| name | design |
| description | Produce a product/UX/UI design brief before building a user-facing surface. Use in the PLAN phase after /plan, alongside /architect, when a change has a UI (dashboard, app, marketing page, mobile screen). Routes to the right craft rubric, overlays the accessibility/UX floor, and emits a brief that guides implementation. Self-skips when there is no user-facing surface. |
/design — product/UX design brief
Goal: decide what this should look like and how it should behave before code, so design
isn't improvised inside /harness-claude:implement (where it comes out worst). The product-design
counterpart to /harness-claude:architect (system design). Both are conditional PLAN steps —
a change can need one, both, or neither.
When to use
Only when the change has a user-facing surface — a page, screen, component, dashboard,
form, email, or CLI/TUI presentation a human looks at. If the work is internal/back-end
(an API, a script, a refactor with no visible change), skip and say so — like
/harness-claude:architect skips routine work. The harness itself (a CLI plugin) skips this step.
Do this
1. Route by surface
Pick the leading craft rubric from the change's surface, then always overlay the floor:
| Surface | Lead rubric |
|---|
| Product UI — dashboard, admin, SaaS, tool, settings, data | references/product-ui.md |
| Marketing / brand / landing / portfolio / expressive | references/aesthetic-direction.md |
| Mobile / native (iOS/Android, React Native, Flutter) | references/ux-floor.md (+ closest of the two above) |
| Every surface (overlay, not optional) | references/ux-floor.md |
Read the leading rubric(s) under skills/design/references/. These are the harness's own design
standard and are fully self-contained — no external plugin or install is required. If the project
keeps a saved design-system note (e.g. .design/system.md), read it too and hold to its decisions.
2. Explore before proposing (don't default)
Per the lead rubric: name the human (who, where, what they did 5 min before/after), the
task (the verb), and the feel (in words that mean something). For product/marketing,
do the domain exploration — domain · color-world · signature · the 3 defaults you're rejecting.
Test: remove the product name from your proposal — could someone still tell what it's for?
3. Emit the design brief
Keep it to one screen. This is the artifact /harness-claude:implement builds against, and
what /harness-claude:design-review later checks the build against.
# Design brief: <surface>
Human: [who, where, prior/next action]
Task: [the verb — what leads, what hides]
Feel: [3–5 words that mean something; not "clean and modern"]
Surface: [product UI | marketing | mobile] → [lead rubric]
Direction: [domain · color-world · signature · rejected defaults]
Hierarchy: [focal element + how it wins; type scale; density in px]
System: [palette w/ why · type pairing · depth strategy (one) · spacing base]
Floor: [a11y/touch/perf items that apply — from ux-floor.md]
States: [the default/hover/focus/disabled + loading/empty/error this surface needs]
Success: [observable signals — what "it works + looks designed" looks like]
Constraints
- Never trade the floor for aesthetics. ux-floor §1 (a11y) + §2 (touch) are part of the
harness accuracy floor — contrast, focus rings, keyboard nav, 44px targets are non-negotiable.
- Don't hand-roll controls a primitive should own (see product-ui.md "Use what exists").
- Lean: the brief is a working brief, not a spec novel. Confirm direction with the user only
when it's ambiguous or costly to change; otherwise state a responsible assumption and proceed.
Output
The design brief above (saved to the session file for multi-session work via
/harness-claude:save-session), plus a one-line note of which rubric/skill led and what you
overlaid. If there's no user-facing surface: say "skipped — no UI surface" and move on.
Exit criterion
A design brief with a named focal point, a committed system (palette/type/depth/spacing), the
applicable floor items, and required states — concrete enough to build and to review against.
Then /harness-claude:architect (if also warranted) or /harness-claude:harness-implement.
