motion-site

Motion that means something.

A Claude Code skill that turns Claude into a motion design studio. Art direction → scroll storyboard → build → frame-by-frame self-review until every scene scores 9/10.

Live demo · Install · Example prompts · How it works · What's inside

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Why this skill

Ask any AI for "a landing page with animations" and you get the same thing: centered text on a gradient, everything fading in at once, a bounce here and there. It looks generated because it is generated: effects with no reason behind them.

motion-site gives Claude a method, not a list of effects. It works the way a motion studio does, and it checks its own work.

What you usually get	What you get with motion-site
Effects added "to look nice"	Every movement answers "where do I look, and what just changed?"
Everything fades in at once	Words rise out of masks 0.09s apart; numbers roll like an odometer
Transitions via fade-to-black	The object itself becomes the next scene: push-ins, reveals, morphs
Every section equally loud	A storyboard with rhythm and exactly one peak moment
"Done!" without ever looking	Screenshots on desktop and mobile, 5-axis scoring, fix the 3 worst spots, repeat

Showcase

Halden Atelier — Editorial direction

A fictional architecture studio. Paper and ink, Instrument Serif, photos that open from their own edge, and a peak where a framed dune photo opens to full bleed as the page turns to ink.

Open the live example →

How the review loop shaped it — three rounds, exactly as the skill prescribes:

Round	Worst spot found in the frame sheet	Fix
1	The theme change into the peak scrubbed through a muddy half-grey (scored 5/10)	A quick 0.7s crossfade when the peak starts, never a scrub
1	Manifesto text too small, empty right side (7/10)	Larger serif, tighter measure
2	On mobile, the fixed masthead overlapped photo captions	The masthead hides while you scroll down and returns on scroll up
2	After the peak, a near-empty screen on mobile	Less padding before the method section
3	All scenes at 8–9, no technical problems	Shipped

Everything it gives you

🎬 A real studio process

• Brief in one message. At most four questions, only about what you didn't already say. No interrogation.
• Art direction first. Six complete directions — Midnight Launch, Editorial, Swiss Kinetic, Warm Craft, Liquid Glass, Neo-Brutal — each with a palette, a type pairing, a motion character, and a signature move. One page, one character.
• A scroll storyboard before any code. 5–8 scenes, each with one idea and a before → after, calm/active rhythm, and exactly one peak moment.

🔁 A built-in self-review loop

• It looks at its own work. A bundled script captures the page at every scroll step on desktop (1440×900) and mobile (390×844) and assembles a contact sheet.
• It grades itself honestly. Every scene is scored 1–10 on five axes: idea, composition, motion, typography, rhythm — with a written rubric of what 5, 7, and 9 look like.
• It fixes what's worst. The three weakest spots get fixed, then it shoots again — until every scene hits 9+ or the score stops improving.
• It catches the boring bugs too. Console errors, horizontal overflow, text under 14px on mobile, content hidden under reduced motion.

The contact sheet the skill shoots of its own demo page. This is what Claude looks at before it's allowed to say "done".

✨ Motion that feels expensive

• Masked text reveals with GSAP SplitText — words rise out of line masks, re-split automatically on resize.
• Odometer numbers that roll and settle right to left, with each column sized to its digit.
• Portal push-ins, horizontal rails, sticky card stacks, and 11 more techniques with ready code: image reveals, read-along text, sticky swaps, theme shifts, line drawing, velocity marquees, 3D layer explodes, chart morphs, magnetic buttons, light sweeps, Flip layout transitions.
• A precise motion grammar: expo.out enters, exits twice as fast, springs that settle without bouncing, 0.09s word staggers, results that hold while they're read.
• Buttery scrolling with Lenis, synced to ScrollTrigger — smooth, but the visitor always stays in control.
• A living frame: slow drifting light and subtle film grain. Never a dead screen, always one focus.

🔤 Modern type, verified

• Current favorites — Bricolage Grotesque, Geist, Instrument Serif, Funnel Display, Host Grotesk, Fraunces, Syne — paired per direction.
• Script support checked against the Google Fonts API. Many trending fonts are Latin-only; every direction comes with a verified Cyrillic pairing, and there's a table for Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek.

♿ Correct by default

• prefers-reduced-motion → no animation, everything visible.
• No JS or a dead CDN → content still shows. Elements are hidden only after motion is confirmed to run.
• Mobile gets vertical pins only, shorter travel, no hover effects, and native snap scrolling instead of horizontal pins.
• Performance: only transform, opacity, clip-path, and filter are animated; ScrollTrigger.refresh() runs after fonts load.

🚫 Taste, enforced

A hard "never" list: no centered-text-on-gradient as the idea, no bounces, neon glow, particles, confetti, emoji, or stock icons, no scroll hijacking, no custom cursor blobs, and no invented numbers, testimonials, or client logos. Plus a "looks AI-made → fix" table for when something still feels generic.

🧱 Zero setup for the page itself

• One self-contained HTML file. No build step, no framework, no npm install.
• Libraries load from jsDelivr; all GSAP plugins are free since 3.13.
• Works with any host: GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel, or just opening the file.

Install

As a plugin (recommended)

Inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add ildargiv/motion-site
/plugin install motion-site@motion-site

Or from your shell:

claude plugin marketplace add ildargiv/motion-site
claude plugin install motion-site@motion-site

As a plain skill

git clone https://github.com/ildargiv/motion-site.git
cp -r motion-site/plugins/motion-site/skills/motion-site ~/.claude/skills/

For a single project, put the folder in .claude/skills/motion-site inside that project.

For the review loop (once)

pip install playwright
playwright install chromium

Without Playwright the skill still works: Claude falls back to whatever browser tool your session has.

Example prompts

The skill activates on its own when you ask for a site with motion. Best results with Opus at high effort (/effort high).

Build a landing page for my running app with motion design. The one idea: "workouts that adapt to your heart rate." Colors: black and lime.

Portfolio for an architecture studio called Line, editorial style. Photos are in photos/. I want the images to reveal as you scroll.

Bring my existing index.html to life with Apple-level motion, but don't touch the copy.

A conference page for November 12–13, neo-brutal, a speaker marquee, and a big countdown.

How it works

1. Brief — at most four questions, only about what's missing.
2. Art direction — one of six directions, or a custom one with the same recipe.
3. Storyboard — 5–8 scenes, each with one idea and a before → after, one peak.
4. Build — from a tested starter with Lenis, GSAP, ScrollTrigger, and SplitText already wired up.
5. Review loop — shoot frames, score five axes per scene, fix the three worst spots, repeat.
6. Report — the storyboard, the scores per round, the final frame sheet, and open questions.

What's inside

motion-site/
├── .claude-plugin/marketplace.json
└── plugins/motion-site/
    ├── .claude-plugin/plugin.json
    └── skills/motion-site/
        ├── SKILL.md                    the method: steps, rules, never-list
        ├── references/
        │   ├── motion-grammar.md       easing, durations, choreography, scroll rules
        │   ├── art-directions.md       6 directions + verified font script support
        │   ├── techniques.md           16 techniques with code
        │   └── quality-rubric.md       5-axis scoring and technical blockers
        ├── assets/starter.html         Lenis + GSAP + ScrollTrigger + SplitText starter
        └── scripts/frames.py           frame sheets + technical report (Playwright)

The frame checker on its own

frames.py is useful for any page, with or without the skill:

python plugins/motion-site/skills/motion-site/scripts/frames.py index.html --out frames

It writes frames/sheet-desktop.png, frames/sheet-mobile.png, and frames/report.json with console errors, horizontal overflow, mobile text under 14px, and elements hidden under reduced motion.

FAQ

Does it work with existing sites? Yes. Point it at your HTML and ask it to add motion without changing the copy. It storyboards around your content.

Do I need to know GSAP? No. The skill and its recipes handle it. If you do know GSAP, the starter is clean and commented, so it's easy to extend.

Is the output tied to any framework? No. It's a single HTML file. Port it to React, Vue, or Astro later if you like; the GSAP code carries over.

Why one peak moment? If everything is "wow", nothing is. A page that builds to one moment is the page people remember.

Contributing

New art directions and techniques are welcome. A technique should come with: when it fits, the code, and its gotchas. Share sites you built with the skill in Issues with the showcase label.

License

MIT