Animations.dev

Emil Kowalski's interactive course and reference surface for animation taste: easing, timing, springs, performance, vocabulary, and the judgment behind motion that feels right.

The course matters to Kevin's stack because it teaches the decision layer behind UI motion: which easing and duration fit an interaction, when spring physics belong, what properties keep animation performant, and why a technically working animation can still feel wrong. The public page reports 11,632 designers and engineers improved their animation skills through the course and says the next enrollment opens on 2026-08-25 for 10 days. Source: animations.dev, checked 2026-07-01

Stack fit

Use Animation Vocabulary (Animations.dev) when the task is naming the motion pattern for an agent prompt. Use design-engineering-polish when reviewing or implementing the motion. Use this page when choosing the source authority: Emil's course is the higher-level taste and theory reference; the vocabulary page is the narrow prompt glossary.

The Gianluca bookmark starts as a joke about design engineers using gradient profile pictures, but the self-thread is a source map: follow Emil Kowalski, Vaun Blu, Vedant Lad, Atilla, Jakub Krehel, Vinoth Ragunathan, and Sasha for design-engineering taste and painfully polished interfaces. The useful point is curation: Kevin's design brain should collect exemplary taste sources, then encode the reusable decisions into skills and review checklists rather than merely imitate the look. Source: X/@GianlucaNDRT thread, 2026-06-23

Intro-animation ordering

The Linear intro-animation bookmark adds a reusable rule to the course/source page: sequence by semantic importance, not by physical position. Emil's example orders the reveal as headline, description, product demo, then changelog, even though the changelog sits higher on the page than the product. His follow-up applies the same rule to an animations.dev onboarding screen: utility controls can enter last even when they sit above the main content. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-06-16

That rule belongs in design-engineering-polish because it is executable design judgment. The page stays the source authority; the skill owns the repeated review behavior.

Practical skill-file tips

The March 2026 practical-tips artifact is the compact version of Emil's skill-file guidance: responsive buttons use scale(0.97) on press, entry states start near scale(0.95), transform jitter can use a narrow will-change hint, hover flicker is fixed by animating a child instead of the hit-area parent, origin-aware popovers scale from their trigger, sequential tooltips skip delay after the first one, tap targets stay at 44px minimum, subtle blur can smooth awkward transitions, and hover states must be gated behind @media (hover: hover) and (pointer: fine). The durable route is Design and Animation for the compiled style guidance and design-engineering-polish for the executable review behavior. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-03-11

AI skill expansion

Emil's June 2026 bookmark makes animations.dev a watch source for AI-assisted design-engineering work, not only animation theory. He said /emil-design-eng had crossed 100K installs and that the course's AI section would be fully updated in August with new skills and workflow notes on how he works with LLMs. For Kevin's stack, the stable routing decision stays the same: design-engineering-polish owns executable review behavior, while this page tracks Emil as a source authority. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-06-24

Skill decision

No separate animations-dev skill. The executable owner is design-engineering-polish; this page is a source/reference page. A duplicate skill would split motion judgment across two owners and weaken routing.

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Timeline

• 2026-07-01 | Deep-reviewed Emil Kowalski's practical skill-file tips artifact and folded the missing hover-flicker and will-change rules into design-engineering-polish; kept this page as the source authority instead of creating a duplicate skill. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-03-11
• 2026-07-03 | Added Emil's AI/design-engineering skill expansion note: /emil-design-eng crossed 100K installs and animations.dev will refresh its AI section with LLM workflow notes in August. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-06-24
• 2026-06-30 | Deep-reviewed Emil Kowalski's Linear intro-animation bookmark and local video thumbnail. Added the importance-over-position sequencing rule and linked the public emil-design-eng / review-animations skill page. Source: X/@emilkowalski, 2026-06-16; Source: emilkowal.ski/skill, 2026-06-30
• 2026-06-23 | Gianluca Andretta's design-engineer gradient-profile joke linked to animations.dev and named a design-engineering follow set. 556 bookmarks, 2,029 likes. Source: X/@GianlucaNDRT
• 2026-06-30 | Promoted into a focused source page and linked to Emil Kowalski, Animation Vocabulary (Animations.dev), and design-engineering-polish after artifact review. Source: X bookmark artifact audit, 2026-06-30