commands. Source: X2069742622252445866;emilkowalski/skills@78761e1; current skills.sh and animations.dev replay - 2026-07-01 | Deep-reviewed Emil Kowalski's practical skill-file tips artifact and folded the missing hover-flicker and
will-changerules intodesign-engineering-polish; kept this page as the source authority instead of creating a duplicate skill. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-03-11 - 2026-07-03 | Added Emil's AI/design-engineering skill expansion note:
/emil-design-engcrossed 100K installs and animations.dev will refresh its AI section with LLM workflow notes in August. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-06-24 - 2026-06-30 | Deep-reviewed Emil Kowalski's Linear intro-animation bookmark and local video thumbnail. Added the importance-over-position sequencing rule and linked the public
emil-design-eng/review-animationsskill page. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-06-16; Source: emilkowal.ski/skill, 2026-06-30 - 2026-06-23 | Gianluca Andretta's design-engineer gradient-profile joke linked to animations.dev and named a design-engineering follow set. 556 bookmarks, 2,029 likes. Source: X/@GianlucaNDRT
- 2026-06-30 | Promoted into a focused source page and linked to Emil Kowalski, Animation Vocabulary (Animations.dev), and
design-engineering-polishafter artifact review. Source: X bookmark artifact audit, 2026-06-30