An advisor, not a replacement.
Soleio published a sourcing framework on X that I kept reopening every time I thought about hiring or being hired. Most hiring advice is generic. His was the opposite. Designers don’t respond to job postings. Most aren’t even looking. The whole game is being someone they want to talk to before they’re on the market.
I wanted that available as a consultant I could talk to from either side of the table. So I built a skill that diagnoses your situation first, then recommends what to do. It doesn’t recite the framework at you, it asks questions and gives you back the version of the advice that fits what you’re working with.
Two sides of the same table.
The framework is one body of thinking, but the advice flips depending on whether you’re sourcing or being sourced. The skill branches at the top.
For founders, hiring managers, and recruiters. It diagnoses what you’re building, your design reputation today, and what you’ve already tried. Then it profiles your target designers, names your advantages and gaps, and gives you a prioritized plan instead of a menu of channels to try.
/soleio-design-hiring hire
For designers trying to get hired by companies they care about. It assesses where you are now, researches the companies you’re targeting, runs a gap analysis on your visibility and positioning, then builds a plan tied to your goals. The point is to be findable before you need to be found.
/soleio-design-hiring designer
Works in any AI coding agent
One install command, any agent. The skill rides on the open skills protocol, so it works the same in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, and 35+ others. The CLI auto-detects what you have installed and wires it up.
$npx skills add kylezantos/soleio-design-hiring#Auto-detects your agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, 35+ more)#Then run: /soleio-design-hiring [hire|designer]
Built on Soleio's framework.
Built on Soleio’s sourcing framework, posted March 2026. The skill draws on the case studies he points to: Tom Johnson’s path to Vercel, Julie Zhuo’s hiring framework, Profound’s design page, and Notion’s “Designer Who Can Code” tweet from 2019.
The skill wraps his thinking in a form you can interrogate. It doesn’t replace reading the original. Go read it.