Harness Kit

skill

design

Artifact-backed interface critique and polish for hierarchy, typography, layout, density, IA, interaction feel, content, brand fit, and taste. Requires screenshot, URL, rendered artifact, or explicit file plus intent. Use when: "make this look better", "improve the design", "polish the UI", "critique this screen", "design pass", "art direction", "scaffold design", docs layout, report polish, generated diagrams/images, screenshots, decks, dashboards, charts, or any product-facing visual artifact. Trigger: /design.

/design

Source: skills/design/SKILL.md

What it does

Artifact-backed interface critique and polish for hierarchy, typography, layout, density, IA, interaction feel, content, brand fit, and taste. Requires screenshot, URL, rendered artifact, or explicit file plus intent. Use when: "make this look better", "improve the design", "polish the UI", "critique this screen", "design pass", "art direction", "scaffold design", docs layout, report polish, generated diagrams/images, screenshots, decks, dashboards, charts, or any product-facing visual artifact. Trigger: /design.

Workflow role

Support primitive in the Harness Kit operating loop.

Source contract preview

This generated excerpt gives readers the beginning of the live primitive contract before they jump to GitHub.

Critique and improve a rendered artifact against its intent. The core contract
is evidence, not generic advice:

1. Name the artifact: screenshot, URL, rendered file, route, or concrete source
   file that produces the surface.
2. Name the intent in one sentence: audience, job, and desired feel.
3. Inspect the rendered result when possible.
4. State the design read: surface kind, audience, desired feel, constraints.
5. Set VARIANCE / MOTION / DENSITY for the surface before building.
6. Return ranked, specific design moves or implement a bounded polish pass.

Refuse to make a final design judgment from code alone when a rendered surface
can be inspected. If rendering is impossible, mark the design unverified.

## Delegation Floor

Delegation floor applies: probe the roster first; dispatch two or more
providers for substantive work; direct solo only for mechanical, emergency,
user-forbidden, or fewer-than-two-providers cases. See
`harnesses/shared/AGENTS.md` (Roster).

Local lane guidance: Use one lane for proposed direction or implementation and
another for cold review of substantive redesign, external-facing polish, or
final critique of visible UI changes.

## Routing

| Intent | Action |
|---|---|
| `/design audit` or `/design critique` | Read intent, inspect artifact, return ranked findings. |
| `/design polish` | Apply the smallest coherent improvement set, then verify render. |
| `/design redesign` | Propose 2-3 structurally different directions, get convergence, then implement. |
| `/design scaffold` | Read `references/scaffold.md` and generate or update project-local `DESIGN.md` and `design-contract.md` when recurring or product-facing visual work earns them. |

Use `/a11y` for WCAG compliance, `/qa` for behavior verification, `/demo` for
evidence packaging, and `/shape` when the product direction itself is unsettled.
...

What to verify