Canvas Design Skill
Turns a prompt into an original poster or artwork: it first writes a design philosophy manifesto, then renders it on canvas with museum-grade craftsmanship.
Pure prompt file with no code execution, network calls, or sensitive-data handling; low red-line risk. However, SKILL.md instructs the agent to 'download whatever fonts are needed' with no source constraints, an uncontrolled external-fetch instruction; the referenced LICENSE.txt is absent from evidence; no rollback, confirmation, or data-flow disclosure, deducted accordingly.
The skill is self-consistent stepwise instruction (philosophy → canvas → refinement) with no script dependencies to break; but it references a ./canvas-fonts directory not present in evidence, with no failure handling if fonts are missing; no tests or error-feedback design for this skill path; output quality depends entirely on the host agent, deducted accordingly.
Description clearly scopes the use case (posters, art, static design) and output formats (.png/.pdf/.md), giving fairly precise triggers; but non-fit boundaries are undeclared, no Chinese-support statement, and the actual rendering mechanism is unspecified, deducted accordingly.
Frontmatter includes name, description, and license; well-structured, readable, with concrete examples; but the referenced LICENSE.txt is missing from evidence, there is no versioning or changelog, the skill appears derived from Anthropic's official skills repo (README mentions a Claude Skills submodule) without attribution, and maintenance/update responsibility is unclear, deducted accordingly.
Core value is creative design guidance that can steer production of a philosophy .md plus visual artifacts, but static review cannot verify outputs are directly usable; no representative output evidence and no comparative-benefit argument against alternatives, deducted accordingly.
Only the SKILL.md source text is auditable; no execution evidence, no test coverage of this skill path (tests/ cover only agent and ACP), no third-party corroboration; claims like 'museum quality' are unverifiable, deducted accordingly.
- The skill instructs the agent to download fonts as needed without source constraints; verify that font fetching is constrained by the host environment before use.
- LICENSE.txt and the ./canvas-fonts directory referenced by SKILL.md are absent from the reviewed evidence; license terms and resource availability should be verified independently.
- The skill appears derived from Anthropic's official skills repository without explicit attribution.
- Static review executed nothing; output-quality claims (e.g., 'museum quality') are independently unverified.
- No Chinese-language support statement; the skill assumes the host agent can write files and generate canvas/PDF/PNG artifacts, and may be unusable otherwise.
What does this skill do, and when should you use it?
canvas-design is one of the 15 skills bundled in the Mini-Agent repository (MiniMax-AI/Mini-Agent, MIT licensed), located at mini_agent/skills/canvas-design/SKILL.md. It targets static visual creation such as posters, art pieces, and graphic designs. The workflow has two steps: author a named design philosophy as a .md file, then express it as a highly visual, text-minimal single-page .pdf or .png. The skill emphasizes minimal text, spatial expression, and expert-level craft, and includes a mandatory second-pass refinement step.
It reads the user's theme or subtle instructions and first outputs a 4-6 paragraph design philosophy .md file (naming an aesthetic movement and articulating space, color, and composition principles). It then deduces a subtle conceptual reference from the original request to serve as the work's 'conceptual DNA,' and produces a single design-forward .pdf or .png page (expandable to multiple pages on request) alongside the philosophy file. It selects fonts from the repository's ./canvas-fonts directory, enforces that nothing overlaps or falls off the canvas, and performs a purification-focused second pass.
- A designer needing a one-page poster for an event, venue, or brand who wants a considered aesthetic stance rather than a template
- A content creator generating a conceptual poster or cover sketch for a book, film, or album
- A design team that wants a quick design-philosophy document plus visual draft as a creative direction starting point
- A Mini-Agent user who wants the agent to handle end-to-end visual production from abstract idea to finished image
- Users needing multi-page visual material, who can request multiple pages bundled into one .pdf forming a tasteful visual narrative
What are this skill's strengths and limitations?
- Two-phase flow (philosophy first, visual expression second) yields results with a clear aesthetic stance rather than random decoration
- A mandatory second-pass refinement step encodes concrete craft standards: no overlaps, no off-canvas elements, proper margins and breathing room
- A bundled canvas-fonts directory and several worked philosophy examples reduce uncertainty in first-run output quality
- Explicitly requires original design and avoiding copying existing artists' work, lowering copyright risk
- Output quality depends heavily on the model's execution of abstract aesthetic instructions; the source offers no benchmarks or evaluated samples
- Font usage relies on the in-repo ./canvas-fonts directory, making this dependency unclear when installing the skill standalone
- Minimal text is a design goal — it is a poor fit if you need information-dense, text-heavy layout documents
- The specific PDF/PNG generation toolchain (which drawing library, etc.) is not stated in SKILL.md, leaving little basis for troubleshooting
How do you install this skill?
The skill ships with the Mini-Agent repository. Quick route: uv tool install git+https://github.com/MiniMax-AI/Mini-Agent.git, then run the official setup script and fill in your MiniMax API key and API base in ~/.mini-agent/config/config.yaml. Development route: git clone the repository, run uv sync, and run git submodule update --init --recursive to initialize the Claude Skills (the skills arrive via submodules). The skill itself lives at mini_agent/skills/canvas-design/. Note: steps for installing it as a standalone Claude Code skill are not documented in the source.
How do you use this skill?
Run via the Mini-Agent CLI (mini-agent or mini-agent --workspace /path/to/project) and trigger it in natural language, e.g. 'Design a poster for a jazz bar.' The agent first produces the design philosophy .md, then generates a .pdf or .png. For multi-page work, state the page count in your request. The SKILL.md itself defines no standalone command or trigger syntax; loading depends on the host client.