This is the frosted glass look — the same effect you see on iPhone notifications, the macOS menu bar, Apple Vision Pro, and every premium iOS app in the last three years. Elements look like sheets of frosted glass layered on top of each other, slightly transparent, with a soft blur behind them. It creates an immediate sense of depth and modernity that's very hard to achieve any other way. When someone looks at your app built with this skill and says "wait, how did you make it look like that?" — this is why.
Glassmorphism.
The frosted glass effect from iPhone notifications and Apple Vision Pro — layered, transparent, and immediately premium.
Depth without shadows
Traditional design creates depth by stacking shadows under elements. Glassmorphism creates depth through transparency — you can see what's behind the element through it. This makes the interface feel spatial and layered in a way that shadows alone can't achieve.
The background is part of the design
Glassmorphism doesn't work without a strong background. The gradient, image, or blur behind the glass elements isn't decoration — it's what makes the glass effect visible. The background and the UI are designed together, not separately.
Restraint makes it premium
The temptation with glassmorphism is to make everything glass. The skill works by using it selectively — key cards, modals, navbars, and overlays. Elements that ground the design (like solid text sections) stay opaque. The contrast between glass and solid is what makes the glass feel special.
Before building with Claude Code, drop SKILL.md and DESIGN.md into Claude Design first. Use it to generate mockups and nail the visual direction — then hand those references to Claude Code. You'll get significantly higher quality output than going straight to code.
Two files. That's it.
Drop them into your Claude project or Cursor rules and build normally. No CLI, no package manager, no setup.