From 7cd43c0365a870a0bd12e59bacd6680e47af433f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Paul Bakaus Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:27:43 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] The contract carries the exit condition, because the file outlives attention Two probe runs on two different harnesses built complete pages and declared done without ever entering the finish sequence: the reference was read once near turn four and the finish choreography had fallen out of attention thirty turns later. The one text a model rereads on every edit is its own artifact, so the direction contract now closes with a FINISH line naming the exit condition verbatim: unreviewed and undocumented is unfinished; this build ends with the finish review, the verdict, and DESIGN.md. A page that looks complete with that line undischarged is not done, it is abandoned at the finish line. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 --- skill/reference/new-work.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/skill/reference/new-work.md b/skill/reference/new-work.md index ab97385d8..03e6b19b5 100644 --- a/skill/reference/new-work.md +++ b/skill/reference/new-work.md @@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ 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, 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. +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. Close the comment with one more line, FINISH: the run's exit condition, verbatim "unreviewed and undocumented is unfinished; this build ends with the finish review, the verdict, and DESIGN.md". The comment sits at the top of the artifact you re-open on every edit, which makes it the one reminder that survives a long build: a page that looks complete with the FINISH line undischarged is not done, it is abandoned at the finish line. If a block reads like a mood, the direction is not decided yet; the finishing review audits the render against this contract. On a new or replacement world, DESIGN.md is written at finish, from the built world, by the shipped documenter (section 7); a rulebook written before the build gets defended against reality instead of describing it, and it hands the design-system detector an unstable target that buries the build in noise. A new world shipped with no DESIGN.md is still an incomplete run. An ordinary extension does not rewrite DESIGN.md.