The LanceTek Bake-off
Everybody loves the Great British Bake Off. This is ours: the same brief goes into the tent with 16 different AI design recipes, and you judge what comes out.
- Designs
- 45
- Briefs
- 3
- Recipes
- 16
- Baked
- 9 to 11 November 2026
Why bake them all off?
There are now more design skills, plugins and "make it look good" add-ons for AI coding agents than anyone can try. Every week brings a new one with a confident demo. Each claims to fix the generic look of AI-made pages, and most are free, so the cost is your time.
So we took a handful of real briefs and ran every one through every recipe: the bare model, one skill, two skills stacked, a design system first, a motion library on top. Same model, same brief, same rules, a fresh run each time. The only thing that changes is the recipe. Then we screenshot every result at desktop and phone width and let people judge them blind.
If you build with these tools, this answers the question the demos don't: if I use this pipeline, what quality do I get, and what does it cost me?
Rules of the tent
One prompt for everyone
Every run gets the identical brief and output rules. The only difference is the recipe's own instruction and the skills installed for it. The agent is never told it is being compared.
A fresh, sealed run
Claude Code 2.1.318, headless (claude -p), one fresh run per step, no MCP servers, only the recipe's skills installed. Model: Claude Opus (Claude Code's opus model alias). Skills are pinned to the exact commit listed below.
Plain files out
Static HTML, CSS and JavaScript that opens from disk, no build step (one recipe, shadcn/ui, is allowed one because it only exists as a build). It must work at 1440 and 390 pixels.
Judged blind
Designs carry a letter, not a name. Each card has a "Show pipeline" button for when you want to know, but scores are fairer before you look.
Cost is what the run would have cost at Anthropic API prices, as Claude Code reported it. A few runs were recovered after the runner restarted mid-run; their cost and time were lost, and they show as "not recorded" rather than a guess. Claude Code's version was not written into each run; the build installed on the run machine from 5 to 11 November 2026; runs did not record it.
The recipes
Averages are per design across the published briefs. Skill links go to the exact commit that was installed.
| Recipe | Skills (pinned commit) | Steps | Designs | Avg cost | Avg time | Baked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| p00 Baseline (no skill) v1 The brief alone, no skill, no design instruction. The control. | none: the model alone | 1 | 3 | $1.76 | 8.9 min | 9 November 2026 |
| p01 Art-directed, no skill v1 No skill; the prompt makes the model art-direct three subject-specific concepts and build the strongest. | none: the model alone | 1 | 3 | $1.93 | 9.6 min | 9 November 2026 |
| p02 Anthropic frontend-design v1 Anthropic's frontend-design skill alone. | Anthropic frontend-design 2c5958e | 1 | 3 | $1.71 | 8.2 min | 9 November 2026 |
| p03 Taste alone v1 Leonxlnx taste-skill (design-taste-frontend) for the whole build, including its browser check. | Taste (design-taste-frontend) f6b7657 | 1 | 3 | $7.632 of 3 recorded | 70.9 min | 9 to 10 November 2026 |
| p04 Impeccable alone v1 pbakaus Impeccable for the build (shape/craft), then its audit and polish on its own result. | Impeccable 613fbf8 | 1 | 3 | $6.31 | 21.1 min | 9 November 2026 |
| p05 Taste, then Impeccable v1 Taste builds; a second run applies Impeccable critique + audit + polish. | Taste (design-taste-frontend) f6b7657Impeccable 613fbf8 | 2 | 3 | $9.452 of 3 recorded | 73.7 min | 9 to 10 November 2026 |
| p06 Taste, Impeccable, then Emil Kowalski polish v1 The "Claude Code website design workflow" stack - Taste build, Impeccable polish, Emil Kowalski design-engineering pass on detail and motion. | Taste (design-taste-frontend) f6b7657Impeccable 613fbf8Emil Kowalski design skills 5206a95 | 3 | 3 | $11.282 of 3 recorded | 54.5 min | 9 to 10 November 2026 |
| p07 frontend-design + GSAP motion v1 Anthropic frontend-design for the design, GreenSock's official GSAP skills for scroll and entrance motion (Lenis smooth scroll allowed). | Anthropic frontend-design 2c5958eGSAP skills (GreenSock) aed9cfd | 1 | 3 | $1.94 | 7.9 min | 9 November 2026 |
| p08 MotionSites v1 The MotionSites web-builder skill (cinematic reference designs, real media, screenshot-and-fix loop), build mode. | MotionSites web builder faa30d5 | 1 | 3 | $2.95 | 14.7 min | 9 November 2026 |
| p09 UI UX Pro Max system, build, Impeccable v1 UI UX Pro Max generates a design system for the brief; the site is built to it; Impeccable audits and polishes. | UI UX Pro Max 4f2dbb6Impeccable 613fbf8 | 2 | 3 | $5.96 | 22.6 min | 9 November 2026 |
| p10 DESIGN.md reference + frontend-design v1 Pick the best-fitting real design-system description(s) from awesome-design-md as a structural reference, then build with frontend-design. | Anthropic frontend-design 2c5958e | 1 | 3 | $1.91 | 9.5 min | 9 November 2026 |
| p11 Taste, then Emil Kowalski animate v1 Taste builds; Emil Kowalski's animation skills find and add deliberate, CSS-first motion. | Taste (design-taste-frontend) f6b7657Emil Kowalski design skills 5206a95 | 2 | 3 | $7.15 | 42.7 min | 9 to 10 November 2026 |
| p12 MotionSites, then Impeccable v1 The MotionSites web-builder skill builds (cinematic references, real media, its own screenshot loop); Impeccable then critiques, audits and polishes. | MotionSites web builder faa30d5Impeccable 613fbf8 | 2 | 3 | $7.17 | 32.9 min | 9 November 2026 |
| p13 frontend-design + Motion AI Kit v1 Anthropic frontend-design for the design; Motion's official AI Kit skill (/motion best practices) for entrance, scroll and chart motion with the Motion library (vanilla JS, from a CDN). | Anthropic frontend-design 2c5958eMotion AI Kit 1e42494 | 1 | 2 | $2.46 | 10.8 min | 11 November 2026 |
| p14 frontend-design + Anime.js v4 v1 Anthropic frontend-design for the design; Anime.js v4 (animate, stagger, onScroll, from a CDN) for entrance, scroll and chart motion. Prompt-only - Anime.js publishes no official agent skill. | Anthropic frontend-design 2c5958e | 1 | 2 | $1.81 | 7.9 min | 11 November 2026 |
| p15 frontend-design + shadcn/ui chart v1 Anthropic frontend-design plus shadcn/ui's official skill; a Vite + React + Tailwind app with shadcn components and the shadcn chart (Recharts), built into static pages in site/. The one recipe allowed a build step, because shadcn/ui only exists as source added by its CLI. | Anthropic frontend-design 2c5958eshadcn/ui skill dd41d19 | 1 | 2 | $4.00 | 23.9 min | 11 November 2026 |
In the tent
Website design
3 briefs, 45 designs. A small business site, a developer's CV and blog, and an affiliate guide.
Judge them →Video and images
Next in the tent: the same treatment for AI video and image pipelines.
Coming soon