shadow

What This Skill Does

The shadow skill provides a comprehensive CLI-driven framework for generating, managing, and exporting CSS shadow effects directly from your terminal. It abstracts the complexities of CSS syntax by allowing users to construct box-shadow, text-shadow, drop-shadow, and inset properties with intuitive flags. Beyond simple generation, it supports advanced features like multi-layered effects, automated keyframe animation generation, and preset management for design patterns like neumorphism or material design. The skill maintains a local database (~/.shadow/data.jsonl) that acts as a library, enabling users to recall, layer, or export their saved styles into production-ready CSS, JSON, or SCSS formats.

Installation

To integrate this utility into your development environment, run the following command within the OpenClaw CLI: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/bytesagain1/shadow Ensure you have Python 3.8+ installed and accessible in your shell environment, as the script relies on standard system execution paths to manage the shadow configurations.

Use Cases

This skill is perfect for frontend developers and UI designers looking to streamline their CSS workflow. Use it to quickly iterate on shadow depth for card components, create sophisticated hover interactions through CSS keyframe generation, or maintain a consistent library of shadow tokens across different projects. It is particularly useful for rapid prototyping when you need to visualize how different blur, spread, and offset parameters affect UI depth without leaving the terminal.

Example Prompts

1. "Create a subtle box shadow for a notification card, with a 0px x-offset, 4px y-offset, 10px blur, and a light grey color, save it as 'toast-shadow'."
2. "Generate a transition animation between my 'button-idle' and 'button-hover' shadow definitions with a duration of 0.2 seconds."
3. "Export all my saved shadows into a single CSS file so I can include them in my current project's stylesheet."

Tips & Limitations

• Persistence: All defined shadows are saved locally in the ~/.shadow directory. Be aware of this if you frequently switch machines or environments.
• Previewing: Always use the --html flag with the preview command to verify your shadow's appearance in a browser rendering context, as ASCII previews are purely representative.
• Layers: You can combine any previously saved shadow by referencing their names in the layer command, allowing for complex, high-fidelity UI effects that would be cumbersome to write manually.
• Constraints: The random command is excellent for exploring creative design variations, but ensure you save the outputs you like immediately, as random generation is non-deterministic.