From a35c9281830be3eddc8bbb7f913a057c565b02c1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Paul Bakaus Date: Thu, 21 May 2026 09:19:19 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] skill: restore prescriptive cream/sand/beige paragraph Bisection across 5 historical skill commits on Gemini 3.5 flash fast lane n=3 found that 0cf2debd was the peak quality state. The regression between 0cf2debd and HEAD came from simplifying the long anti-cream paragraph into a one-liner. Restoring the paragraph (with em-dashes replaced by parens to satisfy prose lint) recovers ~0.22pt average on Gemini vs HEAD, with the largest gains on: - 09-luxury-hotel: +0.50 (restores editorial drama in photo-led briefs) - 10-food-magazine: +0.67 - 03-italian-restaurant: +0.51 The paragraph's load-bearing parts are the (a)(b)(c) alternatives that give the model actionable replacements for cream-tinted body bg ("saturated brand color as body", "true off-white at chroma 0", "darker mid-tone tinted neutral"). Without them, the one-line warning left the model with no concrete alternative. Cross-provider validation showed the pattern matches historical behavior: Gemini benefits from prescriptive scaffold (+0.12 over off), Sonnet is roughly neutral (+0.01), GPT-5.5 slightly regresses (-0.11 matching the v3.1.0 pattern of -0.11). The skill has never been uniformly better than skill-off across providers; this is the closest achievable state without provider-specific rework. The structural improvements from the prior restructure stay (file merges, S-tier inlines, routing rule extension, reveal-animation safety rule). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) --- skill/SKILL.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/skill/SKILL.md b/skill/SKILL.md index 32906ff60..389ca6360 100644 --- a/skill/SKILL.md +++ b/skill/SKILL.md @@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ Two hard typographic ceilings you currently miss: #### Color & Theme - Use OKLCH. -- Don't default to a cream / sand / beige body bg (white is fine) - this is a common AI trope in 2026. +- **The cream / sand / beige body bg is the saturated AI default of 2026.** The whole warm-neutral band (OKLCH L 0.84-0.97, C < 0.06, hue 40-100) reads as cream/sand/paper/parchment regardless of what you call it. Token names like `--paper`, `--cream`, `--sand`, `--bone`, `--flour`, `--linen`, `--parchment`, `--wheat`, `--biscuit`, `--ivory` are tells in themselves. If the brief is "warm, traditional, family-coastal-Italian" or "magazine-warm" or "editorial-restraint", DO NOT translate that into a near-white warm-tinted bg; that's the AI move. Pick: (a) a saturated brand color as the body (terracotta, oxblood, deep ochre, near-black), (b) a true off-white at chroma 0 (or chroma toward the brand's own hue, not toward warmth-by-default), or (c) a darker mid-tone tinted neutral that's clearly the brand's own. "Warmth" in the brand is carried by accent + typography + imagery, not by body bg. - Tinted neutrals: add 0.005–0.015 chroma toward the brand's hue. Don't default-tint toward warm or cool "because the brand feels that way"; that's the cross-project monoculture move. - When picking a theme: Dark vs. light is never a default. Not dark "because tools look cool dark." Not light "to be safe.".Before choosing, write one sentence of physical scene: who uses this, where, under what ambient light, in what mood. If the sentence doesn't force the answer, it's not concrete enough. Add detail until it does. - Pick a **color strategy** before picking colors. Four steps on the commitment axis: