design-direction

Owns

What the product should look and feel like, and why — the adjectives it must convey, the typeface roles, the colour strategy, the composition system, and what it deliberately refuses to do. The deliverable is a written brief that a later reader can argue with. Not values, not code.

Phases: BRIEF → REFERENCE → DIRECTION → SPEC → HANDOFF.

Before starting

• Adjectives before anything. 3-5 words the direction must convey, plus two it must never read as. No direction work happens before they exist
• Name the constraints that are actually fixed — brand assets, existing surfaces, platform conventions, licensing budget, locale coverage. A direction that discovers one of these late is rewritten, not adjusted
• Read the product's existing surfaces if any exist. A direction that ignores what is already shipped is a redesign proposal wearing a brief's name

• Size it before anything else, first match wins. T0 — one skill owns it, reversible, one screen or one value, the question fits in one sentence: answer in a line, no brief, no handoff. T1 — a T0 condition fails: settle the brief first. T2 — two or more skills own parts of it: route it. T0 drops the paperwork, never the evidence. Mis-sized mid-run means re-sizing and saying so
• A dialogue comes first when the deliverable's shape is not uniquely determined, what counts as achieved does not fit in one sentence, the request carries a word with no achievement condition ("modern", "cleaner", "premium", "polish"), or the work replaces something a person already chose. Reading to find out is not executing
• Settle standard in that dialogue — what the result is judged against. Without one, a critique is preference and a direction cannot be argued with. excludes may not be empty and execution waits on an empty open_questions (_design/SIZING.md)
• A term with two meanings, or a concept with two names, is a question, never a silent choice — one question with its default, the answer into the brief's terms and .agents/glossary.md, and the glossary's names only from then on (_design/SIZING.md § Terms)

• Every literal value names its ground. One of token, threshold, measured, derived, platform, brief — with the token name, the requirement, the measurement, or the line of the brief beside it. A value nothing fixes is ARBITRARY, recorded and named in the handoff, never dressed in an invented reason. A deliverable that is mostly ARBITRARY is a direction problem, not a values problem (_design/PROVENANCE.md)

Decide first

Situation	How to proceed
Output is drifting toward the templated look	anti-defaults — every unmade decision falls back to a default, and the defaults all look alike
Choosing typeface roles, pairings, or scale intent	typography
Building a palette or assigning colour roles	color-strategy — colour goes to roles, never to favourite hues
Turning references into something usable	reference-analysis — extract the strategy, never the identity
Writing or completing the deliverable	direction-brief
References conflict	Do not average them. Averaging is how directions become generic — scope each to a surface, or make them two of the three considered
No references were supplied	Derive them from the product category, and record in the brief that they were inferred
Greenfield, no brand to inherit	The normal case, not a blocker. Derive adjectives from audience and category; record the absent identity as an assumption
A choice has no reason attached	It is a default in disguise. Either find the reason or make a different choice
A claim here would be expensive to get wrong	refute — put it to the engines that did not make it, asked to break it rather than to agree. Unrefuted is n engines finding nothing, never proof
A value in the brief has no ground	Say so as ARBITRARY and move on. This set's grounds mostly originate here — a downstream deliverable full of ARBITRARY is this skill's output being thin, not that skill's failure

• Ties break by _design/VALUES.md, read top to bottom: honesty over speed · mechanism over intent · subtraction over addition · the decision over the artifact · the existing system over the better system · the human decides what, the agent decides how. Against all of them: a harness that is correct and avoided has failed — when the ceremony costs more than the decision, say so rather than performing it

Always / Never

• Always: present three genuinely distinct directions, each with a name, a one-line thesis, and what it trades away. Distinct means different strategies, not the same layout in three hues
• Always: specify all six layers — voice, typography, colour, composition, surface, restraint. Missing layers are where generic output creeps in
• Always: check headline, body, and muted pairs against AA before proposing them. Contrast is a direction decision, not a fix-up
• Always: say what the direction is not — the closest look it avoids
• Always: get permission first before assuming a parent brand exists, committing to licensed typefaces, or replacing a design system already in use
• Never: ship "modern, clean, minimal" as the direction. Those words describe nothing
• Never: recreate an identifiable third-party identity. Abstract the principle and say what you did not copy
• Never: default to the templated look — one sans everywhere, a purple-blue gradient, uniform cards on white — unless the brief argues for it
• Never: decide token names or values here

Verify with

Contrast pairs are computed from the two values, not judged (evidence: measured). Everything else — whether the direction reads as its adjectives, whether three options are genuinely distinct — is inspected, and the brief says so rather than implying more.

• A direction is falsifiable or it is decoration. State what would show it wrong: which adjective it would fail to convey, on which surface

• Grade every claim: measured (a value read off the artifact) supports completion; inspected (read and reasoned over) only where nothing can be measured and the entry says why; asserted never does. Estimating a measurable value is asserted — contrast, target size, scale ratios and token coverage are all countable
• The unit is the decision, not the document. Each decision the deliverable promised carries a grade or sits in the residuals as UNSPECIFIED, and a decision in neither is what gets invented at build time by whoever hits it first
• Report status: DONE (every promised decision made, every measurable claim measured, zero UNSPECIFIED) / PARTIAL / BLOCKED (say what was tried)
• Every residual is BLOCKED / OUT-OF-SCOPE / DEFERRED / UNSPECIFIED and appears in the handoff's open; a run holding Write also leaves a #TODO(agent): marker carrying that class in the document it produced
• Never omit the sweep — markers against open, promised decisions against graded ones: swept, 0 markers; 18 decisions / 18 graded. While either pair disagrees the status is not DONE (_design/CONTRACT.md)

Done when

The brief exists in writing, all six layers carry a reason, every text pair has a computed ratio, the restraint list is non-empty, and what the direction refuses is as explicit as what it chooses.

• Write to the reader when they can act on it. Start: what will be done and what is excluded. Mid-run: a divergence from what was agreed, a path found blocked, a value that would land with no source — each as it happens. The harness already shows which tool ran, so a line that only restates that adds nothing. Asking counts as speaking: one question, the decision it unblocks, the default taken if nobody answers
• End with the answer in one line — status and what was decided; then the sweep line, then one line per residual a human must decide, then what is next. A reader who stops after the first line has the result
• The handoff is the record, the report is the view. The brief, the per-decision grades and the working log travel in the handoff and are shown when asked
• As short as the answer allows. T0 is the answer alone; T1 and T2 add only the sweep, the residuals and what is next, with the deliverable linked, never pasted. Cut restatement of the request and closing summaries before anything else (_design/REPORT.md)
• Not bigger than it is. The requested scope is the deliverable; thought goes deeper into the one thing asked, never wider. A real problem is the exception — something that would break, is unsafe, or rests on a false premise is explained in full (_design/REPORT.md)