Concept machinery: survive truncation, builds, and loud briefs

The release-gate audit traced four ways the roll's output was defeated
downstream of a perfectly healthy seed. Gemini's harness keeps only the
tail of tool output, so the header-only ASSIGNED INDEX never reached
the model in 18 of 18 samples; the seed now restates the assignment
and key at the end of its output. Astro strips frontmatter comments,
so half the anthropic contracts vanished from built artifacts; the
contract now must survive the production build as an HTML comment in
emitted markup. A brief that paints its own picture (the album named
Soft Cathedrals) converged every arm regardless of assigned index; its
literal reading now joins the rut with at most one candidate. And Opus
under 4.0.1 skipped the seed 42% of the time while hand-authoring
plausible contracts; the finish reviewer now verifies FORM carries a
corroborable seed key before any craft point.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

skill/agents/impeccable-finish-reviewer.md

@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ Expect: the original request; the confirmed user answers; the artifact path(s);
 
 1. **Persistence.** On a new or replacement world: PRODUCT.md and DESIGN.md exist, and DESIGN.md matches the built world. A missing or mismatched file is the first material fix, ahead of any craft point.
 2. **Ceiling.** Against the QUALITY BAR card and the approved comp, name the world's native devices the build left unused: frame, depth, lettering treatment, ornament density, motion. Compare commitment and finish, never composition; the card is a bar, not a layout.
-3. **Contract, promise by promise.** For each of the five blocks, does the render keep the promise? Apply the memory test to the first viewport: what would a visitor describe an hour later, and is it the thesis or a mood?
+3. **Contract, promise by promise.** First verify FORM carries the seed key the concept roll printed; a contract with no seed key, or one the parent cannot corroborate, means the roll was skipped and that is a material fix ahead of any craft point. Then, for each of the five blocks, does the render keep the promise? Apply the memory test to the first viewport: what would a visitor describe an hour later, and is it the thesis or a mood?
 4. **Truth.** Demonstration data authored and labeled synthetic; no invented commercial claims; unanswered claims present as marked placeholders, not omissions.
 
 Do not run a second detector pass; mechanical findings belong to the parent's hooks.

skill/reference/new-work.md

@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ The script assigns which structure gets built: your top-ranked structure is what
 
 ### Create or replace the visual world
 
-1. Name the product's unique mechanism in one sentence, the audience's real scene, its cultural home, and what this first surface must prove. Note the page this category always ships and its predictable opposite; name both as the rut and keep them out of the seven-candidate list, so no die face is spent on the page the category already ships.
+1. Name the product's unique mechanism in one sentence, the audience's real scene, its cultural home, and what this first surface must prove. Note the page this category always ships and its predictable opposite; name both as the rut and keep them out of the seven-candidate list, so no die face is spent on the page the category already ships. A brief that paints its own picture, a product name, a titled artifact, a governing metaphor, adds its literal reading to the rut: spend at most one candidate on it and derive the rest from elsewhere in the audience's world.
 2. From that cultural world, list seven concrete visual systems, artifacts, places, or rituals the audience knows by heart, each with one line on why it resonates and can carry the mechanism, ordered by resonance. The audience's world includes its graphic and screen traditions, the notation, publications, identity programs, data graphics, and interfaces it reads daily, not only its physical objects; a nameable abstract system (a school of poster, a documentation standard, a data-graphic tradition) is as concrete a candidate as any artifact. What would this thing look like as a physical object; what did its world look like before the web? Near-duplicates count once. When more than three of the seven share one material family, the derivation stopped at the subject's most obvious artifact; the audience's world is larger than that, so dig until the list spans at least three families.
 3. Turn that material into complete directions: each joins a reusable visual world to a concrete first-surface experience.
 4. Run `node {{scripts_path}}/concept-seed.mjs --scope direction --mode <mode>` and follow what it prints. The script assigns which direction gets built and deals catalog challengers. Fuse each challenger before judging it: the challenger supplies the form and its system grammar, the product supplies every fact, and clarity wins conflicts. Weigh fused challengers against the assigned direction on exactly two axes, audience identification and product clarity; losing to strong grounded material is a valid outcome, and beating a thin or tool-monoculture list is the point. <!-- rule:skill-concept-procedure -->
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ Your measured rendition prior: warm, bookish, family, and child-facing subjects
 
 ## 5. Record the decision
 
-Before code, state the chosen direction as a contract in the artifact's opening comment, five short blocks, 150 words at most. THESIS: the one idea this surface owns and the category-default arrangement it refuses. OWN-WORLD: the palette and component language, specific enough to be recognizable with all content removed. STORY: what the visitor understands, believes, and does. FIRST VIEWPORT: the exact composition, what is where and at what scale, and where the primary action sits. FORM: the chosen form, its position on your ordered list, the staging chosen for it, and the seed key the script printed; when the seed dealt stagings, choosing the world does not silently discharge the staging decision, so name the one you commit to. If a block reads like a mood, the direction is not decided yet; the finishing review audits the render against this contract. <!-- rule:skill-decide-then-build -->
+Before code, state the chosen direction as a contract in the artifact's opening comment, five short blocks, 150 words at most, in a form that survives the production build: an HTML comment in the emitted markup, never only a templating-frontmatter comment the compiler strips. THESIS: the one idea this surface owns and the category-default arrangement it refuses. OWN-WORLD: the palette and component language, specific enough to be recognizable with all content removed. STORY: what the visitor understands, believes, and does. FIRST VIEWPORT: the exact composition, what is where and at what scale, and where the primary action sits. FORM: the chosen form, its position on your ordered list, the staging chosen for it, and the seed key the script printed; when the seed dealt stagings, choosing the world does not silently discharge the staging decision, so name the one you commit to. If a block reads like a mood, the direction is not decided yet; the finishing review audits the render against this contract. <!-- rule:skill-decide-then-build -->
 
 When a new or replacement world is chosen, DESIGN.md is part of recording the decision, not an aftercare step: write it at the appropriate project or app boundary using [document.md](document.md) before the first build edit lands, in the same working stretch as the direction contract. Record only durable system rules; exact tokens may remain provisional until the first build establishes them, and you update the file when the build settles them. A new world shipped with no DESIGN.md is an incomplete run, exactly as a missing PRODUCT.md is; the finishing review checks the file exists and matches the built world. An ordinary extension does not rewrite DESIGN.md. <!-- rule:skill-design-md-before-build -->
 

skill/scripts/concept-seed.mjs

@@ -470,6 +470,8 @@ channel: when a browser can open, present the direction on the decision page
 the no-browser fallback.
 ${authorityInstruction}
 A user- or brief-pinned decision beats the roll, always.
+ASSIGNED INDEX (restated for truncated readers): ${buildIndex}. Build candidate
+${buildIndex} of your own grounded list; seed key ${key}.
 `;
   }
 
@@ -510,6 +512,8 @@ never as a mockup to copy; your surface serves this product, not that render.
 ${authorityInstruction}
 ${richnessInstruction}
 ${telemetryBlock}A user- or brief-pinned decision beats the roll, always.
+ASSIGNED INDEX (restated for truncated readers): ${buildIndex}. Build candidate
+${buildIndex} of your own grounded list; seed key ${key}.
 `;
 }