Design

/design

Critique and improve a rendered artifact against its intent — and route the specifics to the right specialist. /design is one front door over a bench of design skills: it owns the contract and the taste call and dispatches each job to exactly one primary per role. It is a menu, not a pipeline — every route below stands alone; none waits on another's output.

The core contract (every route)

These six are the method within a single design pass — how one route executes, not a sequence across routes. Pick the route that fits the job and run this once.

1. Name the artifact: screenshot, URL, rendered file, route, or the source file that produces the surface.
2. Name the intent in one sentence: audience, job, desired feel.
3. Inspect the rendered result when possible.
4. State the design read: surface kind, audience, desired feel, constraints.
5. Set the dials (below) for the surface.
6. Return ranked, specific moves — or implement a bounded change — then verify the render.

Refuse to make a final design judgment from code alone when a rendered surface can be inspected. If rendering is impossible, mark the design unverified.

Set two dials first (choices, not steps)

Aesthetic preset — pick the vibe. Each is a distinct, vendored direction, not a restyle of one template:

For greenfield generation, nutlope-hallmark's genres (editorial / modern- minimal / atmospheric / playful) are a parallel preset axis — pick one there.

Variance / Motion / Density — set per references/anti-slop.md before building. A dashboard and a landing page sit at opposite ends; state the target.

Route to one primary per role

Each row is an independent entry point. Invoke the one that matches the job; do not chain them into a sequence.

The dial and role axes are orthogonal, so a request never matches two rows ambiguously: an aesthetic preset wins when the request names a vibe (brutalist, luxe, minimalist); a role wins when it names a surface to improve or a job to do (audit this, polish these, redesign that).

Use /qa for behavior verification and evidence capture, and /shape when the product direction itself is unsettled.

Anti-slop ban-core (one source)

references/anti-slop.md is HK's single ban-list: the slop tells, the VARIANCE/MOTION/DENSITY dials, and the pre-emit quick gate. Do not re-derive it per surface and do not paste the vendored skills' copies in — route to them and let each carry its own. nutlope's 58-gate slop-test is the superset oracle; npx impeccable detect is the deterministic, no-LLM check.

Accessibility is part of the pass, not a ceremony

Keyboard reachability and focus order on interactive changes, visible focus states, contrast (WCAG AA), labels/alt on controls and images, reduced-motion respect. Run axe or equivalent on web surfaces; a11y findings are design findings and get fixed with the same minimal-change discipline.

Review gate — earned approval, default-deny

Substantive or external-facing visual changes pass a gate before "done", not a rubber stamp. Run two fresh-context lanes — a heuristic design-director read and a deterministic scan (npx impeccable detect + the anti-slop quick gate) — and synthesize them; do not just concatenate. Approval is earned. These are presumptive blockers the author must justify, not nits:

• An off-system value (color / spacing / radius / type) not in the repo's tokens.
• A surviving slop tell from references/anti-slop.md.
• Contrast below WCAG AA, or an interactive control unreachable by keyboard.
• No distinctive decision — the surface is template-clean but anonymous.
• Meta-copy: UI that explains the agent's process instead of naming the thing.
• A generative/redesign request answered with a single option when the operator wanted to explore — or "variants" that are palette/font swaps of one layout rather than structurally distinct directions within the named constraints.

Delegation Judgment

Delegate per the shared Roster contract: native subagents by default; one lane for the proposed direction/implementation and a separate fresh-context lane for cold review of substantive redesign, external-facing polish, or final critique. Add cross-model critics or /sprites only when they answer a distinct question.

Critique Shape

Lead with the highest-leverage issues. Avoid a laundry list.

## Design Critique
- Intent:
- Artifact inspected:
- Primary issue:
- Recommended direction:
- Specific changes:
- Verification needed:

Each finding names evidence from the artifact and one concrete change. If the issue is only preference, say so; if it blocks comprehension or trust, say that.

Redesign Directions

Directions must differ structurally, not by palette. Recommend one, and name what each sacrifices: minimal polish (preserve structure, fix hierarchy and rhythm), editorial (guide attention through a story), workbench (more density, repeated-use affordances), brand-forward (make it unmistakable), inversion (challenge the organizing metaphor).

Divergence first (the standing stance for any generative work)

Models are strong at generating options and weak at choosing between them — so use them that way. For any route that creates or redesigns a surface (generate, redesign, prototype, scaffold a system, shape a flow), the default is to diverge, then let the operator decide — never one-shot a single answer, never auto-pick the aesthetic. The decision is the operator's; the spread is yours.

Step zero is naming the constraint set — what is FIXED for this job (the repo's DESIGN.md tokens, brand, platform, a11y floor, the product premise). Wide creative distinction within those constraints is the goal; differentiation that breaks them is noise, and five palette swaps of one layout is one variation, not five. What varies vs. what stays fixed differs by design mode — system, component/page, UX flow, motion, copy — and references/divergence.md maps the axes and the right navigable artifact for each.

Present the spread as a navigable artifact, not prose: a one-shot fan (several structurally distinct options in one self-contained HTML file, real content, labeled, switchable) for "pick one of these"; the paged references/lab-registry.md viewer (≥6 options, full-viewport pages, arrow-key nav, adjustable viewport — the operator's confirmed default for almost all prototyping) for rounds or viewport-dependent calls. Generate genuinely distinct directions by routing the ideation through nous-creative-ideation's named methods (SCAMPER, lateral provocations, analogy) rather than reskinning one idea. Then converge: build the chosen direction properly with the preset and the anti-slop gate; never ship the prototype file.

Implementation Guardrails

• Change the fewest surfaces that make a coherent improvement; prefer hierarchy and content structure over decoration.
• No framework, animation system, or token layer for a one-off surface. Scaffold a project-local contract before enforcing tokens across recurring UI.
• Preserve domain truth; polish must not launder weak claims. Keep process out of the UI — copy reads as the finished surface, not internal notes.
• After visible changes, verify desktop and mobile render and report evidence.
• If a repo has DESIGN.md, read it before any visual change and update it when durable facts change; else scaffold it (references/scaffold.md) or waive as one-off in the completion gate.

References

• references/scaffold.md — repo-owned DESIGN.md in the @google/design.md format (lint + DTCG export) and design-contract.md provenance.
• references/design-system.md — token and component-system judgment.
• references/taste-layer.md — aesthetic direction and anti-generic critique.
• references/aesthetic-library.md — six operator-endorsed aesthetic directions (neo-brutalist, terminal-TUI, soft-luxe, memphis, web-1.0, instrument-panel), each with DNA + a runnable HTML example to pull from.
• references/divergence.md — the divergence-first method: per-mode variation axes (system / component / UX flow / motion / copy), constraint-naming, navigable artifacts, fan width, and the converge handoff.
• references/anti-slop.md — the single ban-core: slop tells, dials, quick gate.
• references/interface-polish.md — micro-polish checks.
• references/external-design-references.md — license-safe use of the vendored design skills and inspiration libraries.
• references/ui-surface-routing.md — composing /design + /qa + /code-review.
• references/lab-registry.md — paged adjustable-viewport prototyping viewer.
• evals/routing-eval.md — the routing oracle (this skill's verification system).

Completion Gate

See harnesses/shared/AGENTS.md (Completion Evidence) for the shared core; this phase keeps design-specific fields.

## Completion Gate
- Direction chosen: critique, polish, redesign, generate, or scaffold applied.
- Route taken: which preset and which role-primary were invoked.
- Design read: surface kind, audience, desired feel, constraints.
- Dials: VARIANCE / MOTION / DENSITY values chosen for this surface.
- Evidence that proves it: screenshot, render, artifact, or visual diff inspected.
- Exact command/path/route exercised: URL, screenshot path, render command, or artifact path.
- DESIGN.md status: read, created, updated, not present with waiver, or n/a with reason.
- Hierarchy/content + type/layout changes: the specific issues changed or recommended.
- Copy provenance: visible copy inspected for product truth vs. agent-process leakage.
- Distinctive decision: the intentional choice that prevents template sameness.
- Slop detector: `npx impeccable detect` result on changed files (clean, listed, or n/a).
- Residual risk: remaining design, a11y, or QA risk after inspection.

Gotchas

• Design critique without an inspected artifact is speculation.
• The routes are a flat menu: never sequence them into a phase pipeline. No route depends on another route's output — that drift is the workflow engine VISION.md forbids.
• Aesthetic preference is not blocking unless it hurts comprehension, trust, conversion, accessibility, or domain fit.
• Generic "modernize" moves are slop when they ignore audience, density, or the existing system.
• Never hide UI defects behind feature explanations. Point to the visible artifact and the concrete change.
• Meta-copy in UI is a design defect: real product policy, privacy, draft-state, or compliance copy is fine when the user is meant to see it; leaking the agent's caution is not.