# Morphing Icons with Claude

Essay by Benji Taylor (https://benji.org)

Pushing Claude Code’s animation abilities to build a universal icon primitive.

Topics: Motion, Components
Source: https://benji.org/morphing-icons-with-claude

## For agents

Nothing to install. This is a reference: cite it, or fetch the source when
the reasoning matters.

Read it at: https://benji.org/morphing-icons-with-claude

The full text is not reproduced here. It belongs to its author. What is
above is the author's own summary and the topics it covers.

Skills in this library that act on the same ground:

- emil-design-eng (https://www.stackskills.dev/md/emil-design-eng): The design-engineering house style behind Sonner and Vaul.
- animate (https://www.stackskills.dev/md/animate): Builds an animation from scratch, decisions in the order that matters.
- review-animations (https://www.stackskills.dev/md/review-animations): Reviews your motion strictly, against Emil's rules.
- improve-animations (https://www.stackskills.dev/md/improve-animations): Audits every animation in a codebase and hands back prioritised plans.
- find-animation-opportunities (https://www.stackskills.dev/md/find-animation-opportunities): Finds where motion would genuinely help, and says what not to animate.

## The short version

Benji wanted icons that transform into one another rather than crossfade, the way a hamburger rotates into a close button. His first ask produced exactly what you would expect, an AnimatePresence wrapper fading one SVG out and another in. The fix was a constraint rather than a better prompt. Every icon has to be exactly three SVG lines, with unused lines collapsed to invisible points, which means any icon shares a structure with every other and can morph into it. Twenty-one icons came out of a single session, and some of them took real creativity to fit the rule.

## Verification

- Source link: Resolved (HTTP 200) (pass)
- Reading copy: Plain markdown for agents at /md/morphing-icons-with-claude (pass)
- Attribution: Credited to Benji Taylor (pass)

Full page: https://www.stackskills.dev/library/morphing-icons-with-claude