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chore(01-design-tokens-rams-foundation-01): commit design baseline — Rams docs, mockups, agent skills

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- Root Rams design docs (DESIGN.md, IDEAS.md) and GSD install-fix notes (GSD_FIX.md, gsd-fix.sh)
- Four Telemetry Rams mockup screens + telemetry_rams/DESIGN.md (canonical token frontmatter)
- .agents/ project skills (design-taste-frontend) + skills-lock.json
- .gitignore: node_modules/dist/env secrets/OS junk; .planning stays local-only; Zone.Identifier scrubbed (9 files deleted)
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---
name: design-taste-frontend
description: >-
tasteskill v2, the anti-slop frontend skill. Art direction for websites, distilled from a study of
247 curated gallery sites (One Page Love, Awwwards Sites of the Day). Deals researched directions
(idea, composition, type, palette, photographs, section blueprints) from a library, enforces a strict
no-slop house style with a real-browser inspector, and runs a look-and-fix loop on screenshots. Use
this whenever you build, design, redesign, restyle, polish or review a landing page, marketing site,
portfolio, product page, one-pager, hero or any public-facing web page, in any stack (HTML/CSS, React,
Next.js, Vue, Svelte, Astro, Tailwind) — also when the user says a page looks generic, templated,
"AI-made", sloppy, or asks to make it look designed, premium, award-level or less like every other
site. Also for app screens: dashboards, admin and analytics views, settings, inboxes and other screens
people work in, with their own run and rules.
---
# tasteskill v2
A page built by a model usually looks like the average of every page the model has seen: a centred
headline over three lines, a little label above it, a row of icon cards, a soft gradient, a few thin
rules and a monospace caption. Nothing in it is wrong and nothing in it was decided.
This skill replaces those defaults with decisions, in four ways:
1. **A script deals the directions, you choose among them.** Asked to invent a look, a model picks
the category default every time. `scripts/draw.mjs` deals three of twenty researched directions;
you choose the one that carries the subject's idea, and the script then deals its type system,
palette, hero and section compositions from a library distilled from 247 real sites.
2. **The idea comes from the subject.** In the study, what separated the best sites from the forgettable
ones was a concept taken from the thing itself, not the styling.
3. **A house style with no ornaments,** measured in a real browser by `scripts/inspect.mjs`, so the
rules are checked rather than hoped for.
4. **You look at what you made.** Screenshots at three widths, a juror's rubric, fix, look again.
One warning learned in testing. Taking the ornaments away is only half the job; a page that has lost its
labels, rules and cards and gained nothing in their place reads as thin, and blind jurors rightly prefer
a richer page with tells over an empty page without them. The other half is substance: type set
larger, whole fields of colour, real pictures of this subject's world (found or drawn), and every
section carrying its full content. The skill is built to give you that; do not trade it for restraint.
In the commands below `<skill>` is this skill's folder. Run them from the project's root, so the
working files land in `.taste-skill/` there. The scripts need Node 22+ and an installed Chrome, Edge
or Chromium, and install nothing. `assets.mjs` also needs network access; it uses no API keys.
## Page or app screen
Decide first which of two kinds of work this is.
- **A page** is read and scrolled: a landing page, a marketing or product site, a portfolio, an
event, a restaurant, a one-pager. It follows **the run** below.
- **An app screen** is worked in: a dashboard, an admin or analytics view, settings, billing, an inbox
or queue to work through, a wallet, a list with filters, an editor or builder. It follows
**`references/app-screens.md`**: its own run, its own draw (`draw.mjs --app`), its own house rules
(quiet borders, small labels and repeated panels are normal there; gradients, glows, icons in tinted
squares, rainbow charts and invented vanity numbers are not) and `inspect.mjs --app`. Read that file
whole before you start; the page run below does not apply.
A product site that shows its app is a page; the interface fragments on it follow the app-screen
rules for their insides. Deal the product's app style once, in its own folder, with the page's colours
and type kept:
```bash
node <skill>/scripts/draw.mjs --app --kind <kind> --brief "<the product>" --keep palette,type --out .taste-skill/app
```
and build every fragment the page shows (the hero's live screen, a feature's crop, a chart) as a real
piece of that app: `assets/app.css` for its panels, tables and controls, `assets/charts.js` for its
charts, real data that adds up, one finding stated, cropped and scaled the way the page's blueprint
treats a picture. A fragment that looks like a working product is the strongest picture a software page
has; grey bars and lorem numbers are the weakest. When a request mixes both (a landing page and the
dashboard behind it), build each with its own run and one shared palette and typeface.
## The run
Do these in order. Steps 1–5 take a few minutes and decide whether the page is any good.
### 1. Read the brief and the project
Find out what is real: the subject, the audience, the one thing the page must get someone to do, the
stack, any existing brand (colours, fonts, logo), and above all **what imagery truly exists**: the
project's own photographs or product shots, a real interface that can be shown, an image generation
tool you can call, or nothing. Do not plan around pictures you do not have. Nothing of its own is
rarely nothing at all: the subject's city, street, materials and history are in open archives and
museums, free to use with a credit (step 6, `scripts/assets.mjs`).
If the request is vague, decide and state your reading in one line instead of asking. Ask only when a
missing fact blocks the work (for example, no product name).
Then **inventory the subject** in your notes: eight to twelve things that belong to this client and to
no competitor. Look for its name and what the name means; its address, door number, street and
neighbourhood, and what that place looks like (its tiles, signs, paint colours, typefaces on its shop
fronts, its light, its weather); the numbers in the brief (seats, rooms, minutes to the sea, the
price, the year); the constraint it lives with (only one batch a month, closed in winter, by
appointment); its materials and colours; its rituals and hours (the oven lit at five, the ferry at
seven); the printed things of its world (a timetable, a label, a ticket, a sign). This list is where
the idea comes from in step 4. In blind tests, the page that won each brief was built from an item on
such a list (the client's name and what it means, the street it stands in, the one constraint that
makes it what it is), and the pages that lost had a good composition with a category idea. The list
is also your picture search: each place, material and printed thing on it is a query for step 6.
### 2. Write the argument
Before any design, list the page as claims with their proof, one line per section, the way
`references/copy.md` §1 shows. The claims decide which sections exist and in what order. Delete any
section that has no claim. This is how you avoid the stock sequence of hero, logos, three features,
testimonial, pricing, call to action.
### 3. Draw the direction
```bash
node <skill>/scripts/draw.mjs --sector <sector> --brief "<one line about the subject>" \
--sections <roles in the order of your argument> [--tone <tone>] [--have <assets>] [--keep palette,type] \
--options 3
```
This deals three directions and prints a short summary of each. Hold each one against your inventory:
which way of composing can carry something only this client has? Choose that one, not the most
familiar, and write one line in your notes on why. In testing, a single random direction that did not
suit the subject was the commonest cause of a weak page. Then deal the full sheet:
```bash
node <skill>/scripts/draw.mjs <the same arguments, without --options> --direction <chosen id>
```
- `--sector`: `node <skill>/scripts/draw.mjs --list sectors`. Pick the closest.
- `--sections`: roles from `--list roles` (features, showcase, how-it-works, testimonial, proof, stats,
pricing, faq, cta, footer, intro, about, work, gallery, list, contact). The hero is implied.
- `--tone` (optional): quiet, bold, warm, technical, playful, luxury, editorial. Only pass it when the
brief clearly asks for one.
- `--have`: assets that really exist, comma-separated: `photography` (the project's own photographs of
the place, people or work), `product-photo` (photographs of the specific product, or an image tool
that can make them), `product-ui` (real screenshots), `illustration`, `video`. Leave it out if you
have none: the draw then avoids compositions that depend on them and the sheet says how to fill
picture slots honestly (software shows its own interface built in HTML; a product with no photographs
is drawn and set among real pictures of its world, never a fake product shot). Pictures you will
find in the open collections are not the project's own; leave them out of `--have`.
- `--keep palette,type`: when the brand already fixes colours or typefaces. The draw then deals only
the composition, and you map the brand's values onto the roles.
The command prints a **direction sheet**. It is the art direction for this build:
- **Adopt it.** Do not blend it with the layout you would have made anyway. If it feels unfamiliar,
good: the familiar layout is the one this skill exists to prevent.
- Redraw one slot (`--redraw hero | type | palette | photos | scenes | section:<role> | direction`) only for a
reason you can state: it contradicts a stated brand constraint, or needs an asset that does not
exist. Never redraw to get something more comfortable. Record every redraw in your report.
- When a dealt section cannot hold the real content (it compares three plans and there is one price;
it wants five quotations and there are none), do not bend the content to fit. List the others with
`--alternatives <role>`, pick the one whose assumptions match the content, and take it with
`--redraw section:<role>=<id>`.
- **Check the palette against the subject.** A dealt palette is a set of proportions (one ground, one
ink, one accent, fields) as much as a set of colours. If its colours fight the subject's own material
(candy pastels for a peat whisky, neon for a mountain hut), redraw the palette once; if the subject
has unmistakable colours of its own (its material, the paint of its street, the landscape outside
its windows), keep the dealt proportions and take the colours from the subject instead, and say so
in the report.
- Reprint it any time with `node <skill>/scripts/draw.mjs --show`. In a long session, re-read it before each
section you build.
### 4. Find the idea
The direction is a way of composing. The idea is what makes the page belong to this subject and no
other. Write this sentence in your notes and do not start building until both blanks are filled from
the subject itself:
> On this page, **[something that belongs to the subject]** becomes **[the device the direction calls for]**.
Places to look for the first blank:
- **Its output.** What does the thing produce? Put the real output on the page as material. (A camera
that prints poems delivered its copy as paper slips.)
- **Its object or shape.** What does it physically look like, in cross-section, in silhouette?
Enlarge it, crop it, make it the frame or the one motif.
- **Its name.** Can the letters hold a photograph, stack into a wall, split to two corners?
- **Its place.** Is there one view that makes someone want to be there?
- **Its ritual.** Is there a sequence the page can perform as it scrolls?
- **Its artefact.** What printed thing already exists in its world: ticket, menu, label, receipt,
invitation, folder, manual?
- **Its opposite.** Which other category owns the feeling this one lacks?
Fill the first blank from your inventory (step 1), not from the category. **The competitor test:** put
the nearest real competitor in the sentence (the bakery two streets away, another oak furniture maker,
another hut on the same mountain). If the sentence still works, the idea belongs to the category: a
loaf of bread is every bakery; the seven doors of the street this one is named after are only this one.
"Clean and modern" is not an idea. The sites the study's panel scored lowest were the ones whose idea
was recorded as "none beyond the standard formula".
**One live thing.** Give the page one thing the visitor can do, or that is different for each visit,
made from the idea: pick a wood and see the chair in it; type your name and see it cut in the
foundry's letters; set the loan and read the real monthly figure; see whether the hut's stove is lit
right now and how long until the last ferry; choose a size and see it against the room. In blind tests every winning page had one and the jurors named it first. Rules: it uses the subject's real content, it works on a phone with a thumb, it has a plain
fallback without script, it never blocks reading, and it is one thing, not a playground. It is
built in step 6 as part of the page, not added as motion in step 9.
**The scenes carry the idea too.** The scroll scenes on the sheet are devices waiting for a subject.
Decide what each one shows from your inventory before building: the fly-through passes through this
studio's own title cards, the route is the road this shipment really takes, the picture that opens to
the whole screen is the room the guest will wake up in. A scene filled with pictures that could belong
to anyone is a screensaver.
### 5. Write the words
Write the whole page as a copy deck (plain text) before markup, following `references/copy.md`:
- **Every headline fits in two lines or fewer at every width.** Do the arithmetic in copy.md §2 before
committing to a sentence: about 32 characters is safe everywhere at a confident size. The studied
gallery heroes have a median of 5 words and 32 characters.
- One supporting sentence, directly under the headline (32–48px below it) and shown with it, never
docked at the foot of the first screen or held back by an animation. When the headline is a name or
a figure of speech, this sentence says plainly what the thing is. One primary action, named for what
it does, as a real button on the first screen.
- **The first screen answers the visitor's first question in large type.** For an event: what it is,
when and where (the dates belong in the headline or at the second size, never only in small text).
For a product: what it is and what it costs or does. For a person: who and what they do. Every
section the visitor came for (the line-up, the menu, the rooms, the price) has its own heading and
its own place in the navigation.
- **Write the full content.** Every section the brief asks for delivers its information completely:
the whole menu with prices, each room with its own details, every speaker and talk, the price with
what it includes, an answer for each real question. Thin sections are the commonest reason a clean
page loses to a busier one.
- Sample details are expected where the brief leaves gaps (dish names, room names and rates, project
titles) so the design is seen at full density; list them in the report for the client to confirm.
Proof is never invented: no customers, quotes, reviews, press, logos or business statistics.
### 6. Build it, still
Build the page with motion switched off in your head; a page that needs animation to look finished is
not finished. Order of work:
1. **Tokens.** Colour and type roles from the sheet as CSS custom properties. Everything downstream
references tokens only. `<skill>/assets/base.css` is a neutral foundation you may start from (reset, token
names, fluid type steps, grid, focus and selection styles, the motion helpers); it has no look of
its own.
2. **The hero, exactly as the blueprint describes it,** at desktop and at phone width. Get the big
thing big and the small things small before anything else exists.
3. **Each section from its blueprint,** with this project's content. Keep the geometry, change the
subject. Neighbouring sections must not share a layout. **Carry the idea into every section,**
pricing, FAQ and footer included: the commonest failure in the study, even among good sites, is a
distinctive first screen followed by stock blocks.
4. **Imagery,** in this order of preference:
1. the project's own;
2. generated, if you have an image tool;
3. **real pictures of the subject's world from the open collections,** whenever an honest one
exists. Search them with `node <skill>/scripts/assets.mjs "<query>"` (Openverse, Wikimedia
Commons, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Met; only licences that allow commercial use, by
default). Search the inventory, not the category: its street in old postcards, an old map of the
neighbourhood, its material up close, its trade in engravings, a museum object of its kind, a
botanical plate, a star chart. Use them large and with intent: one archival photograph as the
hero, an engraving enlarged into the page's motif, the real map of the street as the contact
section. Look at each before choosing; `--get <ref>` downloads it into `assets/` and records
its source and licence, and `--credits` prints the credit line for the footer. A found picture
shows the world around the client and is never presented as the client's own product, room,
dish, person or team;
4. **drawn in code from the subject itself,** for what no honest picture exists of (its objects,
its tiles, its windows, its product's interface, made as one consistent flat graphic language in
the palette's real colours);
5. the photographs dealt on the sheet, only where an honestly generic picture fits (the sea for a
sea house), never as a stand-in for the subject;
6. type and colour alone.
When the project has footage or a real picture of its own process or product, the first screen
shows it, large (about 40% of the screen or more). Never write a sentence on the page about where
the pictures come from or what they are not ("none of these shows our bar"): a caption says what
the picture is, and the credit line sits small in the footer. A portfolio whose work is invented
for the brief draws each piece as a finished still of that work (its title card with its own type,
an end frame, a poster), with real detail, never as a pictogram of the client's product.
**The floor, which the inspector checks:** at least four real pictures on the page, usually six to
twelve (photographs, archival images, maps, engravings, footage, raster artwork; for software, its
cropped interface fragments count too). SVG drawings do not count toward the floor: draw what no
picture exists of, and still carry real pictures. Add one moving picture wherever an honest clip
exists: search it with `assets.mjs --video "<query>"` and use it as a muted loop with a poster
frame. Models skip pictures and footage because finding them is work; the page fails without them.
`references/imagery.md` covers searching, licences and credits, video, drawing, crops and treatments.
5. **The live thing** from step 4, built into the section where it proves the claim (often the hero
or the booking), with real content, a thumb-sized phone version and a plain fallback.
6. **The scroll scenes,** when the sheet deals them (section 9), each with the section it carries: the page's big
moments, the camera that flies through the work, the picture that opens to the whole screen, the
word that buckles under the scroll. Copy the shared stage and the scene's files from
`<skill>/assets/scenes/`, fill the scene with this project's own pictures and words, and set the
page's tokens so it takes the page's look. A scene is composition: it decides how long the page is
and what each screen shows, so it is built now and seen in every look round, not added at the end.
`references/scenes.md` says how to put one on a page, fill it, fit it and check it;
`assets/scenes/demo/<id>.html` is a working example of each.
7. **Fullness.** Look at each desktop screen as a poster: one dominant thing and the content it
carries. A screen that is mostly empty ground is an underbuilt section, not a rest; one deliberate
rest per page is the limit, and the inspector fails a page with two or more near-empty screens.
Running text is in the full ink at 16px or more; grey is for secondary notes.
8. **The frame.** The page has one pair of equal outer margins at every width, and every section uses
the width the page has set up: when its text sits in the left half, the right half holds its
picture, its second column, its list or its figure, never nothing. Asymmetry lives inside the grid,
never in the frame: a void is placed only when something closes it on the far side. No stretch of
the page taller than about half a screen holds nothing at all; sections are 120–240px apart on
desktop. Every section the visitor came for opens with a heading that names it, and the first
screen carries the page's title in an `h1`. These are what readers name first when a page looks
wrong ("no clear title", "random empty space", "everything is pushed to one side"), and the
inspector measures each of them.
9. **States and semantics.** Real links and buttons, visible focus, alt text, a phone layout that is
its own composition.
Read `references/type.md`, `references/colour.md` and `references/layout.md` when you need the detail
behind a decision; the laws below are the short form.
### 7. Gate
```bash
node <skill>/scripts/lint.mjs <source files or folder>
node <skill>/scripts/inspect.mjs <url or path/to/index.html>
node <skill>/scripts/scenes.mjs <url or path/to/index.html> # when the page has scroll scenes
```
`scenes.mjs` photographs every scroll scene at 0, 10 … 100% of its hold, on desktop and on a phone,
and the reduced-motion page; with scenes on the sheet, `inspect.mjs` also films the whole scroll
(`desktop-film-NN.jpg`). A scene that never started or rests on desktop is a `FAIL`.
`lint.mjs` scans source for banned patterns and stock phrases. `inspect.mjs` opens the page in a real
browser at 1440, 768 and 390 pixels, measures it (headline line counts, type sizes, fonts actually
loaded, colours, rules, shadows, gradients, contrast, overflow, and the frame: equal margins, sections
huddled on one side, blank stretches, the title, untitled sections, text against the screen edge) and
saves screenshots to `.taste-skill/inspect/`. Fix every `FAIL`. Treat each `WARN` as wrong unless you can defend it to a
designer in one sentence. Re-run until there are no `FAIL`s. Do not argue with the meter and do not
hide things from it. The inspector serves local files over a throwaway local server; if the page must
also open straight from the file system, open `index.html` that way once before you finish.
### 8. Look
Passing the gate means nothing banned was measured. It does not mean the page is good. Open the
screenshots the inspector lists (every viewport, with your image viewer or Read tool) and critique them
with `references/critique.md`: the fourteen passes, the Awwwards-weighted score, the caps. Write the critique
down in its format, fix the top three problems, run the inspector again, look again. Three rounds at
most.
Judge only the pictures. If a problem is visible in a screenshot, it is real, whatever the code says.
### 9. Move
Now build the motion layer. It is required, and it is more than one fade: the inspector counts the
elements that really move while the page loads and is scrolled, and fails a page under eight (it warns
under sixteen). Any scroll scenes are already built (step 6); around them the layer has four parts:
1. **The signature move** named on the sheet: one, done well (a dealt scene can be it).
2. **An entrance for the parts of every section:** the heading, then the text, then the picture,
staggered by 60–90ms, rising 16–32px with opacity, triggered once as the section enters. Not one
fade for the whole block, and never content that stays hidden if the script fails.
3. **Feedback on every control:** press, hover and focus on buttons, links, cards and the live thing.
4. **One moving picture:** a found clip as a muted loop, a slow scale or drift on a photograph, or a
scroll-linked move on the hero picture.
Transform and opacity only; every move has a `prefers-reduced-motion` fallback that keeps the content
and drops the travel. A move that changes the colour or the layout of whole screens (colour by
chapter, a pinned story) is part of the composition, so build it in step 6 and let every look round see
it. `references/motion.md` has the tokens and tested recipes. Then run the inspector once more and check
every screenshot for content that failed to appear.
### 10. Report
Do not report until all of these are true; each one was skipped in a test run that came out badly:
- `inspect.mjs` shows **0 FAIL** at 1440, 768 and 390, on the final version of the page.
- You opened every screenshot it listed after the last change, not only the first screen.
- With scroll scenes: `scenes.mjs` ran on the final page with no problems, and you read every sheet
(desktop, phone, reduced motion).
- A stranger reading the first screen for five seconds can say what this is and what to do.
- Every section has a heading; the margins match on both sides; no stretch of the page is empty.
- The critique of your last round is written down in the shape of `references/critique.md` §4.
Tell the user, briefly: the direction dealt (name and seed) and any redraws with reasons; the idea
sentence and the live thing; the final scores from your last critique round and what still falls short;
every found picture and clip with its title, creator, licence and source page (`assets.mjs --credits` prints
the list) and where its credit sits on the page; which bundled photographs and which drawings stand in
for photography (so they can be replaced); and any sample content that must be swapped before launch.
Do not claim a check you did not run.
## House rules
These hold on every build, whatever the direction. `inspect.mjs` measures them.
| Rule | Instead |
| --- | --- |
| **Headlines: two lines or fewer, at every width.** Every `h1`–`h6`, and the main line of the first screen whatever its tag. | Cut words. Then widen the measure. Size last. |
| **A clear title on the first screen**, in the page's one `h1`, and a heading on every section. | Say what this is: the name with what it does, the product with what it is for, the event with its date and place. |
| **Equal outer margins; no section huddled on one side** with the other half of the screen empty. | Close every void with something on its far side: the section's picture, a second column, a list, a figure. |
| **No blank stretches** taller than about half a screen. | The normal section gap. A deliberate rest is a placed picture or a field of colour, once per page. |
| **Statements are paragraphs.** An intro sentence or a quotation set large is marked up as `<p>` or `<blockquote>`, stays at statement size (36px or less on desktop, 24px on a phone) and runs to about 25 words, three lines. | Larger than that it is a headline and the two-line rule applies. In blind tests jurors read a 42px sentence over four lines as a four-line headline. |
| **No eyebrows.** No small label above a heading, no pill badge above the headline, no "New ·" chip. | Put the information in the heading or the first sentence, or drop it. |
| **No monospace** outside real code blocks. | The text face. Tabular figures where numbers align. |
| **No index numbering.** No 01 / 02 / 03, no (001), no "Step 2". | Order shown by position, size, or the words. A real `<ol>` if order matters. |
| **No thin rules.** No hairline dividers, no 1px outlined boxes, no grid lines, crosshairs or crop marks. | Space. A step in background tone. A change of scale. A filled shape. |
| **No gradients.** Not as backgrounds, not on buttons, not in text. | Flat colour, or a real photograph. A neutral scrim under text on a photo is the one exception. |
| **No shadows on things at rest.** No glows. | A tone step between surfaces. Shadows only on what truly floats: a menu, a dialog. |
| **No assistant palette.** No yellow-cream ground with terracotta or rust; no violet or indigo. | The dealt palette. |
| **No tiny uppercase letter-spaced labels.** | Sentence case at a readable size. |
| **No icon-topped feature cards, no rows of identical cards.** | The dealt section blueprint. |
| **No glass.** No backdrop blur panels, no floating pill navigation. | A plain bar: wordmark, a few links, one action. |
| **No emoji, no gradient blobs, no decorative shapes, no fake dashboards of grey bars.** | A real picture, a real interface fragment, or nothing. |
| **No styled accent word** in a headline (italic, serif, coloured, underlined). | One face, one colour. The words carry the emphasis. |
| **Two typefaces at most,** usually one. | The dealt type system. |
Three places keep their own conventions and are left alone by the inspector: real code in
`<pre>`/`<code>` (monospace is correct there), real tables and form fields (they may have lines), and
a real interface fragment whose root carries the attribute `data-ui` (the product's own borders and
menus; see `references/imagery.md` §7).
Why these, honestly. Some are what the study measured: among the 247 sites, those the panel scored
7.5 or higher used icon feature cards 1% of the time against 28% for sites under 6.5, pill badges 14%
against 34%, gradients 22% against 52%, shadows 24% against 48%, tiny tracked caps 16% against 57%.
Others are the owner's taste and go against current gallery fashion: monospace labels, index numbers
and hairline grids are actually *more* common on award sites than on weak ones, which is exactly why
generators imitate them and why they now read as costume. They are banned here without exception.
`references/tells.md` keeps the dated registry.
Removing ornament leaves space. Never fill it with another ornament. Fill it with scale (make the main
thing larger), with the full content, with a picture made for this subject, or with a field of flat
colour. Leave it empty on purpose once per page at most.
## Laws of the craft
Short form. Numbers are from the study unless marked as house style.
**Type**
- Two or three sizes do the visible work: one very large, one small, nothing in between. Median
headline-to-body ratio on the studied sites is 4.3; the best go far beyond (largest type: median
8.4vw on the top sites against 5.0vw on the weak ones).
- Display type: tracking -0.02 to -0.05em, leading 0.85–1.05. Text: 16–20px, leading 1.45–1.6,
45–75 characters per line.
- Five sizes on a page is the ceiling. One family is normal (a third of the studied sites); two is the
limit.
- Left-aligned by default. Centre at most one moment.
**Space**
- One grid, one pair of tight margins (16–32px), used everywhere; large things run to the edges. Text
blocks share two or three left edges on the whole page.
- Asymmetry inside the grid, never in the frame: the two outer margins are equal, and an off-centre
heading is answered by something at the far side of the grid.
- The gap between sections is clearly larger than any gap inside one: 120–240px on desktop (the study's median is about 240).
- Each section has a different composition from its neighbours; none is a card grid.
**Colour**
- One ground, one ink, one accent. The accent appears on the action and perhaps one other thing.
- Running text in the full ink. A page set in soft grey reads unfinished.
- Surfaces are separated by a small step in tone, never by a line or a shadow.
- A section may change the whole field colour. Nothing fades into anything.
**Imagery**
- One dominant image beats six small ones. On the top-scored sites the hero media covers at least half
the first screen 68% of the time.
- Same crop ratios, same treatment, square corners unless the direction says otherwise (73% of the
studied sites leave media square).
- No image is better than a placeholder, an icon, or an abstract shape. A picture drawn for this
subject, in its colours and with care, is better than either. A real picture of its world, found
and credited, is better still.
- Every found picture is downloaded into the project, credited on the page and listed in the report.
None is presented as the client's own.
- Nothing ever lies on top of a headline or a statement (the inspector fails it).
**Components**
- Buttons: flat, one fill colour, either square-cornered or fully round, decided once (top sites: 52%
square, 23% pill; the 9–16px "soft" radius is the weak-site default). Most strong heroes have no
button at all, or one.
- Navigation: wordmark, three to five plain links, one action. No bar chrome.
- The footer is a designed close, not a sitemap: on most strong sites the name returns at full width.
## Special cases
**An existing brand or design system.** Pass `--keep palette,type`, map the brand's colours and faces
onto the roles, and take only composition from the draw. The house rules still apply; if the brand
itself requires a banned device (its logo sits in a gradient, its accent is violet), keep the brand
asset, say so in the report, and pass `--allow <rule>` to the inspector for that rule only.
**Redesign, restyle or review of an existing page or app screen.**
1. **Record the before.** Run the project as it is and inspect it into its own folder
(`inspect.mjs <url> --out .taste-skill/before`, with `--app` for an app screen) and lint its
source. Read the code: the framework, the styling method (Tailwind v3 or v4, CSS modules,
styled-components, plain CSS), the components, and what must survive: routes, forms, data,
behaviour, the brand's own assets.
2. **A review stops here.** Critique the before screenshots with `references/critique.md`, list the
findings with the inspector's measurements, and name the three changes that would move the page
most.
3. **Keep the stack, the content and what works.** No framework or styling-library migration; check the
dependency file before adding anything. A restyle keeps the layout and takes type, colour and
components from a dealt direction (`--keep` whatever the brand fixes); a redesign deals a full
direction and rebuilds the sections from its blueprints inside the existing components. Either way
proceed from step 2 of the run with the page's real content.
4. **Order of work, biggest effect for least risk:** type (faces and scale), colour (one ground, one
ink, one accent), the frame (margins, section rhythm, a title on the first screen and a heading on
every section), states (hover, focus, loading, empty, error), then the stock components (icon
cards, pill badges, gradient blobs, card grids) replaced by the dealt blueprints.
5. **Prove it.** Inspect again into `.taste-skill/after`, compare before and after at every width,
click through every link, form and menu that worked before, and report the before and after
measurements side by side.
**A component or a single section, not a page.** Skip the draw unless there is no direction to follow.
Match the surrounding design, apply the house rules and the laws, and still inspect the result.
**No checkout, no form backend.** The primary button goes to the real destination when the brief names
one. Otherwise it opens an email with a written subject and body (`mailto:` with the visitor's choices
filled in), or, for a shop, it points at `#checkout` and the report says it must be wired before
launch. Never fake a payment form.
**No Chrome or Node 22.** Run `lint.mjs` (Node 18+), take screenshots with whatever browser tool you
have, and critique those. Say in the report that the inspector could not run.
**No network.** If `assets.mjs` reaches no source, draw the pictures and say in the report that the
open collections could not be searched.
## Files
| File | Read it when |
| --- | --- |
| `references/app-screens.md` | Any dashboard, admin, settings or other app screen: its own run, rules, tokens and checks. |
| `references/copy.md` | Writing the argument and the copy deck (steps 2 and 5). The two-line arithmetic. |
| `references/type.md` | Setting type: scales, tracking, measure, loading fonts, pairing. |
| `references/colour.md` | Applying the palette: roles, proportions, tone steps, dark pages, contrast. |
| `references/layout.md` | Grid, margins, rhythm, section variety, navigation, footer, the phone composition. |
| `references/imagery.md` | Choosing, finding, crediting, cropping and treating pictures; what to do with none. |
| `references/motion.md` | Step 9. Budget, tokens, recipes, reduced motion. |
| `references/scenes.md` | Step 6, when the sheet deals scroll scenes: putting one on a page, filling, fitting, the phone, checking, the catalogue. |
| `references/critique.md` | Step 8. How to look, how to score, what to fix first. |
| `references/tells.md` | The dated registry of generated-page tells and what each is replaced by. |
| `references/research.md` | The study: method, numbers, what the best and worst sites do. Cite it, do not guess. |
| `scripts/draw.mjs` | Deals and reprints the direction; `--photos`, `--site <id>` for more references; `--app` deals an app style instead. |
| `scripts/assets.mjs` | Step 6: searches open collections for real pictures of the subject's world; `--get` downloads with the credit, `--credits` prints them. |
| `scripts/lint.mjs` · `scripts/inspect.mjs` | The gate. |
| `scripts/scenes.mjs` | The gate for scroll scenes: each scene at 0-100% of its hold, desktop, phone, reduced motion. |
| `assets/base.css` · `assets/base.js` | An optional neutral foundation to build on. |
| `assets/scenes/` | The scroll scenes: the shared stage (`stage.js`, `stage.css`) and, for each scene in the library, its `.js`, `.css` and a working demo page in `demo/`. |
| `assets/app.css` · `assets/charts.js` | For app screens: a neutral shell, panels, tables and controls, and small SVG charts drawn to the app rules. |
| `library/` | The data the draw reads: directions, heroes, sections, type systems, palettes, photographs, studied sites, motions, scroll scenes (`scenes.json`), and the app styles, shells and screen patterns (`app.json`). Do not read it whole; use the script. |