Command first, capability second

"When the harness can X, do Y" hands the model an exit before the
command arrives; the observed reviewer skip walked through exactly that
door. The three gated constructions now lead with the imperative,
present the decision visually, open the chosen card, spawn the finish
reviewer, and carry their fallbacks as trailing clauses for sessions
that genuinely lack the capability. Constructions that already led with
the command keep their routing clauses unchanged.

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

skill/reference/new-work.md

@@ -46,9 +46,9 @@ The script assigns which structure gets built: your top-ranked structure is what
 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 -->
 5. Present one direction, fully committed: its world, first viewport, visitor path, signature interaction, cross-surface reach, and honest risk. Alongside it, offer the one or two fused challengers that survived the weighing as named alternates with a one-line case each, plus re-roll with an optional one-line steer. What you never present is a ranked menu of your own grounded candidates; a lineup of those invites the safest card, while dealt challengers carry no such rut. The two channels share this structure and differ only in richness: cards and boards on the decision page, names and one-liners through the structured tool; the structured tool's option list also carries the standing exit as its last option.
 
-The standing exit: every direction round offers one quiet, permanent alternative, the category standard, played straight. It is the user's door, never yours: never recommend it, never weigh it against the roll, never let it soften the dealt directions; the counterweights bind the unchosen default, not the chosen one. When the user takes it, in the canon action, a safer-steer, or plain words asking for the familiar or competitor-like path, convention becomes the commitment: ask once for two or three products this should sit alongside, make their craft level the bar, and execute the canon at full fidelity, without irony or smuggled quirk. A standing preference gets recorded as a brand commitment in PRODUCT.md. <!-- rule:skill-canon-standing-exit --> Re-roll eliminates every direction already shown, grounded and challenger alike; after two consecutive re-rolls, ask what quality is missing. You may re-roll on your own only on named factual grounds, when the assigned direction cannot carry the product's truth or task; taste is never grounds. The user may re-roll freely, and a user- or brief-pinned direction beats the roll, always. <!-- rule:skill-assigned-plus-reroll --> Pick the channel by capability, not by habit: can you put a page in front of the user, through an in-app browser or by opening a browser window on their machine outside your harness? If yes, present the decision visually: write an options payload with the assigned direction leading, the dealt challengers as alternates carrying their QUALITY BAR cards, and re-roll, steer, plus canon enabled; a degraded roll with no challengers still uses the page, as a single text-only card with re-roll, then run `node {{scripts_path}}/serve-question.mjs --start --payload <file>` (run it with `--schema` first for the exact payload shape). It daemonizes, prints the page URL and a key, and exits immediately; now open that URL for the user, preferring the in-app browser when the harness has one, then the system opener, then showing the URL. Collect the choice with `--wait --key <key>`, repeating while it exits 3; the ANSWER prints as JSON. Exit 4 means the page was closed without an answer: re-present once through the structured question tool, and with no answer there either, proceed unattended with the assigned direction and state the assumptions. A harness that can leave a shell blocked in the background may instead run the script without `--start` and let it auto-open and block. If no, because the session is headless, CI, an eval worker, or a remote shell with no display, skip the page and put the same decision through the structured question tool; the script self-detects these environments and exits 2 with that advice, so treat exit 2 as this fallback, never as an error to retry. <!-- rule:skill-visual-decision-page -->
+The standing exit: every direction round offers one quiet, permanent alternative, the category standard, played straight. It is the user's door, never yours: never recommend it, never weigh it against the roll, never let it soften the dealt directions; the counterweights bind the unchosen default, not the chosen one. When the user takes it, in the canon action, a safer-steer, or plain words asking for the familiar or competitor-like path, convention becomes the commitment: ask once for two or three products this should sit alongside, make their craft level the bar, and execute the canon at full fidelity, without irony or smuggled quirk. A standing preference gets recorded as a brand commitment in PRODUCT.md. <!-- rule:skill-canon-standing-exit --> Re-roll eliminates every direction already shown, grounded and challenger alike; after two consecutive re-rolls, ask what quality is missing. You may re-roll on your own only on named factual grounds, when the assigned direction cannot carry the product's truth or task; taste is never grounds. The user may re-roll freely, and a user- or brief-pinned direction beats the roll, always. <!-- rule:skill-assigned-plus-reroll --> Present the decision visually: write an options payload with the assigned direction leading, the dealt challengers as alternates carrying their QUALITY BAR cards, and re-roll, steer, plus canon enabled; a degraded roll with no challengers still uses the page, as a single text-only card with re-roll. Run `node {{scripts_path}}/serve-question.mjs --start --payload <file>` (run it with `--schema` first for the exact payload shape). It daemonizes, prints the page URL and a key, and exits immediately; now open that URL for the user, in-app browser first, then the system opener, then showing the URL. Collect the choice with `--wait --key <key>`, repeating while it exits 3; the ANSWER prints as JSON. Exit 4 means the page was closed without an answer: re-present once through the structured question tool, and with no answer there either, proceed unattended with the assigned direction and state the assumptions. A harness that can leave a shell blocked in the background may instead run the script without `--start` and let it auto-open and block. Only a session where no browser can open at all, headless, CI, an eval worker, a remote shell with no display, puts the same decision through the structured question tool instead; the script self-detects these environments and exits 2 with that advice, so treat exit 2 as this fallback, never as an error to retry. <!-- rule:skill-visual-decision-page -->
 
-Catalog worlds are working systems, not mood references. When one survives, carry its palette and material, type and composition, topology, controls and state, and responsive rules into the product. When the source is itself an interface language, commit to its native grammar across navigation, content, controls, and states. When the harness can view images, open the QUALITY BAR board and hero for the world you build at the moment the choice lands, even if you viewed another card earlier; the ANSWER line names the chosen card's images for exactly this reason (download to a temp file when the harness only reads local images). They set the craft level the build must reach, a rendered reference's finish, commitment, and art direction, never the composition; your surface serves this product.
+Catalog worlds are working systems, not mood references. When one survives, carry its palette and material, type and composition, topology, controls and state, and responsive rules into the product. When the source is itself an interface language, commit to its native grammar across navigation, content, controls, and states. Open the QUALITY BAR board and hero for the world you build the moment the choice lands, even if you viewed another card earlier; the ANSWER line names the chosen card's images for exactly this reason (download to a temp file when the harness only reads local images). They set the craft level the build must reach, a rendered reference's finish, commitment, and art direction, never the composition; your surface serves this product.
 
 Every direction the roll can land on must already be viable: every relationship and claim it visualizes true, a real palette and component family, a distinctive composition with one product-specific experience, workable at full-surface scale within the available assets, tools, and performance budget. A candidate that fails on truth is replaced before the roll, never rescued by it. Truth binds claims, not demonstrations: in greenfield work, author whatever illustrative material the concept needs at full fidelity, label it synthetic wherever a visitor could mistake it for the real thing, and hand the user the list of what to replace with real material. What stays uninventable are commercial and factual claims: prices, customers, benchmarks, endpoints, capabilities the product does not have. Refusing a bold direction because its demonstration data does not exist yet is the timidity reflex wearing honesty's clothes. <!-- rule:skill-truth-binds-claims -->
 
@@ -104,4 +104,4 @@ Preserve semantics, accessibility, performance, responsiveness, project conventi
 
 Inspect desktop and mobile, critique the render against the user's request, the direction contract, and DESIGN.md, fix material gaps, and re-inspect. On a Persuade surface, verify the mode did its job: a first-time visitor should know what this is, why it matters, and what to do within seconds, in the form's own vocabulary. After a first implementation of a new world, update DESIGN.md with the exact tokens and behaviors that survived the build.
 
-When the harness can run a separate agent, this review belongs there, not in the build thread: the skill ships the finish reviewer as a named subagent, `impeccable-finish-reviewer` (`impeccable_finish_reviewer` in codex), so spawn it rather than improvising one, with the original request, confirmed answers, the artifact path, its direction contract, DESIGN.md, existing hook findings, and the QUALITY BAR card and approved comp paths. The reviewer's first check is persistence: on a new or replacement world, PRODUCT.md and DESIGN.md exist and DESIGN.md matches the built world; a missing file fails the review before any craft point is scored. Its second check is the ceiling: against the chosen world's QUALITY BAR card and the approved comp, name the native devices the build left unused, frame, depth, lettering, ornament density; floor rigor is very good at disguising an unreached card. Then ask for a short list of material fixes, promise by promise against the contract, apply them, and finish. Do not run a second detector. <!-- rule:skill-finish-separate-reviewer -->
+Spawn the shipped finish reviewer, `impeccable-finish-reviewer` (`impeccable_finish_reviewer` in codex), and give it the original request, confirmed answers, the artifact path, its direction contract, DESIGN.md, existing hook findings, and the QUALITY BAR card and approved comp paths. This review never runs inside the build thread; a harness with no subagents runs it as its own fresh pass, after stepping fully out of the build context. The reviewer's first check is persistence: on a new or replacement world, PRODUCT.md and DESIGN.md exist and DESIGN.md matches the built world; a missing file fails the review before any craft point is scored. Its second check is the ceiling: against the chosen world's QUALITY BAR card and the approved comp, name the native devices the build left unused, frame, depth, lettering, ornament density; floor rigor is very good at disguising an unreached card. Then ask for a short list of material fixes, promise by promise against the contract, apply them, and finish. Do not run a second detector. <!-- rule:skill-finish-separate-reviewer -->