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absence-audit

Skill5 starsChanged 8 months agoMITView on GitHub

Notice what's deliberately missing from a design. Restraint is a taste signal. Use when studying minimalist products, evaluating design maturity, or understanding the power of removal.

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

5 rules. About 0 are common, 5 are distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.

  • ≈0

    Common · estimate

    Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

  • ≈5

    Distinctive · estimate

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 0

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Distinctive:

    MUST list 5-10 things that are conspicuously absent from the design

    line 17
  2. Distinctive:

    MUST hypothesize for each: intentional removal or never considered?

    line 18
  3. Distinctive:

    MUST evaluate: does the absence strengthen or weaken the experience?

    line 19
  4. Distinctive:

    SHOULD note what the absence reveals about the design philosophy

    line 20
  5. Distinctive:

    MUST distinguish between the two.

    line 31

≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 308,232 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Absence Audit

The hardest things to notice are the things that aren't there.

How to use

  • /absence-audit Apply absence analysis to any design in this conversation.

Constraints

What to Look For

  • MUST list 5-10 things that are conspicuously absent from the design
  • MUST hypothesize for each: intentional removal or never considered?
  • MUST evaluate: does the absence strengthen or weaken the experience?
  • SHOULD note what the absence reveals about the design philosophy

Categories of Absence

  • Missing UI elements (no breadcrumbs, no tooltips, no onboarding tutorial)
  • Missing content (no testimonials, no feature comparison, no pricing)
  • Missing states (no loading skeleton, no empty state, no error recovery)
  • Missing interaction (no animation, no hover effects, no sound)

The Restraint Signal

  • Intentional absence is a strong taste signal. It says "we thought about this and decided it wasn't needed."
  • Accidental absence (missing error states, broken edge cases) signals the opposite.
  • MUST distinguish between the two.

Anti-Patterns

  • Treating every absence as a problem to fix
  • Assuming absence equals minimalism (it might just be incomplete)
  • Missing obvious gaps because you're focused on what IS there

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