# You Don’t Need Animations

Essay by Emil Kowalski (https://emilkowal.ski)

Why you are animating more often than you should.

Topics: Motion
Source: https://emilkowal.ski/ui/you-dont-need-animations

## For agents

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

Read it at: https://emilkowal.ski/ui/you-dont-need-animations

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

Motion can make an interface feel faster, more predictable and more enjoyable, or it can do the exact opposite and cost you the user's trust. Emil's first test is purpose. If you cannot say in one sentence what an animation is for, it should not be there. His second test is frequency, and it is the one most people skip. Raycast opens hundreds of times a day and has no open animation at all, which is the correct decision. Delight is for the things people meet rarely.

## Verification

- Source link: Resolved (HTTP 200) (pass)
- Reading copy: Plain markdown for agents at /md/you-dont-need-animations (pass)
- Attribution: Credited to Emil Kowalski (pass)

Full page: https://www.stackskills.dev/library/you-dont-need-animations