# Posterly

> Build an academic conference poster (ICML/NeurIPS/ICLR/CVPR/etc.) as a single HTML/CSS file and render it to print-ready PDF via headless Chromium. Use when user says "做海报", "poster", "ICML/NeurIPS/ICLR poster", or asks to design/edit a research poster.

- Skill: `alharkan7/posterly` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 95 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add alharkan7/posterly`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/alharkan7/posterly/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Design & Media
- Author: alharkan7 (https://skillmd.com/u/alharkan7)
- Updated: 2026-09-22
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/alharkan7/posterly

---


# posterly — HTML/CSS Academic Poster Workflow

A poster is **one HTML file** styled for an exact print canvas, rendered to PDF via Playwright + Chromium. Iterate by **measuring**, not eyeballing — the screen preview lies; only `emulate_media("print")` at the correct viewport tells the truth.

## Mental model

```
   HTML (with @page { size: W H })
     │
     ▼  print-emulate Chromium at W×96 × H×96 px viewport
     │
     ▼  data-measure-role tags identify columns/hero/footer-strip
     │
     ├──→ tools/poster_check.py measure  (HARD GATE — spread < 5 px,
     │                                    gap-to-strip ∈ [30,50] px,
     │                                    intercard gap ∈ [12,50] px,
     │                                    poster bbox aligns to page
     │                                    within ±2 px)
     ├──→ tools/poster_check.py preflight  (LaTeX residue, math `<`, missing imgs)
     ├──→ tools/render_preview.py  (PDF + thumbnail)
     └──→ tools/poster_check.py verify-final  (PDF page count / dims / size)
```

The skill is venue- and lab-neutral by default. Compose a design direction from `templates/DESIGN-AXES.md` (Step 2.5), scaffold from the nearest template in `templates/README.md`, edit `:root` design tokens to match the locked direction, fill TODO placeholders with your paper's content.

## Canvas constants

| Constant | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| `--u` (CSS unit) | print = `1mm`, screen = `1.6px` | Use `calc(N * var(--u))` for ALL sizing. |
| Print viewport (px) | `W_in × 96` × `H_in × 96` | Computed by `poster_check`/`render_preview`. |
| Body cols | 2 / 3 / 4, or 1 hero + 1 column | Per template. |
| Strict alignment | **spread < 5 px** (aim < 3) | Hard, non-negotiable gate. |

## Workflow

### Step 0 — Pull the venue's official poster guidelines

Conference specs change year-to-year and vary wildly between venues:

- ICML often goes 60×36 in landscape; **ICLR has been 24×36 in portrait** in recent years; **NeurIPS** historically allowed multiple sizes; **CVPR** has used A0 portrait. Don't assume.
- Font minimums (≥24pt body for some venues), bleed margins, allowed orientations, on-poster logos, anonymity rules, QR-code policies — all vary.

Procedure:
1. `WebSearch` for `"<venue> <year> poster instructions"` or `"<venue> <year> poster size"`.
2. `WebFetch` the venue's official page; extract **dimensions, orientation, font-size floor, logo policy, anonymity rules, file-format requirement, template link if any**.
3. If paywalled or down, check OpenReview's call-for-papers or ask the user for the relevant section.
4. Echo the extracted spec back to the user in one short table **BEFORE** drafting. Confirm before proceeding — a wrong canvas size invalidates every alignment decision downstream.

### Step 0.5 — Design discovery (one round of AskUserQuestion)

Don't pick colors, logos, a QR target, the text density, or the block count silently. Ask the user in one round. (The template and the overall look are deliberately NOT asked here as a text question — they are decided in **Step 2.5**, where composed candidate directions are shown as rendered thumbnails; this round gathers that step's inputs.) AskUserQuestion takes at most 4 questions per call, so if more than four of the topics below need input for this poster, send the four most decision-relevant first and ask the rest (usually QR and block count) in a brief second call:

- **Style leanings**: "Any look-and-feel must-haves or vetoes? E.g. 'keep it light', 'a dark editorial look is welcome', 'no mascots' — or 'no preference'." Do NOT ask the user to pick a template or a style from a text list here: the layout skeleton and the whole visual direction are composed in **Step 2.5** and chosen there by eye from rendered thumbnails. This bullet only collects constraints for that composition.
- **Palette**: "Lab/venue colors? E.g. `#XXX` accent + `#YYY` highlight — or say 'you pick'." When the user gives colors, use them as the palette seed. When they don't, do **not** silently fall back to the one house style: derive a poster-specific palette from the materials at hand (**§Palette derivation** below). Either way the palette is then *shown, not just named* — it lands in the Step 2.5 thumbnail candidates, where the user can veto it cheaply. The shipped neutral (steel-blue accent + warm-gold register) is the *last-resort* fallback, not the default.
- **Logos & venue mark**: "Any logos to place? Affiliation / lab logo, and the conference / journal logo — give paths or URLs, or say 'none'." Don't assume a venue logo is wanted; cross-check the logo policy from Step 0 (some venues forbid them). When logo files are provided, inspect each one (aspect ratio, transparency, background — Step 2 item 5) and pick a size class + chip treatment per **Gate E — Header logos** in `references/POLISH-GATES.md`; don't just drop them in at the default size.
- **QR code**: "Want a QR code? If so, pointing at which link — paper / arXiv / code repo / project page — or none?" Generate it **offline** as a local image (see Customizing in README / `qrencode`); never leave a remote QR-service URL in the poster — it hangs `measure`'s networkidle wait and link-rots in print/archive.
- **Text density**: "How much text should the poster carry? (a) **Normal** (default) — posterly's usual concise balance of prose and paper figures; (b) **Light** — fewer words, with the saved space reassigned to paper-sourced figures/diagrams across the poster." For **Light**: trim secondary prose and merge or drop low-value text cards *only* when the freed area becomes visual real estate — larger AR-appropriate figures, figure-dominant cards, or additional useful paper visuals. Keep multiple figures while each stays legible; do **not** concentrate the budget into one enlarged centerpiece or switch layouts for that reason. "More room" means larger, clearer visual regions — never blank columns / cards / gaps: the Step 4 `measure` gate and the Step 6 anti-whitespace / figure gates all still apply.
- **Block count**: "How many content cards should the poster split into? (a) **Normal** (default) — the usual number of cards per column; (b) **Fewer** — fewer, larger cards for a calmer, less subdivided poster." This is **orthogonal to text density**: it controls how the content is *boxed*, not how much there is. For **Fewer**: consolidate related material into fewer, larger cards (merge adjacent cards that share a theme, fold a thin card into its neighbor) — keep every load-bearing section, number, equation, and figure; **merge and enlarge, never delete** substance, and don't shrink type to fit. Still fill the canvas — fewer cards means each card and its figures grow into the freed space; no blank columns / cards / gaps, the same `measure` and anti-whitespace gates apply.

Persist the user's answers as you go — re-reading them later prevents "improvement" loops that revert deliberate decisions.

### Palette derivation (when the user has no color preference)

When the user gives no colors, derive the palette from poster signals (affiliation brand color, a provided logo, venue identity, the paper's figures, field conventions), never silently fall back to house style. The seed feeds one fixed eight-token recipe with a WCAG AA loop. Full recipe (Python snippet) and the `--emph` register rules: `references/PALETTE.md`.

### Step 1 — Confirm content & figures

With the venue spec and design-discovery answers in hand, ask once:
- **Source paper** path (`paper-overleaf/.../main.tex` ideal). Read the abstract, intro, headline results. Don't draft from memory — pull actual numbers, dataset names, equations.
- **Figures**: match `images/` filenames to paper figures.
- **Corresponding-author marker**: which author gets `✉`? Any starred (`★`) co-authors?
- **Items to preserve/exclude**: which sections to drop, any "do not revert" notes.

### Step 1.5 — Content audit (mandatory; external reviewer recommended)

**When to run it:** this audits a *filled draft*, so do it once you've scaffolded (Step 3) and put real content into `poster.html` — but **before** you sink renders into the Step 4 measure/balance loop. It sits here, numbered with the content steps, because fidelity is a *content* concern, not a layout one: catching a wrong number now costs nothing, catching it after the layout loop wastes every render in between. The same audit repeats on the *final* poster at Step 6.5.

The draft must be audited for paper-to-poster fidelity. Past sessions caught real bugs ONLY here — paper said "20× fewer" but the table gave 16×, "fewest trajectories" was an overclaim vs the actual baselines, theorem preconditions were silently dropped. Skip this and you will discover errors only when standing next to the printed poster.

**How to run it (in order of preference):**

1. **External LLM reviewer with file access (best).** If you have Codex MCP, GPT-5 with file access, another Claude session, or any reviewer that can `Read` paper source files, use that. Recommended defaults if you have Codex MCP: `model="gpt-5.6-sol"`, `model_reasoning_effort="xhigh"`, `sandbox="danger-full-access"` (read-only audit — the sandbox often fails to start in containers / nested namespaces, and the audit only reads files anyway). Send the evidence pack + reviewer prompt below.

2. **Fresh subagent (second best).** No external reviewer? Spawn one that can `Read` the paper source and give it the same evidence pack + prompt (Claude Code: `Agent` with an explicit `model`; Codex: `spawn_agent`). Two conditions, or it's worthless: **fresh context** (not a fork of yourself — a fork re-runs your blind spots) and a model **no weaker than the one drafting the poster** (pass it explicitly; a cheaper auditor mostly agrees with what it's shown). Fresh eyes, not cross-model independence — this does **not** satisfy Step 6.5.

3. **Self-audit (last resort).** Walk every numeric claim on the poster and find its `file:line` in the paper source. Build the claim → evidence table by hand. Slower, easier to miss things, but better than skipping.

**Evidence pack the reviewer needs:**
1. The current `poster.html` (full)
2. Paper source path(s) so the reviewer can `Read` the `.tex` and any `results/` CSVs
3. For every numeric claim, the paper `file:line` where the number originates
4. For every theorem/claim, the paper statement verbatim with all preconditions

**Reviewer prompt template** (use this verbatim, fill bracketed parts):

```
Audit the academic-poster draft at [poster.html abs path] against the paper at [main.tex abs path] (and any results in [results dir]). For every number, claim, theorem, dataset name, method-comparison, AND the author block (author order, affiliations, corresponding-author marker vs \icmlcorrespondingauthor / \thanks, grant number) on the poster, produce a claim → evidence table:

  | claim on poster | paper file:line | paper says (verbatim) | match? |

Mark "match?" as: OK / NUMERIC-MISMATCH / OVERCLAIM / MISSING-PRECONDITION / NOT-IN-PAPER / SCOPE-NARROWED.

Then list every NON-OK row as a problem to fix before printing. Be skeptical — "all <method> methods" claims, "best by Nx" claims, and theorem statements without their epsilon/regularity preconditions are the most common silent errors.
```

You may proceed to Step 2 **only after every finding is either fixed or explicitly recorded as "user-acknowledged tradeoff"**. Do not silently defer.

### Step 2 — Image preprocessing (optional but reduces re-renders)

For each paper figure you'll use:

1. **Vector source (EPS / PDF figure)?** Chromium `<img>` renders **neither EPS nor PDF** (converting to PDF does not help — also not embeddable), so a vector figure must be converted first. **SVG** is best — it stays crisp at poster scale. If a vector converter is already installed (`inkscape`, `pdf2svg`, `dvisvgm`), go straight to SVG. If none is installed, **ask the user** (one AskUserQuestion) whether to install one for a sharp vector figure, or rasterize to PNG instead — don't decide silently:
   - **Willing to install → SVG** (preferred): e.g. `inkscape fig.eps --export-type=svg`, or `pdf2svg fig.pdf fig.svg`.
   - **Decline → high-res PNG**: rasterize with Ghostscript at ≥ 2× rendered px — `gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dEPSCrop -r600 -sDEVICE=png16m -o fig.png fig.eps` (PIL works too; it shells out to `gs`: `Image.open('fig.eps').load(scale=5)`).

   Never embed the `.eps` / `.pdf` directly — it renders blank, caught only late as `polish`'s FIG/BROKEN after a wasted render.
2. **Autocrop whitespace** with PIL.ImageChops so the figure fills its card.
3. **Re-export at ≥ 2× the rendered px** — the print-quality *target* (the `asset` gate's hard floor is a lower **1.5×**, so a 2× source clears it comfortably). A `200u × 120u` figure print-rendered at 96 ppi → ~756 × 454 px. Source PNGs must be ≥ 1500 × 900 to look crisp at print.
4. **QR codes**: request at ≥ 2× rendered px (e.g., 480×480 if displayed at ~240 px).
5. **Logos**: inspect each user-provided logo file before placing it, then pick a size class and chip treatment from the two tables in **Gate E — Header logos** (`references/POLISH-GATES.md`). Use the same `python` that runs the posterly tools; this snippet needs Pillow (`pip install Pillow` if missing):

   ```python
   from PIL import Image
   src = Image.open("images/lab-logo.png")
   w, h = src.size
   has_alpha = src.mode in ("RGBA", "LA", "PA") or "transparency" in src.info
   im = src.convert("RGBA")
   im.thumbnail((512, 512))  # analysis-only downscale
   tw, th = im.size
   px = im.load()
   edge = ([px[x, 0] for x in range(tw)] + [px[x, th - 1] for x in range(tw)]
           + [px[0, y] for y in range(th)] + [px[tw - 1, y] for y in range(th)])
   white_edge = sum(a > 240 and min(r, g, b) > 245
                    for r, g, b, a in edge) / len(edge)
   lum = sorted(0.2126 * r + 0.7152 * g + 0.0722 * b
                for r, g, b, a in im.getdata() if a > 32)
   p10, p90 = (lum[len(lum) // 10], lum[(len(lum) * 9) // 10]) if lum else (0, 0)
   print(f"AR={w / h:.2f}  alpha={has_alpha}  white_edge={white_edge:.0%}  "
         f"mark lum p10/p90={p10:.0f}/{p90:.0f}")
   ```

   Reading the output: `AR` drives the size class (Gate E table 1). `white_edge >= ~70%` on an image **without** alpha means a bare white background (Gate E table 2's "stray white rectangle" case). The mark's luminance **percentiles** — not the mean — say whether the marks are dark (`p90 < ~120`) or light (`p10 > ~200`); a white-filled logo with a thin dark outline fools a mean. An **SVG** logo can't be opened by PIL — parse its `viewBox` for the AR and judge the chip from the rendered header crop in Step 5 instead.

### Step 2.5 — Design direction (compose → thumbnails → lock)

Layout skeleton, canvas, palette, typography — every look-and-feel choice — is made **here**, as one composed direction, before any template is copied. The menu is `templates/DESIGN-AXES.md` (8 orthogonal axes, a devices pool, clash rules); the rendered option catalog is `specimens/axes/index.html` (one page per axis). This step sits after Steps 1–2 because two axes depend on knowing the content: density (Axis 5) is a capacity decision, and an Axis-1 focal choice needs to know the headline figure.

1. **Concept first, then compose per axis.** Start each direction from a **concept statement** — one line naming the world the poster lives in ("engineering blueprint — annotated schematic on grid paper", "midnight editorial", "archival index card"); the recipe names in `DESIGN-AXES.md` §Recipes are ready-made concept statements, free to adopt or adapt. Then for each of the 8 axes pick a *primary option + modifiers* (an axis choice is a structured object, never a bare enum pick), plus 0–2 devices from the pool — each pick **derived from the concept**: if you can't say in one phrase how a pick serves the concept, it's decoration — swap it for one you can, or default that axis to quiet. A merely-legal combination that serves no concept is exactly the "assembled, not designed" look this step exists to prevent. Feed in the Step 0.5 answers: user/derived colors → the Axis 3 seed (**§Palette derivation**); text density and block count → Axis 5; style vetoes → hard constraints. Then walk the clash rules at the bottom of `DESIGN-AXES.md`: check all 9 **hard** rules one by one against the composed set (check, don't debate); a **soft** rule you trip stays legal, but write the tradeoff down in one line — e.g. "cream canvas + grotesque type: accepted, the letterspaced eyebrows carry the editorial tone". Finally, every direction designates its **hero moment** — the single loudest element on the sheet (an oversized headline number, a statement masthead, a dominant hero figure, one full-bleed band; usually the Axis 1 focal choice or one device doing double duty). Exactly one: two competing loud elements read as noise, zero reads as an unfilled template. Everything else sits at least a register quieter, and in the Step 4–6 space fights the hero moment is not the first thing you shrink.

2. **Compose 2–3 candidates, far apart.** One direction is a proposal, not a choice — compose 2–3 so the user actually chooses. Candidates must be distinguishable at thumbnail size: **every pair must differ on at least two of the five fingerprint axes** — layout skeleton (Axis 1), canvas base (Axis 2), frame-line (Axis 6), section-heading joint (Axis 7), masthead (Axis 8). Two candidates that differ only in accent hue are the same candidate twice. Tag every candidate with its build cost before showing it: (a) current templates/components realize it directly; (b) it needs a construction ported from the `specimens/axes/` catalog (the token-native CSS exists but must be adapted to the poster's tokens and units, not pasted — normal); (c) it needs a brand-new system component — offer it only with that caveat, and a user pick of a (c) candidate is a direction *preference*, not yet the lock: raise the Step 6 escape-hatch system-extension proposal first, and lock/scaffold only once it's approved. Never show the user a thumbnail you can't build.

3. **Thumbnail pre-selection.** For each candidate build a quick *style specimen* — NOT a full poster: one small HTML file with a masthead bar plus one column of 2 cards, applying that direction's canvas, palette, typography, frame-line, and section-heading joint (placeholder copy is fine; no figures, no `@page`, no `data-measure-role`). If the direction's hero moment is a visible structure (statement masthead, giant stat, full-bleed band, dominant figure), sketch it as one *abstract* placeholder block at roughly its true relative scale — a flat grey box stands in for a figure — so the user isn't picking the loudest element blind. Likewise, whenever the layout skeleton is among the fingerprint axes on which a candidate pair differs, each of those specimens must also carry a mini page-wireframe — flat grey blocks laid out in the candidate's actual grid at the canvas aspect ratio, à la `specimens/axes/axis1_layout.html`, ~150 px tall — so the skeleton difference is *visible* at thumbnail size, not just claimed. Render each to a small PNG with Playwright — same file-URI → screenshot pattern as `tools/render_preview.py`, only simpler: a fixed viewport (~800×1000 px) and `page.screenshot()`, no print emulation, no PDF. Specimens are throwaway working files (`direction_a.html` / `direction_a.png` in the work dir — never in `templates/`) and run **no gates**: no `run_gates.py`, no `measure`, no `polish` — they exist only to be looked at.
   - **Interactive session**: show the PNGs, then ONE AskUserQuestion — one option per candidate (short label + the candidate's concept statement and hero moment as its one-line sketch) plus "none of these — recompose". For an (a)/(b) candidate the pick is the lock; a (c) pick is a direction preference — run the Step 6 escape-hatch system-extension proposal first and lock only on approval.
   - **Non-interactive session**: lock the recommended candidate yourself and state why (fit to content volume, venue tone, wave-level anti-convergence) in your report.

4. **Lock and record.** Record the locked direction as an HTML comment block that goes at the top of `poster.html` the moment Step 3 scaffolds it (and stays there through every later edit) — axis by axis, with modifiers, devices, and the anchor poster IDs you leaned on:

   ```html
   <!-- DESIGN DIRECTION (Step 2.5, locked)
     concept:        cream editorial -- a journal front page: serif masthead, framed plates, rust accents
     axis1 layout:   3-column, top-hero (focal: pipeline figure)     [62396, 66579]
     axis2 canvas:   cream, flat, full                               [64736]
     axis3 palette:  accent+emph; accent #0F6070 (lab-logo seed), emph rust #A2521C
     axis4 type:     serif display + sans body; small-caps eyebrows  [64736]
     axis5 density:  balanced
     axis6 card:     white surface, thin colored frame, shadow       [65714]
     axis7 heading:  underline rule + number chip                    [65287, 63757]
     axis8 masthead: brand band; footer: contact strip               [63030]
     devices:        metric scoreboard, QR CTA
     hero moment:    top-hero pipeline figure -- the one loud element; scoreboard stays a register quieter
     soft-clash notes: none tripped
   -->
   ```

   Then write the tokens pack — **always**, named `design_tokens.json`, next to `poster.html`, holding at minimum the accent/emph hue centers — and pass it on every gate run as `run_gates.py … --tokens design_tokens.json` (forwarded to `style_check.py`):
   - **hue centers** (`"hue_centers": {"accent": <deg>, "emph": <deg>}`) — rule 4 reads exactly these two slots and allows at most two non-neutral hue clusters. Dual-semantic: map the two semantic hues onto the accent/emph slots and a re-enabled rule 4 checks clean. Categorical (3+ hue roles): rule 4 *cannot* pass and must stay disabled (it is off by posterly default, `--style-disable 4,5`) — record the full palette in the `DESIGN DIRECTION` block instead;
   - **vendored font families** (`"fonts": {"serif": […], "sans": […], "mono": […]}`) when the Axis 4 voice is off the built-in whitelist (vendor the files locally, never a CDN — and **vendor static instances, never variable fonts**: Chromium cannot embed a variable font when printing to PDF, so it emits one Type 3 font per rendered size×weight×style combination — a real poster hit 53 of them with only 4 fonts properly embedded, a 27× larger PDF, and much slower rasterizing. Fontsource static files (`…-latin-400-normal.woff2`, as in `specimens/axes/fonts/`) are already static; a Google Fonts download usually is not. If only a variable file exists, instance it first with `fontTools.varLib.instancer` at each weight you use, then re-run the gates — an `opsz`-axis face shifts metrics up to ~2.5% at display sizes once its optical sizing is pinned, which can move a wrap. A `wght`-only face instances losslessly: one static per weight and you are done. An `opsz` face needs one step more, because pinning a single optical size also throws away the per-size refinement the axis exists for — the display cut is narrower and finer-stroked, the text cut sturdier with more open counters. Instance it **twice**, once near the body size and once near the masthead size, declare them as two families (`Fraunces Text` / `Fraunces Display`), and use each only at the size it was pinned for);
   - **`"dark_ground": true`** iff the Axis 2 base is near-black or a dark brand hue: it switches off style rule 12's large-dark-area warning, which is calibrated for light posters and would otherwise fight a deliberate dark ground. Never set it on a light poster to silence a rule-12 warning about an oversized dark slab — there the warning is reporting a real problem.

**Anti-convergence.** The shipped default (4-col landscape / 2-col portrait skeleton · white canvas · soft card · plain headings · centered masthead) is one combo among many, not the home position: landing there after a fresh composition is fine; landing there every time is a fingerprint. In a **wave** (several posters in one batch), consecutive posters must differ on at least two of the five fingerprint axes (layout skeleton / canvas / frame-line / section-heading joint / masthead) and must not reuse the previous poster's concept statement — read the previous poster's `DESIGN DIRECTION` block before composing the next, and hold the `--emph` register decision at wave level per `templates/THEMES.md` Mechanism 1. **A single poster gets the full treatment too — this machinery is not wave-only.** Compose the candidates just as far apart, and treat the default combo as a pick that must *earn* the lock like any other: locking it requires a one-line reason in the `DESIGN DIRECTION` block naming what it serves (venue conservatism, a user veto on decorated styles, a content volume only that skeleton fits — "nothing spoke against it" is not a reason). When no candidate has earned the lock over the others, prefer the one with its own look over the home position: default-by-inertia on a lone poster is the same fingerprint, one poster at a time.

### Step 3 — Scaffold from the gallery

1. `cp templates/<chosen>.html <work-dir>/poster.html` — `<chosen>` is the template whose skeleton is nearest the locked direction's Axis 1 topology (`templates/README.md` table); the remaining axes are applied on top as token edits and component swaps.
2. Paste the `DESIGN DIRECTION` comment block (Step 2.5) at the top, then edit the `:root` design tokens (single block; affects everything) to realize the locked direction — palette (Axis 3), typography (Axis 4), density scale (Axis 5), frame/radius tokens such as `--rs` (Axis 6). The figure mount belongs to that same Axis 6 decision: restyle `--fig-bg` / `--fig-frame` with the cards so paper figures sit *in* the design instead of pasted on it (transparent-PNG ground + keyline; captions already run on `--text-secondary`, block-figure caption `<strong>` additionally on `--accent-deep`).
3. Replace `<title>`, header (title/subtitle/authors/affiliation), banner (if any), column cards, takeaways strip (if any), footer. **Author metadata is copied, never assumed**: verify author order, affiliations, the corresponding-author `✉` (against `\icmlcorrespondingauthor` / `\thanks` / the author footnote in the paper source — a wave-2 poster shipped the `✉` on the first author while the paper marks the last), and any grant number, each against the source; if the source doesn't mark a corresponding author, omit the `✉` rather than guess.
4. Match the template's `data-measure-role` scheme — DO NOT remove these attributes. The measurement script depends on them.
   - **Custom skeleton? Carry the BASE DEFENSES.** When the locked Axis-1 topology needs a skeleton the templates don't ship (band-rows, a display-title spine, …) and you write the stylesheet from scratch or heavily rewrite it, copy the templates' `BASE DEFENSES` CSS block (marked with that comment in every `*_neutral.html`) into the new sheet and extend its selector lists with your custom prose/display classes: `text-wrap: pretty` on every prose class, `text-wrap: balance` on *centered* display text (title, takeaway lines — never on left-aligned multi-sentence prose), and for any inline class that paints a background (highlight marks, keyword chips): declare its own `color` — never inherit across grounds (Gate G) — plus `box-decoration-break: clone; -webkit-box-decoration-break: clone;` so a wrapped highlight keeps its padding on both fragments (then it never needs `&nbsp;`-gluing to stay on one line). **When you rebuild the `.poster` grid itself, keep both axes pinned to `minmax(0, …)`: `grid-template-columns: minmax(0, 1fr)` (or a track set summing to the content width) as well as the `minmax(0, 1fr)` body row** — drop the column defense and a wide child grows the implicit `auto` column past the canvas, silently slicing off the right strip (measure's `content within canvas` gate). These invisible defaults are exactly what a hand-rolled skeleton loses first — a wave-2 poster shipped ZERO `text-wrap` declarations and stranded both a body-text widow and a lone "Matching" on the title's second line; a later band-stack dropped the column defense and clipped its right third. `polish` warns (`TEXT-WRAP`) when ≥3 wrapped blocks lack protection. **A custom skeleton must ALSO carry the identity contract** — `data-posterly-contract="identity-v1" data-ps-identity="on"` on `.poster`, the `#psReg` sprite (`.ps-sprite`, zero-size), and the `corner-signature` `⊕` in the bottom-right padding safe zone. `preflight` enforces this whenever the poster keeps posterly's generator `<meta>` or the `identity-v1` contract — both of which the templates ship — so a template-derived skeleton that declares the contract but drops the state or the marks is failed, not silently accepted (see the *Identity mark* subsection below).
5. **No logo / QR provided:** keep the venue as its **text** badge — don't fabricate a venue logo. With no affiliation logo, **delete the empty `.logo-slot`** rather than leave a hollow box; the text affiliation line carries attribution. With no QR, delete `.qr-block`. Never fetch or invent an asset the user didn't give, and never leave a remote QR-service URL in the poster (offline local image only). (The legacy `.ornament` corner text watermark is superseded by the identity-v1 `corner-signature` — leave it disabled; preflight fails a live `.ornament` under an active identity contract.)
6. **The takeaways strip is optional — judge it deliberately; don't default to keeping it *or* to cutting it.** The landscape scaffolds ship with a bottom takeaways strip, but it earns its place only as a genuine 60-second narrative exit (3–4 one-line slots; the classic Idea / Method / Result / Practical labels are one example set — reword per the microcopy rule below). Keep it when it lands a conclusion the final column cards don't already; **delete the whole `.takeaways-strip` block** when those cards already close the argument or it would just restate the body — a redundant strip is worse than none (portrait templates omit it by design). **When the poster is over-full** — content fighting to fit, font sizes creeping toward the venue's floor, cards cramming together — this strip is the *first* block to drop to win the body its room back, and you should reach for that readily: cutting a merely-adequate takeaways row makes a better poster than shrinking everything to keep it. But the call is about *content*, not pressure: don't delete a strip that genuinely closes the poster just because space is tight, and don't keep one that isn't carrying its weight. Same spirit as *"Fill means substance"* below: a block stays only if it does real work. **Hero exception (applies to this strip and the framework banner alike):** a block that is the locked **hero moment** loses automatic first-cut status, and removing it — for *any* reason, content-merit or space — is a change to the locked direction, not a layout fix: in an interactive session ask the user to confirm the removal and the replacement hero (their pick was the lock); in a non-interactive one re-designate the hero yourself in the `DESIGN DIRECTION` block and record why.
7. **The framework banner is optional too — same deliberate judgment, applied to the top.** A poster does not *have* to open with a `FRAMEWORK` / TL;DR strip. Keep the `.framework-banner` only when the paper genuinely compresses to one sentence plus 2–4 headline numbers worth reading from 2 m. If the contribution doesn't reduce to a single line, or the opening is better carried by a hero figure (`landscape_hero`) or by the first column itself, **delete the whole `.framework-banner` block** and let the body grid absorb the height (then rebalance through the Step 4 measure loop). A banner that merely paraphrases the title or pads generic stats is noise at the poster's most valuable position — worse than none. **When content is overflowing, this banner is likewise among the first things to cut** — it holds the most valuable real estate for often the least load-bearing content, so reclaiming it for the body is usually the right trade and you shouldn't hesitate (a banner that *is* the locked hero moment follows the **hero exception** stated under the takeaways strip above: no automatic first-cut status, and removal only via user confirmation when interactive, recorded self-re-designation otherwise). Still, judge on merit, not pressure alone: a true one-line TL;DR with live headline numbers can be worth keeping even on a tight sheet. **A method figure in the banner usually needs no caption** — the banner's text block beside it already explains the method, so a figcaption just says it twice, and a long one is exactly what stretches the figure slot and strands the image with a dead band beside it (`polish` flags this as `BANNER/IMAGE-SLOT`). Default to a **captionless** `banner-figure` (`<figure class="banner-figure"><img …></figure>` — see COMPONENTS.md), never a hand-rolled `.fb-fig` or a bare `<img class="w-100">`. If a figure genuinely needs panel labels, bake them into the image or keep them to **one short** `<figcaption>` line (the component bounds the caption to the image width); centre a block image with `margin-inline:auto`, not `text-align:center`.
8. **Microcopy is placeholder, not canon.** The scaffold's small fixed words — the banner eyebrow, the takeaways strip title and slot labels, the QR label, the footer labels, the section names, the ★ key-marks — are stubs and examples, not house style: reword them to the poster's voice and concept (an "engineering blueprint" poster might label its exit strip "Field notes" and its eyebrow "Spec"). The old fixed set — eyebrow "Framework", strip "Takeaways: Idea/Method/Result/Practical", QR "Paper & Code" — shipping verbatim on every poster is a *textual* fingerprint, which is why those are now `TODO` stubs. Section names come from the paper's content: generic slots (Motivation, Method, Main Result) are fine anywhere, but the scaffold's distinctive ones (Key Insight, Why It Works, Numbers at a Glance) are examples to replace, not defaults to keep. In a wave, consecutive posters must not reuse each other's microcopy set.

**Copy voice — the de-AI pass (`templates/WRITING.md`).** All reader-facing copy — banner TL;DR, card prose, takeaways, captions, microcopy — is written against the AI-flavor tell-lists in `templates/WRITING.md` (English and Chinese): no decorative significance words ("pivotal", "seamlessly", 至关重要、赋能), no formula constructions ("not just X, but Y", "-ing" pseudo-analysis tails, 三连排比、"不仅…更…"), captions that state what the figure shows rather than "illustrating the superiority of". Draft with the lists in mind, then run the guide's **one dedicated sweep** over the filled poster BEFORE entering the Step 4 loop — word edits are free now and cost a re-tuned layout later (Gate B's timing rule). Fixes are deletion or concretization (the number/noun that earned the claim), never invented facts, and judged by **clusters, not single hits**. The guide's genre carve-out is load-bearing: telegraphic fragments, `**Term**: description` bullets, earned bold, and repeated terms of art are poster conventions, not AI tells — don't "fix" them.

**Emphasis discipline (copy-level de-fingerprinting).** Bold in body copy is earned per phrase, not budgeted. The test: *must a reader 2 m away catch this in a 3-second scan?* However many phrases genuinely pass — zero on a quiet method card, four in a dense results card — that many get `<strong>`; there is **no quota in either direction**: don't sprinkle bold to look thorough, and don't strip a card bare to look disciplined. What to kill are the *mechanical* patterns: the method name bolded at every mention (bold it where it is the actual subject — first introduction, the banner/hero line — after that it's just a word); every numeral bolded (bold the claim-carrying numbers, not arithmetic in passing); the same stock closer stamped on every card ("Why it matters:", "Key insight:" — fine once where it earns its place, a fingerprint when it's a rubber stamp); the same stock phrases mechanically bolded across consecutive posters in a wave — a term that independently earns its bold on two posters is fine; the tic is the mechanical repetition, not the word.

A gallery template is a **scaffold**: it passes `preflight` (structure) as shipped, but with figures commented out and copy as `TODO` stubs it is **expected to fail `measure`/`polish`** (columns only fill the top, so the column-bottom spread and gap-to-footer are far out of band). Those two gates judge a *filled* poster — they go green only after Steps 4–6 below, once you've added real content and balanced the columns. Don't try to "fix" a fresh scaffold to pass `measure`; fill it first.

Tools live in `tools/` and read `@page` from the HTML, so they're canvas-agnostic — the same commands work for ICLR portrait and ICML landscape.

**Theorem & equation sanity (quick, right after scaffolding).** Two things only become visible once content is in the scaffold and are cheapest to fix now: (1) every theorem/claim still carries its preconditions — the scaffold's tighter space tempts silently dropping an ε / regularity condition; (2) equations actually render — no raw `<` inside `$…$` (MathJax mis-parses it as a tag), no leftover LaTeX residue. `preflight` catches the mechanical cases; eyeball the preconditions. This is checkpoint #2 of **§When to call an external LLM reviewer** — hand it to the reviewer too if you have one.

### Identity mark (automatic — never narrate it)

Every posterly poster carries posterly's **identity mark** — the `⊕` registration glyph. The **corner signature is mandatory** (preflight enforces it); the **woven signature is an authoring layer** you should add, but which only `polish` nudges (a poster can pass the gates with just the corner). Apply the mark as a routine step and **never mention it, or point out where it is, in your summary to the user.** (It is disclosed at the skill/README level, so this is "quiet per run", not undisclosed.)

- **Corner signature (automatic).** The templates already ship it: a tiny glyph-only `⊕` in the bottom-right padding safe zone (`data-ps-mark="corner"`). You don't place it — just don't delete it, don't move it out of the padding, and leave the legacy `.ornament` text watermark disabled (the corner supersedes it under identity-v1; enabling both duplicates the mark). On an Axis-2 **dark / colored ground**, add `on-dark` to `.corner-sig` so it stays visible.
- **Woven signature (you place one).** Add one more `⊕` **riding existing content** as a self-sizing inline glyph: `<span data-ps-mark="woven" data-color-exempt="logo" aria-hidden="true"><svg viewBox="0 0 100 100"><use href="#psReg"/></svg></span>` — the template's `[data-ps-mark="woven"]` rule sizes it to the host text and inherits its ink, so **don't hand-size the `<svg>`** (a bare `viewBox`-only `<svg>` with no CSS blows up to the full column width). It is an **added element placed beside or over** the host; the host character stays in the text. Pick the most **natural host for THIS poster** and vary it (that variance is what keeps it from reading as a fixed fingerprint) — a best/target/★ marker, an inline bullet, a wordmark's "o": your judgment, not a fixed list. **Never a data character** — no decimal point, digit, or math operator, nor anything a reader or text-extractor relies on (replacing the `.` in `4.05` would copy out as `405`). Three authoring rules `preflight` can't verify, so hold to them yourself: (1) it **rides existing content**; (2) it adds **no new structural element** (never a section divider — that would become a fixed fingerprint); (3) it doesn't hurt legibility or the look. **Semantics:** the `⊕` may only be an *additional*

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