product-design

Product Design

Overview

Coordinate product-design work as a staged system. Preserve confirmed decisions, route each unresolved problem to the narrowest specialist skill, and pass explicit contracts downstream instead of re-solving the same problem at every stage. For resumable multi-step execution, hand the routed plan to design-harness rather than managing run state here.

When to use this skill

Use when:

• the user asks to design a product, continue a design program, or move from feature definitions into pages;
• multiple design skills are relevant and sequence/ownership matters;
• a prior session already established IA, page baselines, or approved visual direction;
• “continue”, “next page”, or “finish the product design” must resume from existing work rather than restart.

Do not use this skill as a replacement for specialist design, documentation, rendering, implementation, or testing skills.

How to use this skill

1. Recover the current state. Identify approved facts, current stage, completed artifacts, open decisions, and the next unfinished deliverable.
2. Choose execution mode. If the task spans multiple stages, tools, approvals, corrections, or must resume later, REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: use design-harness as the execution controller. Keep this skill as the router/decision layer.
3. Select the narrowest SOP profile when Harness is used.
   • new product/feature from intent to UI → product-to-ui
   • continue one page from locked contracts/baseline → existing-product-next-page
   • generate sibling pages against one shared baseline → page-family-batch
   • scoped correction to an existing run → design-correction
   • Stitch-centered high-fidelity delivery → stitch-high-fidelity-delivery
   • approved design into guarded implementation handoff → design-to-implementation If none fits, keep the run unprofiled or define a tested custom profile rather than distorting an existing one.
4. Classify the missing work.
   • behavior semantics → REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: feature-design
   • navigation/routes/context → REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: navigation-design
   • continuation from an approved UI baseline → REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: ui-continuity
   • documentation suites/PRD/UI docs → use the project’s documentation skill, such as full-stack-doc
   • PRD-to-design description translation → use tui-prd-to-descriptions when appropriate
   • visual execution → use the selected rendering skill (for example Stitch, Pencil, or huashu-design)
   • delivery verification → use the appropriate delivery/testing skills
5. Protect authority boundaries. A downstream renderer may propose visuals but may not silently rewrite upstream product contracts.
6. Build the design task handoff. Use references/design-task-contract.md so every stage consumes the same page ID, source versions, constraints, scenario data, and acceptance criteria.
7. Advance one gate at a time. Candidate generation, preferred direction, product-contract approval, visual-master approval, implementation verification, and archival are distinct states.
8. Resume instead of restart. If the user says “continue”, execute the next approved task unless a missing decision materially blocks it.
9. Run consistency review before promotion. Use design-guard when several artifacts must agree.

Detailed routing is in references/workflow.md.

Best Practices

• Orchestrate; do not duplicate.
• Preserve locked decisions until explicitly changed.
• Ask only for material blockers.
• Keep one canonical identity for page/feature/navigation objects across skills.
• Separate proposals from approved facts.
• Do not equate rendering success with design approval or implementation completion.
• Prefer narrow skills over one giant prompt.

Output contract

For the current iteration, return:

• current stage and authority sources;
• completed vs missing decisions;
• specialist skill(s) required next;
• design task contract or handoff;
• explicit human checkpoint when needed;
• next action and promotion gate.

Keywords

product design workflow, design orchestration, continue design, next page, product design SOP, design handoff, design pipeline, product design, continue design, page design workflow, design orchestration