markdown-illustrator

name

markdown-illustrator

description

Turn a markdown document into a visualization-first chat response consisting of one Visual Brief and one high-quality diffuser prompt generated with best-effort reasoning. Use when the user references a .md file and wants a hero image, cover image, visual digest, keynote opener, illustration, or diffuser prompt, especially for requests like "turn roadmap.md into a keynote opener image" or "create a visual digest for onboarding-notes.md". Default to zero follow-up questions, no file creation, and no style/theme/model menus; infer a compact visual strategy from the request and document, and only honor extra specificity when the user explicitly asks for a named model, aesthetic, or visual treatment such as whiteboard or blackboard.

Markdown Illustrator

This skill reads a markdown file and answers directly in chat with one visualization-focused Visual Brief plus one final prompt compiled to be concrete, readable, and diffusion-ready.

Critical

• Keep the workflow narrow by default: one document-wide visual interpretation, one shared summary, one final prompt, direct chat response.
• Use the Visual Brief as the anchor for the final prompt.
• Default to best-effort reasoning across diffusers. Only become narrower or model-specific when the user explicitly asks.
• Treat final prompt generation like prompt compilation: preserve intent, but strengthen clarity, structure, physical grounding, and renderability.
• Do not turn visual strategy into a questionnaire. Infer a small set of visual defaults and proceed unless the user explicitly asks to steer them.
• Default to de-duplicated composition. Show each major concept, phase, label, callout, panel, or document fragment once unless the user explicitly asks for repetition, comparison, or multi-panel variation.

Output Contract

Return this structure directly in chat:

## Visual Brief

**Subject:** [one-sentence description of what the document is truly about]
**Audience:** [who the document is for]
**Core narrative:** [the tension, movement, or transformation inside the document]
**Visual opportunity:** [the most compelling scene, metaphor, or spatial idea to visualize]
**Mood:** [the emotional tone the image should carry]
**Must-show elements:** [3-6 concrete visual anchors that belong in the image]
**Avoid:** [things that would misrepresent or weaken the image]

## Final Prompt

[one production-ready prompt paragraph]

The Visual Brief is the anchor. The final prompt is the best single visual interpretation of that shared meaning.

Workflow

Follow the documented procedure in this file in order: Reading the Markdown -> Writing the Visual Brief -> Inferring Visual Strategy -> Compiling the Final Prompt.

1. Read the referenced markdown file for meaning, not for headings.
2. Distill the whole document into a Visual Brief optimized for visualization.
3. Infer a compact visual strategy from the request and document without asking follow-up questions.
4. Generate one best-effort final prompt from that summary and strategy.
5. Return the result directly in chat.
6. If the user explicitly asked for constraints such as Flux, photorealistic, editorial illustration, 16:9, avoid people, whiteboard, or blackboard, honor them inside the final prompt without turning the interaction into a selection flow.

Reading the Markdown

Extract:

• the real subject of the document
• the intended audience
• the central transformation, conflict, or promise
• recurring symbols, systems, environments, or objects
• the emotional energy the image should carry

Do not mirror every section. Distill the document into one image-worthy idea.

Ignore headings that are structural only, such as Table of Contents, References, or appendices, unless the user explicitly wants them reflected.

Writing the Visual Brief

Write the summary for visualization, not for literary analysis.

• Subject should identify what the image is fundamentally about.
• Audience should clarify how polished, technical, aspirational, or educational the image should feel.
• Core narrative should name the movement or tension, such as migration, orchestration, discovery, simplification, growth, launch, or coordination.
• Visual opportunity should identify the strongest scene or metaphor, not a style label.
• Mood should guide lighting, composition energy, and texture.
• Must-show elements should name only the elements that materially improve recognition and fidelity.
• Avoid should protect against misleading clichés, irrelevant detail, or flat literalism.

Inferring Visual Strategy

Infer these dimensions silently. Do not present them as a menu.

• Intent: choose hero, digest, diagram, or cover.
  • Use hero for requests such as hero image, breathtaking, cinematic, launch, raise interest, or when no stronger signal exists.
  • Use digest for requests such as digest, overview, summary, onboarding, or explain.
  • Use diagram for requests such as diagram, systems, process, architecture, workflow, or pipeline.
  • Use cover for requests such as cover image, keynote opener, poster, or editorial cover.
• Visual treatment: preserve explicit user styles such as whiteboard, blackboard, scientific, hand-drawn, isometric, or minimal line art. If the user gives no style signal, default to cinematic editorial.
  • For whiteboard and blackboard, preserve the physical medium but do not keep every mark monochrome. Bias toward a mostly black-marker or white-chalk base with a small accent palette for emphasis marks such as arrows, checkmarks, key icons, circles, highlights, or flow traces.
• Abstraction level: choose literal, balanced, or concept-led.
  • Use concept-led for wow, hero, cinematic, breathtaking, desirable, or raise interest.
  • Use balanced for digest, overview, onboarding, educational, or systems.
  • Use literal only when the user explicitly asks for faithful, exact, or direct process depiction.
  • Default to concept-led for hero and cover, and balanced for digest and diagram.
• Label density: choose none, minimal, light, or academic.
  • Use none or minimal for hero, cinematic, minimal text, or infographic-first.
  • Use academic for scientific, textbook, educational diagram, or explicit labeling requests.
  • Otherwise default to minimal.
• Aspect ratio: prefer wide compositions.
  • Honor an explicit user ratio such as 16:9, 3:2, 4:3, or 1:1.
  • Otherwise default to 16:9 for hero, cover, cinematic, keynote, and most digest requests.
  • Use 3:2 when the composition feels more editorial, poster-like, or object-centered and slightly less panoramic framing improves clarity.
  • Avoid defaulting to 1:1 unless the user explicitly asks for it.

Keep the output contract unchanged: always return both Visual Brief and Final Prompt unless the user explicitly asks for prompt-only output.

Compiling the Final Prompt

Write one vivid prompt paragraph that another agent or human can paste into a diffuser.

Default behavior:

• Optimize for broad diffuser compatibility.
• Prefer natural language over vendor-specific syntax.
• Convert abstract ideas into concrete visual elements. Represent concepts as visible objects, scenes, marks, layers, flows, or diagram components.
• Be specific about the scene, relationships, and visual anchors when that specificity strengthens the image.
• Favor one memorable visual concept over a crowded checklist.
• Use best-effort reasoning to choose the strongest visual treatment for the document.

Compiler rules:

• Enforce strong composition. Prefer clear spatial structure such as on the left, in the center, and on the right when useful.
• Show transformation explicitly. If the document is about change, process, or reasoning, visualize it through arrows, flows, transitions, intermediate stages, or layered progression.
• Use the inferred strategy to bias the image strongly instead of asking for clarification.
  • hero and cover: prioritize spectacle, memorability, atmosphere, premium composition, and one dominant visual idea over procedural completeness.
  • digest: prioritize readability, overview, and a satisfying big-picture synthesis without turning the image into a wall of cards.
  • diagram: prioritize system legibility, visual flow, and structural clarity without becoming text-heavy.
  • concept-led: prefer one striking scene or metaphor that captures the document's meaning, even if not every process step is shown literally.
  • balanced or literal: keep more visible process fidelity, but still avoid sterile box-and-arrow overload.
• Prefer one authoritative artifact over repeated fragments. If the image resembles a document, diagram, scientific plate, dashboard, or infographic, bias strongly toward one clean instance of each structural element rather than many similar panels or echoed blocks.
• Add cognitive structure when relevant, but use embedded text sparingly. Prefer arrows, icons, blocks, and symbolic grouping over text-heavy diagrams because image models often render words poorly.
• If labels or annotations are truly necessary, keep them very short, secondary, and non-critical to success. Prefer one-to-three-word phrases over readable sentences or dense copy.
• Ground the image in a physical medium when appropriate. If the chosen treatment benefits from a medium such as whiteboard, chalkboard, blueprint, or another concrete surface, describe material details like marker strokes, chalk dust, lighting, texture, and small imperfections.
• For whiteboard and blackboard treatments, describe selective accent colors explicitly. Keep the medium legible and authentic, but use a restrained accent set such as red, blue, yellow, or green for emphasis marks instead of rendering every icon, arrow, checkmark, or callout in plain black marker or white chalk.
• Steer the composition toward a wide frame by default. Prefer 16:9 unless 3:2 clearly better supports the scene; avoid implying 1:1 unless the user explicitly asked for square output.
• Control complexity aggressively. Keep one dominant idea, one obvious focal path, and one readable hierarchy.
• Add negative constraints directly into the prompt to prevent failure modes, using phrases like no clutter, no chaos, no unnecessary elements, clean composition, and intentional layout where appropriate.
• Add anti-repetition constraints by default, especially for structured visuals. Use phrases such as no duplicated sections, no repeated bullets, no repeated steps, no echoed callouts, no mirrored panels, one authoritative page or diagram, and one instance per concept unless the user explicitly asked for repetition.
• When text rendering is a risk, add a direct steer such as no gibberish text, no fake words, no dense paragraphs, or minimal legible labels only if essential.
• Describe what is seen, not what is implied. Replace conceptual wording with observable visual detail.
• Preserve the user's meaning. Improve execution, not intent.

Output rule:

• Output a single refined prompt only under ## Final Prompt, with no extra explanation inside that section.