Direction round: verdict-routed hand, MY PICK card, salience parity, Safer/Bolder registers (#531)

* Route the direction hand by verdict, add the pick card, enforce salience parity

The decision round previously rendered every dealt challenger as an equal
full card whatever the weighing said, so a world that fused poorly (an
underwater world dealt to a flower shop) sat at the same visual weight as
the assigned direction, and concept-level fusion had no surviving output.
Three changes, all presentation-layer; the dice, the assignment, and the
two-axis weighing are untouched:

- Verdict routing: the weighing closes with wins / competitive / declined
  per challenger, decided before any borrowing. Declined challengers render
  demoted (narrow, quiet, catalog art as a labeled thumb, "Adopt anyway"),
  reordered to the end of the deck by the page itself, still adoptable,
  never silently dropped. Donations return as named "raised by" lines on
  the assigned card: a declined challenger donates ambition and system
  discipline, never its clothes.

- The pick card: one card for the model's top-ranked grounded candidate
  when the dice assigned another, kicker MY PICK, honest familiarity risk
  on its face. One card, never a ranked list, never the lead position; the
  anti-menu rule survives with exactly this carve-out.

- Salience parity: a card's imagery weight is capped by the assigned
  card's. With a text-only assigned card (no image generation in the
  harness), full-bleed catalog heroes demote to labeled thumbs, so what
  looks important is the verdict's call, never rendering luck.

serve-question payload gains additive fields (verdict, kept, raised); old
payloads render unchanged. concept-seed's rendered instructions carry the
verdict/donation contract and the pick-card carve-out. Covered by two
Playwright tests in the new-work e2e suite (verdict routing + parity).

Design exploration and rationale were worked through with the maintainer;
research grounding is impeccable.style/research lessons 3-5.

AI-assisted change.

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

* Add Safer/Bolder re-roll registers to the direction round

The re-roll gains the user's steering wheel on the familiar-to-bold axis.
The decision page renders two register buttons beside the plain re-roll
(payload: reroll: { registers: ["safer", "bolder"] }; booleans still work),
the answer carries the chosen register, and concept-seed gains --register.

The design constraint that shaped the implementation: a register changes
only what a round INSTRUCTS, never what it DEALT. The same key and reroll
count reproduce the same deal whatever the register, so the exclusion chain
never forks and the reproduction contract holds with no API change.

- bolder: the dealt foreign forms become the whole hand, every challenger a
  full card; the first-dealt challenger leads (assignment by deal order, so
  the dice still choose). The pick card sits out; the canon stays.
- safer: the round's dealt hand is spent unseen and stays excluded; the
  model presents its remaining conventional grounded candidates (at most
  three) plus the canon executed against named competitors. This is the one
  sanctioned lineup of the model's own ranked list, existing only by
  explicit user request. Works degraded (needs no catalog); bolder degrades
  to a plain grounded round, disclosed.

Registers are user steering, never the model's to pre-select. Covered by a
concept-seed unit test (same-deal invariant, validation) and a Playwright
test (button, answer field, REGISTER directive).

AI-assisted change.

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

* Add the execution-contract round: comp-led or code-led, chosen after the direction

The build previously went comp-led for everyone, silently: a generated comp
led and the build chased it, which produces the boldest compositions and
also the measured worst-of-both-worlds failure (ambitious design landed
poorly, no motion, fix rounds after). Models already defect from it by
quietly skipping comp generation, which is unsanctioned code-led with no
contract to catch it. This makes the fork explicit and both paths
defection-proof:

- Comp-led: the comp is law and non-optional once chosen; visualize.md and
  the comp-is-king build phases run as today.
- Code-led: no comp of this page, skipped by contract rather than drift.
  The QUALITY BAR boards still calibrate finish, and the ambition moves
  into the written direction contract (FIRST VIEWPORT plus a named
  signature interaction and motion grammar), audited by the finish
  reviewer in behavior. Not a discount on commitment.

Placement: a second round on the same open table, right after the
direction lands. Sketches stay in the direction round (they pick the
world); comps are what code-led skips (they bind the composition). The
chosen world sets the default lead; the user flips freely; a standing
preference recorded in PRODUCT.md skips the round on later surfaces; with
no image generation there is no fork, code-led is the only path.

Mechanism: serve-question gains payload-level followup: true, which keeps
the detached server alive after a pick (exactly like re-roll), swaps the
page to the loading hand instead of goodbye, marks the answer with
followup: true so --wait keeps the table, and prints a FOLLOWUP OPEN
directive telling the agent to deliver the next round via --update.
Covered by a Playwright test driving the full two-round flow.

AI-assisted change.

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

* fix: address PR review bot findings

- Degraded safer register no longer contradicts itself (greptile,
  Copilot, cursor): the degraded template previously said "the assigned
  index is suspended; the user picks" and then emitted ASSIGNED INDEX,
  the mandatory build instruction, and the restated footer anyway. The
  degraded safer path now suppresses the assignment machinery entirely,
  matching the non-degraded safer round, and restates the user-picks
  behavior for truncated readers instead.
- A declined card's declared sketch no longer renders a full media face
  (Copilot): the renderer ignores sketch slots on declined cards
  outright, so a stray sketch cannot buy back the salience the verdict
  took away.
- Bolder rounds no longer carry the generic weighing instruction
  (cursor): it measures against the assigned grounded direction, which
  the bolder register suspends; a leader-relative variant weighs the
  fused challengers against the first-dealt leader instead.

All three pinned by new assertions in tests/concept-seed.test.mjs and
tests/new-work-e2e.test.mjs.

AI-assisted change.

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

* fix: followup never arms the loading hand in blocking serve mode

cursor[bot] caught a client/server disagreement: the page interpolated its
FOLLOWUP constant from the payload alone, so a followup: true payload served
in blocking mode (no --start) would leave the browser on a loading hand that
nothing resolves, since a blocking server exits on any pick and has no
update channel. The page constant is now armed only when the server is
detached, blocking rounds get the goodbye screen as before, and new-work.md
states that followup belongs only on a detached round; blocking and
structured-tool channels run the build-path round as its own second
question. Pinned in tests/serve-question.test.mjs.

AI-assisted change.

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

* Add card-kind choice telemetry and the bolder routing disambiguation

The choice ping previously fired only when a dealt catalog challenger won,
so pick-share and canon-share had no denominator and the decision page's
new spectrum could not be measured. The ping now fires once per resolved
attended round on API-dealt rolls: --kind names which card class won
(assigned / pick / challenger / canon), --chosen carries the catalog id
only when a dealt challenger won, and --register rides along when the
round came from a steered hand. Grounded candidates' names never leave the
machine (the ping carries the kind alone), the legacy id-only shape stays
valid, and DO_NOT_TRACK / IMPECCABLE_NO_TELEMETRY still disable the ping
entirely. The seed's TELEMETRY block teaches the new invocation.

Also the naming-collision guard: "bolder" said while a direction round is
open routes to the Bolder hand register, never the bolder refinement
command; one line each in bolder.md and new-work.md.

The /api/chosen field additions land in a sister impeccable-site PR; the
API ignores unknown fields meanwhile, so this is safe to ship first.

AI-assisted change.

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

* fix: ping test survives a DO_NOT_TRACK shell

cursor[bot]: the pingChosen unit test cleared only IMPECCABLE_NO_TELEMETRY,
so a developer shell with DO_NOT_TRACK set failed the success-path
assertions. The test now clears both, restores prior values in finally,
and passes under DO_NOT_TRACK=1.

AI-assisted change.

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

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Code <noreply@anthropic.com>

skill/reference/bolder.md

@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 > **Additional context needed**: which section is the target, and what must stay untouched.
 
+An open direction round owns the word first: "bolder" said while a direction decision is on the table is the Bolder hand register steer, a fresh deal of foreign forms (see new-work.md), not this command. This command refines a surface whose world already shipped.
+
 "Bolder" is an amplification request, and almost always it is scoped to something that already exists. The surrounding page, its system, and its conventions are the given. Your job is to raise one part to the conviction the rest already implies, without rebuilding anything the brief did not name. The reflex answer, reaching for more effects, is the opposite of bold; reject it first.
 
 ## Scope is sovereign

skill/reference/new-work.md

@@ -43,12 +43,14 @@ The script assigns which structure gets built; your top-ranked structure is what
 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. 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, not only its physical objects: the notation, publications, identity programs, data graphics, and interfaces it reads daily; a nameable abstract system (a school of poster, a documentation standard) 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; 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. This step has no substitute and no skip condition: on a new or replacement world, writing artifact code before this script has run and its assignment is acknowledged is a contract violation, whatever the harness, the model, or the time pressure, because the roll is the mechanism that keeps every run from converging on the category default. 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 hand's challengers as named alternates, the weighing's verdict written on each as its one-line case, an honest "fuses poorly because X" included; the weighing informs the user's choice, it never pre-empts it. A hand holds at most three challengers: when the roll deals more, the three strongest join the hand and the rest wait in the re-roll pool, noted in one line; dropping a challenger from the hand itself takes a named product-truth failure, disclosed. Add re-roll with an optional one-line steer. Never present a ranked menu of your own grounded candidates; a lineup of those invites the safest card. 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.
+4. Run `node {{scripts_path}}/concept-seed.mjs --scope direction --mode <mode>` and follow what it prints. This step has no substitute and no skip condition: on a new or replacement world, writing artifact code before this script has run and its assignment is acknowledged is a contract violation, whatever the harness, the model, or the time pressure, because the roll is the mechanism that keeps every run from converging on the category default. 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. The weighing closes with a verdict per challenger, decided before any borrowing is considered: wins (beats the assigned direction on both axes; it becomes the build candidate), competitive (holds one axis; it stays a full alternate), or declined (loses both). A declined challenger is not spent: name the one discipline of its system the assigned direction lacks, and raise the assigned direction to match before presenting it. A donation transfers ambition and system discipline (a palette's total commitment, a grid's density courage, a form's structural honesty), never the challenger's clothes; a motif lifted from a declined world is a costume note, not a raise, and one world owns the page. Write each raise into the presented direction as its own line, named for its donor; a raise nobody can read did not happen. <!-- rule:skill-concept-procedure --> <!-- rule:skill-verdict-and-donation -->
+5. Present one direction, fully committed and already raised by the hand it beat, its raises visible as named lines: its world, first viewport, visitor path, signature interaction, cross-surface reach, and honest risk. Alongside it, route each dealt challenger by its verdict: winning and competitive challengers are full alternates carrying their QUALITY BAR cards and one-line case, while declined challengers render demoted, compact and quiet, each carrying its verdict plus what the direction kept from it, never full-size and never silently dropped, each still adoptable on request. The verdict informs the user's choice, it never pre-empts it; the demoted row is the hand's proof of judgment, showing why the dealt worlds made the presented direction better. A hand holds at most three full-card challengers: when the roll deals more, the three strongest join the hand and the rest wait in the re-roll pool, noted in one line; dropping a challenger from the hand itself takes a named product-truth failure, disclosed. Add one card for your own top-ranked grounded candidate when it is not the assigned direction, kicker MY PICK, same anatomy as every card, with an honest risk line naming its familiarity when true: the strongest grounded direction is often the one most runs in this category land on, and the user deciding that trade is the point of showing it. Familiar and effective is a legitimate destination, not a failure of nerve; the pick card and the standing exit serve it at two depths. One pick card, never two, never a ranked list: the rest of your grounded candidates stay yours, because a lineup of them hands selection back to a taste function and invites the safest card. The pick never takes the lead position, and when the dice assign your top candidate there is no pick card; the assigned card notes it also topped your list. Add re-roll with an optional one-line steer, offered in three registers: plain (a fresh hand, same spread), safer (the familiar register: your remaining conventional grounded candidates plus the canon against named competitors), and bolder (foreign forms only, at full commitment). A register is the user's steering on the familiar-to-bold axis, never yours to pre-select; when the answer carries one, re-run the seed with `--register <value>` and the next `--reroll` round, and follow what it prints. A user saying "bolder" or "safer" while a direction round is open means these registers, never the bolder or harden commands. 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 carries the assigned direction, the pick, the winning and competitive challengers, and the standing exit as its last option, while declined challengers fold into the assigned option's description as their kept lines, so the raise survives the text channel too. <!-- rule:skill-pick-card-one-only -->
 
-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. Give every card the same anatomy, thesis, palette, materials, first viewport, honest risk, and the challengers' case lines (run the script with `--schema` for the exact shape); the page renders identity from these fields, and a challenger's catalog image rides as labeled inspiration, never as the promise of the build. Author `canonCard` too: the category standard as one honest card with the same anatomy; the page keeps it subordinate, and the counterweights still bind you. 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 -->
+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 and its raised lines included, the pick card when one exists, the dealt challengers as alternates carrying their QUALITY BAR cards plus each challenger's verdict and kept line, re-roll with its safer and bolder registers, steer, plus canon enabled, and `followup: true` when the execution-contract round will follow (it does whenever image generation exists and no standing build-path preference is recorded); a degraded roll with no challengers still uses the page, as a single text-only card with re-roll. Give every card the same anatomy, thesis, palette, materials, first viewport, honest risk, and the challengers' case lines (run the script with `--schema` for the exact shape); the page renders identity from these fields, routes declined challengers to a demoted row on its own, and a challenger's catalog image rides as labeled inspiration, never as the promise of the build. Author `canonCard` too: the category standard as one honest card with the same anatomy; the page keeps it subordinate, and the counterweights still bind you. 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 -->
 
-When image generation exists, every card also declares a `sketch` path under `.impeccable/sketches/`, the canon card included. Where the harness sandboxes its shell, start the page through the least-sandboxed command path it offers: a sandboxed shell cannot bind the board's port, and the first-attempt failure costs a retry every session. Serve the page first, then produce the sketches; the page shimmer-waits per slot and the user may answer before they land. Render every sketch through one shared frame so the comparison stays about direction, never rendering luck: the requested surface's first viewport as a flat, matte design sketch in that card's own palette and type character, deliberately unfinished, no photorealism, no gloss, identical framing across cards; a candidate whose sketch looks more finished than the others has broken the comparison, not won it. The frame's aspect is the surface's own: a native app or mobile-first surface sketches portrait at its device viewport, a desktop web surface landscape, and the decision page adapts to either, so a phone screen sketched landscape is a broken frame, not a neutral default. The only legible text in a sketch is the product's real name and one real headline; every other text region is greeked, indistinct lines standing where copy will go, because a sketch that renders invented specs, prices, or dates puts claims in front of the user that PRODUCT.md never made. Produce in the order the user reads: the assigned card, then the hand, then canon, each file written the moment it is done. When the harness runs subagents in parallel, fan the set out as one agent per card: each spawn is the shipped asset producer with a single-sketch packet, that card's fields, PRODUCT.md, the shared frame, and the card's declared path, up to four in flight at once. A slot still empty when its agent returns is regenerated inline, and a slot still empty when the user answers is dropped without ceremony; no other supervision is owed. Without parallel subagents, generate in the main thread after serving, in the same reading order, and let the harness's own generation display carry the progress; the wait for the answer follows the last file. A sketch answers which world, never which composition: the comp round still renders its full set, and the chosen card's sketch seeds at most one probe. With no image generation, the cards carry their identity in palette chips and facts, and that page is complete, not a lesser version. <!-- rule:skill-decision-sketches-uniform -->
+When image generation exists, every card also declares a `sketch` path under `.impeccable/sketches/`, the canon card included. Where the harness sandboxes its shell, start the page through the least-sandboxed command path it offers: a sandboxed shell cannot bind the board's port, and the first-attempt failure costs a retry every session. Serve the page first, then produce the sketches; the page shimmer-waits per slot and the user may answer before they land. Render every sketch through one shared frame so the comparison stays about direction, never rendering luck: the requested surface's first viewport as a flat, matte design sketch in that card's own palette and type character, deliberately unfinished, no photorealism, no gloss, identical framing across cards; a candidate whose sketch looks more finished than the others has broken the comparison, not won it. The frame's aspect is the surface's own: a native app or mobile-first surface sketches portrait at its device viewport, a desktop web surface landscape, and the decision page adapts to either, so a phone screen sketched landscape is a broken frame, not a neutral default. The only legible text in a sketch is the product's real name and one real headline; every other text region is greeked, indistinct lines standing where copy will go, because a sketch that renders invented specs, prices, or dates puts claims in front of the user that PRODUCT.md never made. Produce in the order the user reads: the assigned card, then the pick, then the full-card hand, then canon, each file written the moment it is done; declined challengers get no sketch, their catalog thumb is their face. When the harness runs subagents in parallel, fan the set out as one agent per card: each spawn is the shipped asset producer with a single-sketch packet, that card's fields, PRODUCT.md, the shared frame, and the card's declared path, up to four in flight at once. A slot still empty when its agent returns is regenerated inline, and a slot still empty when the user answers is dropped without ceremony; no other supervision is owed. Without parallel subagents, generate in the main thread after serving, in the same reading order, and let the harness's own generation display carry the progress; the wait for the answer follows the last file. A sketch answers which world, never which composition: the comp round still renders its full set, and the chosen card's sketch seeds at most one probe. With no image generation, the cards carry their identity in palette chips and facts, and that page is complete, not a lesser version; the page then also demotes every challenger's catalog art to a labeled thumbnail on its own, because salience must encode the verdict, never the accident of which cards have images. <!-- rule:skill-decision-sketches-uniform --> <!-- rule:skill-salience-parity -->
+
+The moment the direction lands, one more round on the same open table decides the execution contract. The direction payload declares `followup: true`, so the table stays open after the pick; deliver the build-path payload through `--update` immediately. Two text-only cards. **Comp-led**: a first-viewport comp is generated and it is law, the finish review audits the build against it; boldest composition on the table, fix rounds expected, motion at risk; choosing it makes the comp non-optional, no silent skipping. **Code-led**: no comp of this page and no apology for it; the QUALITY BAR boards still calibrate finish, and the ambition moves into the written contract, the FIRST VIEWPORT block plus a named signature interaction and motion grammar, which the finish reviewer audits in behavior; code-led is not a discount on commitment, the direction still lands fully committed in code. Lead with the chosen world's fit: a costume-heavy catalog world leads comp-led, a quiet or conventional direction leads code-led; the lead is a default, never a decision, and the user flips it freely. A standing preference, voiced once, is recorded as a brand commitment in PRODUCT.md and skips this round on later surfaces. Without image generation there is no fork and no round: code-led is the only path, stated in one line rather than asked. Only a detached table (`--start`) stays open for `--update`: a blocking serve or the structured-tool channel runs the build-path round as its own second question instead, and `followup: true` belongs only on a detached round. <!-- rule:skill-build-path-round -->
 
 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 (when the harness only reads files or runs sandboxed, download them into the workspace and open the relative path; sandboxed viewers reject absolute paths outside it). 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.
 
@@ -82,7 +84,7 @@ If the work establishes durable strategy for a route or artifact, read its exist
 
 Keep the brief small: scope and visitor mode; audience, job, action/task, proof/content, and constraints; chosen direction and memorable moment; unresolved decisions. Do not copy global product truth or DESIGN.md tokens into it.
 
-Whenever any image generation is available, a harness-native tool or the API fallback context.mjs reports, the locked direction is visualized before it is built, never skipped: load [visualize.md](visualize.md) and follow it, three compositional options rendered and put before the user for approval. This step is proven to produce the most compositional and ambitious work. <!-- rule:skill-visualize-before-build -->
+On a comp-led build, whenever any image generation is available, a harness-native tool or the API fallback context.mjs reports, the locked direction is visualized before it is built, never skipped: load [visualize.md](visualize.md) and follow it, three compositional options rendered and put before the user for approval. This step is proven to produce the most compositional and ambitious work. On a code-led build the comp round is skipped by contract, never by drift: the ambition it would have carried lives in the direction contract's FIRST VIEWPORT block and named signature interaction, and the finish reviewer audits those promises in behavior. <!-- rule:skill-visualize-before-build -->
 
 For `shape`, return the selected direction to [shape.md](shape.md) and stop before persistence or implementation.
 

skill/reference/visualize.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # Visualize: Direction Comps & Asset Production
 
-Load this from [new-work.md](new-work.md) whenever any image generation is available, a harness-native tool or the API fallback context.mjs reports. PRODUCT.md and DESIGN.md are preconditions. New-work has already resolved the visual world; this file must not reopen it.
+Load this from [new-work.md](new-work.md) on a comp-led build, when image generation is available (a harness-native tool or the API fallback context.mjs reports). A code-led execution contract skips this file by design, not by drift: its ambition lives in the written direction contract and is audited in behavior, so do not load it for a code-led round. PRODUCT.md and DESIGN.md are preconditions. New-work has already resolved the visual world; this file must not reopen it.
 
 The purpose of a probe is to test composition, narrative, hierarchy, density, focal moment, signature use, and image requirements. It is not a second identity workshop. Keep DESIGN.md's palette, typography direction, material language, component character, imagery stance, and motion grammar fixed.