The decision page's fallback is earned by exit code, never predicted

Across every recorded gpt-5.6-sol session, serve-question.mjs was never
invoked once: the rule's prose list of fallback environments (headless,
CI, an eval worker, a remote shell) let the model match itself against
the list and take the structured question tool without running the
script, while claude-opus-5 on the identical harness runs the script
every time and the page works. The direction is then chosen with no
imagery on the table, the catalog challengers are weighed without their
art, and the session's own safest candidate wins: measured end to end
on the eval harness, this is where bland output enters.

The environment list is deleted; the script's own exit 2 is now the
only key to the fallback, and the script already prints the rationale
and the override at runtime to exactly the sessions that hit it. Same
gate on the comp round's approval point: inline image rendering earns
the in-harness path, and a text-only surface is not display.

One adversarial review pass; its two word-level findings are applied.

AI-assisted (Claude Fable 5), prepared for maintainer review.

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

skill/reference/new-work.md

@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ The script deals three of your structures to the table; the dice decide which th
 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 IMPECCABLE’S 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 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 -->
+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. The fallback to the structured question tool is never yours to predict: run the script, and only its exit 2 routes the decision there; treat exit 2 as the fallback, never as an error to retry. <!-- rule:skill-visual-decision-page -->
 
 When image generation exists, every card also declares a `comp` path under `.impeccable/mocks/decision/`, 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 comps; the page shimmer-waits per slot and the user may answer before they land. Each card's image is that direction's north-star comp at full fidelity, produced under the comp discipline in [visualize.md](visualize.md): the requested surface's first viewport, structure-led prompt, real product name and real content, no invented commercial claims, in that card's own palette, type character, and material world, committed all the way; visualize.md's self-checks bind decision comps identically. Generation takes the same time at any fidelity, so an unfinished draft pays draft quality for comp cost; fairness between cards comes from equal fidelity in each card's own grammar, one surface, one aspect, never from shared unfinishedness. The frame's aspect is the surface's own: a native app or mobile-first surface comps portrait at its device viewport, a desktop web surface landscape, and the decision page adapts to either, so a phone screen comped landscape is a broken frame, not a neutral default. Produce in the order the user reads, the assigned card, then the pick, then the full-card hand, then canon, each file written with its prompt sidecar the moment it is done, so a re-roll's spend front-loads onto the cards read first; declined challengers get no comp, 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-comp 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. The chosen card's comp is not spent by the choice: on a comp-led build it enters the comp round as compositional option one, and on a code-led build it returns at the finish review as the critique reference, what the image dared that the build did not. The unchosen comps stay in `.impeccable/mocks/decision/` as the round's spent hand; they carry no approval and imply none. 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-comps-full-fidelity --> <!-- rule:skill-salience-parity -->
 

skill/reference/visualize.md

@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ Treat each comp as a direction test, not a screenshot specification. Core UI tex
 
 ## One approval point
 
-Show the three together: in the harness when it can display images, otherwise on the decision page (`serve-question.mjs`, one option per comp with the comp as its hero). Ask what should carry forward, what feels false to the world, and whether the selected surface concept should be approved, combined, revised, or rejected. Then stop and wait. A structured simulated user counts as attended and receives the same question.
+Show the three together on the decision page (`serve-question.mjs`, one option per comp with the comp as its hero), or in the harness only when it renders images inline; a text-only surface is not display. Ask what should carry forward, what feels false to the world, and whether the selected surface concept should be approved, combined, revised, or rejected. Then stop and wait. A structured simulated user counts as attended and receives the same question.
 
 Do not begin code until the user approves a direction or explicitly delegates the choice. If they delegate, choose using the task brief, PRODUCT.md, and DESIGN.md, and state the evidence. Approval refines the task concept; it does not modify DESIGN.md.