Web Visual Assets

Web Visual Assets

Schema authority: the Illustration primitive shape ({name, kind, alt, spec} and {kind: 'waived', reason}) and the per-unit illustrations[] Coverage Floor are defined in _shared/domain-primitives.md §11.

This skill produces the visual layer of a teaching site. Four asset sources cover virtually every need, each with different tradeoffs.

Asset Source Decision Tree

What do you need?
├── Screenshot of a real product/website     → Source 1: Playwright scraping
├── A conceptual scene (workflow, metaphor)  → Source 2: AI image generation
├── A simple diagram (boxes, arrows, labels) → Source 3: Hand-drawn SVG
└── A scannable code / functional artifact   → Source 4: Code generator (QRCode, etc.)

Source 1: Playwright Scraping

Use for screenshots of tools, websites, profile cards. The example workshop scrapes 6 AI tool homepages and a YouTube instructor channel.

Standard headless flow

// scripts/scrape-tools.mjs
import { chromium } from 'playwright';

const browser = await chromium.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage({ viewport: { width: 1440, height: 900 } });
await page.goto(url, { waitUntil: 'networkidle' });
await page.screenshot({ path: `data/tools/${id}.png`, fullPage: false });
await browser.close();

When anti-bot blocks you (CDP mode)

Some sites (Cloudflare, modern OpenAI properties) detect headless Chromium and block. Workaround: connect to a real Chrome via CDP:

# scripts/start-cdp-chrome.ps1
Start-Process chrome.exe -ArgumentList '--remote-debugging-port=9222', '--user-data-dir=C:\tmp\cdp-profile'

const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP('http://localhost:9222');
const page = (await browser.contexts()[0].pages())[0];
// ... drive an existing real-browser session

Run with --cdp --pause flags so the human can complete any CAPTCHA, then press Enter to continue.

Subset-merge pattern (don't overwrite siblings)

When re-scraping one item out of many, merge with existing data instead of overwriting:

async function writeMerged(jsonPath, updates) {
  const existing = JSON.parse(await fs.readFile(jsonPath, 'utf8').catch(() => '{}'));
  await fs.writeFile(jsonPath, JSON.stringify({ ...existing, ...updates }, null, 2));
}

CLI: node scrape-tools.mjs --ids codex,notebooklm only touches those two.

YouTube channel quirks

• The channel page is a SPA. URL query strings like ?sort=p&view=0 are stripped. Sort client-side after fetching the latest N videos.
• Virtual scrolling strips src from out-of-view <img>. Derive thumbnail URLs from videoId: https://img.youtube.com/vi/{videoId}/hqdefault.jpg. Don't rely on DOM src.

Source 2: AI Image Generation

Use for scenario illustrations, day heroes, conceptual scenes. The example workshop uses Gemini's image generation; any text-to-image API works.

Prompt design rules

1. Specify a consistent visual style across the whole course (e.g. "flat illustration, soft pastel palette, no text, no people"). Inconsistent illustrations look amateurish.
2. Avoid faces and brand logos — AI image generators struggle with both and produce uncanny results.
3. Store prompts alongside the images:

assets/illustrations/
├── day1-token-prediction.png
├── day1-token-prediction.prompt.md   ← regenerate-ready prompt
└── ...

This lets you regenerate at higher quality later or tweak style.

PNG + SVG fallback render

AI generation occasionally fails (rate limits, content filters, model issues). Pair every AI PNG with a hand-drawn SVG fallback at the same path stem:

function renderIllustration(name) {
  const img = el('img', { src: `assets/illustrations/${name}.png`, alt: '' });
  img.onerror = () => { img.src = `assets/illustrations/${name}.svg`; img.onerror = null; };
  return img;
}

The browser tries PNG; on 404 swaps to SVG. The fallback ships even if you never use it — defensive against link rot.

Source 3: Hand-drawn SVG

Use for diagrams that benefit from precise control: arrows between named boxes, step-by-step flows, labelled UI mockups, the classroom map.

Hand-coded SVG (or exported from Figma/Excalidraw) is preferable to AI for:

• Text labels (AI can't reliably render Chinese text inside images)
• Arrow + box flows (AI gets layout wrong)
• Anything that needs to update when course details change

Style hint: wrap in a translucent container + drop-shadow filter to match the site's overall aesthetic, even if the SVG itself is line-art.

Source 4: Generated Codes (QR)

import QRCode from 'qrcode';
await QRCode.toFile('assets/qr/workshop-url.png', 'https://your-workshop.example/', {
  width: 512,
  margin: 1,
  color: { dark: '#000000', light: '#FFFFFF' }
});

For dark-themed sites, generate a dark-on-white code, not white-on-dark — most QR scanners require dark foreground on light background.

Asset Folder Convention

assets/
├── tools/             ← Source 1: scraped tool/product screenshots
├── illustrations/     ← Source 2 (PNG) + Source 3 (SVG fallback)
├── scenarios/         ← Source 2: per-unit scene illustrations
├── cases/             ← Source 2: shared case visuals
├── characters/        ← Source 2: persona portraits
├── qr/                ← Source 4: QR codes
└── maps/              ← Source 1 (screenshot) or Source 3 (SVG)

Wiring Assets into the SPA

In course-data.js, every unit carries an illustrations[] array (1–3 entries) populated from the 圖片需求 blocks written in Stage 2:

{
  id: 'u-3',
  title: '...',
  illustrations: [
    { name: 'day1-u3-hero.png',    kind: 'hero',       alt: '...', spec: '...' },
    { name: 'day1-u3-flow.svg',    kind: 'diagram',    alt: '...', spec: '...' },
    { name: 'day1-u3-example.png', kind: 'screenshot', alt: '...', spec: '...' }  // optional 3rd
  ],
  // ...
}

renderUnit iterates unit.illustrations and calls renderIllustration(entry), which handles PNG-first / SVG-fallback per entry. Render hero first (above the fold), then diagram, then screenshot — in that order.

Legacy single-illustration field: older course-data.js files use illustration: 'foo.png' (single string). Treat it as illustrations: [{ name: 'foo.png', kind: 'hero' }] and migrate to the array form when convenient. Don't rely on the legacy shape for new sites.

Coverage Floor (Hard Rule — 1–3 illustrations per unit)

A teaching site that ships with only a cover image looks like an unfinished draft — Stage 5 must hit a minimum coverage before declaring the site feature-complete:

• Every unit in course-data.js has illustrations.length >= 1 (and <= 3).
• At least one entry per unit has a real file under assets/ (PNG or SVG). Pure-stub units ({ kind: 'placeholder' } everywhere) fail.
• Genuine no-image units carry an explicit waiver: illustrations: [{ kind: 'waived', reason: '...' }]. Silence — i.e. an empty array — fails the floor.
• Cover image (assets/cover.png or equivalent) exists in addition to per-unit images. Cover does NOT count toward any unit's 1–3 quota.

When the floor is unmet, the site cannot be declared "feature-complete" and Stages 5b / 6 must NOT be dispatched yet — see teaching-site/SKILL.md Stage 5 Image Coverage Floor for the orchestrator-level enforcement.

Batch-generation pattern (recommended)

Don't generate images one unit at a time. Build a manifest from course-data.js and run a batch:

// scripts/generate-illustrations.mjs
const manifest = [];
for (const dayKey of ['day1', 'day2', 'day3', 'day4']) {
  for (const unit of window.COURSE[dayKey].units) {
    for (const ill of (unit.illustrations || [])) {
      if (ill.kind === 'waived') continue;
      manifest.push({ name: ill.name, prompt: ill.spec, kind: ill.kind });
    }
  }
}
// → feed manifest to AI image API in parallel batches of 4–6

Why batch: style consistency. Single-unit ad-hoc generation drifts. A batch with the same style prefix produces a coherent visual system.

Verification

Two verification concerns, each with its own skill:

• "Do referenced assets exist on disk?" (cross-file reference check) → invoke web-content-audit. Its Audit 1 (Cross-Artifact Reference Resolution) and the asset coverage audit cover this exactly.
• "Do assets actually render in the browser without 404s?" (runtime check) → invoke web-visual-verification. A multi-viewport verify script that collects console.error will surface broken <img> requests automatically.

Run both before each deployment. The audit catches references to files that don't exist; the verify catches assets that exist but are mis-pathed in the rendered HTML. They fail in different ways and need different scripts.

Anti-Patterns

• Generating images one-by-one without style consistency — write the style spec once, paste it as prefix for every prompt.
• AI-generated text in images — almost always broken; use SVG for any image that needs accurate text.
• No SVG fallback for AI PNGs — when the PNG link breaks (file deletion, rename mistake), the site shows broken-image icons; SVG fallback degrades gracefully.
• Storing screenshots without a re-scrape script — six months later someone wants fresh screenshots and there's no record of how the originals were taken.

Hand-off

Tell the user: "visual assets in place. Run node scripts/verify-assets.mjs to confirm nothing's missing. The site is now feature-complete. Next stage (course-ebook-publishing) can turn the same content into a PDF/DOCX deliverable — invoke that only when the web version is stable."