// Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship fewer polished features over more rough ones.
Sketch types, signatures, and module structure before code, then stay in the loop while implementation fills in. Use for /architect, 'architect this', 'design this', or non-trivial work where jumping to code would lock in the wrong shape.
Use for "how does X work", code walkthroughs before changing something, and placement / ownership / layering questions ("where should this live", "which package owns this", "is this the right layer"). Explains subsystem architecture, runtime flow, onboarding mental models. Can critique architecture. Use why for motivation.
Use for "interrogate", "adversarial review", "multi-model review", "challenge this", "stress test this code", "find blind spots", or "tear this apart". Four LLM reviewers challenge changes from independent angles.
Spawn three parallel review subagents over the active transcript, surface learnings, and route each to a concrete edit on an existing skill. Use when the user says reflect.
poteto's agent style for concise, detailed responses, deliberate subagents, unslopped prose, simple code, and verified work. Use for poteto, /poteto-mode, or requests to work in this style.
Use for 'why does X work this way', 'why we picked Y', design rationale, regressions, postmortems, or data-backed thresholds. Discovers available MCPs and queries each evidence category (source control, issue tracker, long-form docs, real-time chat, infrastructure observability, error tracking, product analytics warehouse) in parallel, then returns a cited read on decisions and tradeoffs. Use how for runtime behavior.
| name | principle-experience-first |
| description | Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship fewer polished features over more rough ones. |
| disable-model-invocation | true |
The product is the experience. Every technical decision either helps or hurts it. When implementation convenience conflicts with user delight, choose delight.
The user is whoever consumes the work. For a UI that is the end user. For a library or an internal API it is the colleague who imports it. The engineer who maintains the code next is a user too. Weigh their experience the same way, and explain impact from their seat.
Foundations should serve the experience, not the other way around. Foundational thinking governs the sequence of work; this principle governs the target.