Animate skill for Claude by Emil Kowalski: verdict, safety and alternatives

Emil Kowalski's Animate skill is a Claude Code skill for web UI motion with fixed curves and durations. We rate it Recommended, 77/100, at Low confidence, with safety grade A. It belongs to Emil Kowalski's skills collection.

Get the skill: animate folder on GitHub · SKILL.md at the reviewed commit · skills.sh listing

Which animate skill for Claude is Emil Kowalski's?

Emil Kowalski's animate skill for Claude builds web UI motion. It decides whether a component needs motion, then fixes property, curve, duration, interruption and exit. It is not the delphi-ai, OneWave or Impeccable animate.

An Agent Skill is a SKILL.md package that a coding agent loads on demand. Our guide explains what Agent Skills are. Emil Kowalski, a design engineer, publishes the emilkowalski/skills repo. His animate skill has 2 MIT-licensed files, SKILL.md and RECIPES.md, with 108.1K installs at review on skills.sh. Its recipes target Motion, a JavaScript animation library, and Base UI, a React component library.

Which curves and durations does the Animate skill use?

The Animate skill uses custom cubic-bezier curves, duration bands and springs for gestures. It allows only transform and opacity, bans ease-in exits and scale(0), and prefers transitions over keyframes for rapid triggers.

These values come from SKILL.md at commit d16ebe6:

• Frequency check: no animation on keyboard shortcuts or actions used 100+ times a day.
• Curves: cubic-bezier(0.23, 1, 0.32, 1) for UI, cubic-bezier(0.77, 0, 0.175, 1) for movement, cubic-bezier(0.32, 0.72, 0, 1) for drawers.
• Durations: 100 to 160ms for presses, 150 to 250ms for dropdowns, 200 to 500ms for modals and drawers.
• Cap: UI animations stay under 300ms without a stated reason.
• Springs: { type: "spring", duration: 0.5, bounce: 0.2 }, bounce kept between 0.1 and 0.3.
• Entrances: scale(0.95) with opacity 0 in place of scale(0).
• Toasts and toggles: CSS transitions, not keyframes.
• Tokens: extend the codebase's existing system (Hard Rule 3).

Is Emil Kowalski's Animate skill worth installing?

Yes, Emil Kowalski's Animate skill is worth installing for web UI motion. It scores 77/100, Recommended, at Low confidence. When it fails to load, about 10% of the time, agents write the invented curves it forbids.

Low confidence reflects one independent measurement. It appears in our design and motion skills ranked by verdict.

Effectiveness has no measured result yet: issue #28 measured routing only. Our methodology page explains how we cap unmeasured scores.

How many tokens does the Animate skill use?

The Animate skill loads 2,965 tokens per use, measured from file size, plus 1,989 for recipes on matching components. Our estimate for a typical dropdown or modal task is 11,000 input and 1,500 output tokens.

Our estimate assumes 5 invocations per week.

What changed since our review?

The Animate skill's files have not changed since our 2026-09-30 review. Checks on GitHub on 2026-10-21 show these later changes:

1. No file under skills/animate/ changed; the repo HEAD moved 3 commits ahead to 2d22863.
2. Issue #29 opened on 2026-10-06 and is still open. It reports that line 81 of SKILL.md says "stop and invoke pick-ui-library". That sibling sets disable-model-invocation: true, so only users can call it. The issue is community-reported and not independently reproduced.
3. Two new skills joined the repo: break-ui on 2026-10-02 and animation-performance on 2026-10-11.
4. Stars rose from 42,493 to 47,985, and forks from 2,412 to 2,768.

The verdict stays Recommended, 77.

Is the Animate skill safe to install?

Yes, the Animate skill is safe to install, with safety grade A. It is two Markdown files with no executable code, network calls, credentials or hooks. The Gen Agent Trust Hub, Socket and Snyk audits pass.

Our review of the files at commit d16ebe6 found 8 facts behind the grade, such as these 5:

• Files: SKILL.md (11,860 bytes) and RECIPES.md.
• Folder contents: no scripts, hooks, MCP config or agent manifests.
• Links: only easing.dev and easings.co, as curve sources.
• Prompt injection: no surface, since the skill reads no external content.
• Dependencies: pick-ui-library and review-animations need separate installs.

skills.sh, a directory of Agent Skills, lists the three audits as Pass. Our checklist for vetting a skill before install covers the same checks.

What does the community report about the Animate skill?

The community reports one independent test of the Animate skill. Issue #28 measured 90% recall and 100% precision on Anthropic's Claude Haiku 4.5 model. Every miss wrote invented curves and still reported success.

What are the Animate skill's known failures?

The Animate skill has four known failures at commit d16ebe6. Silent misses write ease-in curves and toast keyframes. Recipes skip the required reduced-motion block and break the 300ms cap, and one snippet references an undefined keyframe.

1. Silent misses: issue #28 logged 8 misses on 79 motion prompts. Each one shipped invented curves such as 250ms ease-in-out.
2. Missing reduced-motion blocks: no recipe includes the block that Hard Rule 4 requires.
3. Undefined keyframe: the reduced-motion snippet in SKILL.md references a fade keyframe it never defines.
4. Long durations: the toast recipe uses 400ms ease and the drawer 500ms, above the 300ms UI cap. The toast exception is explained.

Issue #29, opened after the review, reports a fifth gap: hand-offs to user-invoked skills the model cannot call (community-reported). Naming the skill in your prompt avoids the silent misses. Our guide to fixing a skill that fails to load covers other causes.

Does the Animate skill work in Claude Code and Codex?

Yes for Claude Code: the Animate skill is verified there on Claude Haiku 4.5 (issue #28). Codex reads the same SKILL.md format, but no Codex run is documented. React Native work goes to animate-expo.

The publisher lists no supported agents. Our list of Claude Code skills ranked shows where the Animate skill sits among them.

How do you install Emil Kowalski's Animate skill?

Install Emil Kowalski's Animate skill with npx skills add emilkowalski/skills --skill animate. The bare repo command installs all collection skills. It has no dependencies, but its recipes assume Base UI and Motion.

1. Run npx skills add emilkowalski/skills --skill animate to install only this skill.
2. Run npx skills@latest add emilkowalski/skills to install the full collection instead.
3. Copy skills/animate/ into ~/.claude/skills/animate/ for a manual install.
4. Install pick-ui-library and review-animations for the hand-offs SKILL.md references.

Our Claude Code skills setup guide explains where skill folders live.

How do you add UI animation in Claude Code with the Animate skill?

Add UI animation in Claude Code by naming the Animate skill in a dropdown, modal or toast request. It checks whether motion is warranted, then writes code from its curve, duration and spring tables.

1. Name the Animate skill in the prompt, so the agent loads it on request.
2. Describe the component and the trigger, such as a dropdown opened by click.
3. Let the skill decide whether the motion is warranted at all.
4. Compare the curves and durations against the tables above.
5. Check the reduced-motion variant yourself, because recipes omit it.

Test it yourself with this check:

• Ask the agent to add motion to a dropdown and a Cmd+K palette.
• Run it once with the skill installed and once without.
• Check the curves and the transform-origin.
• Check the reduced-motion handling.
• Check whether the palette is left unanimated.

What are the alternatives to Emil Kowalski's Animate skill?

The closest alternatives to Emil Kowalski's Animate skill are three reviewed skills. Emil Design Engineering (76, Recommended) reviews motion and polish. Impeccable (67, Conditional) and UI/UX Pro Max (68, Conditional) cover broader design.

Can the Animate skill make animated videos?

No, the Animate skill does not make animated videos. It writes motion code for web interface components. For code-rendered video, Remotion's official skill fits better, and OneWave's same-name skill generates video scenes.

Our Remotion skill for code-rendered video is rated Recommended at 77.

Where is the Animate skill on GitHub?

The Animate skill is on GitHub in emilkowalski/skills at skills/animate, under MIT. We reviewed commit d16ebe6 on 2026-09-30. The repo has no releases or version tags and 47,985 stars on 2026-10-21.

• Repository: emilkowalski/skills, folder skills/animate/.
• Reviewed commit: d16ebe60d09a5ba2afcb7054ede9d0a10c9f6128.
• Folder change: last on 2026-09-15.
• Stars at review: 42,493 in our animate review; our Emil Design Engineering review logged 42,391 the same day.
• Installs at review: 108.1K in our animate review; the Emil Design Engineering review lists 107.4K.
• Code-search copies: 1,200 exact copies.
• File hash (sha256): b8ede161… for SKILL.md.

Common questions

Is the Animate skill a video or animation generator?

No. It writes CSS and Motion code for interface components; OneWave AI's animate skill generates video scenes.

Is Emil Kowalski's Animate skill free?

Yes. It is MIT-licensed and installs at no cost.

Does the Animate skill handle React Native?

No. The skill routes that work to animate-expo, which we have not evaluated.

Is this Adobe Animate?

No. It is a SKILL.md for coding agents, unrelated to Adobe's software or Anthropic's Claude Design product.