Comps are shipped screens: subject present, mode readable, depth over coverage

skill/reference/new-work.md

@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ The script assigns which structure gets built; your top-ranked structure is what
 
 The standing exit: every direction round offers one quiet, permanent alternative, the category standard, played straight. It is the user's door, never yours: never recommend it, never weigh it against the roll, never let it soften the dealt directions; the counterweights bind the unchosen default, not the chosen one. When the user takes it, in the canon action, a safer-steer, or plain words asking for the familiar or competitor-like path, convention becomes the commitment: ask once for two or three products this should sit alongside, make their craft level the bar, and execute the canon at full fidelity, without irony or smuggled quirk. A standing preference gets recorded as a brand commitment in PRODUCT.md. <!-- rule:skill-canon-standing-exit --> Re-roll eliminates every direction already shown, grounded and challenger alike; after two consecutive re-rolls, ask what quality is missing. You may re-roll on your own only on named factual grounds, when the assigned direction cannot carry the product's truth or task; taste is never grounds. The user may re-roll freely, and a user- or brief-pinned direction beats the roll, always. <!-- rule:skill-assigned-plus-reroll --> Present the decision visually: write an options payload with the assigned direction leading and its raised lines included, the pick card when one exists, the dealt challengers as alternates carrying their QUALITY BAR cards plus each challenger's verdict and kept line, re-roll with its safer and bolder registers, steer, plus canon enabled, and `followup: true` when the execution-contract round will follow (it does whenever image generation exists and no standing build-path preference is recorded); a degraded roll with no challengers still uses the page, as a single text-only card with re-roll. Give every card the same anatomy, thesis, palette, materials, first viewport, honest risk, and the challengers' case lines (run the script with `--schema` for the exact shape); the page renders identity from these fields, routes declined challengers to a demoted row on its own, and a challenger's catalog image rides as labeled inspiration, never as the promise of the build. Author `canonCard` too: the category standard as one honest card with the same anatomy; the page keeps it subordinate, and the counterweights still bind you. Run `node {{scripts_path}}/serve-question.mjs --start --payload <file>` (run it with `--schema` first for the exact payload shape). It daemonizes, prints the page URL and a key, and exits immediately; now open that URL for the user, in-app browser first, then the system opener, then showing the URL. Collect the choice with `--wait --key <key>`, repeating while it exits 3; the ANSWER prints as JSON. Exit 4 means the page was closed without an answer: re-present once through the structured question tool, and with no answer there either, proceed unattended with the assigned direction and state the assumptions. A harness that can leave a shell blocked in the background may instead run the script without `--start` and let it auto-open and block. Only a session where no browser can open at all, headless, CI, an eval worker, a remote shell with no display, puts the same decision through the structured question tool instead; the script self-detects these environments and exits 2 with that advice, so treat exit 2 as this fallback, never as an error to retry. <!-- rule:skill-visual-decision-page -->
 
-When image generation exists, every card also declares a `sketch` path under `.impeccable/mocks/decision/` (the field keeps its wire name for compatibility; what it carries is the card's comp), the canon card included. Where the harness sandboxes its shell, start the page through the least-sandboxed command path it offers: a sandboxed shell cannot bind the board's port, and the first-attempt failure costs a retry every session. Serve the page first, then produce the comps; the page shimmer-waits per slot and the user may answer before they land. Each card's image is that direction's north-star comp at full fidelity, produced under the comp discipline in [visualize.md](visualize.md): the requested surface's first viewport, structure-led prompt, real product name and real content, no invented commercial claims, in that card's own palette, type character, and material world, committed all the way. Generation takes the same time at any fidelity, so an unfinished sketch pays sketch quality for comp cost; fairness between cards comes from equal fidelity in each card's own grammar, one surface, one aspect, never from shared unfinishedness. The frame's aspect is the surface's own: a native app or mobile-first surface comps portrait at its device viewport, a desktop web surface landscape, and the decision page adapts to either, so a phone screen comped landscape is a broken frame, not a neutral default. Produce in the order the user reads, the assigned card, then the pick, then the full-card hand, then canon, each file written with its prompt sidecar the moment it is done, so a re-roll's spend front-loads onto the cards read first; declined challengers get no comp, their catalog thumb is their face. When the harness runs subagents in parallel, fan the set out as one agent per card: each spawn is the shipped asset producer with a single-comp packet, that card's fields, PRODUCT.md, the shared frame, and the card's declared path, up to four in flight at once. A slot still empty when its agent returns is regenerated inline, and a slot still empty when the user answers is dropped without ceremony; no other supervision is owed. Without parallel subagents, generate in the main thread after serving, in the same reading order, and let the harness's own generation display carry the progress; the wait for the answer follows the last file. The chosen card's comp is not spent by the choice: on a comp-led build it enters the comp round as compositional option one, and on a code-led build it returns at the finish review as the critique reference, what the image dared that the build did not. The unchosen comps stay in `.impeccable/mocks/decision/` as the round's spent hand; they carry no approval and imply none. With no image generation, the cards carry their identity in palette chips and facts, and that page is complete, not a lesser version; the page then also demotes every challenger's catalog art to a labeled thumbnail on its own, because salience must encode the verdict, never the accident of which cards have images. <!-- rule:skill-decision-comps-full-fidelity --> <!-- rule:skill-salience-parity -->
+When image generation exists, every card also declares a `sketch` path under `.impeccable/mocks/decision/` (the field keeps its wire name for compatibility; what it carries is the card's comp), the canon card included. Where the harness sandboxes its shell, start the page through the least-sandboxed command path it offers: a sandboxed shell cannot bind the board's port, and the first-attempt failure costs a retry every session. Serve the page first, then produce the comps; the page shimmer-waits per slot and the user may answer before they land. Each card's image is that direction's north-star comp at full fidelity, produced under the comp discipline in [visualize.md](visualize.md): the requested surface's first viewport, structure-led prompt, real product name and real content, no invented commercial claims, in that card's own palette, type character, and material world, committed all the way, where commitment is depth, not coverage: visualize.md's self-checks, the mode readable from the image, one dominant move, the subject present as content, bind decision comps identically. Generation takes the same time at any fidelity, so an unfinished sketch pays sketch quality for comp cost; fairness between cards comes from equal fidelity in each card's own grammar, one surface, one aspect, never from shared unfinishedness. The frame's aspect is the surface's own: a native app or mobile-first surface comps portrait at its device viewport, a desktop web surface landscape, and the decision page adapts to either, so a phone screen comped landscape is a broken frame, not a neutral default. Produce in the order the user reads, the assigned card, then the pick, then the full-card hand, then canon, each file written with its prompt sidecar the moment it is done, so a re-roll's spend front-loads onto the cards read first; declined challengers get no comp, their catalog thumb is their face. When the harness runs subagents in parallel, fan the set out as one agent per card: each spawn is the shipped asset producer with a single-comp packet, that card's fields, PRODUCT.md, the shared frame, and the card's declared path, up to four in flight at once. A slot still empty when its agent returns is regenerated inline, and a slot still empty when the user answers is dropped without ceremony; no other supervision is owed. Without parallel subagents, generate in the main thread after serving, in the same reading order, and let the harness's own generation display carry the progress; the wait for the answer follows the last file. The chosen card's comp is not spent by the choice: on a comp-led build it enters the comp round as compositional option one, and on a code-led build it returns at the finish review as the critique reference, what the image dared that the build did not. The unchosen comps stay in `.impeccable/mocks/decision/` as the round's spent hand; they carry no approval and imply none. With no image generation, the cards carry their identity in palette chips and facts, and that page is complete, not a lesser version; the page then also demotes every challenger's catalog art to a labeled thumbnail on its own, because salience must encode the verdict, never the accident of which cards have images. <!-- rule:skill-decision-comps-full-fidelity --> <!-- rule:skill-salience-parity -->
 
 The moment the direction lands, one more round on the same open table decides the execution contract. The direction payload declares `followup: true`, so the table stays open after the pick; deliver the build-path payload through `--update` immediately. Two text-only cards. **Comp-led**: a first-viewport comp is generated and it is law, the finish review audits the build against it; boldest composition on the table, fix rounds expected, motion at risk; choosing it makes the comp non-optional, no silent skipping. **Code-led**: no comp of this page and no apology for it; the QUALITY BAR boards still calibrate finish, and the ambition moves into the written contract, the FIRST VIEWPORT block plus a named signature interaction and motion grammar, which the finish reviewer audits in behavior; code-led is not a discount on commitment, the direction still lands fully committed in code. Lead with the chosen world's fit: a costume-heavy catalog world leads comp-led, a quiet or conventional direction leads code-led; the lead is a default, never a decision, and the user flips it freely. A standing preference, voiced once, is recorded as a brand commitment in PRODUCT.md and skips this round on later surfaces. Without image generation there is no fork and no round: code-led is the only path, stated in one line rather than asked. Only a detached table (`--start`) stays open for `--update`: a blocking serve or the structured-tool channel runs the build-path round as its own second question instead, and `followup: true` belongs only on a detached round. <!-- rule:skill-build-path-round -->
 

skill/reference/visualize.md

@@ -9,6 +9,9 @@ The purpose of a probe is to test composition, narrative, hierarchy, density, fo
 Render three distinct high-fidelity north-star comps of the requested surface, with whatever generation capability exists, saved under `.impeccable/mocks/` so they survive the session. Comp at the surface's own viewport: portrait at device size for a native app or mobile-first surface, desktop landscape otherwise; a phone screen comped landscape misstates the composition before anything gets built against it. Comps are the build thread's own work, never delegated: the thread that writes the comp prompts holds the direction's full context, and it has already seen every comp when the build starts. Open every image you produce or reference by its workspace-relative path, never an absolute one: sandboxed viewers reject absolute paths, and everything under the project root has a relative path. Base them on the real content and the surface concepts already developed with the user. Three is the number: one comp invites rubber-stamping, and the spread between three is what surfaces the composition worth building. The chosen card's decision comp is the first of the three: it already renders this direction at full fidelity under this file's discipline, so this round generates two more that vary what the first held fixed, and all three go to the approval point together. Only a round that arrives with no decision comp, a degraded roll, an identity-mode page, a direction pinned without the decision round, renders all three here.
 
 - A comp is a designed surface, not a picture of the subject. Lead the generation prompt with the surface's own structure, whatever regions this design actually has, named in order with their scale relationships; a page with no navigation states that instead of inventing one, and an unconventional surface states its unconventional skeleton. A prompt that leads with the world's atmosphere gets a vignette back: the model paints the fish market instead of the fish market's website. Self-check every render: if it could hang as a poster, or reads as a photograph or scene with some text on it, it is not a comp; regenerate with the layout scaffold stated more literally.
+- The inverse failure fails too: a surface with none of its subject in it. The subject appears as the content the regions exist to hold: a forum about machines shows the machines, a menu shows the dishes, a player shows the work it plays, a dashboard shows the live data it watches. The world dresses the frame and never displaces what the frame exists to show. Self-check every render: point at the subject; a render that depicts everything about the world and nothing of the subject fails however faithful its atmosphere, so regenerate with the subject's imagery named region by region in the prompt.
+- A comp is judged as the shipped screen, in the surface's mode and on its platform. The visitor's job must be readable from the image alone: an Operate surface shows the task's real controls and data mid-use, a Read surface shows its text at reading scale, a Persuade surface shows what is offered and the action that accepts it, an Experience surface gives the work itself the room. Self-check every render: name the mode from the image with no caption; a render whose mode cannot be read back is art direction without a surface, so regenerate with the visitor's job restated as the prompt's spine.
+- Commitment is depth, not coverage. The world enters through one dominant move plus the material, type, and spacing that support it, and the remaining regions hold still so that move can be read; a region that simply does its job in the world's own grammar carries the direction further than a region performing the concept. Density is a mode decision, not a fidelity setting: calm is what Operate and Read surfaces are for, and even a Persuade or Experience surface spends its boldness on a focal moment rather than everywhere at once. Self-check every render: count what competes with the focal moment for the eye in the first viewport; a second contender means the comp is shouting, so regenerate keeping the strongest move and quieting the rest. Busy is louder, not bolder.
 - When the user shortlisted multiple concepts, spread the three across them.
 - When one direction is committed, vary the structural uncertainty an image can resolve: topology, sequence, density, hierarchy, focal composition, or interaction framing.
 - Show enough beyond the opening moment to prove the concept can govern the whole requested surface.