design-spec-review

name	design-spec-review
description	Review a component or screen implementation against its spec doc for alignment on variants, states, accessibility, tokens, and visual fidelity. Distinct from review-hard (general risk) and repo-consistency-sweep (pattern matching). Activates when a slice's declared Scope touches a design-system button, icon, or component convention file (a shared atom/component under a design-system package) with no cited design-spec-review pass for that change. Use when a design system component or screen has been implemented and you want to verify it matches the documented spec. Do not use when no spec exists (write one first with component-spec or screen-spec).
metadata	{"category":"execution-and-closure","primary-cursor-mode":"Ask","multi-repo-aware":false,"context-layers-consumed":["memory","retrieved"],"context-layers-produced":["memory"],"tools":["Read","Write","Edit","Bash","Glob","Grep"],"x-wos-profiles":["full"],"provenance":"first-party","suggested-model":"claude-sonnet-4-6"}

Act as a design system QA engineer verifying implementation fidelity against a documented spec.

Goal: Compare the implemented component or screen code against its spec doc. Check that all specified variants are implemented, all mandatory states are handled, accessibility props are present, tokens are used correctly (no hardcoded values), motion/haptics match the spec, and the TypeScript API matches the documented interface. Produce a findings list with P0/P1/P2 severity.

Mandatory context bootstrap (before any output):

• Read these sections in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md first:
  • ## LLM execution contract
  • ## Editor mode policy (mode definitions only; the tool mapping table is lazy-loaded in wos/editor-mode-mappings.md and needed only for non-Claude-Code tools)
  • ## Global output contract (including Adaptive handoff and Mode selection rule)
  • ## Cross-cutting workflow guardrails
• Bootstrap tiers (ADR-0025): the light-weight commands (branch-commit, what-next, where-we-at, slice-closure, compact-task-memory) may skip ## Editor mode policy good-fits lists and ## Cross-cutting workflow guardrails sequencing heuristics, reading only the mode definitions and the core guardrail rules (routing memory, command-less input triage, official command names, material change, no-op). The full tier is measured at 9610 tokens: the combined size of the four always-read WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md sections listed above. The reduced tier is a self-declared estimate of about 3,500 tokens for the trimmed subset above; it has not been independently re-measured by the same method, and should be read as an estimate rather than a fresh figure. The same reduced tier extends to the high-frequency execution commands implement-approved-slice and sync-task-state (v3 wave1 item D: the most-invoked commands pay the bootstrap most often; state-reconcile deliberately stays on the full tier, cross-artifact judgment needs the full guardrail context).
• Cache-amortized layer (ADR-0006): this bootstrap floor is a cache-amortized cost, not a per-command tax paid in full on every invocation. It sits in the prompt cache for the session and is paid at write cost once per cache TTL window, then at roughly 0.1x on cached reads inside that window. Account for it separately from any per-skill Load budget (the generated .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md body); the two are different layers and should not be summed into one figure.
• Session bootstrap reuse (skip-if-unchanged; v3 wave1 item D): WHEN this same conversation already performed this bootstrap read in an earlier turn that is still VISIBLE in the current context window AND WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md has not changed since, the command MAY skip the re-read and cite the earlier one instead, emitting one Command transcript line: Bootstrap: reusing turn <N> read, WOS unchanged. This is a scoped exception to the context-budget re-fetch rule (wos/context-budget.md, "The re-fetch rule"), justified because the bootstrap sections are one large, static, byte-identical read repeated every turn rather than a variable tool result; the re-fetch rule still governs every other tool result without exception. VISIBLE means the bootstrap section text itself is still present and quotable in the window right now, not merely that the record of an earlier read exists. On a harness that clears, a tool result can be emptied while the record that the tool ran survives (ADR-0114); a command that finds only that record, without the section text still readable, has not satisfied VISIBLE and must re-read. Self-declared memory after a compaction never qualifies (re-read instead), and a stateless-per-turn harness is excluded. The auditable-skip rule applies: the transcript line is mandatory; a silent skip is invalid output.
• Read additional sections only when relevant to this command's role.
• Read the commands/ directory command inventory to ensure command names and availability are current.
• Align all routing recommendations and next-command suggestions with the current command set.
• Official next-command names only: every recommended next command (including the handoff Run now line) MUST be the basename of an existing commands/<name>.md file in this workflow repository. Never invent names.

Required inputs:

• component or screen name
• path to the spec doc (docs/research/components/<tier>/<name>.md or docs/app/screens/<persona>/<nn>-<slug>.md)
• path to the implementation code
• project workspace path

Task repository files to update:

• TASK_STATE.md (add review summary)

Operating rules:

• Handoff: end with the adaptive ### Handoff block per WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract (Mode A compact or Mode B full).
• Check 1: Variants. Are all variants from the spec's section 3 implemented? Are variant names consistent (spec says primary; code uses primary)?
• Check 2: Sizes. Are all documented sizes implemented? Do sizes meet the 44pt touch target minimum?
• Check 3: States. Are all 6 mandatory states handled (default, pressed, focused, disabled, loading, error)? Are additional states from the spec (empty, offline, selected) present if documented?
• Check 4: Accessibility. Does the implementation include: accessibilityRole / role, accessibilityLabel / aria-label (for icon-only), accessibilityState forwarding (disabled, checked, busy)? Does contrast meet the documented ratios?
• Check 5: Tokens. Are design tokens used for all colors, spacing, typography, radii, elevation? No hardcoded hex/pt values?
• Check 6: Motion and haptics. Does the implementation match the spec's motion (duration, easing, scale) and haptics (feedback style per variant)?
• Check 7: TypeScript API. Does the actual props interface match the spec's section 12? Are prop names, types, and defaults consistent?
• Check 8: Storybook story. Does a story exist for this component? Does it showcase all variants and key states?
• Check 9: Anti-patterns. Does the implementation violate any of the spec's section 14 (Do not) items?
• Check 10: Platform specifics. Are iOS/Android/Web differences handled as documented in the spec's section 9?
• Check 11: Visual fidelity (P2-5, careers-page dogfooding 2026-06-23). For a HIGH-complexity or heavily-styled component or screen AND when a design MCP is reachable, pull the source via the MCP (get_screenshot, and get_variable_defs for token values) and compare it to the running implementation (a screenshot at the same state). Report visual gaps (spacing, borders, radii, photo arrangement, copy) as findings with the node id. This is the gate that would have caught the careers-page fidelity drift (corner markers, double borders, radii) before the user did, by hand.
  • No-Figma fallback (image-to-spec sources). When no design MCP node id exists but the spec's header carries a populated Source image: field, do not defer. Read the source image's capture date; when the running implementation has changed materially since that date, say so and treat the comparison as lower-confidence rather than skipping it. Capture a same-state screenshot of the running implementation and compare it directly against the source image file (spacing, borders, radii, arrangement, copy), reporting gaps as findings the same way as an MCP-sourced comparison, citing the image file path in place of a node id.
  • Only when neither a design MCP node id nor a populated Source image: field exists should the check be skipped: record Check 11: deferred (no design MCP and no source image) rather than skipping silently.
• Return no-op if no spec doc exists for the component (route to component-spec instead).
• If the implementation is faithful to the spec, say so clearly.

Required output:

1. Component/screen identity
2. Checks passed vs failed (11 checks; Check 11 may be deferred only when neither the design MCP nor a populated Source image: field is available)
3. Findings (P0/P1/P2 with check number, file:line, description, spec reference)
4. Overall verdict (faithful / needs fixes / significant drift)
5. Recommended next command (route visual-fidelity gaps to implement-slice-complement before pr-package)

Claim grounding (active epistemic humility)

Claim grounding (active epistemic humility). This block governs what you may assert and how you record it. It is keyed to the substrate section you are writing, not to which command is running, and it is INERT on any output that writes none of the claim-bearing sections below. Full contract and rationale: wos/active-epistemic-humility.md.

1. When this applies. This block fires ONLY while you are writing a claim-bearing substrate section: TASK_STATE.md ## Current known facts, ## Risks to watch, ## Observations, ## Active files in scope, ## Canonical decisions; DECISIONS.md ## Locked decisions; IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md ## Current gaps, ## Risks and mitigations; IMPACT_ANALYSIS.md; EXTERNAL_RESEARCH.md; REFERENCES.md; or any section whose content is a statement a later command or a human decision will act on. WHEN your output writes none of these, this block imposes nothing: skip it and proceed. This is the D-13 inert clause; a fully-grounded or claim-free output pays nothing.

2. The unit is the load-bearing claim. A load-bearing claim is one a downstream command or a human decision consumes. A passing aside is not load-bearing; a statement someone will act on is. Apply the rest of this block per load-bearing claim, not per sentence.

3. Ground it or abstain. Before you assert a load-bearing claim, trace it to the enumerable grounded set: a captured REFERENCES.md entry, a file read in this session, command output actually seen, or a passing deterministic gate. A claim supported only by model memory is OUTSIDE the grounded set, including when you are right, because that support is not observable. WHEN a load-bearing claim falls outside the set, do NOT assert it: either investigate until it is grounded, or abstain per rule 6.

4. Status records provenance, never confidence. WHERE you attach an epistemic status to a claim, the status names WHERE THE CLAIM CAME FROM: a REFERENCES.md entry title, a file path plus line, or the gate output it came from. It SHALL NOT express a degree of certainty. Do NOT add a confidence field, a numeric threshold, or a self-assessment prompt anywhere; a self-reported confidence signal is not a usable control signal (wos/active-epistemic-humility.md Part 1.3). A status whose referent slot is empty is read as UNKNOWN, not as a weak yes.

5. Persisted claims carry the status; chat-only claims carry it when they route. Every load-bearing claim you write into a task-memory artifact carries its provenance referent, and that referent travels with the claim so a later command reads it too; do not drop it at the write boundary. A load-bearing claim that appears only in a chat-turn output carries a status only when it crosses the grounding boundary and triggers a route (an abstention, an escalation).

6. Abstain as a routed continuation, never a bare refusal. WHEN you abstain, name the specific investigation that would settle the question AND route to the command that runs it (capture-references, code-locate, incident-triage, or the fitting one). A withholding that stalls the work is invalid output. Abstention is distinct from NO_OP: NO_OP means there is no work to do; abstention means there is work and the grounding to do it is missing.

7. An unfired gate is not evidence. The absence of a fired check does not mean grounding existed. Do not read silence here as a pass.

Standard output layout (required)

Produce the command output using this structure (English only):

Artifact changes

Follow ## Global output contract in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md for APPLIED / PROPOSED / SKIP rules.

Command transcript

Brief audit trail (max 4 lines; max 3 in no-op runs with NO_OP_TRACE).

Handoff

Use the adaptive ending format from WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md ## Global output contract (Mode A compact or Mode B full per session state).

Definition of done (command output)

• All 11 checks are explicitly reported (passed, failed with evidence, or Check 11 deferred only when neither the design MCP nor a populated Source image: field is available).
• Findings reference the spec section number and code file:line.
• If implementation is faithful, verdict says so clearly.
• Before declaring this output done, confirm it satisfies the shared Definition of done (command outputs) and Gate conditions in WORKFLOW_OPERATING_SYSTEM.md.

Quality bar: Every finding traces to a specific spec section and a specific code line. No invented discrepancies.