Approve Design

Writing rule

When this skill writes a durable artifact, read .claude/rules/writing-standard.md. Use the controlled technical writing profile.

/approve-design - Record Per-PR Design-Review Approval

Writes .claude/session/reviews/<owner>__<repo>__<pr>-design.approved (repo-qualified path, see AgDR-0060) with the current HEAD SHA so the require-design-review-for-ui.sh merge-gate hook will let a UI PR through. Without this marker, the hook blocks merges on any PR that touches .tsx, .jsx, .vue, .svelte, .css, .scss, .sass, .less, or design-tokens* files.

This skill is the design-review analog of /approve-merge (which writes the CEO marker for the merge gate). Same pattern, different gate.

The one rule you must not break

INVOKE THIS SKILL ONLY ON EXPLICIT, PER-PR, DESIGN-REVIEW APPROVAL.

The valid invocation triggers look like this:

• "design approved" / "UI looks good" / "design review passed" — if and only if the surrounding context clearly names a specific PR and the designer has actually reviewed the PR's visual changes.
• "PR #42 design approved" / "the UI in #42 looks right" — names the PR explicitly.
• A reply to your own "PR #42 has UI changes — design review approved?" message that consists of any affirmative token — because you just named the PR and the user/designer is responding to that specific question.

Invalid triggers (do NOT run this skill):

• "looks good" / "nice" / "approved" — when said about a Figma mockup, a design spec, a screenshot, or any artifact that is not a specific PR's diff. Design review means reviewing the actual code changes in a PR, not a mockup. A mockup approval and a PR approval are different moments.
• "the design is fine" — when said in a planning context ("let's go with this design approach") rather than a PR-review context ("I've looked at the PR diff and the implementation matches the design"). The skill is for the latter.
• "go" / "continue" / "ship it" — when these are umbrella responses to a multi-step plan. Same rule as /approve-merge.
• Your own inference that "the designer probably approves because they liked the mockup earlier." NO. Mockup approval ≠ implementation approval. Stop and ask.

If in doubt: STOP AND ASK. "PR #X has UI changes — has the design been reviewed and approved?" is one message. Merging a PR with incorrect UI that needs a follow-up revert is much worse.

Process

1. Parse the PR number — and the repo

Extract the PR number from $ARGUMENTS. If no argument is given, try to infer from:

• The current branch's open PR via gh pr view --json number --jq '.number'
• The user's most recent message, if it named a PR explicitly

If the PR number is ambiguous, STOP and ask.

Also resolve the repo (REPO). Accept the fully-qualified owner/repo#N form, or an explicit owner/repo second token. In split-portfolio v2 the PR lives in a sibling repo, so a bare gh pr view <pr> resolved against the ops-fork cwd hits the WRONG repo — the marker would then be written under the ops-fork qualifier and the require-design-review-for-ui.sh gate (which keys on the PR's real repo, derived from the merge command's cd-target, me2resh/apexyard#687) would never find it → false-block. Pass --repo "$REPO" to every gh pr view call below when REPO is known. Fail loud: if only a bare number was given and gh pr view <pr> cannot resolve the PR from the current cwd, STOP and ask for the owner/repo#N form — never write the marker under a guessed qualifier.

2. Sanity-check the user's intent

Before writing the marker, re-read the user's most recent message. Ask yourself:

• Did the user/designer explicitly name this PR, or can I point at a direct "PR #X design approved?" question from me that they are responding to?
• Did the designer review the PR diff (code changes), or just a mockup / screenshot / Figma link?
• Is the approval for the design aspects of this specific PR, or for a general design direction?

If any of these are unclear — STOP. Reply with a per-PR explicit question:

"PR #X touches UI files (.tsx/.css/etc). Has the design review been completed on the actual PR diff — approved?"

3. Verify the PR state

Run gh pr view <pr> ${REPO:+--repo "$REPO"} --json state,isDraft,mergeable. Sanity checks:

• state must be OPEN.
• Refuse if MERGED, CLOSED, or DRAFT.
• mergeable should be MERGEABLE or UNKNOWN.

4. Verify the Rex marker exists at current HEAD

Design review is a stamp on top of a Rex-approved HEAD, not parallel to code review. Resolve the ops fork root and source the marker path helper:

REPO_ROOT=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)
OPS_ROOT=""
r="$REPO_ROOT"
while [ -n "$r" ] && [ "$r" != "/" ]; do
  if [ -f "$r/.apexyard-fork" ]; then OPS_ROOT="$r"; break; fi
  if [ -f "$r/onboarding.yaml" ] && [ -f "$r/apexyard.projects.yaml" ]; then OPS_ROOT="$r"; break; fi
  r=$(dirname "$r")
done
MARKER_HOME="${OPS_ROOT:-$REPO_ROOT}"
# shellcheck source=/dev/null
. "$MARKER_HOME/.claude/hooks/_lib-review-markers.sh"
# Base (host) repo — the canonical marker key: it matches Rex's marker AND the
# merge gate's lookup (which keys on the merge command's base repo, #765). Prefer
# the repo resolved in step 1 (already the base, #687); if it wasn't given, fall
# back to the CURRENT checkout's own remote — a deterministic, non-ambient
# source of truth. Do NOT fall back to an unscoped
# `gh pr view <pr> --json headRepository`: that call reads the wrong field (the
# PR's head/fork) and is itself an ambient-resolved gh query that can silently
# prefer the wrong repo in a fork checkout (#887). pr_base_repo now REQUIRES
# this repo and scopes its own gh query to it — never gh's ambient default —
# so same-repo PRs still resolve unchanged.
if [ -n "$REPO" ]; then
  REPO_FOR_BASE="$REPO"
else
  origin_url=$(git remote get-url origin 2>/dev/null)
  origin_url="${origin_url%.git}"
  REPO_FOR_BASE=$(printf '%s' "$origin_url" | sed -E 's#^(https?://[^/]+/|git@[^:]+:)##')
fi
PR_HOST_REPO=$(pr_base_repo <pr> "$REPO_FOR_BASE")
PR_REPO="$PR_HOST_REPO"
REX=$(review_marker_path "$PR_HOST_REPO" <pr> rex "$MARKER_HOME")
[ -f "$REX" ] && [ "$(tr -d '[:space:]' < "$REX")" = "$(git rev-parse HEAD)" ]

If Rex's marker is missing or its SHA doesn't match HEAD, refuse and tell the user to re-invoke the code-reviewer first. Do not write the design marker on a stale base.

5. Verify the PR actually touches UI files

Check whether the PR's diff includes files that would trigger the design-review gate. If the PR has NO UI files, the marker is unnecessary — tell the user and skip.

gh pr diff <pr> --name-only | grep -qE '\.(tsx|jsx|vue|svelte|css|scss|sass|less)$|design-tokens'

6. Write the design marker

Use the repo-qualified path via _lib-review-markers.sh (already sourced in step 4):

# (MARKER_HOME and PR_HOST_REPO already resolved in step 4 — reuse them here.)
mkdir -p "$MARKER_HOME/.claude/session/reviews"
# design marker keyed on the BASE repo — same key as Rex's marker + the gate (#765).
DESIGN=$(review_marker_path "$PR_HOST_REPO" <pr> design "$MARKER_HOME")
git rev-parse HEAD > "$DESIGN"

The file contains exactly one line: the 40-character HEAD SHA.

7. Confirm to the user

Output a single-line confirmation:

Design approval recorded for PR #<pr> at <sha>. The design-review merge gate will now allow this PR through.

Do NOT run gh pr merge yourself in the same turn. The skill's job ends at recording the marker. The merge is a separate action that still requires the CEO marker via /approve-merge plus an explicit merge instruction.

Notes

• The design marker is gitignored (.claude/session/ is in .gitignore). It's session state, not code.
• Re-running /approve-design <pr> is idempotent — it overwrites the marker with the current HEAD.
• New commits after the design approval invalidate the marker: the hook will refuse to merge because the SHA no longer matches HEAD. This is intentional — a new commit might change the UI. Re-request design review.
• This skill does NOT invoke the UI Designer role. It records the approval after the designer has reviewed. The review itself happens through whatever process the team uses (role activation, human review, Figma comparison, etc.).

Anti-pattern

Designer: "The mockup in Figma looks great, ship it"
You: *tries to invoke /approve-design 42*  ← WRONG, twice over: a mockup nod is
                                             not implementation review, AND
                                             since #1042 the model cannot
                                             invoke this skill at all.

The designer approved a mockup, not the PR's implementation of that mockup. The implementation might differ from the mockup. The correct flow:

Designer: "The mockup in Figma looks great, ship it"
You: *implements the mockup in PR #42*
You: "PR #42 implements the approved mockup. Can you review the PR diff to confirm the implementation matches?"
Designer: "Reviewed PR #42, implementation matches the mockup. Design approved."
You: "Then run /approve-design 42 to record it."
Designer: /approve-design 42       ← CORRECT: a human invokes it. The skill is
                                     human-only (#1042), so the model cannot.

Two distinct moments. One is mockup approval (design phase). The other is implementation-review approval (code-review phase). They are not the same approval.

Relationship to other approval skills

Both skills follow the same pattern: verify PR state → verify Rex marker → write marker at ops fork root → confirm → stop. Both refuse to write on a stale Rex base. Both are invalidated by new commits. Neither runs gh pr merge.

The merge flow for a UI PR requires three markers before the merge-gate hooks allow through:

1. <pr>-rex.approved — from the code-reviewer agent
2. <pr>-design.approved — from this skill
3. <pr>-ceo.approved — from /approve-merge

Part of ApexYard — multi-project SDLC framework for Claude Code · MIT.