| name | editable-design |
| description | Create and render fixed-canvas editable visual designs, including posters, marketing graphics, covers, menus, banners, and social cards. Default outputs include fixed and editable HTML, PNG, a mouse editor with scan and exploded layer views, and an evidence-backed Design Replay. Do not use for websites, slide decks, videos, or standalone logo systems. Always use this skill when the project contains `poster.json`. |
Editable Design
Design the complete requested fixed-canvas visual, verify it, then deliver it. The default
deliverable is a fixed-canvas index.html, a mouse-editable editor.html with
scan and exploded-layer views, a poster-specific visual system built from
generated artwork, live typography, and/or HTML geometry, and a rendered PNG.
It also includes replay/index.html, a deterministic visual account of the real
input, reference, plan, asset prompts, code, review, and layer output, plus a
standalone animated layers.html breakdown.
Communicate clearly
Assume the user is a nontechnical knowledge worker. Talk about their poster,
choices, progress, and results. Keep tools, commands, files, renderers, browser
software, dependencies, source control, paths, and exit codes out of user-facing
messages unless the user asks or must take action.
Use no more than one short update for each user-visible phase: preparing,
designing, and delivering. If a phase takes longer than 60 seconds, give one
plain-language update. Keep recoverable technical problems private; say only that
you hit a problem and are trying another method.
You are the designer, not a consultant. Decide the layout, hierarchy,
palette, type, composition, and white space yourself. Do not generate design
options or pause for a visual selection unless the user explicitly asks to
compare designs. When undecided, pick one and say why; do not hand the choice
back.
Ask one concise group of up to three discovery questions only when the missing
information would materially change the finished poster or force you to invent
something. The only thing you must ask about is fact: prices, dates and
times, locations, contact details, exact brand and product names, legal notices.
Inventing one of those ships a falsehood, which is worse than leaving it out.
Everything else is a judgement call, and judgement is your job.
Choose the execution path
Use the one-shot fast path only when all of these are true:
- this is a new poster in an empty or projectless workspace;
- the layout needs no generated shipping imagery, because type, colour, or CSS
shapes carry it;
- the request does not involve multiple artwork slots, a cutout subject, print
DPI, or revising an existing poster; and
- the deliverable is a single screen-resolution render.
Use the capability path otherwise.
Prepare academic PDF inputs
When the source is a research-paper PDF, complete a compact evidence pass before
the reference or design plan. Read the whole paper's text structure and inspect
the pages containing its principal figures, tables, and diagrams; an abstract-only
summary is not enough. Write source-brief.md with:
- the research question and why it matters;
- the method as a short causal or procedural chain;
- three to five result claims, preserving every reported number, unit, baseline,
and comparison exactly;
- the conclusion and any limitation needed to avoid overstating the paper; and
- a visual-evidence inventory naming the strongest source figures or tables and
what claim each one supports.
Record the PDF path and source-brief.md with the input evidence. Use the brief
as the factual boundary for all poster wording. Prefer a real, legible source
figure, table crop, or faithful code-native reconstruction when it carries a key
result. Generated artwork may establish atmosphere or explain a concept, but it
must not replace empirical evidence or introduce unreported quantities. When the
paper contains usable visual evidence, the final poster must include at least one
evidence-bearing visual tied to a live caption or result claim.
Generate the imagery
Generated artwork is a first-class visual material, not a required full-canvas
layer. Use it wherever photographic, illustrative, material, atmospheric, or
subject-specific content carries the design. Live typography and HTML geometry
may instead form the primary visual system when their precision, repetition,
and spatial relationships are the composition.
Do not replace imagery the design genuinely needs with a generic gradient, flat
fill, or improvised CSS illustration. Equally, do not generate a backdrop merely
to prove that artwork was used.
Generated support does not need to dominate the page; compact visual assets are
worthwhile when they make a section easier to scan, compare, or remember.
Avoid model-authored SVG illustrations. Graphic content is either generated
raster artwork or it is typography and geometry.
Codex's bundled Node runtime includes Lucide; for common small icons, prefer a
coherent locally embedded Lucide subset over ad hoc CSS drawing, without adding
runtime external requests.
Choose the reference mode
Treat reference handling as a four-value mode even when the host exposes no
formal setting:
auto — the default. Resolve it to art-directed for every new poster,
including an open brief and the one-shot fast path; the composition reference
is a standard design step, not an optional enhancement that depends on the
user describing a finished picture. Resolve it to off only when the user
explicitly declines reference generation, or when a small revision to an
existing poster does not change its composition. Resolve it to reproduce
when the user supplied an image as the target or asked to match one closely. A
loose style or mood reference does not imply reproduction.
off — skip composition-reference generation.
art-directed — generate one enhanced, non-shipping composition concept.
reproduce — treat the supplied reference as a high-fidelity specification.
Respect an explicit user choice over auto. Whenever art-directed is active,
run the creative prompt enhancer below; it is not a separate switch.
When image generation is unavailable, resolve auto to off when live
typography, HTML geometry, local icons, and user-provided assets can satisfy the
request. If the requested result fundamentally requires generated photography,
illustration, or cutouts, report the missing capability instead of silently
substituting a materially weaker design. A supplied target can still use
reproduce without image generation when it can be rebuilt from live elements.
Create an art-directed composition reference
Generate one reference composition before planning anything, and read the
layout off it. Pass the request through a
creative prompt-enhancement step and ask the image model for one opinionated,
fully art-directed finished-poster concept rather than a literal transcription.
Lock every user-specified fact, string, subject, required placement, palette
requirement, and exclusion. Freely intensify only the composition, hierarchy,
crop, scale relationships, photographic direction, lighting, materiality,
typography treatment, grid behaviour, and spatial rhythm. This reference-only
step deliberately has more creative freedom than shipping-asset generation,
and it is the only step where the image model is allowed to render text.
Creative expansion changes the design language, not the requested content. Do
not invent facts, dates, locations, prices, brand names, slogans, people,
products, narrative subjects, or extra scene objects. Preserve minimalism when
requested, but express it through tension, scale, atmosphere, material depth,
and precise hierarchy rather than by making the frame merely empty.
Three boundaries make this safe. Breaking any of them wrecks the rest of the run:
- The reference never becomes artwork. Save it under
reference/, never
assets/, and never crop it into a backdrop — it has generated lettering all
over it.
- The reference's pixels never ship. Every character is re-set in HTML. A
generated glyph cannot be edited or re-flowed, and generated Chinese in
particular is often subtly wrong. Its wording, though, is fair game: if the
reference invented a line that fits, adopt it as live HTML text and name the
added lines in the handoff. Facts are the exception. Prices, dates, locations
and brand names still come from the user; a plausible date the image model
made up is still a false date.
- Choose the shipping asset architecture after reading the reference. The
reference determines composition, hierarchy, visual regions, and depth
relationships; it does not require a backdrop. Generate a clean full-bleed
backdrop when the integrated design decision selects a continuous scene.
Otherwise generate the selected slots, cutouts, or fragments, or rebuild the
graphic relationships as live typography and geometry when the reference's
visual force is fundamentally graphic and modular.
Read off the reference: major visual regions and their proportions, band
positions when they are actually present, visual weight, palette relationships,
text-bearing regions, depth and overlap relationships, and any supporting
visuals, large or small, that materially contribute to meaning, comparison, or
recall. Write these observations into the integrated design plan below. Before
calling the image model, save the exact enhanced prompt in
reference/composition-prompt.md; after the result is imported as
reference/composition-reference.png, record both under P02_reference. These
are evidence for the Replay, not extra design prose.
High-fidelity reproduction
When the user asks for the reference to be reproduced closely — "make it look
like this" — or supplied the image explicitly as the target, treat it as a
specification rather than a sketch. Work element by element: match positions, proportions,
decorative marks and where each colour sits, and adopt its wording wholesale
as live HTML text.
Two things do not change under this mode. Text is still re-set in HTML, never
lifted as pixels. And facts still come from the user.
Say in the handoff that you were reproducing a reference, and name whatever you
could not reproduce — a hand-drawn contour edge, a texture, a script face that
is not installed.
Choose the asset architecture before prompting
Before finalizing the asset plan, identify every visual component that
materially contributes to subject, hierarchy, atmosphere, comparison, recall,
semantic distinction, or fidelity to the reference. Let the composition
determine the asset count. Generate all main and supporting assets needed for
the finished poster, and do not consolidate distinct visual roles merely to
reduce generation work.
Use the image model proactively for supporting visual assets when they would
strengthen communication; do not reserve generated imagery only for the main
visual or explicitly requested detail shots.
A generated raster is not the only way to preserve a strong visual reference.
For example, a dense Memphis-style exhibition poster may be strongest as a live
modular composition: monumental typography, saturated colour fields, black
keylines, checker and halftone patterns, label rails, inline pictograms, and
independently placed icon panels. Rebuild those relationships as live HTML/CSS
geometry and inline SVG when flattening them into a background would weaken
their structure, precision, or editability. This is a complete visual system
derived from the same mandatory art-directed reference, not a fallback from
generated imagery.
Choose by visual topology, not by habit. No topology is the default:
- Slot matrix — one image per bounded card, product cell, specimen, or
timeline node; HTML owns the grid and captions.
- Code-native modular field — live typography, colour blocks, rules,
patterns, icon cells, diagrams, and inline geometry form the primary visual
system. Use this when the reference's force comes from graphic composition,
precision, repetition, and modular rhythm rather than photographic material.
- Continuous scene — one zoned full-bleed backdrop plus HTML typography.
Use this when the meaningful imagery depends on shared lighting, perspective,
atmosphere, or physical continuity.
- Cutout stack — independent transparent subjects arranged across explicit
back, middle, text, and foreground layers.
- Layered collage — a base field plus a small set of independently placed
photo fragments, paper pieces, textures, stickers, or cutouts.
Keep elements together when their shared lighting, perspective, material, or
physical interaction makes them one visually continuous scene. Separate or
rebuild them independently when their position, crop, replacement, repetition,
semantic role, or overlap is part of the design. Do not split elements that
share continuous light and perspective merely to make the file count larger;
their seams will show.
Visuals assigned to distinct meanings must remain perceptually and semantically
distinct. Reuse is acceptable only when each instance clearly communicates its
own intended meaning; unintended repetition is a defect.
For a slot matrix, cutout stack, or layered collage, read
Asset architecture. When two or more
shipping assets are needed, create asset-plan.json before generating anything;
record each asset's form, target rectangle, layer order, and dependencies.
Prompt the shipping assets
Before writing shipping prompts, read Imagery and
follow it exactly. The art-directed composition reference may render poster
text; shipping assets may not.
Use one call per distinct asset. After every shipping prompt and destination
filename is frozen, dispatch up to ten independent generations concurrently in
one batch; do not split a run of ten or fewer assets into smaller waves. For
more than ten, use consecutive batches of ten. Parallelism applies only to
assets without dependencies on another returned image; corrections based on a
returned image remain sequential. Orchestrate the batch with all-settled
semantics rather than fail-fast semantics so one rejected call cannot cancel or
hide the successful results.
Let the whole batch settle, preserve every successful result, and retry only the
failed calls immediately rather than rerunning or delaying the successful ones.
Retry a transient failure once with the same prompt. For a safety refusal or an
obvious prompt-specific failure, revise only that asset's prompt and retry it
once; stop automatic retries after that second attempt and continue with the
successful assets while choosing a safe substitute or reporting the missing
slot. Do not ask for several unrelated cutouts in one sheet: one call returns
one raster, not several independently editable transparent files.
Import all successful results in one post-batch pass with
scripts/import-asset.sh GENERATED_PATH assets/NAME.png. Check dimensions,
unwanted lettering, and obvious slot mismatch together in that same pass, then
record the prompt file and selected asset results once. Do not pause for
per-image narration, rewrite already-frozen planning files between successful
results, or introduce a second selection phase when the outputs satisfy their
slot prompts. For ten or fewer independent assets, post-generation handling
should add only local import and one consolidated inspection, not another
multi-minute reasoning stage.
Start new posters immediately
Before setup, if the intended target directory already exists or the workspace
contains an apparent same-title poster project, ask whether to continue that
project or create a new one. Do not treat matching titles, copy, assets, or
timestamps as authorization to modify user-owned files. Make no writes to the
existing project until the user answers; skip this confirmation only when the
user explicitly identified that existing project as the target. This collision
check happens before and overrides the immediate-setup rule below.
For a new poster in an empty or projectless workspace, make setup the first task
action. From an existing parent directory, run this skill's
scripts/init-poster.sh TARGET; do not set the command's working directory to a
target that does not exist yet. Do not run a second initializer.
It copies the starter plus project-local runtime scripts and reports whether a
renderer is available. Change into the target before running the remaining
commands. Complete this before asking any discovery questions, then open the starter's
index.html in the browser so the user sees the placeholder layout while you
work. Begin the trace in the same breath:
scripts/trace.sh init "<one line about this poster>"
Immediately write the active user-authored brief to brief.md, verbatim and in
order, including user-supplied attachment paths. Do not copy ambient UI state,
system instructions, or hidden context into it. Record it with
scripts/trace.sh artifact brief.md P01_input. This is the Replay's source of
truth; the trace label is not a substitute for the original request.
If no renderer is available, do not abort: the HTML is still deliverable, it just
produces no PNG. Say so once in the final handoff rather than repeatedly.
In a delegated, background, or invisible thread, initialize normally but do not
open a browser purely for preview. Reading the render is not preview and is
never skipped.
One-shot build
After setup and any necessary clarification, design and produce the poster in one
focused pass. Trace only the stable artifacts named below.
- Read
index.html, poster.json, and the contract in README.md. Read other
files only when the implementation needs them. Avoid broad scans and
speculative research.
- Fix the canvas. Infer the size from the intended use, and tell the user
which one you chose and why in your first update. Write it into
poster.json;
the root element's width/height must equal its data-canvas-* values.
scripts/trace.sh decision canvas "<W>x<H>" "<why>" P09_canvas
- Complete the reference stage before planning the design or shipping
assets. Resolve the reference mode. Under
art-directed, save the enhanced
prompt, generate and import the composition reference, read it, and record its
prompt and image under P02_reference. Under reproduce, inspect the supplied
target as the specification. Under off, continue without creating reference
artifacts.
- Make one integrated design decision after the reference settles. In one
pass decide the final live HTML wording, information hierarchy, asset
topology, text and image regions, layer order, palette roles, font stacks,
and asset or region geometry. Keep every user-supplied string verbatim; name
any non-factual wording adopted from the reference in the handoff. Write the
decision once in
design-plan.md. When two or more shipping assets are
required, also write the minimal machine-readable asset-plan.json from
that same decision. Record both together under P11_asset_plan.
When typography is a primary visual material or the editor needs stronger
alternatives, read Font system, choose fonts by
role, and use the self-hosted kit rather than defaulting to the same system
sans/serif pair.
- Generate the artwork per the batching, retry, import, and inspection
policy above, into
assets/. Record the completed batch once. In multi-asset
runs, every
asset-plan.json entry's prompt value must exactly match one ## heading
in prompts.md, and the imported filename stem should match the asset id:
scripts/trace.sh artifact prompts.md P12_generate_imagery.
- Make one complete layout patch. One file, CSS inline, zero external
requests, absolute positioning inside the canvas, fixed px for every layout
dimension. Declare the palette and font stacks on
:root and reference them
throughout. Do not write comments.
When the plan selects a bundled font, run scripts/font-kit.mjs add <id> index.html after the HTML exists, then assign its generated
--font-kit-<id> variable to the intended type roles before checking fonts.
For selected Lucide icons, resolve them from the bundled runtime at build
time and inline only their SVG markup in the poster HTML; keep their size,
stroke width, and color treatment consistent, and add no runtime import.
- Check the final HTML font stacks once with
scripts/check-fonts.sh index.html. A missing family raises no error in the
browser, and a family marked latin only must not set CJK text. Fix any
failure before rendering.
- Clear the scaffolding, see below.
- Check the deterministic contract:
scripts/check-poster.sh index.html. Fix every failure before opening Chrome.
- Run the editable-layout preflight before the first render:
scripts/trace.sh run P14_contract -- node <poster-building-skill>/scripts/check-contract.mjs index.html.
It
checks fixed geometry, layer and group structure, viewport stability, font
loading, and whether live-text hit areas are blocked by another layer. Fix
every failure now; this is the cheap point to change structure.
- Render:
scripts/trace.sh run P15_render -- scripts/render-poster.sh index.html out/poster.png. It reads the PNG's real pixel dimensions back and
compares them with poster.json; a mismatch is an error.
- Review, fix, and optimize the render through the single review loop below.
Keep every real pass in
render-review.md; do not create a second review
record for optimization. After the final render, record the consolidated
review once under P16_read_render, and record the current index.html and
out/poster.png under P15_html so Replay cannot select an obsolete version.
- Wire the bundled editor runtime without changing
index.html:
node scripts/wire-editor.mjs index.html. Confirm that editor.html,
layer-editor.css, and layer-editor.js exist, then
scripts/trace.sh artifact editor.html P17_editor.
- Verify the editor and exploded view with
scripts/trace.sh run P17_verify -- node <poster-building-skill>/scripts/verify.mjs index.html.
The same browser
run writes the verified standalone result to layers.html; do not launch a
second generation pass. It must pass the
geometry-plus-pixel zero-drift, edit/export round-trip, overview/background
component extraction, one-level gallery spread, theme, scan, replay, collapse, and
standalone-render checks. After it passes, record
scripts/trace.sh artifact layers.html P17_layers. Read
Editor and exploded views for setup and
commands.
- Generate the Agent Design Replay only after the poster and editing
contract pass:
node scripts/build-replay.mjs ., then
node scripts/verify-replay.mjs replay/index.html. Record the replay/
directory under P18_replay, then scripts/trace.sh finish ok. For an
older project without those project-local scripts, run this skill's bundled
scripts/build-replay.mjs PROJECT and scripts/verify-replay.mjs PROJECT/replay/index.html instead. Open the generated Replay once and
confirm that the seven nodes, Prompt/result pairs, render, Review, and layer
preview load. The fixed
template, not the agent, designs this page. Read
Agent design replay only when recording or
diagnosing its evidence contract.
Record the creative path without constraining it
The Replay is a post-build view of real artifacts. It does not add a visual
selection gate, require multiple directions, or change how the poster is
designed. Preserve the exact user request, enhanced reference prompt, plan,
shipping prompts, imported results, HTML, render review, and verified layer
output while working; the builder groups them into seven story stages.
Do not ask the model to redesign the Replay, summarize the run from memory, add
generic “why this was done” commentary, or reconstruct missing prompts. The
viewer displays recorded Agent content and marks absent evidence as missing.
Optional alternatives and selection branches appear only when the run actually
contains them.
Capability path
Project setup
- For a new poster use the flow in Start new posters immediately and keep the
starter's canvas, runtime, and validation contract. Its preview scaffolding is
not a composition, asset-topology, image-coverage, or text-placement guide.
- For an existing poster, preserve its file organisation,
poster.json, and
asset paths. A copy change is only a copy change; do not re-flow the layout
along the way.
- Keep poster code within the project directory.
Shape the poster
- Hierarchy is the whole job. A viewer takes a poster in three passes: hook,
then claim, then detail. Build that staircase with size, weight, colour, and
white space, and make the steps genuinely different. Two elements of similar
visual weight fight each other and both lose.
- White space is structure, not what is left over.
- Build a controlled palette with explicit roles for the field, text, accents,
and semantic states. Add colours when the brand, reference, imagery, or
information encoding requires them; no colour exists merely to fill space.
- Commit to one direction — editorial, luxury, brutalist, playful, technical —
and let it drive every decision.
- Give every typeface a clear role and verify that it covers the script it sets.
Use as many families as the composition genuinely needs while preserving a
coherent hierarchy. Every step of the size ramp must be clearly different
from the last.
- Distinguish the active type system from the editor palette. A poster normally
uses two or three families, while three to five verified
:root font roles
may be exposed as meaningful alternatives. For a poster, cover, flyer, or
campaign, do not ship only one generic sans stack unless the brief or brand
deliberately requires it.
- For vertical CJK type, set
white-space: nowrap and centre it with flex.
text-align controls the vertical axis under writing-mode, so a fixed-width
box leaves the text against its right edge.
- Where text sits over artwork, guarantee contrast explicitly: a solid panel, a
scrim, or a directional gradient sized to the text block. Do not count on the
image being dark enough exactly where you need it.
- Do not default to a coloured or black text box: first use an existing calm region or a local scrim, and add a panel only when its material, edges, palette, and overlap make it an intentional part of the composition rather than a generic card.
- When unsure about the layout, read Layout and typography.
- When typography is prominent or the available choices feel generic, read
Font system and use its self-hosted font kit.
Build the default editing contract
Every poster ships with the bundled editor runtime for human
micro-adjustments and presentation. It can drag layers; resize width, height, or
both with side and corner handles; edit text; change font size or a declared
font family; delete and undo; save a local draft; scan and spread layers into an
exploded view; and download clean edited or exploded HTML. A manually resized
text width remains fixed during later text or font-size edits so the user's
intended wrapping is preserved. It is not a second design application.
Mark each independently movable semantic unit with a unique data-layer-id;
keep full-bleed backdrops, textures, scrims, fixed frames, and
data-explode-group wrappers unmarked. Use hf-slot for independently editable
styled-text leaves, and use a non-nested data-explode-group only when it
contains at least two meaningful leaf layers; never nest layer IDs or explode
groups. Declare selectable font stacks on :root with a generic fallback.
Keep the prebuilt editor runtime unchanged, generate editor.html only with
node scripts/wire-editor.mjs index.html, render and validate index.html, and
run the bundled browser verification before delivery.
Deliver the standalone layer breakdown
Every poster includes layers.html in addition to the live breakdown in
editor.html. The bundled scripts/verify.mjs generates and verifies it in one
browser run. Groups remain whole modules by default; when fewer than five
primary content components would be visible, the same one-level gallery also
adds the grouped text leaves as companion tiles so the breakdown does not feel
empty. Do not hand-edit it, wire it back into the editor, or substitute it for
the poster render. Read
Editor and exploded views before diagnosing a
failure.
Clear the scaffolding before delivery
Apply the starter cleanup contract in README.md and record the sweep with
scripts/trace.sh artifact cleanup-checklist.json P14_cleanup. Preserve the
placeholder only when the user explicitly asked to work on the starter itself.
Add only what this poster needs
- Before prompting generated artwork, and again when artwork comes back wrong,
read Imagery.
- When the design calls for product matrices, collage fragments, multiple
cutouts, or foreground/background occlusion, read
Asset architecture.
- For print, pass
--dpi 300; the scale factor is derived at 96 px/inch. Only
meaningful for a canvas sized in print dimensions. The renderer produces PNG
only; there is no PDF path.
- Add no poster-specific interactivity, media queries, or CDN.
The bundled default editor shell is the only interaction layer.
Read the render
Read the rendered image yourself. A poster you have not looked at is not
finished.
When a visual reference exists, inspect it beside the current render before
deciding to finalize. Compare the focal subject's scale and position, headline
placement, major information regions, whitespace distribution, alignment,
required supporting details, reading order, and overall visual density. Name
only material differences that can be pointed to in the pixels.
During visual review, check for missing meaningful visual support, unintended
repetition, and mismatches between visuals and their associated content. Treat
them as defects when they weaken comprehension, hierarchy, or fidelity to the
request or reference.
When the reference includes typography, reject a result that looks more
templated, crowded, or hierarchically flat; rework the type before finalizing.
The reference is a benchmark for composition, hierarchy, completeness, and
quality, not automatically a pixel-perfect target. A difference is acceptable
when it deliberately adapts the design to live editable typography or
independently movable assets, or when the current solution is visibly as strong
as or stronger than the reference while preserving the request's intent. Do not
accept an element merely because it remains technically inside the canvas: it is
still defective when it sits visibly too close to a frame, rule, image edge, or
neighboring object. Do not
excuse a weaker focal subject, enlarged dead space, missing structure, reduced
density, poorer contrast, or lost detail as artistic variation unless the
change clearly improves the whole poster.
No script can do this step. The renderer proves the dimensions are right; it
cannot prove that text is not sitting on top of text, or that the artwork
brought its own placeholder lettering — and those two are the main reasons a
poster is scrapped.
Work down the list, and only count what you can point at. Do not evaluate taste:
- Read every piece of text on the image out loud, line by line. Anything you
cannot read is a defect, however correct it looks in the markup
- Any text clipped, cut off by an edge, covered by another layer, or obscured
- Any placeholder copy: LOGO, TITLE, EVENT DETAILS, SUBTITLE, Lorem ipsum, or a
lone brand-shaped word. This almost always came from generated artwork rather
than from you
- Any two elements overlapping badly enough that one is unreadable
- For text intended to sit in a panel, ribbon, card, or dark field, compare its visible bounds with that carrier at pixel level; any text or backing that spills outside, misaligns with, or visibly floats above the carrier is a defect even when fully legible.
- Contrast wherever text sits over artwork. If it is short, add a solid panel, a
scrim, or a directional gradient
For every actual render-review cycle, append one numbered pass to
render-review.md with its concrete findings, the changes applied, and the
result confirmed by the next render. A clean render records none for findings
and changes and pass for the result. Fix, re-render, and read again until no
defect remains. A taste preference is not a defect — do not invent one so you
have something to say.
After defects are resolved, perform exactly one optimization assessment against
the reference and request. Compare visual-asset count, semantic variety,
icon-to-copy pairing, and regions that changed from image-supported to text-only.
If one clear opportunity would materially improve scanning, recall, or fidelity,
apply only the highest-impact enhancement, update the asset plan and prompts when
needed, rerender, and append the real pass. If none exists, write Optimization: none in the current pass and do not rerender. Record the consolidated file once
after the final render:
scripts/trace.sh artifact render-review.md P16_read_render.
If the same problem survives two fixes, your diagnosis is wrong. Stop, look at
the image again, and change your assumption rather than your wording.
Optional PPTX handoff
The mouse-editable HTML is built in and is not an optional integration. Finish
and deliver the core design before discussing PowerPoint. When the separate
html-to-pptx skill is available, tell the user once that an editable PPTX can
also be exported. Do not generate it unless the user asks. After they ask, use
html-to-pptx with index.html or an editor-downloaded *.edited.html beside
its assets; never pass editor.html. PPTX availability must not delay or weaken
the HTML, editor, PNG, layer breakdown, or Replay delivery.
Deliver
Use these stable English labels in the user-facing handoff, regardless of the
language used inside the design:
- Final Design —
out/poster.png
- Editable Source —
index.html
- Visual Editor —
editor.html
- Layer Breakdown —
layers.html
- Agent Design Replay —
replay/index.html
Give the location of each available output, the canvas size and the font
families used, and the text
you read line by line off the render. Tell the
user that editor.html supports mouse dragging, eight-handle width/height
resizing, double-click text editing, and scan/explode/collapse views.
Treat Replay as a local evidence artifact by default and warn before sharing it,
because it may contain the original brief, prompts, attachment paths, and design
decisions.
State anything still wrong and exactly how it falls short; do not describe it
as finished.
When you cannot finish, name the obstacle — which fact is missing, which two
requirements contradict each other, how the amount of content and the canvas size
fail to fit — and say what you need. Do not disguise a design problem as missing
information.
Keep commands, exit codes, renderer names, and other internals out of the handoff
unless the user asks.