Summary — 2026-06-01

Seventh pass — 2026-06-01 (animations.dev — Emil Kowalski's web-animation course + SKILL.md)

One item this pass. Surfaced by Anthony 2026-06-01. animations.dev — "Animations on the Web," a $199 interactive course by Emil Kowalski (design engineer at Linear, ex-Vercel design team; author of Sonner + Vaul, ~70M npm downloads/week). Four base modules (animation theory · CSS animations · Framer Motion/Motion · good-vs-great) plus four walkthroughs, lifetime access, four free content updates/year, Discord. Crucially for our stack: the course ships a SKILL.md file (web-animation-design) — agent-ready animation guidelines (easing/duration/spring/perf/prefers-reduced-motion) extracted from Emil's years of work. Enrollment is currently CLOSED — reopens August 25th for 10 days. Waitlist gives two free preview lessons.

Why P=2 (not 3)

The course itself costs time (hours of lessons) — it doesn't recover hours by being watched. The productivity lever is the bundled web-animation-design SKILL.md: dropped into the coding-agent stack, it lets Claude pick correct easing/duration/spring defaults on microsite builds without the "this animation feels off — try again" iteration loop. That's real, measurable iteration-time recovery on a recurring deliverable (every microsite + lab page). P caps at 2 because (a) enrollment is closed until Aug 25 so the full skill file isn't purchasable today, and (b) the benefit is gated on Dylan actually extracting/wiring the skill, not on watching videos. Promotes to 3 once the animation skill is live in the microsite stack and one page ships measurably faster.

Why Q=3

This is the load-bearing axis. Articulate ships microsites, lab pages, and client-facing surfaces as a core deliverable (MICROSITE-FORMAT.md, Slipstream, GIGI, Famflix onboard, articulate-ai.work). Motion polish is exactly the "good → great" lever — and the anti-AI-slop axis Will/Belinda/Dylan already gate on. Direct parallel to the Frontend Design (Anthropic) plugin (first pass, Q=3, "kills the AI-slop tell"): same quality surface, one layer deeper (motion, not just layout/type). Emil is the canonical authority here — Sonner/Vaul are the components half our reference set already imitates. Q=3 holds.

Why S=1 (not higher)

Clients don't buy "an animation course." There is no standalone product here — it's a craft input to Dylan's design lane, not Articulate product surface. Same shape as Hallmark (second pass, S=1, "input to TripleD's existing workflow, not a standalone product"). S promotes to 2 only if motion-craft is scoped as a named quality tier inside the design/microsite offer (e.g. "design-engineering motion pass" as a discrete MEP line item), and to 3 only if a client signs that as a discrete deliverable.

Class-match against failures.md and prior radar passes

• Hallmark (second pass, 2026-05-19, 6/9) — closest match. Anti-slop design skill, npx-installable, TripleD's lane, S=1, Belinda gate before any Articulate surface. animations.dev is the motion counterpart. Same handling: Dylan owns the install, Belinda gates external surfaces, runs delta-against-canon (here: MICROSITE-FORMAT.md §6 typography + the motion defaults).
• Frontend Design (Anthropic) (first pass, Q=3) — same microsite-quality / anti-slop surface, layout layer. animations.dev sits one layer deeper. The two stack: Frontend Design for structure/type, animation skill for motion.
• Taste Pipeline (third pass, 8/9) + SkillOpt (fourth pass, 7/9) — the bundled SKILL.md is a ready-made, expert-authored skill artefact. It's a candidate input to the Taste→SkillOpt lifecycle: seed v0 from Emil's file, then benchmark-gate it against our own microsite output. Don't ship Emil's raw file unedited onto client surfaces — route through Dylan + the rule-set discipline first (same as the "build the superior Articulate version" call on Corey Haines, second pass).
• No failures.md negative class-match — net-new craft surface, not a repeat fail pattern.

Re-score triggers

• (a) Animation SKILL.md wired into the microsite build stack and one lab page ships with measurably better/faster motion vs the hand-tuned baseline → P promotes to 3, total 7/9.
• (b) Enrollment reopens Aug 25 and Anthony/Dylan buy in → confirms access; re-score P with the full course + skill file in hand.
• (c) Motion-craft scoped as a discrete line item inside an MEP / microsite engagement (named "design-engineering motion pass") → S promotes to 2, total 7/9; to 3 on first paid sign.
• (d) Belinda delta-against-canon fails — if Emil's easing/duration defaults conflict with MICROSITE-FORMAT.md or a deployed client brand's motion language, the skill stays a reference, not an enforced default. Same caveat as Hallmark's 22-theme brand-conflict risk.

Build path

Not built this pass. Next move is lightweight and unblockable today (no enrollment needed):

1. Anthony joins the waitlist → two free preview lessons + the SKILL.md exposure.
2. Dylan drafts an interim Design/PromptLibrary/_motion/animation-skill.md from public craft principles + the preview material, scoped to MICROSITE-FORMAT.md.
3. On Aug 25 reopen: full enrollment, extract the canonical web-animation-design SKILL.md, run it through Belinda's delta-against-canon gate, then promote to the standard microsite build stack.

Rick gates the spend ($199, inside any reasonable own-tooling budget — not a Rick fight) and the scope (P/Q install only; do not over-build a "motion offer" before a client asks).