develop-design-rationale SKILL.md skillA
develop-design-rationale from product-on-purpose/pm-skills is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add product-on-purpose/pm-skills/develop-design-rationale@v2.1.0Pins v2.1.0 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- product-on-purpose/pm-skills
- Path
skills/develop-design-rationale/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 5
- Latest version
- v2.1.0, committed Jun 10, 2026
- First version recorded
- Jan 27, 2026
- Size
- 4,108 bytes
- Repository stars
- 790
- License
- Apache-2.0
Documents the reasoning behind design decisions including alternatives considered, trade-offs evaluated, and principles applied. Use when making significant UX decisions, aligning with stakeholders on design direction, or preserving design context for future reference.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
<!-- PM-Skills | https://github.com/product-on-purpose/pm-skills | Apache 2.0 --> # Design Rationale A design rationale document captures the "why" behind design decisions.the context, constraints, alternatives considered, and reasoning that led to a particular solution. While designs themselves show what was built, rationale documents preserve institutional knowledge about why it was built that way. ## When to Use - When making significant UX decisions that affect user experience - Before design reviews to prepare stakeholder discussions - When multiple valid approaches exist and the choice needs justification - To onboard new team members to existing design decisions - When revisiting past decisions to understand original reasoning - During design system evolution to document pattern choices ## When NOT to Use - The decision is architectural or a technology selection -> use `develop-adr` (Nygard format) - You need stakeholder alignment on the overall solution direction -> use `develop-solution-brief` - You are documenting exploration findings rather than a decision -> use `develop-spike-summary` …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add product-on-purpose/pm-skills/develop-design-rationale@sha256:853395279e4da6fcThe line at the top of this page pins the label v2.1.0, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_qxfqx6erezg45jnn)
2 badge image fetches in 30 days. What the badge shows.
Versions
The registry has recorded 5 versions of this file, between Jan 27, 2026 and Jun 10, 2026, about one every 34 days. Its first recorded version is graded C and its latest A.
| version | committed | commit | size | audit | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| v2.1.0 latest | 2026-06-10 | 152b175 | 4,108 B | A | view · diff |
| v2.0.0 | 2026-05-20 | be1352b | 3,375 B | A | view · diff |
| v2.0.0 | 2026-04-23 | 8ab0f81 | 3,369 B | A | view · diff |
| v2.0.0 | 2026-03-25 | 0ab0a60 | 3,375 B | A | view · diff |
| git:20260127.ac99454 | 2026-01-27 | ac99454 | 3,375 B | C | view |
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (4108 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
product-on-purpose/pm-skills · 790 stars · license Apache-2.0 · pushed 2026-11-03 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_qxfqx6erezg45jnn GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=product-on-purpose/pm-skills/develop-design-rationale GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/853395279e4da6fc4fbbb305544be7b28f65cfb7c24f1b6d558ec07610e99f88
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.