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Content Density Audit

Measure what each screen asks the user to read, scan, and decide before trimming it.

moderate User Experience

What it adds

A repeatable review of the app's main screens that records how much content, chrome, and choice each one presents, and what should be removed.

What your agent is told to do

5
  1. 1

    Pick the screens that carry real work — the list, the detail view, the editor, the settings pages people actually visit — and for each record the counts that matter: distinct actions, competing headings, nested containers, and the number of decisions before the primary task.

  2. 2

    Distinguish information the user came for from chrome that surrounds it. A dense table of the records someone is comparing is doing its job; four toolbars above that table are not.

  3. 3

    Review each screen at a narrow width and a wide one separately and record them as different findings. A layout that is comfortable on a desktop can be an unbroken column of controls on a phone.

  4. 4

    List every action reachable more than once on a screen and every container that adds a border or a shadow without separating anything, and mark them as candidates for removal with a named replacement.

  5. 5

    Do not reduce everything to a single density target. A monitoring dashboard and an onboarding step have opposite goals, so set the target from the workflow the screen serves and say what that workflow is.

Edge cases it handles

7
  • Useful density and clutter look identical in a screenshot. The test is whether the user needs the item to complete the screen's task; apply that test explicitly rather than counting elements alone.
  • Mobile and desktop must be audited as separate surfaces with separate findings, because a screen that passes at one width routinely fails at the other.
  • The same action offered in a row menu, a toolbar, and a bulk bar is not three affordances but three places to maintain and three chances to disagree; record every duplicate and keep one.
  • Cards nested inside panels inside sections add visual weight and no information. Flag containers that do not separate genuinely different things.
  • Targets must be set per workflow. A dense analytics screen for a daily operator and a sparse setup screen for a first-time user cannot share a threshold.
  • The audit is a finding, not a change. Removing something that only power users need, on the strength of a count, is worse than the clutter.
  • Spacing tokens and the comfortable-versus-compact setting belong to Display Density; this audit decides what should be on the screen at all, not how tightly it is spaced.

Definition of done

8
  • Every primary screen has a recorded audit covering both narrow and wide widths.
  • Each finding states whether the item is content the user came for or surrounding chrome.
  • Duplicated actions and non-separating containers are listed with a recommended single home.
  • Density targets are stated per workflow, with the workflow named.
  • Findings are ranked by their effect on the screen's primary task.
  • The audit is repeatable — a second pass on the same screen produces comparable numbers.
  • The feature matches the existing design system.
  • No existing functionality is broken.

Related features

How it works

  1. 1

    Copy the link

    Grab the Markdown instruction URL for this feature.

  2. 2

    Give it to your AI

    Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, v0, Lovable — whatever you build with.

  3. 3

    It inspects, then implements

    Your agent reads your existing app first, then adds the feature to fit it.

Works with your stack

These instructions are written to adapt. They tell the agent to detect your framework, match your existing design system, and reuse what you already have — rather than assuming a particular stack.

Need it tighter than that? Customize the feature and tell it exactly what you're running.