codex-skills-alternative

An open, portable reimplementation of two Codex role plugins — Creative Production and Product Design — as 19 vendor-neutral Agent Skills (SKILL.md): 17 task skills + 2 orchestrators that route to them.

Why this exists. OpenAI announced the Creative Production and Product Design plugins for Codex (June 2026), but they ship only inside Codex through the in-app Plugin Directory — and their source is not published. This repo brings the same workflows to every other agent that OpenAI doesn't serve: Claude Code, opencode, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot. It's an independent, by-the-spec reimplementation written from the public descriptions — no proprietary prompts copied. (Already on Codex? You likely don't need this — use the official plugins. See the Codex note below.)

Each skill is tool-agnostic: it references generic capabilities ("an image-generation tool", "a browser-automation tool", "a web-fetch tool") so you can wire it to whatever you have — DALL·E / Imagen / FLUX / SD / Midjourney for images, Playwright for the browser, any fetch/search MCP for the web.

What's inside

Orchestrators (2 skills)

Start here — they read your request and route to the right sub-skill.

Skill	What it does
creative-production	Routes a creative brief to the right creative-* sub-skill
product-design	Routes a design goal to the right design-* sub-skill

Creative Production (8 skills)

Turn a brief into reviewable visual assets.

Skill	What it does
creative-explore	Propose 3-6 named visual directions + one reference image each; lock one
creative-moodboard	Build 2-4 visual territories with sample tiles for team alignment
creative-positioning	Map business positioning → a concrete visual language spec
creative-offer	Merchandise a specific offer/value-prop into hero visuals
creative-ads-explorer	Generate up to 25 diverse ad hypotheses (angle × format matrix)
creative-scene	Realistic product-in-use lifestyle scenes
creative-shot	Consistent multi-angle product shot set (ecommerce/PDP)
creative-polish	Finish a chosen visual (fix artifacts, grade, conform aspect)

Product Design (9 skills)

Turn early ideas into reviewable prototypes.

Skill	What it does
design-get-context	Clarify the brief first (goal, user, success, scope) → context.md
design-research	Competitor scan + UX pattern research + pain mining
design-audit	Heuristic audit of an existing UI (hierarchy, a11y, conversion)
design-ideate	2-4 structurally different UI directions with tradeoffs
design-image-to-code	Reference image → working local frontend (screenshot-verified)
design-url-to-code	Live site → editable local frontend in your stack
design-prototype	Wire static screens into a clickable, runnable prototype
design-qa	Conformance check: implementation vs design + requirements
design-share	Publish a runnable prototype and return a shareable link

Suggested flows

• Creative: explore / moodboard / positioning → scene · shot · ads-explorer · offer → polish
• Design: get-context → research · audit → ideate → image-to-code · url-to-code → prototype → qa → share

Installation

A skill is just a folder with a SKILL.md. "Installing" = putting that folder where your agent looks for skills. Pick your tool below.

Quick install (any tool)

git clone https://github.com/DKeken/codex-skills-alternative.git
cd codex-skills-alternative
./install.sh            # auto-detects installed agents, installs globally
./install.sh --help     # see options (per-tool, project scope, dry-run)

The script copies each skills/<name>/ folder into the right directory for every agent it detects. Manual instructions per tool follow.

Codex (as a real plugin) — usually unnecessary

If you're on Codex, you probably don't need this. OpenAI ships the official Creative Production and Product Design plugins in the in-app Plugin Directory ("Curated by OpenAI") — if they're available in your region/plan, use those; they're more polished and wire up Figma/Canva/Shutterstock/Picsart/Fal for you.

This bundle is worth installing on Codex only as a fallback (official not rolled out to you yet) or if you want an open, vendor-neutral, hackable version with no proprietary app dependencies. The repo is still a valid Codex plugin:

git clone https://github.com/DKeken/codex-skills-alternative.git
codex plugin marketplace add ./codex-skills-alternative
codex plugin install codex-skills-alternative@codex-skills-alternative-marketplace

Or skip the plugin and just copy the skills (below) — same result, no marketplace.

Claude Code

Source: official docs.

Scope	Path
Personal (all projects)	~/.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md
Project (committed to repo)	.claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md

# Personal install (all 19)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -R skills/* ~/.claude/skills/

# Project install (this repo only)
mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -R skills/* .claude/skills/

Claude Code watches the directory live — no restart needed. Invoke with /design-get-context or let it auto-trigger by description.

opencode / Codex CLI

opencode and Codex read the universal .agents/skills/ path plus their own dirs.

Tool	Personal path
opencode	~/.config/opencode/skills/<name>/SKILL.md
Codex CLI	~/.codex/skills/<name>/SKILL.md
Universal (both + others)	~/.agents/skills/<name>/SKILL.md

# opencode (global)
mkdir -p ~/.config/opencode/skills && cp -R skills/* ~/.config/opencode/skills/

# Codex CLI (global)
mkdir -p ~/.codex/skills && cp -R skills/* ~/.codex/skills/

# Or the portable path both pick up:
mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills && cp -R skills/* ~/.agents/skills/

Restart Codex after copying so it picks up new skills.

Cursor

Source: Cursor docs. Cursor is project-scoped (no personal dir) but also reads ~/.cursor/skills/ and, for compatibility, .claude/skills / .codex/skills / .agents/skills.

Scope	Path
Project	.cursor/skills/<name>/SKILL.md
Global	~/.cursor/skills/<name>/SKILL.md

# Project install
mkdir -p .cursor/skills && cp -R skills/* .cursor/skills/

Then reload: Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P → "Developer: Reload Window". Skills appear in Settings → Rules → "Agent Decides". Invoke with /design-audit or by description.

You can also import from GitHub: Settings → Rules → Add Rule → Remote Rule (GitHub) → paste this repo URL.

Gemini CLI / GitHub Copilot / others

These follow the same SKILL.md standard and read ~/.agents/skills/ (or their vendor dir). Use the universal path:

mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills && cp -R skills/* ~/.agents/skills/

Path reference

Agent	Personal	Project
Claude Code	~/.claude/skills/	.claude/skills/
opencode	~/.config/opencode/skills/	.opencode/skills/ or .agents/skills/
Codex CLI	~/.codex/skills/	.codex/skills/ or .agents/skills/
Cursor	~/.cursor/skills/	.cursor/skills/
Universal	~/.agents/skills/	.agents/skills/

Wiring the tools

These skills name capabilities generically. Map them to whatever your agent has:

Skill needs	Wire to (examples)
Image generation / edit	DALL·E, GPT-Image, Gemini Imagen, FLUX, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, or any image MCP/CLI
Browser automation	Playwright MCP, Puppeteer, Chrome DevTools
Web fetch / search	any fetch/search MCP, curl, Tavily, Exa, Firecrawl
Vision / image read	your agent's native image-reading tool

If a capability is missing (e.g. no image tool), the skill degrades gracefully — it returns the prompts/specs and asks you to run them. Nothing hard-depends on a specific vendor.

How they work

Skills use progressive disclosure: the agent sees only each skill's name + description at startup (~100 tokens each) and loads the full body only when it decides a skill is relevant. So all 19 can sit installed without bloating context. Trigger them explicitly (/creative-explore) or let the agent auto-select by matching your request to the description.

Verify your install

# Claude Code
ls ~/.claude/skills/*/SKILL.md
# opencode
ls ~/.config/opencode/skills/*/SKILL.md
# Cursor (project)
ls .cursor/skills/*/SKILL.md

You should see 19 SKILL.md paths. Common mistake: nesting one level too deep — the path must be .../skills/<name>/SKILL.md, not .../skills/<name>/subfolder/SKILL.md.

Disclaimer

This is an independent, community reimplementation inspired by the publicly announced Creative Production and Product Design Codex plugins. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or copied from OpenAI. The skill instructions were authored from public feature descriptions; no proprietary plugin source or prompts were used. "Codex" is a trademark of OpenAI; used here only to describe compatibility and lineage.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Use, fork, and adapt freely.

Contributing

PRs welcome. Keep each SKILL.md:

• vendor-neutral (no hard dependency on a specific tool/API),
• focused (one workflow per skill),
• short (frontmatter name + description, body as concise instructions),
• with name matching its folder name.