Design knowledge base

Purpose: Curated, agent-ready guidance for any website or product design effort — static marketing sites, nonprofit pages, full-stack apps, and e-commerce. Principles and patterns live here; external authorities are linked in SOURCE_INDEX.md.

Harvest / review: 2026-05 — Revisit Tier 1 links annually.

Companion: AGENTS.md (what to load per task) · context-engineering.md (how to load it) · ai-engineering/context-engineering.md (general LLM context)

Cursor skills:

Scope	Path
This repo	.cursor/skills/design-knowledge/SKILL.md
All workspaces (Victoria)	~/.cursor/skills/design-knowledge/SKILL.md — thin router to this KB

Both trigger on build website / new product / UI / e-commerce asks.

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Who this is for

• Builders using Cursor to ship sites and apps
• PMs who want research-backed UX language for reviews
• Agents that need predictable, link-stable references (not scraped paywalls)

What this is not

• A copy of Baymard, WCAG, or NN/g — we summarize and link
• A replacement for project-specific research — use projects/ for vertical case studies (e.g. equine therapy nonprofit)

Folder map

Folder	Topics
design-thinking/	Human-centered process, heuristic evaluation
ui-design/	Visual principles, accessibility, design systems, psychology
website-design/	IA, conversion, nonprofit/mission sites
design-patterns/	Navigation, static layouts, responsive/mobile
e-commerce/	Catalog, checkout, donations
backend-design/	REST APIs, architecture, security
full-stack/	Contract-first API ↔ UI alignment

Quick start by task

You're building…	Start here
Landing / marketing site	design-patterns/static-site-patterns.md → ui-design/accessibility.md
Nonprofit / mission site	website-design/nonprofit-and-mission.md
Online store	e-commerce/fundamentals.md → e-commerce/checkout-and-payments.md
Web app + API	backend-design/api-design-rest.md → full-stack/contract-first.md
Design critique	design-thinking/ux-research-methods.md

Always read AGENTS.md when scoping a new design session.