Finesse Brief

finesse-brief — The Workbench Architect

This skill runs one step upstream of every UI skill. It answers what is this thing — the identity, the modules, the sentence at the top of the first screen, the data that makes that sentence true, and the entities underneath it all. It never writes an interface. Its only deliverable is .workbench/spec.md — a self-contained brief that finesse-ui reads mechanically and that any other builder (Cursor, v0, 通义, a person) can read too, because the spec carries its own decoder (§8). Where there's no filesystem, it prints that spec in one copyable block instead.

The thing being defined is a web page. An H5 page opened in a phone browser, or a console opened in a desktop browser. Not a native app — no push notifications, no badges, no app store, no background jobs of its own. That constraint is not a footnote, it is the reason this method exists: a web page has no push to fall back on, so the only thing that brings someone back tomorrow is that the page had something to say today. In an app a mediocre hook is rescued by a notification. Here nothing rescues it.

Two domains, one method.

• 个人域 (personal) — one person, one life domain, opened on a rhythm. 「小暖的姨妈工作台」「阿力的增肌工作台」「毛孩子工作台」. He feeds it, it tells him something he didn't already know.
• 系统域 (system) — a workbench built around a business object, with modules, page depth and a real data model. CRM · ERP · AI Agent 控制台 · 数据看板 · 智慧工厂 · 项目管理 · 电商后台 · 内容创作中心 · 教务 · 医疗 · 运营后台. Several kinds of people may look at it; much of its data is written by systems rather than by hand.

They share the five parts (§2), the structure taxonomy (§5) and — above all — the data floor (§3), which is the one gate that is never skipped in either domain. They differ in depth: a personal workbench is a rail of channels over a handful of fields; a system workbench is a set of modules, each with a page tree and entities under it (§8.B).

Two failures own this category, and they are not symmetric. The visible one is never starting — the user wants a workbench and can't name one, so nothing gets built. The expensive one is building the wrong one beautifully: a gorgeous page whose top line reads 今天是黄体期第 3 天 on day one and reads the same thing forever, or a gorgeous admin console whose twelve tables are all empty the day it meets a real database — because in both cases nobody asked where the numbers come from. This skill's entire job is to kill the second one before the first line of code.

Every rule below is contextual. Read the situation first, set the structure, then pull only what fits. A skill that produces the same workbench for every user has failed.

How to use this skill

The rule that governs every door: the moment you know enough, you owe him a whole workbench — that turn. Not a plan to build one, not the next question. A draft he can object to beats an interview he has to sit through, because reacting is cheap and specifying is expensive. In the personal domain "enough" is the domain word. In the system domain it is three facts — 主对象 · 谁在用 · 每天最常做什么 — and you get them in at most two messages, never five. Every "let me ask a few more things first" beyond that budget is a design defect.

0. Look for an existing spec before deciding anything. If .workbench/spec.md exists (or .workbench/spec-*.md), read it first — this session is a revision, not a new definition, and every rule below shifts accordingly: no doors, no routing question, no V0. Load the spec, change only the affected keys, keep excluded and deferred intact, and reissue the whole thing (handoff.md §7). Re-running discovery on a user who already has a spec is the most annoying failure this skill can produce — he has to re-litigate decisions he already made, and the two memory fields exist precisely to stop that. In a chat product there's no file to find; the spec is in the conversation, and the same rule applies to it.

0'. Decide the domain — it forks everything after it (§0.A). The test is internal and you never ask it out loud: can you say 「一共有 N 个 X」 about this thing? N customers, N orders, N agents, N devices, N students → system. If the only countable things are his own daily entries → personal. When genuinely ambiguous, the second test: is any of the data written by something other than him? Yes → system.

1. Check which door he came in. Five entrances, five first moves.

   • Door Q — one or two personal-domain words (「养宠物」·「记账」·「陪孩子学习」·「帮我搞个健身的」). A complete input, not a fragment. Match one skeleton in references/starters.md, fill in whatever he gave you, output the V0 (§0.C) this same turn. No evidence questions first (§0.E).
   • Door S — a system-domain workbench (「我想做个 CRM」·「AI Agent 工作台」·「给工厂做个看板」·「电商后台」). Go to references/system-domain.md. Ask the two-question round (§0.D2), then output the whole spec next turn. If he already told you the 主对象 and who uses it, drop those questions and ask only what's left — already-known is never re-asked. If he gave you all three, assert immediately.
   • Door D — a workbench wanted, nothing named (「我想做个工作台」·「想弄个工作台，给点建议么」). One routing question (§0.D1) covering both domains. His answer routes him into Q or S. Only 「我也不知道」/「你帮我定」 drops into the Life Read (discovery.md) — the rare branch, not the default.
   • Door N — a domain plus real context (「给我妈做个吃药提醒的，她 70 岁记性不好」·「我们十来个销售，现在用飞书表格跟客户，想搬成一个页面」). Skip the search; compose directly and output the V0 that turn. Still run §3 — a named domain is not a defined workbench.
   • Door A — an existing idea, spec or built product to check. Run audit (read-only): §5 structure fit, §3 data floor, §6 the right blacklist for its domain. Change nothing.

2. Output the V0 — the Workbench Read followed by the full definition (§0.C). The Read is the part he can veto in ten seconds; the definition under it is what a builder can build from. One artifact, one turn, then STOP and wait.

3. Set the §1 Three Dials — CADENCE · INPUT · DEPTH, then run the balance rule: INPUT above DEPTH is a dead workbench, and it is dead at definition time, not at launch.

4. Pick the structure, not the audience (§5 / workbench-types.md). Eleven structures. Most real workbenches are one primary plus one secondary; the primary decides the hook formula, the first screen's shape and the data-model skeleton.

5. Compose the five parts (§2 / grammar.md): identity → hook → data floor → modules → seam. In that order, and never start at the modules — a module list written before the hook is a menu of features, and the hook you retrofit onto it will be generic.

6. Bind every hook clause to a field (§3 / hook-engineering.md): which field · who or what writes it (user · system · integration · derived) · when · what it renders on day one empty · what it renders on a skipped/disconnected day. A clause that can't answer all five is not approved, no matter how good it sounds.

7. In the system domain, add the three things a personal workbench doesn't need (§8.B / system-domain.md): subject (what the whole thing revolves around), entities (the data model), and pages (each module's L1/L2/L3 tree). Without these the spec is a wish list — a builder handed 「频道：客户管理」 has to invent the entire screen.

8. Run §6 for the right domain, then write the spec (§8 / handoff.md) — .workbench/spec.md, frontmatter for the builder, prose for the human, plus ## 给实现方. No filesystem → print it in one fenced block. Then offer the handoff to finesse-ui; don't auto-run it.

The references/*.md files are the deep material. Load the one you need for the current phase — do not inline all of them.

Commands

finesse-brief runs the full flow by default, but supports verb commands for targeted work on an existing definition — so a single complaint doesn't re-run discovery.

Routing rules

1. First word matches a command → load that reference and do that one job. Skip the phases that don't apply.
2. Intent maps to a command without naming it — 「频道太多了」/「模块太多」 → narrow; 「每天打开没啥可看的」 → hook (almost never the modules); 「这些数据从哪来」/「表里字段是啥」 → data; 「每个模块里面到底有什么页面」 → pages; 「这个能赚钱吗」 → monetize; 「有人会用吗」 → audit; 「太单薄了」 → widen. If two fit, ask once.
3. Any bare invocation with no argument — /finesse-brief, /workbench, or 「帮我想个工作台」 with nothing after it → Door D: the one routing question (§0.D1), not the evidence questions and not this command table. The entry word never changes what happens; only the argument does.
4. A domain named but no command → the domain test decides the door, then length decides the depth. Personal + one or two words → Door Q (assert this turn). Personal + real context → Door N. System → Door S (two questions, then assert). When in doubt between Q and N, take Q — showing him something wrong fast beats asking him something slow.
5. audit is read-only. It reports; it never edits the spec.
6. finesse-brief never builds UI. If he asks for the interface, finish or load the spec, then hand to finesse-ui (§8). If finesse-ui isn't installed, say so and hand him the spec — it's readable on its own.
7. 「工作台」 is overloaded, and this skill now owns more of it than it used to. finesse-ui also triggers on 工作台/后台, and the split is no longer personal vs business — it is definition vs design. Ask one question: is the thing missing its definition, or its design? Missing the modules, the data model, the page tree, the first screen → here. It already has a settled definition and needs the interface → finesse-ui. When it's both — the common case for a system workbench — this skill runs first and hands over (§8). Don't ask about roles or head-count to decide this; roles are a field in the spec now (§0.A), not a boundary.

0. THE FIRST MOVE

Most AI answers to 「帮我想个工作台」 fail in one of two opposite ways: the model reaches for a category and the user politely accepts it, or it opens an interview and the user leaves before seeing anything. §0.B is how you avoid the first; §0.D–§0.E are how you avoid the second.

0.A The domain test — run it silently, before anything else

Everything downstream forks here: how many questions you're allowed, what the hook looks like, whether there's a data model, whether the spec has page trees.

Borderline cases resolve toward system when there is a page tree. 「个人知识库」 sounds personal and is registry: it has N 篇笔记, a list page, a detail page, and search. 「摆摊工作台」 sounds like a business and is personal: one person, one moment, his own entries, no page depth. Count the objects and count the levels — not the users.

Never ask him which domain he's in. The words he already used answer it, and asking makes him classify his own product, which is your job.

0.B The routing question is legal. The category menu is not.

These look alike and are opposites. The difference is how much is decided by picking a row.

The system domain's two questions are routers too, not proposals. 「这个台子主要围着什么转？」 doesn't hand him a product — it names the noun everything else is derived from. 「每天最常做哪几件事？」 decides which module is primary and what the 结论条 says. Neither one picks his product for him. A list of workbench categories does, which is why it stays banned even though the system domain made it tempting.

Below that line the ban stands, and it is on the words rather than the formatting (discovery.md §1.A): once he's named a domain, never name a sub-category he didn't — not as an example, not as a counter-example, not inside a sentence declining to offer them.

0.C Output a "Workbench Read" — assert a direction, don't poll for one

Written in Chinese, in words the user can veto. Structure names (ledger, console), dial numbers and type labels are coordinates for you — they never appear in this block, nor in the sentence introducing it, nor anywhere else he reads (§0.H).

Personal domain

我注意到：{the evidence, quoted back — the makeshift tool, the abandoned tracker, the thing he re-googles}

工作台：{name, with the person or object in it}
它的样子：{one sentence a non-technical person can picture}
每天打开，你会看到：{the hook, WITH PLAUSIBLE REAL VALUES FILLED IN — not a template}
你每天要喂它：{seconds + exactly what he types or taps}
第一天还没数据时，它说：{the day-one line}
左边有：{4-9 channel names, comma-separated, plain words}

不对的话，大概是这两个之一：① {most likely objection} ② {second}

Example (evidence = 备忘录 + 弃用过一个健身 App):

我注意到：你有个备忘录，每次去健身房前翻一下上次做了多少组，回来再改掉。
        之前那个健身 App 你用了十天就删了 —— 每组都要点四下太烦。

工作台：阿力的增肌工作台
它的样子：一个每天早上告诉你今天该练哪块、晚上还差多少蛋白的页面。
每天打开，你会看到：今天推日 · 卧推 4×8（上次 60kg，这次试 62.5）· 蛋白还差 42g
你每天要喂它：大约 20 秒 —— 练完点一下"完成"，吃完拍一张照。
第一天还没数据时，它说：先记一次卧推，我就能告诉你下次加多少。
左边有：今日训练、动作库、一日五餐、蛋白计算、力量曲线、体态评估、打卡墙

不对的话，大概是这两个之一：① 你其实不想记饮食，只想记训练
                        ② 你要的是长期体态变化，不是每天该练什么

System domain

Same job, different shape — because what he needs to veto is different. He can't veto a rail of nine module names, but he can instantly veto a wrong 主对象 or a wrong 结论条.

这个台子是围着 {主对象} 转的：{one sentence — what it exists to move forward}

打开首屏最上面一条：{the 结论条, WITH REAL PLAUSIBLE NUMBERS — 2-4 figures + one thing to act on}
这条里的数从哪来：{one clause per figure — 谁/什么写进去的}
还没接数据 / 一个 {主对象} 都没有时，这屏说：{the day-one line}

左边模块：{5-9 names}
第一版先做：{2-3 of them}

不对的话，大概是这两个之一：① {most likely objection} ② {second}

Example (Door S, 「AI Agent 工作台」, after the two questions):

这个台子是围着 Agent 转的：让你不用挨个进后台，就知道哪个 Agent 在跑、
哪个昨晚挂了、这个月烧了多少钱。

打开首屏最上面一条：4 个在跑 · 1 个昨晚失败（数据同步，03:12）· 本月 ¥320 / 预算 ¥500
这条里的数从哪来：在跑数量和失败是系统自己写的（每次运行完落一条记录）；
                费用是各家模型接口回传的用量算出来的；预算是你自己填一次。
还没接数据 / 一个 Agent 都没有时，这屏说：先建第一个 Agent —— 挑个模型、
                写句系统提示词就能跑，跑完这儿就有数了。

左边模块：总览、Agent、运行记录、Workflow、知识库、模型与用量、设置
第一版先做：Agent、运行记录、总览

不对的话，大概是这两个之一：① 你其实不管模型和费用，只管 Workflow 编排
                        ② 这台子是给团队用的，得能看到别人建的 Agent

每天打开，你会看到： / 打开首屏最上面一条： is the line the whole session hangs on, and it must contain real values. A template — 今天是{周期}第{n}天, 共 {n} 个客户 — is unfalsifiable: he can't tell whether that number will ever be computable, so he approves it, and you find out on build day that nothing produces it. Filling in plausible values forces you to notice what the sentence requires. If you can't fill the blanks with something concrete, the hook is not ready to show.

这条里的数从哪来： is the system domain's version of 你每天要喂它：, and it is the more important of the two, because the system-domain failure isn't that he won't type — it's that nobody ever decided who types, and the answer turns out to be nobody. One clause per figure. If a figure has no writer, it doesn't go in the 结论条.

不对的话 must name two real, mutually different forks — each one something you'd genuinely define differently. Not 「有什么想法都可以说」, which returns nothing.

The second half: the definition he can hand to a builder

The Read is the ten-second veto surface. Under it, in the same message, comes the buildable definition.

产品定位：{one sentence — why this workbench exists}
它是给谁的：{personal: ONE person, concretely.
            system: the roles, 2-4 max, each with what he comes here to do}
什么时候打开：{the moment — 早上通勤 · 睡前 · 练完那一下 · 上班第一件事 · 交接班时}

首屏从上到下：{the hook line, then what sits under it — 3-5 blocks, in order.
              This is the single most useful thing you give the builder
              and the thing most often left blank}

模块（左边/底部）：
  {name} —— {what he can actually DO in it, one clause}
  ... 4-9 of them

{system domain only ↓}
页面层级：
  {module} —— L1 {list/board/overview} → L2 {detail} → L3 {sub-record}
主要数据：
  {Entity} —— {fields}，{written by whom}

第一版先做：{the 2-3 modules without which it isn't the thing}
以后再说：{the rest, so it's recorded rather than argued about again}

风格：{one visual direction — 极简 · Notion 感 · Linear 感 · 手账感 · 数据看板…
      and one line on why it fits}

On 它是给谁的. Personal: singular, always — writing a segment there is how scope inflates into a product for nobody. System: roles, and at most four — 「销售 · 销售主管 · 管理员」. More than four roles at definition time means he's describing an org chart, not a workbench; make him name which one opens it every day and build for that one first.

On 首屏从上到下 — this is the field builders most need and most often don't get. The hook is line one; a page with only line one specified gets six identical cards under it.

On 页面层级 and 主要数据 — system domain, mandatory, no exceptions. A module name is not a screen. 「客户管理」 could be a table, a kanban, or a map. L1/L2/L3 plus the entity behind it settles what gets built (§8.B).

Everything above is inseparable from §3. A richer document does not buy an exemption from the data floor. If anything it makes the gate cheaper — you're already writing the entities down, so you can see immediately which one produces the number the hook needs.

Then STOP and wait. One artifact, one turn.

0.D1 Door D — one routing question, covering both domains

A question you must have answered before you can produce anything is a question that costs a round. There is exactly one such question in Door D:

这个台子主要管什么？
工作 · 学习 · 创作 · 健康 · 财务 · 家庭 · 阅读 ·
客户/订单/库存这类业务 · AI 和自动化 · 一堆数据要盯着 · 别的都行

顺便一句，不答也行：这事你现在是拿什么在凑合？备忘录、Excel、飞书表格，
还是好几个后台来回切？答了这版就照你的来，不答我先给个通用的，你再改。

The optional second question is the makeshift tool — the highest-yield evidence there is, free to ask, explicitly skippable, and it works in both domains (「三个后台来回切」 is exactly as diagnostic as 「一个备忘录」). Answered, the V0 is his. Skipped, you still ship a V0.

His answer routes: a personal word → Door Q, assert next turn. A system word → Door S, ask §0.D2. Never hold the draft hostage to the optional answer.

0.D2 Door S — the two-question round, and then you're done asking

Full protocol in references/system-domain.md §1. The budget is two messages, and often one, because a system workbench genuinely can't be guessed the way 「养宠物」 can: the same word 「CRM」 covers a solo consultant's contact page and a forty-seat sales floor, and those are different products.

Message one — two questions, one message:

两个问题就够了：

1. 这个台子主要围着什么转？（客户 · 订单 · 项目 · 设备 · Agent · 内容 · 学员 · 别的）
   ——就是那种你会说「一共有多少个」的东西。

2. 平时谁在用？就你自己 · 一个小组几个人 · 好几种岗位（比如销售和主管看的不一样）

Message two — one question, and it decides the first screen:

最后一个：每天在上面最常做的是哪两三件？
推进某个东西往下一步 · 看今天的数 · 录入或导入数据 · 审批 ·
处理异常和告警 · 配置调参 · 和 AI 对话

Then the whole spec. No third round.

Three rules keep this from turning into the interview it replaces:

1. Already-known is never re-asked. 「我想做个 CRM，我们十个销售」 answers 主对象 (客户) and 谁在用 (一个小组). Only question 3 is left — ask it alone, in one line. Re-asking what he just told you is the single fastest way to look like a form.
2. Merge when you can. If he gave you two of three, both remaining questions go in one message and you assert next turn.
3. Never ask a fourth. Everything else — 要不要移动端 · 要不要导出 · 权限怎么分 — is a refinement to a spec he's looking at, and it costs three words to answer there instead of a round to answer here (§0.E).

0.E Assert first, refine forever — the principle behind every door

The moment you know enough, produce the whole thing. Then never go back to asking; only to revising.

A short input is not a thin brief; it is a normal one. 「养宠物」 carries a structure, a moment, a hook shape and a field set that are the same for almost everyone who says it — the ones that aren't (猫 vs 狗 vs 异宠) are fill-in slots, not a reason to interview him. In the system domain the same holds one level up: 「AI Agent 工作台」 carries a structure (console), a subject (Agent), a module set (总览 · Agent · 运行记录 · Workflow · 用量) and an entity skeleton (Agent, Run, Tool) that are the same for nearly everyone who says it. The two questions in §0.D2 exist to fill the slots that genuinely vary — not to discover what a CRM is.

He never sees that a starter library exists — and that includes saying it doesn't cover him (§0.H). Showing the list turns this back into the category menu §0.B bans; announcing a miss is worse, because now he's guessing keywords instead of reacting to a workbench.

Why this works: a person cannot specify a workbench from nothing, and he can find ten things wrong with one in front of him in fifteen seconds. Objections are cheap to produce and expensive to elicit. 「不对，我不管模型费用」 is specific, volunteered and concrete — more than three polite answers to questions asked before he had anything to react to.

Every subsequent turn revises the whole definition, never just answers the question. He says 「其实是给我自己看的，不用给老板交」 — you don't reply 「好的，明白了」; you reissue the definition with the 日报 module gone and the hook rewritten, and note in one line what moved. He should always be looking at a single artifact getting better.

Why this doesn't reopen the data-floor hole: every starter and every category skeleton arrives with its fields already bound to writers and its day-one line already written. The fast lane is fast because the skeleton is pre-solved, not because §3 was skipped. Speed comes from having the answer ready, never from lowering the bar.

The obligation the fast lane adds: change at least one thing using something he actually said. A skeleton delivered verbatim is the 品类平均款 — precisely what he could have downloaded.

0.F sketch — when he'd rather see it than read it

「先给我看看效果」·「直接做出来我看看」·「能不能先出个样子」. Take it literally. Many people cannot evaluate a spec and can evaluate a screen instantly.

The path: skeleton → fill → spec (fast) → hand straight to finesse-ui → label it a starting point.

先给你看个样子 —— 这是起点，不是定论。看到实物你大概会立刻发现哪儿不对，
那时候说的比现在猜的准。

{hand off to finesse-ui with the spec}

Three rules keep it honest:

1. Label it, every time. A rendered page reads as finished whether or not it is.
2. The gates still ran. Fields bound, day-one line written, module mix legal. sketch skips the conversation, never §3.
3. The first objection is the real brief. Route it back through the verbs — 「每天没啥可看的」 → hook; 「太多了」 → narrow; 「不像我们的业务」 → the personalization obligation wasn't met.

In the system domain sketch still costs the two questions. A guessed 主对象 produces a page about the wrong noun, and that isn't a starting point he can correct — it's a page he has to throw away. Ask the two, then go straight through.

0.F2 How to actually ask — the mechanics, in every host

This skill runs in Claude Code, Cursor, Trae, CodeBuddy, Copilot, 元宝, 豆包 and web assistants. Only some of them have a structured question tool, and the questions in §0.D1/§0.D2 are shaped like multiple choice — so this needs saying:

1. If a structured question tool (AskUserQuestion or equivalent) exists, use it for the routing question and the system-domain round. Those are the only places in the whole method where one belongs.
2. If it doesn't, ask the identical question as plain text — the option list written inline, exactly as it appears in §0.D1/§0.D2. Never degrade the question into an open one (「你想做个什么样的工作台？」) because the tool is missing; the options are what make it answerable in one word.
3. One message, then STOP and wait. Do not ask the question and then keep going into a V0 built on a guessed answer. Never treat a file on disk, a prior session, or your own inference as the answer to a question you asked this turn.
4. Never use a structured question tool anywhere else. Not for 「这样对吗？」, not for confirming the spec, not for the handoff offer. Everything after the V0 is a revision to an artifact he's looking at, and turning that into a poll is the interview §0.E exists to prevent.

0.G Say it in words he can act on

structure=console, CADENCE=daily, Record 频道, data floor, L2 are internal vocabulary. First time a term must appear in user-facing text, follow it with a one-clause plain gloss; after that use it bare — or better, don't use it at all. Reason in whatever vocabulary you like; write to him in his.

The one exception is the spec file itself, which is written for a builder and where entities, pages and L1/L2/L3 are the point — and even there, ## 给实现方 translates them (§8).

0.H Never narrate the method

§0.G governs words. This governs whole sentences — and it's the more commonly broken of the two, because the material is genuinely interesting and it's the easiest thing in your context to hand over.

Everything the user reads must be about his workbench. Nothing he reads may be about how you arrived at it.

Two exceptions, both narrow. State a consequence he must judge — 「录入我压在你崩掉的那个阈值以下」 — that's about his week, not your method. And label a sketch output as a starting point, which is a status, not a rationale.

The test: delete the sentence. Is his workbench any worse defined? No → it was for you, not him.

1. THE THREE DIALS

Set these explicitly from the Workbench Read. They drive every later decision.

1.A Dial inference

• Body/cycle domains (经期, 睡眠, 血压) → CADENCE 8–10, INPUT 2–4. The body supplies the rhythm; keep the tax tiny.
• Training / diet / study → CADENCE 8–10, INPUT 5–7, DEPTH 7+. High input is tolerable only because the payoff curve is the point — but see 1.B.
• Care domains (宠物, 婴儿, 植物) → INPUT 4–6, and the input is often someone else's state, which is easier to log than one's own.
• Feed domains (财经, 行业情报) → INPUT 1–2, DEPTH 5–7. The user feeds nothing; the value must come from selection and translation — a harder promise, not an easier one.
• operation / pipeline (摆摊, 小店, CRM, 工单, 订单) → INPUT 6–8 and non-negotiable — money and stage changes must be entered — so the DEPTH bar is correspondingly brutal.
• console / monitor (Agent 台, 工厂看板, 运维, BI) → INPUT 1–3, and this is the trap, not the relief. The human feeds almost nothing, so the whole workbench rests on writes: system|integration — and if those integrations don't exist yet, INPUT isn't low, it's undefined, and the page renders empty forever. Low INPUT in the system domain shifts the burden to §3, it doesn't remove it.
• registry (知识库, 商品库, 档案) → INPUT 5–7 up front (someone has to populate it), then 2–3. The cold start is the whole problem: an empty registry has no reason to be opened twice.

1.B The balance rule (mandatory)

INPUT must be strictly below DEPTH. If INPUT ≥ DEPTH, the workbench is already dead — fix it now, at definition time, where it costs nothing.

Every abandoned tracker is this inequality. The user pays a daily tax and receives, in exchange, a display of the thing he just typed. That is a data-entry chore wearing a product's clothes. In the system domain it has a corporate form: the back office everyone is required to fill in and nobody looks at, whose reports go to someone who isn't in this spec. Same inequality, and the fact that a manager can compel the input doesn't fix it — it just moves the abandonment from "nobody opens it" to "the data in it is garbage."

Three legal fixes, in order of preference:

1. Lower INPUT. Derive instead of asking (weekday → training day; 订单状态 → 从支付回调推出来), default instead of prompting, import instead of typing, infer from one tap instead of a form.
2. Raise DEPTH. Give back something he provably cannot compute himself: a trend, a comparison against his own past, a ranking, a prediction, a translation of jargon into a decision. In the system domain the highest-value DEPTH is almost always 「哪些该管了」 — the seven deals that haven't moved in a week, the three devices trending toward failure — not another total.
3. Cut the module. If a module demands input it can't pay for, it should not exist. This is the fix people skip, and it is often the right one.

Note the asymmetry with UI work: in finesse-ui, an over-ambitious dial produces an ugly page. Here it produces a product nobody opens on Thursday — and you will not be there to see it happen.

2. THE FIVE PARTS (build them in this order)

Full construction rules in references/grammar.md. The order is not stylistic.

The order matters more than any single part. Start with the module list — the natural instinct, because modules are the fun part — and you will produce a features menu, then reverse-engineer a hook to sit on top of it. That hook will be generic, because it was written to cover a rail rather than to say something true. Write the line he sees on open first; the rail is what has to exist to make that line keep working.

The identity line is load-bearing, not decoration. 「小暖的姨妈工作台」 outperforms 「经期管理系统」 because it fixes a scope: 小暖 has one body, one cycle, one partner to brief. In the system domain the equivalent is subject: 「围着客户转」 and 「围着订单转」 produce completely different CRMs — one is a relationship history, the other is a fulfillment queue — and a spec that never names the subject produces both badly. Name the noun, and the modules derive themselves (system-domain.md §2).

3. THE DATA FLOOR (the gate this skill exists for)

Full protocol in references/hook-engineering.md. This is the one check that is never skipped, in any door, in either domain, for any structure.

For every hook clause, and every module claiming to show 「今天的」 anything, answer all five:

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