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AI · May 4, 2026

Layers – AI skills for deep product design

Some years ago I wrote a mildly popular article called 'The Elements of Product Design' which broke down modern product design into 7 distinct layers. It was influenced heavily by Jesse James Garret's Elements of UX, hence the name similarity. The framework seems to help remind designers and their teams that there's more to design than just the visuals: structure and flow, concept modelling, product strategy, domain understanding, user needs. What's lacking from the article are concrete steps how you might apply the thinking, which was always a bit hard because it's so situational. But with…

Layers – AI skills for deep product design launched on May 4, 2026 with 6 votes, #1,742 of 20,538 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.

What it does

AI skills for product designers — guidance through the seven layers of product design.

Whether you're directing your AI or working alongside it, Layers walks you both through all seven layers of product design — so the decisions underneath the screen actually get made. npx skills add jamiemill/layers-skills Copy Copied Install once with the skills package, then run any /layers-* skill in your AI tool. Most product design decisions live at one of seven layers. It's easy — for humans and for AI — to stay near the surface; plausible screens come quickly, and the decisions underneath them go unmade. Layers gives you a way to navigate down, find which layer the real problem lives at, and run the skill that thinks with you there. Complex, contradictory, evolving — the source of all…from layers.jamiemill.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

Some years ago I wrote a mildly popular article called 'The Elements of Product Design' which broke down modern product design into 7 distinct layers. It was influenced heavily by Jesse James Garret's Elements of UX, hence the name similarity. The framework seems to help remind designers and their teams that there's…

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