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AI Skills for Product Designers (Website)

AI Skills for Product Designers (Website)

Design ai Layers.jamiemill.com
Layers is an open-source AI skills pack that forces LLMs to navigate seven structured design layers instead of just generating visual UI.
What: Created by Jamie Mill, the `layers-skills` package for Claude Code and Cursor provides a structured framework to audit design problems from business strategy down to user behavior, outputting decisions in markdown or Mermaid diagrams.
Why it matters: This attempts to curb the 'surface-level' bias of AI tools by forcing a structured design process that prioritizes documentation and strategic alignment over mere UI generation.
Takeaway: Install the skills package via `npx skills add jamiemill/layers-skills` to audit your design workflow or generate structured decision artifacts.
Deep dive
  • Framework: Operates across seven layers: Surface, Interaction, Conceptual Model, Product Strategy, User Needs, Domain, and Observed Behavior.
  • AI Tool Integration: Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and OpenAI Codex via CLI commands.
  • Output: Focuses on decision documentation rather than visual output, creating job stories, strategy trees, and object maps.
  • Governance: Allows connecting to tools like Notion, Linear, or GitHub via MCP to store design decisions.
Decoder
  • MCP (Model Context Protocol): An open standard that allows AI models to connect to external data sources and tools to perform actions like writing tickets or updating documentation.
  • Mermaid: A Markdown-based syntax used to generate diagrams and flowcharts.
Original article

Design beyond the surface.

Whether you're directing your AI or working alongside it, Layers walks you both through all seven layers of product design — so the decisions underneath the screen actually get made.

Install in Claude Code, Cursor, Codex & more

npx skills add jamiemill/layers-skills

Install once with the skills package, then run any /layers-* skill in your AI tool. Works with:

  • Claude Code
  • Cursor
  • OpenAI Codex
  • pi.dev
  • + 50 more

Not sure where to start? Run /layers-orient — it audits all seven layers and tells you which one is your bottleneck.

Start broad

When you don't yet know which layer the problem lives at.

  • I've been asked to redesign onboarding — use the Layers skills to help me think it through properly.
  • Help me figure out why my team can't agree on how to design this feature. Use Layers to surface what we're actually disagreeing about.
  • I'm stuck on this design and I don't know what's wrong. Use Layers to diagnose where the real problem is.
  • Audit my mockups with the Layers skills — what decisions am I assuming, and which ones haven't actually been made?

Or go straight to a layer

When you know which decisions you need to make.

  • I've got 12 user interviews. Run /layers-user-needs and turn them into prioritised job stories.
  • Help me model the objects, relationships, and vocabulary for this scheduling tool with /layers-conceptual-model.
  • Run /layers-interaction-flow for this checkout — surface the edge cases and empty states I'm missing.
  • My team can't agree on terminology across product, design, and engineering. Use /layers-domain to map the conflicts.

Decisions, not screens.

Skills capture design decisions as markdown and mermaid — job stories, strategy trees, object maps, breadboards, decision inventories. Plain text, readable by humans, by AI, and by every other tool you use.

Need decisions to live in Linear, Notion, Figma, or GitHub instead? Connect an MCP and the skill writes there directly.

The Layers framework, made available to AI.

Layers is a model of product design as seven layers across three zones. The framework is by Jamie Mill; the skills make it executable inside the AI tools you already use.

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