Design Station

Design Station is a key factory module — an AI-powered design pipeline that generates, evaluates, and applies UI designs to iOS applications. The module operates as a self-contained design factory: it observes design trends from real sources (Mobbin, X/Twitter), generates specifications using AI models, produces design variations, and applies a selected style to any target app automatically. One prompt to Design Station can spawn 10 parallel agents and return production-ready designs on demand.

The critical insight behind Design Station is that good design isn't generated from first principles — it's synthesized from proven patterns. The module doesn't try to invent a new visual language from scratch; it starts by cloning from Mobbin's validated UI pattern library, then applies a custom style layer on top. This reduces design risk dramatically: starting from proven patterns means the baseline quality is already established, and the style transfer only has to get the custom part right.

The operational workflow of Design Station involves several specialized scripts:

design-station.sh is the entry point that orchestrates the overall design process. find-references.sh scrapes Mobbin and other design showcases for relevant UI patterns matching the app's category and style requirements. generate-variations.sh uses Gemini to produce multiple design directions from the collected references. apply-design.sh takes the selected variation and translates it into actual SwiftUI code and asset specifications. reskin-app.sh applies a new visual style to an existing app without changing its functionality — useful for rapid product variants.

The Design Station's output feeds directly into the design gate (see design-gate). Before an app proceeds from the DESIGN phase to the BUILD phase, the design must score 95 out of 110 on the quality checklist. This gate validates that the design is coherent, complete, and ready for implementation — not just that it looks good in a mockup.

Design Station also integrates with the marketing factory (see marketing-factory) to generate the visual assets needed for marketing: App Store screenshots, social media carousels, thumbnail images for TikTok, and the landing page hero. The design system is shared across the product and its marketing, ensuring visual consistency without separate design briefs.

The 10-agent spawning pattern is specific to Design Station: when a design request comes in, the Router can spawn up to 10 specialized design agents in parallel — one checking color contrast, another verifying typography hierarchy, another checking component completeness, others evaluating accessibility, responsiveness, and visual consistency. The consolidated output from 10 agents working simultaneously gives a far more comprehensive design review than a single agent could produce.

The factory's overall design philosophy, codified in the pipeline, treats Design Station as a high-leverage stage. The design is where the product's personality and usability are established; a bad design at this stage propagates through the entire build. Spending extra time at the Design Station to get the design right is far cheaper than reworking a finished app because the UI was flawed.

  • design-gate — the quality bar (95/110) that Design Station output must pass
  • ios-factory-pipeline — where Design Station fits in the 10-step factory pipeline
  • research-station — the sister module that finds opportunities; Design Station finds visual execution
  • marketing-factory — consumes Design Station output for marketing assets