Post a video with 2M views first, then the repo: unslop hits 10k stars in 8 days
What it is A skill for Claude Code / Codex that works like a designer's audit, turning UIs that obviously look AI-generated into something with real design sense, and it can export before-and-after comparison videos.
Why it took off The author first posted a before-and-after video with 2M views. Viewers asked for the tool, he promised it within two days, and then big accounts and aggregators in Chinese, Japanese and other languages reposted it.
CHow you could ride it Don't build yet another skill that de-AI-ifies UIs. Pick an "AI-looking" category nobody has claimed yet (slides, charts, app screenshots, etc.), hand-make before-and-after videos and post them on X first, then release the skill once it catches fire, and build shareable comparison videos into the tool.
- Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-10-29 · 11,274 stars · 7 days +7,989
GitHub · stars Data 2026-10-31 → 2026-11-08 (9 days, 9 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one
A freelance UI designer turned his craft of "fixing AI-looking interfaces" into a before-and-after video, and only after it went viral did he package it as a free Claude Code / Codex skill. The repo hit 10k stars in 8 days, even though the category already had three projects with 100k+ stars. It took off not because the skill was much better than others, but because of the order of the launch. Below is that sequence, and why copying a skill will most likely not get you the same stars.
A tweet with no copy
2026 Oct 27, midday (UTC), Damir Sokolovsky (@heydamir on X) posted a tweet whose text was just "Unslopping a vibecoded dashboard", with a video: a typical AI-generated admin dashboard (purple gradients, glowing buttons, emoji icons, slogan headings, uneven spacing) morphing frame by frame into an interface that looks designer-made.
He had about 9,500 followers then. The tweet reached about 2M views by 11-06 with 16.3k likes and 15.5k bookmarks (fxtwitter, 11-06). Bookmarks close to likes on design content means many people saved it to use later.
The next day he wrote: "1M views on a design post is wild 🤯 I'll share the unslop skill for Claude in a few days!" (63k views). The tool wasn't out yet; he had already promised "in a few days" in public.
What it actually is
unslop is a skill for Claude Code and Codex. After installing, you run /unslop this dashboard, and it doesn't touch anything directly. It walks through three steps like a designer's redline review:
- Audit first: list every "AI-looking" spot on the page and say where it is.
- Then set a direction: pull a personality from your product itself, one or two accent colors, and a signature detail, show you first, and let you change the direction.
- Fix layer by layer: spacing → color → icons → copy → typography → layout → detail → visuals → motion, in that order. If the page is already decent, it says so and only gives a few small suggestions.
Two more things: give it a live URL and it can use Playwright to screenshot it and fix against that; with ffmpeg installed it generates a square video under 10 seconds of your interface unslopping itself. The README example command is "make the story video so I can post it".
The license is CC BY 4.0, free to use including commercially, but you must credit and link back to the repo. The README's last section is called "Hire the unslopper": if you don't want to do it yourself, the author will redo one key page for 3 days, linked at heydamir.design/unslop.
How the stars climbed day by day
| Timeline | What happened | Metric |
|---|---|---|
| 10-27 | Before-and-after video tweet | 2M views |
| 10-28 | Teaser "coming out in a few days" | 63k views |
| 10-29 | Repo created | |
| 10-30 | Launch tweet "I turned my unslopping process into a free Claude skill" | 620k views, 5,173 likes |
| 10-31 | Chinese account @gkxspace (about 60k followers) reposted "Expert just packaged and open-sourced the 'unslop-the-slop-interface' method"; Japanese accounts @sora_biz and @DataChaz followed with reposts | The Chinese post had 140k views, the Japanese ones 77k |
| 10-31 | Repo 825 stars | |
| 11-01 | +2,460 in a single day, same day as Codex support was added | 3,285 star |
| 11-02 to 11-06 | +1,150 to +1,400 per day | 11-06 daytime 9,647, and later that day GitHub showed 10,497 stars and 568 forks |
The first three days ran on the author's own audience, then on reposts: big Chinese, Japanese and Arabic AI accounts, dozens of AI tool aggregators, dev.to and Medium articles, introductions on Japan's note.com and Korean sites, YouTube explainers, and Instagram / Facebook lead-gen posts saying "comment UNSLOP and I'll DM you". People were using it to grow their own followings. On Reddit's r/BestGitHubRepos a post got about 929 upvotes (number from a search snippet; the original post wasn't opened, unverified). No Hacker News presence.
The fork-to-star ratio is about 5%, on the low side but normal; the author's GitHub account is 2022 years old, and the spread chain on X lines up link by link, with no sign of artificial boosting.
The category is already crowded
"Make AI-written interfaces look less like AI" is not a new need. unslop is a late entrant:
| Project | Scale (11-06) | How unslop differs |
|---|---|---|
| ui-ux-pro-max-skill | 146k stars | Big all-in-one UI/UX knowledge base, not focused on removing AI look |
| taste-skill | 111k stars | Gives the agent taste at generation time; unslop revises existing pages |
| impeccable | 104k stars | A toolbox of design commands (polish, bolder…), not a fixed workflow |
| Anthropic's official frontend-design skill | Whole repo 188k stars | General frontend design guidance |
| hallmark | 49k stars | Calls itself an anti-AI-slop design skill, closest positioning; the author was already a big account |
| anti-slop | 8,335 star | A list of "don't do this" rules |
| kill-ai-slop, oil-ui, superdesign-skill, etc. | Hundreds to thousands | Leans toward detection or multi-option comparison, or is backed by a commercial product |
It also launched in the week the topic was hottest: hallmark 10-27 gained +2,800 in one day, impeccable 10-30 gained +2,013. Everyone was annoyed that vibecoded interfaces look fake at a glance, and unslop was the one that made the best video that week.
Why it broke out from a crowd of 100k-star projects
The demand was proven before the tool existed. The 2M views came before the repo did. As soon as the launch tweet went out, people were already waiting, and the repo got 825 stars the day after it was built. Most open source projects go the other way: publish the repo, then go find people to look at it.
The effect is visible. "De-AI-ifying" is vague in text, but a video morphing frame by frame makes it obvious at a glance. The "crimes" (purple gradients, glows, emoji tags) are specific enough to count, and "unslop" and "vibecoded" are ready-made memes.
The product makes its own promo material. Every user can export a video of "my UI, unslopped" to post, and the author 10-31 says "Unslopping is officially a format now". Of all the differentiators, this is the one that actually drove spread; the walkthrough flow is well built, but it only makes the product easier to use.
The fame ends up as client work. A free skill, mandatory credit, and design services linked in the README: the stars are his portfolio, and the portfolio brings clients. The pricing page has no public numbers, so how many jobs he gets isn't visible from outside.
If it were you
One judgment: building another "de-AI UI" skill isn't worth it. The top spot already has three 100k-star projects, and you won't get Damir's video. What's worth learning is his launch sequence and the trick of "the tool itself produces shareable output", applied to an "AI-looking" category nobody has claimed yet.
Who it's for: developers or designers with a visible craft (design, motion, typography, data viz, writing) who can film their own before-and-after, even with a small X following. Damir only has 9.5k.
Who it's not for: people who can only write rules and can't show a visual before-and-after; anyone hoping to beat impeccable and taste-skill in the UI space by simply having more features.
How to do it:
- Pick something everyone can spot as "made by AI" that doesn't have a dedicated skill yet. Candidates (my inference, you'll need to search yourself to see if anyone has built them): AI-generated PPT/slides, AI-made data charts, AI-written mobile UIs (someone has already made unslop-mobile, but it's small), AI-generated email templates, AI-flavored App Store screenshots.
- Don't create the repo yet. Hand-fix one case with your craft, film a frame-by-frame before-and-after under 10 seconds, and post it on X.
- If the numbers are good, say "releasing in a few days" in the replies and deliver within two or three days. If the numbers are bad, film another case. The cost is just one video.
- Build "export a before-and-after video" into the skill so every user's post carries your name. Use a license that requires attribution, like CC BY.
- Have Chinese and Japanese launch copy ready on release day so the repost accounts can pick it up right away.
How to get users: X is the home turf. Use the before-and-after video with a one-line caption. The second wave comes from large Chinese and Japanese AI accounts and tool aggregator sites, which will find you on their own, as long as the first wave is loud enough.
Why now: the "AI look" topic is hot right now, and unslop, hallmark and impeccable all picked up traction the same week. Every extra month, more people claim the adjacent gaps, so ideally you post the first video before year-end.
Signs you're wrong: your before-and-after videos don't beat your usual views by 10x across several posts; or a search shows the category you picked already has a skill with a thousand-plus stars; or people start getting tired of the format, with saves on "Unslopping" videos clearly dropping.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill Open source 2025-11-30 146k stars A broad UI/UX knowledge base that doesn't focus on removing AI look and has no review workflow Leonxlnx/taste-skill Open source 2026-02-19 111k stars Leans toward giving the agent taste and reference images during generation; unslop focuses on remaking existing pages pbakaus/impeccable Open source 2025-11-16 104k stars A set of design vocabulary and command toolkit; unslop is a fixed pipeline from review to fix anthropics/skills(frontend-design) Big-company features 2025-09-22 188k stars (whole repo) Official general frontend design guidance, not aimed at remaking AI-generated pages Nutlope/hallmark Open source 2026-04-27 48.6k stars Closest positioning (anti-AI-slop design skill); unslop adds deciding direction first, layer-by-layer fixes, and before-after videos miqdadbadjuber/anti-slop Open source 2026-08-07 8335 star A checklist of prohibitions, with no remake workflow oil-oil/oil-ui Open source 2026-09-30 2805 star Multi-direction exploration and side-by-side comparison yetone/kill-ai-slop Open source 2026-07-10 1412 star A catalog focused on identifying AI look superdesigndev/superdesign-skill Open source 2026-01-21 947 star Backed by a commercial design product JCarterJohnson/vibecoded-design-tells(unslop-ui) Open source 2026-06-16 533 star Mines Reddit data to rank AI-look signals; same name, but small - Where users come from
- Verified X content first (the author's own video post): 10-27 "Unslopping a vibecoded dashboard", 2M views, 15.5k bookmarks; 10-28 teaser "I'll share the skill in a few days"
- Verified X launch post: 10-30 launch post, 620k views, 5173 likes
- Verified Multilingual X reposts from large accounts: @gkxspace (Chinese) 141k views, @sora_biz (Japanese) 77k, @DataChaz (180k followers) 36k, Arabic @cnemalek
- Verified Aggregators, blogs, newsletters: explainx, earlysignal, karmazinmedia, byteiota, dev.to, Medium, beehiiv, note.com, itplain, trendshift and more (Exa search)
- Verified YouTube / Instagram / Facebook reposts: several YouTube explainer videos; IG/FB posts saying "comment UNSLOP and I'll DM you"
- Inferred Reddit: r/BestGitHubRepos post with 929 votes and 73 comments (from search snippets; original post was blocked)
- Verified Built-in distribution (story video): the skill produces a 10-second before-and-after video for posting; the author says "Unslopping is officially a format now"
heydamir/unslop research report
A skill for Claude Code / Codex that turns vibecoded interfaces that are obviously AI-generated (purple gradients, glows, emoji labels, slogan copy, uneven spacing) into designed ones. Author Damir Sokolovsky (@heydamir) is a freelance UI designer. Data as of 2026-11-06.
1. Conclusion first
unslop's stars didn't come from the skill being "better". They came from the author first going viral on X with a before-and-after video (2M views), then packaging that craft as a free skill for an audience that was already waiting. The order was: content first, people ask for it, the author teases "releasing in a few days", then the repo goes up. The repo hit 825 stars the next day. After that, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic-language accounts reposted it, aggregator sites picked it up, and YouTube/Instagram reposts kept it growing by 1100–1400 a day.
The space itself is crowded: taste-skill (110k stars), impeccable (104k), ui-ux-pro-max (146k), hallmark (49k), and Anthropic's official frontend-design skill are all doing "remove the AI look from UI". unslop differs in two ways. First, its workflow works like a designer's review: diagnose problems, set a direction before touching anything, then fix layer by layer (spacing → color → icons → copy → typography → layout → details → visuals → motion). Second, it auto-generates a 10-second square video of a page getting "unslopped" that users post themselves, so every user advertises it. What actually made it take off is the author's personal content brand and this shareable "Unslopping" video format. Of the differentiators, only the video output directly drove distribution.
2. Data
| Date | star | fork | Daily gain | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10-29 15:41 UTC | Repo created | Our GitHub library repo_profile | ||
| 10-31 | 825 | 40 | (first observation) | repo_day |
| 11-01 | 3,285 | 164 | +2,460 (single-day peak) | repo_day |
| 11-02 | 4,698 | 229 | +1,413 | repo_day |
| 11-03 | 6,011 | 311 | +1,313 | repo_day |
| 11-04 | 7,333 | 372 | +1,322 | repo_day |
| 11-05 | 8,481 | 420 | +1,148 | repo_day |
| 11-06 | 9,647 | 501 | +1,166 | repo_day |
- Fork/star ratio 5.2%. The median for new repos with ≥5000 stars is about 11%, which is on the low side but not abnormal. Our library flags a suspicious pattern:
a new account whose single repo spikes. The reason is that this is the author's only repo in our database. In reality his GitHub account was registered 2022 years ago, has 19 public repos, and the X distribution evidence is solid, so there's no sign of star farming. The stargazer sample failed due to GitHub API rate limits (unverified). - Not on trending, because the repo is under 60 days old. That tells us nothing.
3. Growth path (by timeline)
| Time (UTC) | Event | Data (fxtwitter API, read on 2026-11-06) |
|---|---|---|
| 10-27 12:50 | @heydamir posts a video: "Unslopping a vibecoded dashboard", an AI-looking dashboard turned frame by frame into a designed interface | 2M views, 16.3k likes, 15.5k bookmarks, 536 reposts. The author had about 9.5k followers then |
| 10-28 13:12 | "1M views on a design post is wild 🤯 I'll share the unslop skill for Claude in a few days!" Teaser posted first | 63k views, 1,912 likes |
| 10-29 | Repo created | |
| 10-30 | Launch post: "I turned my unslopping process into a free Claude skill…" with the repo link | 623k views, 5,173 likes |
| 10-31 03:11 | Chinese account @gkxspace (60k followers) reposts: "A big shot just packaged and open-sourced 'blow up slop interfaces'" | 141k views, 1,493 likes, 2,329 bookmarks |
| 10-31 07:11 | @DataChaz (183k followers): "This is wild…" | 36k views; also shared on LinkedIn |
| 10-31 09:21 | Japanese account @sora_biz (13.5k followers) reposts, saying they had already covered the video earlier | 77k views |
| 10-31 | The author posts "Unslopping is officially a format now" and links a paid service: "I'll unslop your product in 3 days" | |
| 10-31 | Someone has already built a mobile version: TheDreamSaver/unslop-mobile | |
| 11-01 | +2,460 in a single day; Codex support shipped the same day | |
| 11-02 | "You asked, I shipped — now works in Codex too" | 57k views |
| From ¥10-30 | Dozens of aggregators and blogs picked it up: explainx, earlysignal, karmazinmedia, byteiota, dev.to, Medium, beehiiv newsletters, note.com (Japanese), itplain (Korean), trendshift, claudepluginhub, agentskillshub and more | Exa search |
| Around 11-01 | Third-party YouTube explainers, and Instagram/Facebook "comment UNSLOP and I'll DM you" lead-gen posts (others are using it to grow their own followings) | Jina search |
| ~11-02 | Reddit r/BestGitHubRepos post with 929 votes and 73 comments | Brave search snippets |
No HN post about it (an Algolia search for "unslop" only returns other projects with the same name).
Breakdown of growth tactics
- Content first, demand presold: post the video before releasing the tool. Once it goes viral, people in the comments ask for the tool, the author says "releasing in a few days", and delivers two days later. The audience was already built up, so the launch post alone got 620k views.
- Visual before-and-afters spread naturally: before/after and frame-by-frame transformation videos get very high bookmark rates on X (15.5k bookmarks on 2M views). Design content rarely reaches this scale.
- Cross-language reposting: large Chinese, Japanese and Arabic accounts relayed it, plus a whole chain of "AI tool aggregators / newsletters / YouTube explainers / IG comment-to-get-the-file" reposts, which is why it kept growing by 1100+ a day after 11-01.
- Built-in distribution: the skill outputs a 10-second square video of "my UI unslopped". The README example literally says "make the story video so I can post it". Every user who posts one is another exposure, and the author himself says "Unslopping has become a format".
- Where the money comes back: the skill is free under CC BY 4.0, which requires attribution with a link back. The README and SKILL.md both link heydamir.design/unslop (a paid design service: "3-day unslop of one key page"), and his bio links living-ui.dev. Stars and fame ultimately funnel into his design client work.
4. Competitors
| Name | Form | Launched | Scale (our library, 11-06) | How unslop differs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| nextlevelbuilder/ui-ux-pro-max-skill | Open-source skills | 2025-11-30 | 146k stars | A big, all-in-one UI/UX knowledge base (styles, palettes, component rules), not focused on removing "AI taste" and no review workflow |
| Leonxlnx/taste-skill | Open-source skills | 2026-02-19 | 111k stars, +5,187 over 7 days | Adds "taste" to agents: art direction, reference images, a browser. It aims to make things look good at generation time; unslop is about revising existing pages |
| pbakaus/impeccable | Open-source skills | 2025-11-16 | 104k stars, +8,787 over 7 days | A set of design vocabulary and commands (polish, bolder, review) that works as a toolbox; unslop is a fixed pipeline from review to fix |
| anthropics/skills (frontend-design, etc.) | Big-company official | 2025-09-22 | 188k stars | Official general frontend design guidance, not aimed at fixing existing AI-built pages |
| Nutlope/hallmark | Open-source skills | 2026-04-27 | 48.6k stars, 10-27 +2,800 in one day | Also called an anti-AI-slop design skill, the closest positioning; its author Nutlope already had a big account. unslop adds deciding direction first, layer-by-layer fixes, and before/after videos |
| miqdadbadjuber/anti-slop | Open-source rules | 2026-08-07 | 8,335 star | A filter rule set (UI, copy, code): a list of "don'ts", with no revision workflow |
| oil-oil/oil-ui | Open-source skills | 2026-09-30 | 2,805 star | Explores several directions first and compares them side by side |
| yetone/kill-ai-slop | Open-source skill + guide | 2026-07-10 | 1,412 star | A catalogue of the visual and copy "tics" of AI products, mostly for recognition |
| superdesigndev/superdesign-skill | Open-source skills | 2026-01-21 | 947 star | "Stop shipping AI-slop UI", backed by the superdesign product |
| JCarterJohnson/vibecoded-design-tells (includes unslop-ui) | Open source | 2026-06-16 | 533 star | Mines Reddit data for an "AI taste" signal ranking, then turns it into a skill; even the name collides |
| Claude Design / v0 / Lovable and similar | Big-company and commercial products | — | — | Generates designs from scratch, rather than revising existing pages in your own code |
Takeaway: the space is already crowded, with leaders at 100k+ stars. unslop isn't first and isn't the most complete, but it 8 days in, 9.6k, is fast for a late entrant in this space (hallmark took half a year to reach 49k).
V. Why it took off
- The author proved the craft with content first: 10-27 one video got 2M views and 15.5k bookmarks, far beyond the scale of his 9.5k followers. Before the tool shipped, demand was already proven.
- Teaser + delivery: 10-28 teaser, 10-30 launch. The launch tweet got 620k views, and the repo gained 825 stars the day after it was created.
- Rode the peak of the "AI-taste UI" mood: the same week hallmark gained 10-27 in one day, impeccable gained 2,800 in one day, and 10-30 2,013 in one day. Everyone was annoyed that vibecoded interfaces "look fake at first glance".
- Name and message are easy to remember: "unslop / unslopping / vibecoded" are ready-made memes. Paired with concrete, countable "sins" like purple gradients and emoji labels, they're instantly understood.
- Cross-language secondary spread: Chinese @gkxspace got 140k views, Japanese @sora_biz 77k, plus dozens of aggregator sites and video reposts, which sustained 1100+ per day in the second week.
- The product ships its own spread material: the story video feature lets users make shareable before/after videos, turning "Unslopping" into a format.
VI. Differentiation
- How it works: audit first (list every piece of slop and where it sits), then set a direction (pull the personality, the world, one or two accent details that carry the color, and a signature detail from the product itself), then revise layer by layer across 9 layers. If the page is already good enough, give only small suggestions and don't force changes. Competitors are mostly rule checklists or knowledge bases; this one works like a designer's redline review.
- The aesthetic stance "one highlight + quiet chrome": stated clearly in SKILL.md, with the author's personal style.
- Can snapshot and revise a live link (Playwright), and when needed call an image service to generate hero visuals, asking before generating.
- Outputs a 10-second before/after video.
These differences are real. But the main driver of the traction was the author's video content and launch sequencing; product differences are secondary. Only the "outputs a video" feature connects directly to distribution.
7. Visibility and copycats
- Visibility: already widely discussed in X's AI/dev circles (the author's main post had 2M views, multilingual big accounts reposted it, dozens of aggregator articles, and YouTube and IG explainers). It is not "nobody knows about it". No revenue is public; monetization is in the author's design client work.
- Copycats: TheDreamSaver/unslop-mobile (10-31, mobile redesign); IG/FB posts saying "comment UNSLOP to get the skill" to ride the traffic; the author says "Unslopping has become a format", and people are shooting before/after videos following it. Also earlier same-name projects: 0design/unslop-skill (10-06,31 stars), JCarterJohnson's unslop-ui, and writing-focused theclaymethod/unslop and mshumer/unslop (not the same thing).
VIII. Takeaways
- Ship the work first, the tool second: prove the result with one before/after video, open-source only once viewers ask, so there's an audience ready at launch.
- The tool builds in a "postable output", so users become the distribution channel.
- Free open source + mandatory CC BY attribution + paid service linked in the README: stars turn into client leads.
- Give a category of design problem a meme name (unslop), then make the "sins" concrete so it spreads easily.
IX. Uncertainties
- Stargazer quality is unsampled (GitHub API rate limits). Star-farming risk looks low, but unverified.
- Paid service pricing and volume unknown (the page shows "See pricing", not examined in detail).
- Actual usage and retention unknown; stars do not equal use.
- The Reddit post's 929 votes come from the Brave search snippet; the original post was blocked by Reddit, so not directly verified.
Sources
- Repo README / SKILL.md: github.com/heydamir/unslop
- Our GitHub repo_profile / repo_day (2026-11-06)
- Tweets (data read via api.fxtwitter.com, 2026-11-06): x.com/heydamir/status/2115063463063998736, /2115431530407301345, /2116158176336970008, /2116514776104751274, /2117240311562785225; x.com/gkxspace/status/2116367454557655359; x.com/DataChaz/status/2116427882381885442; x.com/sora_biz/status/2116460609063850282; x.com/the_dream_saver/status/2116578445509706221
- Paid service: heydamir.design/unslop
- Coverage: explainx.ai/blog/unslop-claude-skill-fix-vibecoded-ui-heydam…, dev.to/dd8888/unslop-brings-staged-ui-review-to-claude-code-…, karmazinmedia.com/en/news/2026-10-31-2121-unslop-free-claude…, medium.com/open-intelligence/unslop-give-ai-generated-interf…, www.reddit.com/r/BestGitHubRepos/comments/1xlxeju/
- HN: searched hn.algolia.com for "unslop", no hit for this project