design

name	design
description	Interface and design-system design by parallel bench: every /design invocation fans out blind subagent lanes — each obeying one vendored design philosophy end to end — and composes their rendered explorations into one clickable lab catalog the operator browses and gives verdicts on. Needs a screenshot, URL, rendered artifact, or file plus intent. Use when: "improve the design", "redesign this", "critique this screen", "show me options", "prototype this", "deslop this", "polish the UI", "is this accessible", "scaffold DESIGN.md", or any product-facing visual artifact — docs layout, dashboards, charts, diagrams. Do not use when: a mechanical style fix with no design decision (just make the edit), or behavior verification (/qa). Trigger: /design, /prototype.
argument-hint	<artifact-or-surface> [intent]

/design

One method, every invocation — no routes, verbs, modes, or preset menus. A design request never picks a specialist; it benches them:

fence → bench → catalog → verdicts → converge

One context brainstorming N variants produces one taste wearing costumes. Real spread comes from blind parallel lanes, each obeying a different vendored philosophy end to end. The operator decides from rendered options, never from a menu of style names — and the pick is never delegated to the model.

Fence

Name the artifact and its intent in one sentence. Read DESIGN.md when present; scaffold it for recurring product-facing work (references/scaffold.md). State what is FIXED (tokens, brand, platform, a11y floor) and which axes vary — references/divergence.md owns the per-mode axes and fan-width calibration. Set VARIANCE / MOTION / DENSITY targets (references/anti-slop.md). When the operator supplies reference sites or screenshots, the DNA-not-dress protocol in references/external-design-references.md binds every lane. Route to /shape first when the product direction itself is unsettled.

When motion intent arrives as a vague effect without a name, load emil-animation-vocabulary before fencing it. The glossary sharpens the brief; it does not join the generative bench.

When the target is itself a design system or component library—or the request changes shared tokens, recurring components, or multi-surface grammar—classify it as a holistic system lab and read references/design-system.md before dispatch. A named primitive is the variable inside the system, not the whole option.

Bench

Fan out 4–6 blind lanes in parallel (the harness's subagent capability; sequential fresh-context lanes where it has none — blindness is the requirement, parallelism the speed). Each lane card is three lines: the fence, the path to one philosophy's SKILL.md ("read it fully; obey it"), and the lane output contract (references/lab-registry.md § Lane modules). Each lane returns 1–3 structurally distinct options. Lanes get the fence and the contract only — never each other's output or your reasoning trail (shared AGENTS.md: Prove).

For a cheap zero-build holistic system lab, use six blind philosophies and require three proposals from each before dedupe. This is an exploration floor, not permission to keep weak work.

The philosophies (vendored under primitives/skills/.external/; licences and boundaries in references/external-design-references.md):

Lane	Brings
anthropic-frontend-design	distinctive aesthetic thesis; calibration against the known AI default looks
emil-apple-design	fluid physical interaction: direct manipulation, interruptibility, velocity, momentum, spatial continuity, and material depth
leon-taste-skill	metric-based anti-default rules; the dials
leon-soft-skill	glossy, luxe, agency-tier
leon-minimalist-skill	flat editorial (Notion/Linear), no gradient or shadow
leon-brutalist-skill	raw industrial-terminal, Swiss print × military terminal
leon-gpt-tasteskill	GSAP scroll choreography, AIDA macrostructure
leon-images-taste-skill	image-first: generate design images, build to match (image-gen runtime is live)
leon-redesign-skill	keep-the-stack redesign; a11y/SEO omissions checklist
nutlope-hallmark	macrostructure-first genres, 20-theme rotation, 58-gate slop test
impeccable-impeccable	23 discipline lenses (typeset, colorize, distill, harden, …); brand-vs-product register

Pick the spread against the fence, not a fixed roster: a dense operational surface benches density-honest philosophies; a landing page benches hallmark's genres against the soft and brutalist poles. Gesture-driven, sheet, spring, drag/swipe, or spatial-motion surfaces bench emil-apple-design; static visual work usually does not. references/aesthetic-library.md holds six operator-endorsed directions lanes can seed from.

Catalog

Compose the lab-registry paged viewer (references/lab-registry.md): one full-viewport page per option, adjustable viewport, arrow-key nav. Dedupe cross-lane reskins, refill to the applicable target, include the current shipped state as the round-1 baseline, and badge every option with its originating philosophy — provenance is how verdicts feed back ("kill everything from that lane") and how each vendored skill earns its keep.

The Design Labs Law (stated here only; everything else points here): the candidate catalog holds 6–20 structurally distinct propositions, scaled to render cost. The round-1 baseline is shown separately and never satisfies the count. Six is the floor for expensive options, not the default stopping point; cheap zero-build and holistic system labs retain 12–20 candidates after dedupe. Palette/font swaps of one layout count as one option. The pick is the operator's.

In a holistic system lab, one option means one reusable system proposition rendered through the same complete gallery contract. A standalone application screen is a supplemental stress test, not an option.

Verdicts

Rounds per the registry contract: the operator kills, mutates, locks; sections refill toward the Law. Mutations return to the originating lane's philosophy; nous-creative-ideation methods (SCAMPER, lateral provocations) drive within-lane mutation and round reseeding. Anything the operator phrases as a definite fix ships immediately, outside the lab.

Converge

Build the locked winner in the real stack; update DESIGN.md when a durable fact changed; the lab is a sketch — never ship its files. Convergence gates:

Gate	Source
slop	references/anti-slop.md quick gate + npx impeccable detect (exit 2 on findings)
micro-polish	jakub-make-interfaces-feel-better — exact radii, optical alignment, hit areas
motion	emil-emil-design-eng to author, emil-review-animations to review
a11y / guidelines	vercel-web-design-guidelines; WCAG AA contrast, keyboard reach; checklist in references/interface-polish.md
React architecture	vercel-composition-patterns, vercel-react-view-transitions

For substantive or external-facing changes, approval is earned, default-deny: one fresh-context design-director read plus the deterministic scan, synthesized — not concatenated. Presumptive blockers the author must justify:

• 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 catalog below the Law, or cross-lane "options" that are reskins of one layout.

After visible changes, verify desktop and mobile render and report the evidence. Use /qa for behavior verification and evidence capture. Delegate per the Shared Operating Spine (Act).

Completion Gate

See primitives/shared/AGENTS.md (Prove) for the shared core; design-specific fields:

**Completion Gate**
- Fence: artifact, intent, fixed vs varying, dial targets.
- Lanes: philosophies fanned, options returned per lane.
- Catalog: lab path, option count vs the Law, round number, baseline present.
- Verdict state: locked winner (option id) or awaiting operator verdicts.
- Converge evidence: desktop+mobile render evidence; `npx impeccable detect` result.
- DESIGN.md: read, created, updated, or waived one-off.
- Residual risk: remaining design, a11y, or QA risk.

Gotchas

• A lane that skims its philosophy emits house-style output — the philosophy IS the decorrelation. Spot-check each lane's options against its source skill's signature moves before composing.
• Two lanes can converge on the same obvious layout; dedupe counts them once.
• Critique and audit asks get the catalog too: findings render as fixed options in the viewer, not as a prose report.
• Aesthetic preference is not blocking unless it hurts comprehension, trust, conversion, accessibility, or domain fit.
• 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.

References

• references/lab-registry.md — the paged viewer and the lane output contract (file layout, namespaced IDs, provenance badges, round mechanics).
• references/divergence.md — per-mode variation axes, fence-naming, fan-width calibration, converge handoff.
• references/anti-slop.md — the single ban-core: slop tells, dials, quick gate.
• references/external-design-references.md — vendored-skill inventory, licences, DNA-not-dress reference work.
• references/aesthetic-library.md — six operator-endorsed aesthetic directions with runnable HTML examples.
• references/scaffold.md — repo-owned DESIGN.md and design-contract.md provenance.
• references/design-system.md — token and component-system judgment.
• references/taste-layer.md — direction menus and anti-generic critique lenses for seeding lanes.
• references/interface-polish.md — micro-polish and accessibility checks.
• references/critique-shape.md — the finding shape lanes use when annotating options.
• references/ui-surface-routing.md — composing /design + /qa + /code-review on visual diffs.
• evals/bench-eval.md — this skill's verification system.