Assets

assets — ingest what exists before inventing

Stage: Phase 1 — Understand (immediately after brief) - Reads: the paths/folder/files the user named + design/BRIEF.md - Writes: design/ASSETS.md

Standard

A first-grade intake is exhaustive, classified, and honest about its own authority:

• Exhaustive: every file in the named source is accounted for — used, superseded, or rejected with a reason. A silently ignored asset becomes the client's first review comment: "why isn't our logo on it?"
• Classified by what it can become, not by extension. A 4000px flat-lay is hero media; the same shot at 380px is a thumbnail. Classification records that ceiling, so imagery never plans a full-bleed around a file that cannot carry one.
• Slotted: each kept asset names the page slot that consumes it and the ONE treatment it passes through. An inventory that stops at "we have 40 photos" hands the build a shoebox, not a decision.
• Advisory, never sovereign: extracted palette and type facts are CANDIDATES. taste and contrast math still govern; a client hex that fails AA loses. What the client owns is input to the design, not a veto over it.
• Honest about absence: no assets is a finding, not a blank. It gets written down so §Assumed facts stays truthful about what the studio invented.

Process

1. Resolve the sources. Enumerate the folder, paths, or attachments the user named — find <dir> -type f -not -path '*/.*' | sort — then file each hit for its real type. A named URL is not an asset source: hand it to direction and move on.
2. Classify every find into one of seven buckets: vector logo (.svg, .ai, .eps, live-path .pdf) · raster logo · photography · illustration/pattern · copy documents (.docx, .md, .txt, exported site copy) · brand-guide PDF · font files (.otf, .ttf, .woff2). Anything unclassifiable is listed as unknown with its type string — never dropped.
3. Record the ceiling per asset: pixel dimensions and orientation for raster, viewBox for vector, page count for documents. Photography under 1600px on the long edge cannot hold a hero — say so in the row instead of discovering it in Phase 6.
4. Assign the slot and the treatment. Slot comes from BRIEF.md §Pages and §Content inventory (/shop grid card, hero, about portrait); when wireframe later names the real section, tighten the column to that name. Treatment names what the asset must survive: imagery's single named treatment, media-optimization's pipeline, background removal, re-crop.
5. Sample color candidates. Pull 3–6 values from the vector source or the brand guide, converted to oklch(L C H) — never carried forward as hex. They are proposals for color's ramp, labeled as such.
6. Contrast pass, non-negotiable. Compute every candidate proposed as a foreground or surface against its intended pair. Failing AA: keep the hue, move L (cap C if the hue can't hold it), log BOTH values and both ratios. An unreadable client color is a defect with a brand story attached.
7. Check the typeface license before committing anything. A named face enters SYSTEM.md only if web embedding is permitted — open-licensed, or a webfont license the client actually holds. Desktop-only licenses, "we bought it for the logo", and unverifiable claims all resolve the same way: name the nearest licensable alternative on typography's terms and log the substitution with its reason. Never ship an unlicensed .otf out of a client folder as a webfont.
8. Read the mark, don't redraw it. Record clear-space in mark-heights, minimum legible size, whether a mono variant exists, and whether it survives knocked out on dark. Vector → identity formalizes the lockup around it. Raster-only → flag it for identity and stop: never auto-trace a client mark. A traced logo is a forgery with wrong curves, and it gets compared against the printed one.
9. Mine the copy documents for voice, not paragraphs. Extract the phrases the client genuinely uses — product names, process terms, how they describe their craft — and hand them to copywriting as source. Their existing About page is evidence of voice, never approved copy.
10. If nothing exists, write the file anyway with exactly the line No client assets provided — everything visual is invented. and mirror it into BRIEF.md §Assumed facts. That line is why the first review is a correction and not a betrayal.
11. Write design/ASSETS.md in the format below. Every Foundation-phase skill reads it before inventing.

ASSETS.md format

# Assets — <client>
Source: <path or "none provided"> · <n> files scanned, <n> kept

| Asset | Class | Ceiling | Slot | Treatment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `label-scan.jpg` | raster logo | 1200×800 | header, footer, favicon | → identity: formalize as vector, never traced |
| `throw-flatlay-*.jpg` (12) | photography | 3000px | /shop cards, /products/[slug] gallery | linen-ground treatment + blob pipeline |
| `brand-2019.pdf` | brand guide | 6pp | constraints only | — |

## Color candidates (input to `color`, not law)
- `oklch(0.42 0.06 148)` — thread green, sampled from label. AA fail on linen (3.1:1) → **use `oklch(0.36 0.07 148)`** (5.4:1), hue held.

## Type
- Named in guide: <face> — <license verdict> → <committed face or nearest licensable alternative, with reason>

## Mark
- Clear space: <n>× mark height · min size: <n>px · mono variant: yes/no · knockout: holds/fails

## Voice source
- <document> → phrases handed to `copywriting`

## Not used
- <file> — <one-line reason>

Anti-patterns

• Auto-tracing a raster logo and calling it the vector — wrong curves, forged authority
• Adopting a client hex that fails AA because "it's their brand color" — the ratio is not negotiable, the hue is
• Treating a brand-guide PDF as SYSTEM.md — it is evidence; color, typography, and identity still decide
• Installing a font found in a client folder without a license check
• "40 photos in /assets" as an inventory — no ceiling, no slot, no treatment is a shoebox
• Pasting the client's existing About page in as copy — copywriting writes every string on the site
• Skipping the file when nothing was supplied, leaving the brief silently implying the visuals came from the client
• Chasing the reference site the user linked instead of handing it to direction

Worked example — Loop & Thread, a shoebox of shop assets

Moved to references/example.md — read only when this build's case is genuinely ambiguous; the sections above are the decision material.

Composes with

Moved to references/composes.md — the handoff map; load it when orchestrating this skill against its neighbors.