Make the code-led GROUND fallback deterministic, compare like for like

The quality bar leaves the color-authority chain (it arrives as card
image paths and never governs composition). With no comp, a color
OWN-WORLD names is the target; when it names none, the review states
there is no GROUND authority instead of inventing a target. The build
side of the numeric comparison now samples the same way each record
was taken: patch average against patch average, gradient ends against
gradient ends.

AI-assisted change (Cursor), prepared under maintainer direction.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>

skill/agents/impeccable-finish-reviewer.md

@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ Expect: the original request; the confirmed user answers; the artifact path(s);
 
 0. **Evidence.** Before any other check, verify the required captures exist and every capture is valid. Required: the platform's full viewport set (web: `desktop.png` and `mobile.png`; native: one capture per shipped device class), plus every capture the calling brief names as required, a reported user viewport (`user-<width>.png`) included. Valid: no black or blank regions, content matching what the filename claims (a visit capture showing the About section is invalid), the document top visible where the file claims a full page, dimensions that make sense for the named viewport. A required capture that is absent fails exactly like one that is malformed: a viewport nobody captured is a viewport nobody inspected, and it cannot ship. When any capture fails, the whole review changes shape: return `disposition: recapture` as the first line, then one section, `recapture`, listing each missing or invalid file and what a valid capture of it shows, and stop. Never build a matrix on malformed evidence; a verdict derived from a broken capture launders the breakage into an approval, and the parent owes you a full re-review on valid captures, not a scoring round.
 1. **Persistence.** PRODUCT.md exists. On a comp-led build, `.impeccable/review/hero-repro.png` exists: the hero reproduction checkpoint's capture at the comp's own dimensions; its absence means the reproduction phase ran unproven, a material finding. When DESIGN.md predates this build (an extension or redesign), it matches the built world; on a new world it is written after this review by the documenter, so its absence here is not a finding. When comp-round comps exist under `.impeccable/mocks/`, an approval record exists too: the surface brief naming the approved comp, or an `approved` flag in its sidecar. Comp-round comps with no recorded pick mean the approval point was skipped, a material finding. Files under `.impeccable/mocks/decision/` are exempt: they are the direction round's dealt hand, produced before any comp round, and imply no approval whatever the build path; a code-led build has no comp round at all.
-2. **Fidelity.** Against your own element inventory of the approved comp, never against the contract's summary of it: topology, reading order, focal scale, overlaps and z-order, density, signature geometry, the primary action's treatment (a CTA the comp physically works, dissolves, or stamps is a signature element; its plain-rectangle rendition is contradicted), navigation items and icons, headline levels and scale relationships. Classify every salient element: match, acceptable adaptation, missing, contradicted, or added without approval. Three rows are mandatory in every matrix. TYPE: the display lettering's character, compression, width, weight, contrast, terminals, against the comp's; a face of a different character is contradicted however the layout matches. MATERIAL: an element rendered as flat CSS or clean vector where the comp shows painted, textured, dimensional, or photographic material is contradicted regardless of placement; medium is part of the promise. GROUND: the page field's value and temperature against the comp's, sampled from pixels on both sides when tooling allows rather than judged from memory, and read as the net on-screen result where a texture or tile paints over the base color; a ground warmer or cooler than the comp's is contradicted however faithfully the layout matches, and drift toward the rendition prior (warm cream on light grounds, blue-black slate on dark) is the direction to hunt. With no approved comp, TYPE and MATERIAL do not lapse: judge them against the contract's OWN-WORLD and the world's real materials, and treat faked physicality (CSS bevels, embossing, stamped-metal or chalk effects imitating a material the page never renders) as contradicted on its face; imitation material is the single most reliable mark of machine-made design. GROUND does not lapse either: with no comp to sample, judge the page field's value and temperature against the colors OWN-WORLD and the quality bar name, and where neither names one, hold the ground to the world's internal coherence rather than a target you invent. A critique-reference comp on such a build is provocation, not spec: no element matrix, no adaptation citations, no asset obligations; its one contribution is what the image dared that the build did not, and dares worth adopting enter material_fixes as ordinary ordered fixes. An adaptation counts as intentional only when it cites the user answer, surface brief, accessibility need, or product truth that forced it; an uncited deviation is a defect. A missing signature element, a changed topology, or content added without approval fails fidelity and outranks every craft point in material_fixes. When MATERIAL is contradicted on the focal element, or contradiction is the page rather than the exception, stop ordering repairs: make the first material fix a rebuild directive naming the comp regions to re-derive and the assets to produce; a list of patches against a rejected page launders the rejection into an approval. A fix that requires producing an asset says so explicitly ("produce: <region> as a raster asset"), never phrased as a style adjustment the parent will answer with CSS. The comp is the spec for composition, topology, element inventory, density, lettering character, and material; it is not a pixel spec for semantics, accessibility, or responsive reflow, and that allowance covers translation, never replacement.
+2. **Fidelity.** Against your own element inventory of the approved comp, never against the contract's summary of it: topology, reading order, focal scale, overlaps and z-order, density, signature geometry, the primary action's treatment (a CTA the comp physically works, dissolves, or stamps is a signature element; its plain-rectangle rendition is contradicted), navigation items and icons, headline levels and scale relationships. Classify every salient element: match, acceptable adaptation, missing, contradicted, or added without approval. Three rows are mandatory in every matrix. TYPE: the display lettering's character, compression, width, weight, contrast, terminals, against the comp's; a face of a different character is contradicted however the layout matches. MATERIAL: an element rendered as flat CSS or clean vector where the comp shows painted, textured, dimensional, or photographic material is contradicted regardless of placement; medium is part of the promise. GROUND: the page field's value and temperature against the comp's, sampled from pixels on both sides when tooling allows rather than judged from memory, and read as the net on-screen result where a texture or tile paints over the base color; a ground warmer or cooler than the comp's is contradicted however faithfully the layout matches, and drift toward the rendition prior (warm cream on light grounds, blue-black slate on dark) is the direction to hunt. With no approved comp, TYPE and MATERIAL do not lapse: judge them against the contract's OWN-WORLD and the world's real materials, and treat faked physicality (CSS bevels, embossing, stamped-metal or chalk effects imitating a material the page never renders) as contradicted on its face; imitation material is the single most reliable mark of machine-made design. GROUND narrows rather than lapses: with no comp to sample, a color OWN-WORLD names is the target and the same warmer-or-cooler judgment applies; when OWN-WORLD names none, there is no GROUND authority, and the review says so in place of a verdict, because a target the reviewer invents turns the check into taste. A critique-reference comp on such a build is provocation, not spec: no element matrix, no adaptation citations, no asset obligations; its one contribution is what the image dared that the build did not, and dares worth adopting enter material_fixes as ordinary ordered fixes. An adaptation counts as intentional only when it cites the user answer, surface brief, accessibility need, or product truth that forced it; an uncited deviation is a defect. A missing signature element, a changed topology, or content added without approval fails fidelity and outranks every craft point in material_fixes. When MATERIAL is contradicted on the focal element, or contradiction is the page rather than the exception, stop ordering repairs: make the first material fix a rebuild directive naming the comp regions to re-derive and the assets to produce; a list of patches against a rejected page launders the rejection into an approval. A fix that requires producing an asset says so explicitly ("produce: <region> as a raster asset"), never phrased as a style adjustment the parent will answer with CSS. The comp is the spec for composition, topology, element inventory, density, lettering character, and material; it is not a pixel spec for semantics, accessibility, or responsive reflow, and that allowance covers translation, never replacement.
 3. **Ceiling.** Against the QUALITY BAR card: name the world's native devices the build left unused, frame, depth, lettering treatment, ornament density, motion. The card governs commitment and finish, never composition.
 4. **Contract, promise by promise.** First verify FORM carries the seed key the concept roll printed; a contract with no seed key, or one the parent cannot corroborate, means the roll was skipped, a material fix ahead of any craft point. Then, for each of the five blocks: does the render keep the promise? Apply the memory test to the first viewport.
 5. **Truth.** Demonstration data authored and labeled synthetic; no invented commercial claims; unanswered claims present as marked placeholders, not omissions. Every image-native region of the approved comp shipped as a real asset, not a gradient standing in for one, and every produced asset visibly present in the screenshots; an asset applied at near-zero opacity or buried behind other paint is a compliance token, not a shipped material.

skill/reference/new-work.md

@@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ For `shape`, return the selected direction to [shape.md](shape.md) and stop befo
 
 ## 6. Build with full commitment
 
-When an approved comp exists, the comp is king, and the build happens in phases. The comp is a spatial contract, not a mood board: only the user can downgrade its authority, in explicit words, and difficulty never infers a downgrade. Phase one is reproduction: rebuild the comp at its own breakpoint until a screenshot at the comp's width and height overlaps it near pixel-perfectly, materials, components, elevation, assets, and implied design language included. Exactly three concessions exist: fonts (the closest obtainable face), icons (exact match unless the user already chose an icon library), and genuine defects in the generated comp such as spelling errors. Everything else must match, and models systematically believe their HTML, CSS, and SVG recreation succeeded when it did not, so the overlap comparison is the authority, never your conviction: set the screenshot beside the freshly reopened comp image at identical dimensions after every region, never beside your memory of it, and when a region keeps losing that comparison, stop recreating it in code and produce it as a rendered asset composited into the page. The comp also outranks every written record of it: when the recorded brief or inventory commits to less than the comp shows, a softer texture, a sparser field, a sculpted plate reduced to flat CSS, correct the record upward to the comp; qualifiers like subtle, restrained, and low-contrast, and counts rounded down to a comfortable fraction, are how approved materials die between approval and build. A produced material must then survive to the screen: a texture buried under a nearly opaque color wash ships the wash, not the material, so judge every material by the screenshot beside the comp, never by the stylesheet. Every color the brief records gets that comparison by number, not by eye: sample the build screenshot's ground, dominant fields, and accents and set each hex against the recorded comp value (sampled from the comp itself when the brief lacks one), and when a texture or tile paints over a base token, measure the net on-screen value, because the eye files a drifted color under the same color word and the number is what catches it. Judge the gap like a colorist, not a diff tool: a difference with a color name (warmer, grayer, darker than the record) is drift to fix, while a few digits of render and compression noise are the same color. <!-- rule:skill-color-by-number --> Only when reproduction holds does phase two begin: static regions that should live become animated or interactive, reveals and motion are added, then responsiveness across the surface's devices. Where the comp does not cover the whole surface, continue building the remainder inside the comp's recorded world and design language; a component the comp never shows inherits the recorded system's corner language, line weights, and materials, and may not introduce container styles, border weights, or chrome the comp never uses. <!-- rule:skill-comp-is-king -->
+When an approved comp exists, the comp is king, and the build happens in phases. The comp is a spatial contract, not a mood board: only the user can downgrade its authority, in explicit words, and difficulty never infers a downgrade. Phase one is reproduction: rebuild the comp at its own breakpoint until a screenshot at the comp's width and height overlaps it near pixel-perfectly, materials, components, elevation, assets, and implied design language included. Exactly three concessions exist: fonts (the closest obtainable face), icons (exact match unless the user already chose an icon library), and genuine defects in the generated comp such as spelling errors. Everything else must match, and models systematically believe their HTML, CSS, and SVG recreation succeeded when it did not, so the overlap comparison is the authority, never your conviction: set the screenshot beside the freshly reopened comp image at identical dimensions after every region, never beside your memory of it, and when a region keeps losing that comparison, stop recreating it in code and produce it as a rendered asset composited into the page. The comp also outranks every written record of it: when the recorded brief or inventory commits to less than the comp shows, a softer texture, a sparser field, a sculpted plate reduced to flat CSS, correct the record upward to the comp; qualifiers like subtle, restrained, and low-contrast, and counts rounded down to a comfortable fraction, are how approved materials die between approval and build. A produced material must then survive to the screen: a texture buried under a nearly opaque color wash ships the wash, not the material, so judge every material by the screenshot beside the comp, never by the stylesheet. Every color the brief records gets that comparison by number, not by eye: sample the build screenshot's ground, dominant fields, and accents the same way each record was taken (an interior patch average where the record is an average, both end colors where the record is a gradient) and set each value against its recorded counterpart (sampled from the comp itself when the brief lacks one), and when a texture or tile paints over a base token, measure the net on-screen value, because the eye files a drifted color under the same color word and the number is what catches it. Judge the gap like a colorist, not a diff tool: a difference with a color name (warmer, grayer, darker than the record) is drift to fix, while a few digits of render and compression noise are the same color. <!-- rule:skill-color-by-number --> Only when reproduction holds does phase two begin: static regions that should live become animated or interactive, reveals and motion are added, then responsiveness across the surface's devices. Where the comp does not cover the whole surface, continue building the remainder inside the comp's recorded world and design language; a component the comp never shows inherits the recorded system's corner language, line weights, and materials, and may not introduce container styles, border weights, or chrome the comp never uses. <!-- rule:skill-comp-is-king -->
 
 Build the assigned direction, not a safer interpretation of it. The form supplies structure, reading order, component conventions, and native motion; the product supplies every fact. Commit every atom: nav, buttons, inputs, and links are rebuilt in the form's vocabulary, and a stock component inside a committed form is a lapse. Land the first build fully committed; committing is the hard part, and the passes that follow exist to make the committed thing clear and effective, never to dilute it. In unattended work, the safe rendition is the known risk. <!-- rule:skill-commit-every-atom -->