Patience while sketches land, honesty when standing in

Field data: the first image of a real batch took ninety seconds and the
page's 150-second fallback then silently promoted catalog art to full
bleed, unlabeled, which is exactly the this-is-your-design misread the
picture-in-picture treatment exists to prevent. The policy is now
patience while there is progress: a slot shows its inspiration only
after waiting four minutes with nothing landing anywhere on the page
for four minutes, the stand-in is dimmed and labeled 'inspiration ·
sketch pending', and polling continues so the real sketch still swaps
in whenever it arrives. Slots with no inspiration keep the honest
elapsed shimmer instead of folding. The parent's reclaim rule matches:
files landing steadily is health at any pace, and only total silence,
no first file in three minutes, takes the batch back inline.

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

skill/reference/new-work.md

@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ The script assigns which structure gets built: your top-ranked structure is what
 
 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, so a grounded direction is never a wall of text against rendered art, 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, so it is never yours to recommend. 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. Serve the page first, then produce the sketches; the page shimmer-waits per slot and the user may answer before they land, so generation never delays the question. 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 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, spawn the shipped asset producer with the payload file and PRODUCT.md, one pass for the whole set; otherwise generate inline after serving. Waiting on the choice is supervision, not idleness: every `--wait` pass that returns 3 is a checkpoint on the sketch directory, and when no file has landed within two minutes of the spawn, interrupt the producer and produce the remaining sketches inline, because a stalled opaque batch reads to the user as a dead page. 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. Serve the page first, then produce the sketches; the page shimmer-waits per slot and the user may answer before they land, so generation never delays the question. 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 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, spawn the shipped asset producer with the payload file and PRODUCT.md, one pass for the whole set; otherwise generate inline after serving. Waiting on the choice is supervision, not idleness: every `--wait` pass that returns 3 is a checkpoint on the sketch directory. Generation is genuinely slow, so files landing steadily is health, whatever the pace; reclaim the batch inline only on total silence, no first file within three minutes of the spawn, because a stalled opaque batch reads to the user as a dead page while a slow live one just reads as sketching. 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 -->
 
 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 (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.
 

skill/scripts/serve-question.mjs

@@ -523,6 +523,11 @@ function page() {
   .pip figcaption { position: absolute; left: 0; right: 0; bottom: 0; font-family: var(--ks-mono); font-size: .5rem; letter-spacing: .2em; text-transform: uppercase; color: var(--ks-text); text-align: center; padding: 3px 0 4px; background: oklch(7% 0.006 95 / 0.72); backdrop-filter: blur(3px); }
   .pip:hover { left: 0; bottom: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border-radius: 0; z-index: 3; }
   .sketch-note { position: absolute; inset: 0; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; font-family: var(--ks-mono); font-size: .66rem; letter-spacing: .22em; text-transform: uppercase; color: var(--ks-text-faint); }
+  /* A stand-in is honest about being one: dimmed, labeled, and replaced by
+     the real sketch whenever it lands. */
+  .media.stand-in img.sketch { filter: brightness(.72) saturate(.85); }
+  .media.stand-in .pip { display: none; }
+  .stand-in-label { position: absolute; z-index: 2; left: 0; right: 0; bottom: 0; margin: 0; font-family: var(--ks-mono); font-size: .56rem; letter-spacing: .2em; text-transform: uppercase; color: var(--ks-text); text-align: center; padding: 4px 0 5px; background: oklch(7% 0.006 95 / 0.78); backdrop-filter: blur(3px); }
   .media.sketching { position: relative; }
   .media.sketching .shimmer { position: absolute; inset: 0; }
   .media img.sketch { position: relative; z-index: 1; }
@@ -640,8 +645,13 @@ function page() {
   }
 
   // Sketches stream in after the deal: poll each slot until the file lands,
-  // then swap the shimmer for the image. On a long timeout, promote the
-  // inspiration to full bleed when there is one, otherwise fold to text-only.
+  // then swap the shimmer for the image. Generation is genuinely slow and a
+  // sequential batch puts the last card many minutes out, so patience is the
+  // default: a slot only shows its inspiration as a stand-in when it has
+  // waited four minutes AND nothing has landed anywhere for four minutes, the
+  // stand-in is labeled as such, and polling continues so the real sketch
+  // still swaps in whenever it arrives. Progress anywhere resets patience.
+  const landTracker = { last: Date.now() };
   document.querySelectorAll('.media.sketching').forEach(m => {
     const url = m.dataset.sketch;
     const img = m.querySelector('img.sketch');
@@ -649,19 +659,26 @@ function page() {
     const started = Date.now();
     // A live elapsed count is the difference between "working" and "frozen".
     const tick = setInterval(() => { if (note) note.textContent = 'sketching · ' + Math.round((Date.now() - started) / 1000) + 's'; }, 1000);
-    const settle = () => { clearInterval(tick); m.classList.remove('sketching'); m.querySelector('.shimmer')?.remove(); };
+    const settle = () => { clearInterval(tick); m.classList.remove('sketching', 'stand-in'); m.querySelector('.shimmer')?.remove(); m.querySelector('.stand-in-label')?.remove(); };
+    const standIn = () => {
+      const pip = m.querySelector('.pip img');
+      if (!pip || m.classList.contains('stand-in')) return;
+      img.src = pip.getAttribute('src'); img.hidden = false;
+      m.classList.add('stand-in');
+      m.querySelector('.shimmer')?.remove();
+      clearInterval(tick);
+      const label = document.createElement('p');
+      label.className = 'stand-in-label';
+      label.textContent = 'inspiration · sketch pending';
+      m.appendChild(label);
+    };
     const tryLoad = () => {
       const probe = new Image();
-      probe.onload = () => { img.src = probe.src; img.hidden = false; settle(); };
+      probe.onload = () => { landTracker.last = Date.now(); img.src = probe.src; img.hidden = false; settle(); };
       probe.onerror = () => {
-        if (Date.now() - started > 150000) {
-          const pip = m.querySelector('.pip img');
-          if (pip) { img.src = pip.getAttribute('src'); img.hidden = false; }
-          else { m.closest('.face').classList.add('text-only'); m.remove(); }
-          settle();
-          return;
-        }
-        setTimeout(tryLoad, 2500);
+        const quiet = Date.now() - landTracker.last > 240000;
+        if (Date.now() - started > 240000 && quiet) standIn();
+        setTimeout(tryLoad, m.classList.contains('stand-in') ? 5000 : 2500);
       };
       probe.src = url + (url.includes('?') ? '&' : '?') + 't=' + Date.now();
     };