Commit Graph
203 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
cacb2868ac No comps outside the state: generate-image refuses .impeccable/mocks/ output while a roll is pending and build-phase has not started
The first paid confirmation sweep showed the failure: models rendered the
three comps first and ran build-phase.mjs start after, so a session cut at
the composition pick carried no state.json and the resumed model followed
the conversation ('translate the comp into HTML now') instead of the
phases. Decision comps (.impeccable/mocks/decision/) are unaffected;
--force-mock overrides.

AI-assisted (Claude).

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 06:13:59 +05:00
f5751c4d75 font-match: choose the face by metrics; chroma-keyed plates; ink-box report; verbatim words in the hero
font-match.mjs fingerprints a text region's lettering in the comp (cap
height, glyph advance per cap = width class, ink fraction = weight class,
tracking), renders candidate faces at that cap height in a headless
browser (yours plus a shortlist for the width class), and ranks them by
distance with a proof sheet; the spec gate refuses to close until the lead
text region is measured and ranked. generate-image --plate keys ink-on-
ground plates to alpha (chroma) so the drawing sits on the page's own
ground; the plates gate scores keyed plates composited over the region's
ground. comp-diff reports each region's ink box; the hero gate names a
control whose box height or width differs from the comp. The hero
instruction copies the comp's words verbatim; rewording is a stated
decision after the hero passes.

Driven by a human review of the r3 side-by-sides: face width and weight,
plate ground, control row height, and content substitution.

AI-assisted (Claude).

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 06:13:59 +05:00
af4ac68805 Plates: textures tile a clean comp patch first; record hero reports plate rows
AI-assisted (Claude).

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 06:13:59 +05:00
e618357a69 Responsive gate: the desktop capture must still read as the comp
Round-1 simulated builds passed the hero at 1536 and shipped a page whose
first viewport collapsed to one column at 1440 (comp-diff 50% on the
final capture, 82% on the hero). The responsive phase now requires
desktop.png and mobile.png and diffs desktop.png against the comp at 65%
with no region missing.

AI-assisted (Claude).

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 06:13:59 +05:00
d9a155be8c Gates that cannot be talked past: metric hardening, one start command, uncovered-ink refusal
From a forensics pass over twelve runs and two adversarial passes over
the metrics:

- comp-diff: detail is signed and penalizes invented energy; regions with
  structure under 0.3 (or painted regions under 0.45 / added detail over
  0.4) are contradicted whatever the mean says; palette ramp tightened;
  region crops inherit the whole-image best translation so a shifted page
  is not eight contradicted regions.
- hero gate: fails on any contradicted plate/image/text region (chrome and
  controls keep the one-third allowance), on a capture that is not the
  comp's frame, on a palette that is not the comp's, and on an organic
  clip-path drawn inside a raster region's box.
- plates gate: scored against the comp crop with overlapping text/chrome
  painted out (comp-spec plateReference; generate-image uses it too), with
  a structure floor and an added-detail veto; the real plate passes, noise,
  mirrors, mosaics, and other regions do not.
- comp-spec refuses a regions file that leaves comp ink unnamed.
- The direction-choice ping is folded into build-phase.mjs start
  --direction --kind; the roll writes .impeccable/build/pending.json and
  context.mjs / detect.mjs report COMP_ROUND_OPEN until the hero gate
  passes. A code-led config makes start print the contract step and stop.

AI-assisted (Claude).

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 06:13:59 +05:00
6dd15238c4 Close the comp-round gap and make the hero gate teach
concept-seed's choice ping now prints the next mandatory step from the
recorded build path (comp-led: build-phase.mjs start --direction <key>),
because every run that skipped the comp round did so right after that
ping. build-phase gains a comps phase ahead of spec (three sidecar'd comps
under .impeccable/mocks/, one approved) and records the approved comp on
close. The hero gate lists the worst region crops first with the fix class
per verdict, and refuses a third value-only attempt on the same stuck
region. Hero instruction is plates first, then the semantic layer. The
finish reviewer treats a comp-led build with no closed comps phase as a
material finding.

AI-assisted (Claude).

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 06:13:59 +05:00
f4987eebba Hero gate refuses while a produced plate is unreferenced by the source
The first live run produced a faithful carburetor plate, then drew the
region in SVG and left the plate on disk. Before diffing, the hero gate
now walks the artifact (or a bounded source tree) for every plate's file
name or a data URI named for it.

AI-assisted (Claude).

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 06:13:27 +05:00
63dd7faa0e build-phase: textures skip the size floor, --force needs the user's words
The first live run forced past the plates gate with 'single-file HTML
delivery requires embedded CSS/SVG'. That is not a reason the comp's
authority moves for; the script now refuses a --force whose reason does
not quote the user, and new-work.md says a single-file deliverable inlines
the plate as a data URI. Texture plates are judged on palette and grain,
not size or structure, since they tile.

AI-assisted (Claude).

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 06:13:27 +05:00
34ef9ac2c4 Rewrite the comp-led build around the phase gates; reviewer reads the diff first
new-work.md section 6 becomes the spec / plates / hero / sections / motion /
responsive phase list, each closed by build-phase.mjs advance; the
reproduction and hero-checkpoint prose that asked the model to compare
from memory is gone. visualize.md's inventory, medium gate, and produce
sections collapse into the spec and plate mechanism. The finish reviewer
takes the state file and comp-diff reports as inputs and starts its
fidelity matrix from the measured verdicts. docs/COMP-FIDELITY.md records
the design.

AI-assisted (Claude).

Co-Authored-By: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-28 06:13:27 +05:00
Abdul WahabandCursor 35ae07339b Fix: parse Grok Build camelCase hook stdin (#646)
Grok was classified as GitHub Copilot, so the design hook skipped every
edit with no-file-path and never ran Stop. Normalize toolInput/sessionId
and treat Stop additionalContext as the Grok product.

Prepared with AI assistance.

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
2026-08-24 05:28:21 +05:00
Paul Bakaus 7d5c60d291 Remove stale Claude MultiEdit matcher
Claude Code now folds multi-edit behavior into Edit, so keep generated and repaired hook manifests aligned with the current Edit and Write tools. Grok keeps its compatibility matcher unchanged.

AI assistance was used to implement and validate this change.
2026-08-19 09:28:28 -07:00
3c6f53406b Fix: stop the direction page hanging forever after a re-roll (#469) (#530)
* Fix: stop the direction page hanging forever after a re-roll (#469)

The re-roll leg of the decision-page protocol was documented only in
serve-question.mjs's own header, so agents never ran --update and the
open tab polled a round that could never arrive. Compounding failure
modes: the page poll swallowed every error, the daemon's --timeout was
an absolute guillotine that killed the server under a still-open tab,
a choice posted to a dead server confirmed nothing, and refresh or
Reload on an unresolved round resurrected heartbeats that held the
daemon alive indefinitely.

- new-work.md documents the re-roll leg: rerun concept-seed with
  --from/--reroll, deliver with --update on the same key, never --start
  a second server.
- The page poll terminates and says why: eight consecutive fetch
  failures means the server is gone; the delivery deadline (the
  server's own --idle-grace, inlined into the page) passing means the
  hand never arrived. Both stop heartbeating.
- The daemon's --timeout bounds only the wait for a page to open; once
  the page heartbeats, the server lives while the page does and exits
  after --idle-grace (default 600s) without a beat, including under
  --timeout 0.
- Build this and Re-roll against a dead server fail loudly instead of
  silently swallowing the click.
- The server tracks the window between a collected re-roll answer and
  the --update that replaces the round, and serves the page in waiting
  mode there, so a native refresh re-enters the same bounded wait
  instead of resurrecting dead cards; the in-page Reload button only
  revives a delivered hand.
- --update is exempt from the headless gate and its liveness probe
  trusts a fresh heartbeat over a failed kill probe (sandbox EPERM is
  not death).

Squash of the six review-round commits on this branch, rebased onto
main after the decision-page revamp.

AI assistance: prepared with an AI agent operating under maintainer
instruction (abdulwahabone).

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

* Fix review findings: persist the replacement deadline, refuse unloadable hands

A browser-native refresh of the waiting page re-entered the bounded wait
with a fresh delivery deadline and an immediate heartbeat, so refreshing
before each deadline expired could hold the daemon alive and keep --wait
on WAITING indefinitely. The server now records when the re-roll or
followup answer was collected, each served waiting page inherits only
what remains of that one allowance, and a page served after the deadline
renders stalled immediately and never starts its heartbeat.

And a next hand the round could not load used to reload-loop the tab:
GET /'s catch kept the file on disk, so /next-status stayed ready:true
forever. --update now refuses a payload without a non-empty options
array at the sender, and GET / discards an unloadable next file so the
bounded wait resumes.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent) under maintainer instruction.

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

* Fix review finding: a stalled page recovers a late hand without a click

The stall silenced heartbeats so the idle grace could reclaim the
daemon, but that silence read as a closed tab: after a late --update,
--wait saw the stale beat and reported PAGE CLOSED while the user sat
on the Reload screen, so the agent abandoned the browser path the
recovery UI exists for. The stall screen now keeps a beat-free
/next-status watch that reloads into a delivered hand on its own
(GET never beats, so an abandoned flow is still reclaimed), and --wait
no longer concludes closure from a stale beat while an undelivered
next hand sits on disk.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent) under maintainer instruction.

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

* Fix review finding: a delivered hand must not mask a closed page

The mid-delivery suppression keyed on the next file existing, but a
closed tab never claims that file, so an unconsumed delivery held
--wait on WAITING indefinitely instead of reporting the closed flow.
The suppression is now age-bound: a stalled page's watch reclaims a
delivered hand within seconds, so a file still unclaimed after a 10s
grace means no page is coming back and the stale beat reads as the
closed page it is.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent) under maintainer instruction.

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

* Fix review finding: stamp the delivery clock at --update, not the copy

--wait's mid-delivery grace reads the next file's mtime, but
copyFileSync's timestamp behavior is the platform's business: a copy
that preserves the source payload's older mtime would start the grace
already spent and report PAGE CLOSED under a live stalled tab. --update
now touches the delivered file itself, so delivery time is delivery
time everywhere.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent) under maintainer instruction.

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

* Fix review findings: disable canon during the wait, validate --timeout

The waiting and stall screens disabled only the re-roll buttons; the
footer canon action stayed clickable, and a canon pick posted after
--wait had consumed the re-roll could never be collected: it overwrote
the answer, marked the table closed, and exited the daemon under the
agent. Both disable sites now take the canon exit down with the re-roll
buttons; a delivered hand reloads the page and serves it live again.

And --timeout reached the lifetime timer unvalidated: NaN or a negative
value disarmed the no-page exit and the daemon leaked. It now takes the
default unless the value is a finite non-negative number, keeping 0 as
the explicit wait-forever.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent) under maintainer instruction.

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

* Fix review finding: a second click must not renew the delivery deadline

dealAgain left the re-roll and canon controls live through the answer
POST and the 700ms fly-out, so a second click posted another re-roll
and the server restamped awaitingNextSince, renewing the deadline this
PR made non-renewable on refresh and on the stall screen. The controls
now go quiet at the click itself, in dealAgain and in answer(), and the
server stamps the allowance only on the transition into the wait, so a
duplicate answer racing the disable keeps the first stamp.

Regression coverage on both sides: the unit deadline test posts a
duplicate re-roll mid-allowance and asserts the budget shrank instead
of resetting, and the e2e stall test asserts both controls are disabled
immediately after the click, before the fly-out.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent) under maintainer instruction.

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

* Fix review finding: a late delivery must survive its claim window

--update could land a replacement hand after the stalled page went
silent but moments before the daemon's idle deadline: the daemon exited
before the page's 1.5s watch could claim the hand, orphaning a delivery
--update had confirmed, and the next --wait reported a server failure.
The idle exit now defers while an unclaimed next hand is younger than
the claim grace --wait already reads (extracted as one shared
constant), so the page's watch deals it and heartbeats resume; a file
unclaimed past the grace still ends the daemon, bounded as before.

Regression test: deliver at idle-deadline-minus-a-beat, assert the
daemon survives past the deadline and serves the late hand.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent) under maintainer instruction.

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

* Fix review finding: the claim itself must hold the daemon

The idle-exit hold read only the next file's freshness, but GET /
deletes that file when it serves the claimed round, before the
reloading page can post its first heartbeat: a lifetime tick in that
gap saw no pending hand and a stale beat, and exited under the hand
just claimed. GET / now stamps the claim when it consumes a pending
hand, and the idle exit honors the same bounded grace from that stamp,
so the reloading page gets its seconds to beat while an abandoned claim
still ends the daemon at the grace.

The claim-window regression test now also fetches after the claim, past
another lifetime tick, and asserts the daemon survived the gap;
verified it fails on the previous commit.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent) under maintainer instruction.

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

* Fix review finding: --wait must ride out the claim gap too

The claim deletes the next file --wait's mid-delivery grace watches,
and the reloading page has not beat yet, so --wait in that gap read the
stale beat as PAGE CLOSED while the daemon was alive serving the dealt
round, and the agent abandoned a browser session that had just
recovered. GET / now persists the claim stamp into the per-key state
file, and --wait's suppression honors it under the same bounded grace:
a fresh claim stays WAITING, a claim nobody followed with a beat still
reads as the closed page it is.

Regression test drives --wait through the gap (claim with a stale beat:
WAITING, not exit 4) and past it (backdated claim stamp: exit 4);
verified it fails on the previous commit.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent) under maintainer instruction.

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

---------

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Co-authored-by: Paul Bakaus <paul.bakaus@gmail.com>
2026-08-16 14:26:02 -07:00
Abdul WahabandGitHub f1560cc238 Merge pull request #590 from pbakaus/fix/comp-ground-sampling
Fix uncaught ground-color drift on comp-led builds
2026-08-16 13:52:16 +05:00
Abdul WahabandCursor e9c62278c1 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>
2026-08-16 13:39:57 +05:00
Abdul WahabandCursor 79c648a9ab Resolve bot review: code-led GROUND authority, sampling rules, tolerance
GROUND no longer lapses silently on code-led builds: with no comp to
sample, the authority is the colors OWN-WORLD and the quality bar name,
and no invented target beyond them. Non-uniform fields get sampling
rules (interior pixel, patch average for texture, both ends of a
gradient, never an edge), and the numeric comparison gets tolerance
semantics so render noise never fails a faithful build. The hunt hint
names the dark-ground prior beside the light one.

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

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
2026-08-16 12:50:46 +05:00
3b87935958 Fix: keep raster provenance through the finish-review fix loop (#588)
* Fix: keep raster provenance through the finish-review fix loop

Three runs (two harnesses) showed the parent generating production
rasters after the producer returned: no exact embedded prompt, no
inventory row, orphan files. The asset contract in visualize.md was
phase-scoped to the build while new-work.md's fix loop licensed
"produce the named assets" with no rules attached.

- visualize.md: name the provenance contract, require the exact tool
  payload, and scope it to the run, fix rounds and rebuilds included.
- new-work.md: bind fix/rebuild rasters to the contract, add an
  embed-prompt --scan step before the verdict round, and extend the
  FINISH line to carry the condition through long builds.
- embed-prompt.mjs: add --scan mode listing rasters missing a prompt
  (exit 3 when any), reusing the existing read path.

AI-assisted change, prepared with Cursor under maintainer direction.

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

* Add cursor-control-8 comp vs final screenshots for PR evidence

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

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

* Add cursor-control-9 comp vs final screenshots for PR evidence

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

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

* Address review findings on the provenance gate

- Hoist the provenance rule out of the fix disposition into its own
  paragraph binding rebuild and fix alike, gated before either round's
  result goes back for review or verdict (Bugbot: rebuild skipped the
  scan when its fresh review shipped).
- A scan-flagged raster gets the record it is missing embedded, exact
  prompt for produced, origin for sourced/stock/pre-existing; deletion
  is reserved for abandoned rasters, never scan hits (Bugbot: gate hit
  non-generated assets on extensions).
- Document the scan command with its required directory argument
  (Greptile: literal command exited before scanning).
- Align the FINISH line on the provenance token.

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

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

* Remove evidence images from the diff; they live on the pr-evidence branch

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

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

---------

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
2026-08-14 13:51:03 -04:00
Abdul WahabandCursor 9213bf1511 Generalize color sampling beyond the cream-ground case
Accents join the sampled record alongside ground and dominant fields,
every recorded color (not only the ground) is compared by number
during the build, and the light-ground-only rationale clauses become
value-neutral so dark and saturated comps get the same protection.
Rule anchor renamed to skill-color-by-number to match its scope.

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

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
2026-08-14 21:26:08 +05:00
Abdul WahabandCursor 5b7c9e93cb Fix uncaught ground-color drift on comp-led builds
Sample the approved comp's ground and dominant-field hexes into the
brief (visualize.md), judge the built page's ground by number against
that record including the net value under textures (new-work.md), and
make GROUND a mandatory fidelity-matrix row beside TYPE and MATERIAL
(finish reviewer). Pre-comp palette chips are retired at approval.

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

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
2026-08-14 20:27:19 +05:00
Paul BakausandGitHub 49d8cbff16 Comp-fidelity review discipline + conciseness pass on core references (#586)
* Comp-fidelity review discipline + conciseness pass on core references

Process fixes derived from a real Codex session (Hanasaku landing page)
where a build drifted wholesale from the approved comp and still shipped
under a reviewer pass:

- finish reviewer: new Evidence check (check 0) with a fourth
  disposition, recapture, for malformed screenshots; a review on invalid
  evidence binds nothing and owes a full re-review, not a verdict pass
- finish reviewer: verdict passes exit scoring mode when recaptures fail
  check 0 or when the packet carries user-supplied screenshots that
  contradict a prior verdict (those force a fresh full review); a ship
  earned in a verdict pass covers the scored fixes, not the whole surface
- new-work: capture-validity rules (settle entrance motion, capture from
  document top, comp comparison at comp dimensions, open every file once
  before sending); user's actual viewport joins the inspected sizes
- new-work: hero checkpoint now writes .impeccable/review/hero-repro.png
  and the reviewer verifies it exists under Persistence
- new-work: comp authority is explicit (only the user can downgrade it);
  handoff reports the verdict at its actual scope; user evidence reopens
  a full review; documenter re-runs when fixes land after documentation
- craft-floor: Refuse entry for geometric masks approximating organic
  photographic contours (the circular-cutout failure)
- editorial conciseness pass over new-work.md, visualize.md, and both
  agent files: tighter sentences, no dropped rules, all rule markers and
  mechanical tokens preserved

Assisted-by: Claude Code

* fix: define the ship disposition in new-work's action paragraph

Copilot review finding: the paragraph claimed exactly four disposition
words but defined only recapture, rebuild, and fix.

Assisted-by: Claude Code

* fix: rebuild returns get a full review; recapture return shape in preamble

Cursor Bugbot findings:
- a return following a rebuild directive is now a fresh full review on
  both sides of the contract, never a verdict pass, so a wholesale
  rebuild cannot earn a scoped ship on the directive alone
- the turn-ceiling preamble now names the recapture return shape instead
  of contradicting it with "the five sections"

Assisted-by: Claude Code

* fix: absent required captures fail the evidence check

Greptile finding: a packet with no desktop.png/mobile.png (or missing
native device-class captures) routed to the missing-input notice and
could still reach ship. A required capture that is absent now fails
check 0 exactly like a malformed one and forces recapture; the
missing-input allowance in the preamble excludes captures.

Assisted-by: Claude Code

* fix: user-viewport capture is a required, named input to the review

Greptile finding: the evidence gate hard-coded web requirements to
desktop.png and mobile.png, so a reported user viewport could join the
inspected set and still ship uncaptured. The parent now saves it as
user-<width>.png and names every inspected viewport required in the
packet; check 0's required set includes every brief-named capture.

Assisted-by: Claude Code
2026-08-14 05:44:26 -07:00
Paul BakausandClaude Opus 5 ae56d719af Name the image-gen sources and the unanswered default
Two review findings on #583.

"context.mjs reports it" undersold what counts: that directive only fires on an
OPENAI_API_KEY, so a harness with a native image tool and no key generates
images while the boot output says nothing. Read literally, the step would skip
the question exactly where the toggle belongs. It now names both sources and
says a silent boot is not evidence.

The unanswered branch said to state which path the session takes without saying
which one it is. Left implicit, an agent picks its own, which is the failure
this step exists to stop. It now names comp-first, the default new-work applies
when nothing is recorded.

Written with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-14 00:06:17 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Opus 5 83e8b4645c Ask the build path as its own question, and record only a real answer
A live Codex session folded the build path into the stack question as a
trailing recommendation ("I recommend static and code-first"), never said what
either name means, treated its own recommendation as the user's answer, and
wrote `buildPath: code` as a standing default. The user disagreed and flipped
the board to comp-first, but a flip binds one session, so the unasked default
stayed on disk to steer every later round.

Step 5 said to "ask once ... stated as the trade it is", which the run
violated, but the step left the shortcut open: it sits after the interview
ends, it never says a recommendation is not an answer, and unlike the stack
question it offers no way to end without a value, so an agent holding no answer
writes one anyway.

Now: it is its own question, never a clause inside another; the trade is stated
in the question the user reads, because the two names mean nothing on first
contact; only the user's own choice is written; and an unanswered question
records nothing and says so. Unset is a working state, since the page toggle
governs the session and new-work's one-time offer still captures the answer at
the first flip.

The same run also wrote "Code-first build path" into PRODUCT.md's `## Stack`,
so the step now says the config is the only place this lives: a copy in product
truth outlives the setting and steers rounds nobody can trace back to it.

Written with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-13 23:44:38 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Opus 5 816ffe92d0 Surface the build-path finding in doctor, and keep cwd out of the lookup
Round two of review findings, all four valid.

`doctor` builds its own finding list and never called `checkBuildPathUnset`,
so `config-build-path-unset` could not appear in the report even though
doctor.md documents it. That is also the only path left once stalenessCheck is
off, which is exactly when someone is looking for it.

The lookup chain included `process.cwd()`, which lets an ambient invoking
directory decide another project's workflow: run from workspace A with
--target resolving onto workspace B, and B inherited A's buildPath ahead of
the repository default. The chain is now the resolved project then the repo
root, matching `checkBuildPathUnset` exactly; cwd stands in only when no
project resolved at all.

Two prose contradictions, both mine. new-work said to write the value "when
the user says yes" and then to "record the answer either way", which reads as
persist-on-yes-only and leaves the decline to be asked again next session. It
now says the write always happens and the answer picks the value. The README
still pointed existing projects at re-running init, which is the problem this
PR exists to solve; it now names the toggle as the migration path.

The workspace-isolation test earned a correction of its own: the first version
passed a relative --target, which resolves against the caller's cwd and puts
projectRoot back on the calling workspace, so it asserted nothing.

Written with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-13 22:41:32 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Opus 5 c489335799 Build path becomes a config key existing projects can actually reach
The build-path preference shipped as a question only `init` asks, written to
a file only `init` writes. Nothing routes an initialized project back through
init, so every existing project took the comp-first default without anyone
choosing it, and the only recourse was a footer toggle that binds one session.

Neither the setting nor the round that preceded it ever reached a release
(skill-v4.0.4 has no `buildPath`, no `comp-led`, no `.impeccable/settings.json`),
so the PRODUCT.md standing-commitment fallback describes an era that never
existed publicly. It is deleted rather than honored: told a field might exist,
models go hunting for it and preserve it.

- `buildPath` moves from `.impeccable/settings.json` into the unified
  `.impeccable/config.json`, which already has a known-keys registry, doctor
  coverage, and a gitignored `config.local.json` override. Whether a machine
  has an image tool is a property of that machine, so the local file wins.
- new-work captures the answer from behavior instead of an interview: a toggle
  flip on a project recording nothing asks once, after the round closes,
  whether to keep it. The answer is written either way, because a declined
  offer nothing writes down is an offer the next session makes again.
- Two findings: `config-invalid-build-path` (an unread value rides the default
  rather than the opposite path) and `config-build-path-unset`, gated on a
  product record plus evidence of direction work so polish-and-audit projects
  never hear about a setting they do not use.
- init treats a recorded value as a confirmed answer, resolving its conflict
  with Step 1's "do not reopen confirmed fields".
- The setting was undocumented in the README and doctor.md. Both now cover it.

Also records a measured skill-behavior baseline. Three cells fail on unmodified
main (scenarios 9 and 15, `initialized natural build`), verified against a clean
worktree; the suite README now says so, so the next person does not spend the
hour attributing them to their own branch.

Written with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-13 21:52:17 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Opus 5 121602079c Deliver the report as its own step; retune the lineup
Two failures the trace test found were structural, not model quirks.

critique.md described the report's format and then went straight to writing a
temp file, with no step saying to output the report. gemini-3.6-flash and luna
both responded by bundling heredoc, snapshot write, trend read, and cleanup into
one bash call and stopping, leaving a perfect archive nobody had read. A
"Deliver the Report" step now precedes persistence, and persistence describes
itself as a copy of what was already sent. gemini-3.6-flash failed three
consecutive runs before this and its failures afterward all show the report
reaching chat.

The close is also step 6 of the persistence list rather than a section after it,
since the same shape is what fixed delivery.

Lineup: gpt-5.6-luna and deepseek-v4-flash out, gpt-5.6-terra in at
reasoningEffort high (IMPECCABLE_SKILL_BEHAVIOR_EFFORT overrides), gemini 3.5 to
3.6. Provider options resolve from the model object inside the harness so the 21
runTurn call sites are untouched. Verified the effort actually reaches the API
rather than being silently dropped.

The Gemini bump was not cosmetic: 3.5-flash passed critique closes twice and
3.6-flash then failed three times against identical text. A version bump inside
one family changed the outcome, so the README now treats cross-version carryover
as unmeasured.

Known floor, recorded: critique closes is flaky on gemini-3.6-flash, 1 run in 3.
Two structural attempts moved it from consistently failing to intermittently
passing and then stopped paying. claude-sonnet-5 and gpt-5.6-terra are clean.

Prepared with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-13 17:03:19 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Opus 5 ebc63f071a Fix critique's close on the right mechanism
The earlier fix in this branch was built on a wrong diagnosis. It assumed a
structured question hides any prose sharing its message, so it split report and
question across two turns. A controlled check showed prose before a question
renders fine; what hides a report is emitting it AFTER the question. The split
therefore fixed nothing and introduced a worse failure: a turn that ends on the
report is a turn that ends, and the questions never arrived at all.

Persistence returns to main's ordering, byte for byte, and the boundary prose is
gone. What replaces it is a position rule: the question is the last thing in the
response.

The trace test added here found two failures beyond the reported one. Critique
can fail to land in three ways, and they are now all asserted:

  1. Question emitted before the report, hiding it behind the picker.
  2. No close at all: no questions and no skip line, so polish inherits nothing.
  3. Report authored into the persistence heredoc and never written to chat,
     leaving a perfect snapshot and a user who sees nothing.

Mode 3 predates this branch entirely. Persistence step 1 now says the temp file
is an archive copy, not delivery.

The Codex final-question gate is promoted out of its <codex> fence, where it was
stripped for three of four providers, and the skip branch is now a countable
threshold (fewer than 3 Priority Issues) rather than a judgment call.

Known floor, recorded in the suite README: gpt-5.6-luna passes 1 run in 6 and
deepseek-v4-flash is flaky. claude-sonnet-5 and gemini-3.5-flash are consistent.

Prepared with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-13 14:14:44 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Opus 5 d4e1b0902f Enforce the ask_instruction sentence-initial contract
Review on #576 caught document.md:71 splicing {{ask_instruction}} after
"then", which is the same defect this branch set out to fix. Rendered for
Codex it produced "Show the user the existing file, then STOP and use Codex's
structured user-input/question tool...". The line now starts a new sentence.

The comment added to PROVIDER_PLACEHOLDERS asserted the contract without
enforcing it, which is exactly how four reference files shipped the splice in
the first place. validateAskInstructionSites() in build.js now checks every
call site and fails the build on a mid-sentence interpolation, and the comment
points at the gate instead of asking authors to remember.

Prepared with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-13 13:24:29 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Opus 5 0e5c6cbe17 Keep critique's report out of the question's message
The critique report and the AskUserQuestion call shipped in one assistant
message, so the report stayed hidden until the user answered the picker and
the command read as if it had never run.

Reorder critique's persistence steps so the temp-file cleanup runs after the
report and trend line are sent. That cleanup now ends the message carrying the
report, leaving the questions to open a fresh one. Both critique.md and
overdrive.md state the constraint and why it exists, so the ordering is not an
unexplained sequence a model can optimize away. Overdrive additionally moves
its direction descriptions inside the question options, where the user is
actually reading them.

Also fix the ask_instruction splices. The placeholder is a complete sentence,
but five call sites spliced it mid-sentence and shipped text like "stop and
STOP and call the AskUserQuestion tool to clarify. before expanding it". Every
call site is now sentence-initial and the twelve lowercase provider values are
capitalized to match, with a comment in utils.js pinning the contract.

Record a workflow-contract baseline for the current model lineup. The two
failures seen while validating this change are pre-existing: bolder refinement
fails on deepseek-v4-flash identically with bolder.md reverted to HEAD, and
redesign replaces DESIGN is flaky on assertions driven by new-work.md, which
this change does not touch.

Prepared with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-13 01:06:33 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 ea90b23bc8 Merge main: build-path setting lands under the evidence-gated fallback
The retired execution-contract round and the buildPath payload keep
main's text; the decision-page fallback keeps this branch's gate.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 17:44:37 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 64dd60a78a Build path becomes a setting plus a page toggle; the followup contract round retires
- serve-question: payload buildPath { value, toggle } renders a footer
  segmented control (comp first / code first) with the trade stated in one
  line; the default comes from settings, a flip binds that session only.
  Code-led rounds treat declared comp paths as flip reserves: wireframes
  render, a flip to comp shimmers the slots and surfaces once through
  --wait as BUILD PATH FLIPPED so the agent starts generating mid-round;
  the flip back is free and a landed comp stays. The ANSWER carries
  buildPath and buildPathFlipped with a session-only directive.
- init Step 5 asks the preference once (only when image generation exists)
  and writes .impeccable/settings.json; context.mjs surfaces the recorded
  default every session; PRODUCT.md standing commitments stay honored as
  the fallback.
- new-work retires the two-card execution-contract round: no round asks a
  workflow preference. followup stays as the generic same-table mechanism.
- e2e: new toggle test (14/14 with the wireframe test).

Written with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 16:56:39 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 6129744410 Scope the fallback to exit code 2 from starting the script
Bugbot's finding: exit 2 is overloaded, and at --wait it means the
question server died, so the unscoped rule would drop a live visual
round onto the text channel after a transient daemon loss. The gate now
names the serving invocation, which also settles Copilot's exit-code
ambiguity, and the display clause reads grammatically.

AI-assisted (Claude Fable 5).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 16:43:39 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 e2421aff43 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>
2026-08-12 16:37:03 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 ac4c3200db Surface rounds deal three structures, draw wireframes, and anchor comps on a reference screenshot
- concept-seed --scope surface deals three grounded-list indices (dice-picked,
  primary leads) instead of one: a single card is not a choice, and the
  no-lineup rule stays direction-only, where it was written for worlds
- serve-question renders a new per-card wireframe field as a layout schematic
  in the media slot: the code-led channel's visualization, no image
  generation needed, no card back, no salience weight
- generate-image gains --ref (repeatable): routes through the edits endpoint
  with input images, so an established world's comp inherits identity from a
  captured screenshot of a real page instead of a prose paraphrase; tested
  against impeccable.style, where the reference-anchored comp reproduced the
  live site's chrome and the prose-only comp drifted
- new-work rung two rewritten around the dealt hand: lock-in is the
  approval, a locked comp builds comp-led and discharges the visualize.md
  three-option round, a locked wireframe builds code-led; visualize.md
  records the exemption and the reference-image discipline, including the
  reference-leak caveat (chrome carries, the reference page's content
  does not)

Written with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 16:28:15 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 f66eace20d Decision page: plain-language raises, IMPECCABLE'S PICK, sticky footer, short-viewport fit
- The raise block drops the side-tab left border for a quiet patina panel,
  and drops the poker jargon: "Improved by Impeccable's worlds" with
  per-line "From <world>" donors, on single raises too; tooltip, aria, and
  screen-reader copy follow
- The pick-card kicker convention renames MY PICK to IMPECCABLE'S PICK at
  every definition site, so users stop reading "my" as themselves
- The footer (steer, registers, canon exit) is a sticky full-bleed bar on
  wide viewports, sharing one --page-inset with the content column; portrait
  keeps it in flow where the deck scrolls internally
- Short landscape viewports compact the headline and narrow the cards so a
  full round fits 1440x800

Written with AI assistance (Claude Code).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 15:26:34 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 53a6947653 Close the unnamed-focal-moment gap; unstutter the inverse-failure lead
Cursor's finding was real: gating the density check on a named focal
moment let a busy comp pass whenever the direction named none, which is
the common case on the lane that produced the busy comps. The second leg
reuses the bullet's own distinction: several regions performing the
concept at once is the same shout; regions doing their jobs are not.

AI-assisted (Claude Fable 5).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 14:29:59 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 cb305fdca1 Two adversarial reviews later, the discipline says half as much
Two independent skeptic passes over the added prose, one hunting
oversteer and example bias, one hunting mode and platform damage. What
they killed, and why:

- The absolute 'never a medium' rule contradicted the file's own
  imagery-stance fixity two paragraphs up and stripped legitimate guards
  (an illustration-committed world, a native app screen warding off
  stock-photo drift). A medium ban now belongs to the committed imagery
  stance, never to caution, and the rule appears once per reader context
  instead of five times corpus-wide.
- The quoted incident string and the four-example subject list taught
  the model the exact framings they existed to prevent. Gone; the
  abstract rule plus the point-at-the-subject check carry it.
- 'A first-time visitor learns what this is, why it matters, and what
  to do' was Persuade anatomy imposed on all four modes. The guard is
  now mode-neutral: a quieted region keeps its information and stops
  performing.
- 'Calm is what Operate and Read surfaces are for' contradicted
  operate.md's density affordance. Deleted; modes stay defined in one
  place.
- The focal-moment count now presupposes nothing: it fires only where
  the direction names a focal moment, and only on same-scale rivalry,
  so an even, calm field stops reading as a failure.
- The decision-comp clause and the mode bullet no longer restate what
  they can reference.

Net: the prose additions drop from roughly 480 words to under 200, with
no quoted strings and no example lists.

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

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 17:53:10 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 e91c273361 The density check cuts competition, never content
Proven necessary by its own demo: the first re-render of the declined
moto-forum comp satisfied subject-present and one-dominant-move by
deleting the value proposition, leaving a members' index that told a
first-time visitor nothing about what this is or why to care. Paul
caught it. Quieting a region means it stops performing, not that it
leaves; empty is quieter, not calmer.

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

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 17:25:04 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 e867487d55 Ban fabrications, never media: counter the exclusion-list reflex everywhere prompts are authored
The declined moto-forum comp's prompt read 'no gradients, no rounded SaaS
cards, no photography, no fake member counts, no badges, no testimonials':
the reflex that rightly bans invented claims swallowed the one medium the
subject lives in, and that is exactly how a motorcycle forum got comped
with no motorcycles. The lektor prompt's 'no AI imagery', written by an
image model, is the same fingerprint.

One counterweight, phrased once per authoring surface: the comp
discipline's subject-presence check (which the decision comps already
bind), the asset producer's own prompt rules (a standalone agent that
never reads visualize.md), and new-work's author-assets law (the path a
code-led build takes without the comp round). Truth binds claims, not
demonstrations; a photo of the subject doing its job is a demonstration.

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

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 16:09:21 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 248a4a699a Retire the sketch era's wire name: the field is comp, sketch is an alias
The deliverable died in #545; the word survived as the decision-page
payload's field name, annotated everywhere it appeared with the same
compatibility apology. The page and the skill text ship together and
payloads are per-session, so the compatibility burden is one input alias,
not a frozen name.

serve-question.mjs: the card field, the answer key, the schema docs, the
--schema example, the help text, and every internal identifier (compSrc,
data-comp, .media.comp-pending, img.comp, comp-note) now say comp; a
payload declaring the legacy sketch key still renders and answers
identically. new-work.md and the asset producer drop their wire-name
parentheticals. The unit suite covers the canonical answer key coming
back from a legacy-key payload; the new-work e2e's declined-card stray
comp stays declared as sketch, which doubles as alias coverage.

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

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 15:53:25 -04:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 62e90a257f Comps are shipped screens: subject present, mode readable, depth over coverage
Factory review evidence (two batches, both lanes): generated comps drift
poster-ward. They render the world's atmosphere at high density, drop the
surface's subject (a motorcycle forum comped with no motorcycles), and stop
reading as screens a product would ship. The existing anti-vignette
self-check catches the fully collapsed case but says nothing about density
or subject presence, and new-work's "committed all the way" reads as a
coverage instruction.

Three sibling self-checks in visualize.md's comp discipline, each phrased
per mode (Persuade/Operate/Read/Experience) and platform-neutral: the
subject appears as the content the regions hold; the mode must be readable
from the image alone; commitment is depth, not coverage, with one dominant
move per viewport. new-work.md's decision-comp rule gains a clause binding
the same checks so the direction round inherits them explicitly.

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

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 15:29:51 -04:00
dc4e4a4bd6 Denoise the design hook and let agents self-serve confident ignores (#508)
* Denoise the design hook and let agents self-serve confident ignores (#497)

The directive footer now emits in full once per session (a one-line
reminder after), the DESIGN.md staleness note is mentioned once per
session, rule descriptions dedupe within an emission, and the per-line
ignore suggestion shrinks to the bare rule/value pair. The footer and
hooks.md replace the confirmation-gated ignore policy with a three-way
triage: fix real problems, self-serve the narrowest ignore for confident
false positives or sanctioned exceptions and disclose it (with an honest
--reason), ask when unsure. Self-serve stops at ignore-value, and the
footer now gives a runnable hook-admin.mjs command instead of a slash
command agents cannot execute.

Measured on a seeded lab session replaying 11 hook events: 33,658 to
14,063 chars of agent-visible output (-58%).

AI-assisted (Cursor agent), directed and reviewed by @abdulwahabone.

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

* Preserve the policy footer and honor maxChars under constrained budgets

Greptile's runtime check found two pre-existing clamp gaps that matter
more now that the full policy emits once per session: the last-resort
tail slice cut the footer off an over-budget emission, and the DESIGN.md
staleness note was appended after clamping, pushing past maxChars.

The clamp now gives the footer the budget first, clipping the finding
line and downgrading full to short policy when needed. The staleness
note defers, without consuming its session flag, to a later emission
with room.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent), directed and reviewed by @abdulwahabone.

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

* Harden the constrained-budget clamp: keep findings, honest flags, guaranteed note

Review follow-ups from Bugbot and Greptile on the clamp fix:

- The clamp retries with the short policy before dropping finding lines
  that fit beside it, and a grouped result that kept only a file header
  no longer counts as a fit.
- The full-footer session flag commits only when the full policy
  actually survived the clamp, so a downgraded emission does not mark
  the session as having seen a policy it never received.
- Render paths reserve room for a pending DESIGN.md staleness note, so
  it is delivered inside the budget on the first emission instead of
  deferring behind full emissions indefinitely.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent), directed and reviewed by @abdulwahabone.

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

* Route the Cursor deny cap through the clamp and match the whole footer

Bugbot follow-up: cursorBlockMessage tail-sliced at 4000 chars after
render, which the default 8000-char budget made reachable, and a cut
that spared the footer's opening words still committed the session
flag. The 4000 cap now feeds through the renderer's footer-preserving
clamp, and commitFooterShown matches the complete footer text instead
of a sentinel.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent), directed and reviewed by @abdulwahabone.

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

* Reconcile hook.test.mjs expectations with main's per-platform quoting

Three tests fell out of sync when main's quoteCommandArg change (#533,
building on #476) met this branch's footer/hint rework. Test-only
changes; production logic untouched:

- The full-footer test now accepts either close quote after the
  hook-admin.mjs path, since quoteCommandArg single-quotes absolute
  paths on POSIX and double-quotes them on Windows. The short-footer
  guard rejects `node '` and `node "` alike.
- The #476 hostile-value test asserts the new bare
  `ignore-value <rule> '<value>'` hint format. The security property is
  unchanged: the value still passes through quoteCommandArg, so
  $(touch pwned) stays single-quoted and inert.
- The #533 test previously asserted a concrete quoted `--file` path in
  the footer; directiveFooter() now carries only literal placeholders,
  so that surface is gone. The per-platform assertion moves to the
  per-finding ignore hint, the remaining user-visible surface where
  scanned file content flows through quoteCommandArg.

Prepared with AI assistance (Claude Code).

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

* Fix two Bugbot findings: Cursor prefix budget and footer-cutting tail slice

Both flagged by Cursor Bugbot on PR #508 after the main merge; both real.

1. cursorBlockMessage computed min(maxChars, 4000 - prefix), so a
   configured maxChars at or below the Cursor ceiling never charged the
   BLOCK_PREFIX against the budget: the final deny text could exceed
   maxChars by the prefix length, and appendDesignSystemNoteOnce's size
   check lost exactly the room designNoteReserve had held back. The
   prefix now comes off whichever limit binds. Default-config behavior
   is unchanged (min(8000, 4000) - 60 equals the old 4000 - 60).

2. The note reservation is subtracted after renderTemplate's 500-char
   floor, so the clamp can run below the budget clampLastLine assumed
   safe, and its last-resort path tail-sliced the rendered text, cutting
   the policy footer (the failure mode this PR exists to eliminate) when
   a deep file path met a pending DESIGN.md note. The reservation order
   stays (the staleness-note delivery guarantee at floor budgets depends
   on it); the last resort now drops the finding line and clips the head
   instead, so the footer survives every path. New regression test pins
   it: 6 findings, 100-char path, maxChars 500, reserveChars 134.

Prepared with AI assistance (Claude Code).

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

* Charge the Cursor deny prefix after the renderer's floor, not before

Greptile's runtime check caught the residual from ead0346d: subtracting
BLOCK_PREFIX from the maxChars passed to renderTemplate does nothing at
floor-tier configs, because the renderer re-raises any budget below its
500-char floor. At maxChars 500 with a stale design sidecar, the
prefixed denial landed at 432 chars and appendDesignSystemNoteOnce
could not fit the staleness note inside 500, deferring it (flag
unconsumed) for every equivalent denial in the session.

The prefix now rides in reserveChars, which comes off after the floor,
so it is charged at every config tier and the final prefixed message
plus a pending note closes exactly at the binding limit (499 chars in
the regression scenario). Default-config output is byte-identical:
max(500, min(8000, 4000)) - prefix equals the old min(8000, 4000) -
prefix. New end-to-end Cursor preToolUse test pins the path with a real
stale sidecar at maxChars 500.

AI-assisted (Cursor agent), directed and reviewed by @abdulwahabone.

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

---------

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Co-authored-by: Paul Bakaus <paul.bakaus@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 13:42:39 -04:00
Paul BakausandGitHub 181212cb2d Map polish's evidence and verify steps per platform (#550)
* Map polish's evidence and verify steps per platform

polish.md was the last command reference verifying through web-only
vocabulary after #546 gave the pipeline its native leg. Three targeted
mappings, following the in-file precedent new-work.md set (the
classify-triage-polish-verify flow itself is platform-neutral, so no
polish.native.md):

- Evidence gathering: desktop and mobile sizes on the web; the shipped
  device classes on simulator, emulator, or hardware on native, per the
  platform reference's Verifying the build section.
- Verify checklist layouts: phone and tablet size classes, both
  orientations where supported, on native.
- Verify checklist "supported browsers": native has none, so the
  analogues are named (runtime warnings, dropped frames, supported OS
  versions).

Assisted-by: Claude Code

* fix: branch the verify checklist web-vs-native explicitly

Copilot follow-up: the parenthetical style could read as both term
sets applying on native. The two bullets now branch explicitly, and
the shared items (console errors, layout shift, latency, image
loading) stay unbranched since they apply everywhere.

Assisted-by: Claude Code

* fix: restore runtime warnings to the native verify branch

greptile follow-up: the explicit-branch restyle dropped the runtime
warnings requirement the parenthetical carried; folding it into
"console errors everywhere" hid it behind web vocabulary. It is back
as its own item in the native branch.

Assisted-by: Claude Code
2026-08-09 15:35:07 -07:00
Paul BakausandGitHub 19786e7a22 Native leg for the verify-and-review pipeline (#546)
* Give the verify-and-review pipeline a native leg

The build-verify-review loop assumed a browser end to end while the
comp side of the system was already platform-aware: new-work.md,
visualize.md, and the asset producer all comp a native app portrait at
its device viewport, and then the verification steps asked for desktop
and mobile browser screenshots of it. Concretely:

- new-work.md step 7 ordered detect.mjs on every hookless build with no
  platform guard. routing.md declares the detector web-only and the
  design hook skips native projects, so a native build was always
  hookless and always ordered to run an HTML rule engine over
  Swift/Kotlin/RN code. The playbook now guards it: web-only, and on
  native the reviewer's floor check is the named slop gate.
- The inspection round and the SKILL.src.md batched-round principle
  named desktop and mobile as the only viewports. Both now map per
  platform: web keeps desktop and mobile; native inspects the shipped
  device classes per OS, captured from the simulator or emulator.
- ios.md and android.md carried no verification guidance at all, so
  nothing told a native run how to produce the screenshots the evidence
  chain depends on. Each gains a Verifying the build section: simctl /
  adb capture commands, dark-appearance and type-scale checks, and the
  simulator-vs-hardware honesty line.
- The finish reviewer judged native builds blind: it never runs
  context.mjs and its packet carried no platform guidance. On native
  the packet now includes the platform reference path(s) and a
  no-detector-ran line, and the reviewer's Input Contract says to judge
  in the platform's conventions.

Assisted-by: Claude Code

* fix: address PR review bot findings

- greptile: carry the capture's device selector through the
  state-changing verification commands (simctl appearance, adb uimode
  and font_scale); unqualified forms fail with several targets attached
- Copilot: align new-work.md's cross-reference with the actual heading
  (Verifying the build)
- Copilot: give the finish reviewer's Input Contract the native
  filename example new-work.md establishes (phone.png / tablet.png,
  suffixed per OS on adaptive)

Assisted-by: Claude Code

* fix: identify simulators by UDID, not display name

greptile follow-up: display names can collide across booted simulators,
so the capture and appearance commands now both key on the UDID from
simctl list devices booted.

Assisted-by: Claude Code
2026-08-09 15:09:55 -07:00
045865918a Held for review: agent placeholder substitution, reviewer recapture contract, base-directory script form (#544)
* Resolve {{scripts_path}} in the agent bodies Codex ships

Three code paths emit an agent body: the degraded fallback reference, the
.toml nested inside the skill for Codex, and the native agent file. Only the
nested .toml skipped placeholder substitution and rule-marker stripping, so
the codex and .agents dists shipped `node {{scripts_path}}/embed-prompt.mjs`
verbatim in the asset producer, and every caller had to substitute the token
itself at load time.

All three now render through renderAgentBody(), and the new regression test
asserts a runnable embed-prompt command on each emitted surface plus a
synthetic agent proving markers and placeholders resolve in the nested .toml.

Prepared by an AI agent (Claude Code) under pbakaus's instruction.

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

* Give the finish reviewer's screenshots one fixed address

The Input Contract asked for "desktop and mobile screenshot paths captured by
the parent" and named none, so each session invented a filename and the
verdict pass went looking for a recapture that was never written there. Two
reviewer passes burned on that in the eval runs.

The parent now captures and recaptures to .impeccable/review/desktop.png and
.impeccable/review/mobile.png, and the reviewer reads those two first,
treating a brief-named path as the fallback for a parent that wrote elsewhere.

Prepared by an AI agent (Claude Code) under pbakaus's instruction.

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

* Lead Setup with the base directory the runtime reports

The rendered claude and codex skills opened with
`node .claude/skills/impeccable/scripts/context.mjs`, a project-relative path
that resolves in this repo and in nothing a user installs: a personal or
plugin install puts the scripts outside the project entirely. The working form
was already in the text, parenthesized, after the one that fails.

Setup now leads with `node <skill-base-dir>/scripts/context.mjs` and says once
that the base directory resolves every scripts-path command in the skill and
its references, leaving the project-relative path as the fallback for runtimes
that report no base directory.

Prepared by an AI agent (Claude Code) under pbakaus's instruction.

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

* Answer the Copilot review: brittle model assertion, missing review dir

Assert that {{model}} resolved rather than that it resolved to "GPT", which
belongs to PROVIDER_PLACEHOLDERS and can change without touching what the test
guards. And have the parent create .impeccable/review/ when the harness does
not, so a fresh project's first capture has somewhere to land.

Prepared by an AI agent (Claude Code) under pbakaus's instruction.

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

* Make the review-screenshot contract directory-based, not web-viewport-named

Two amendments to the recapture contract from review feedback:

1. The canonical location is the directory .impeccable/review/, one file
   per captured viewport; desktop.png and mobile.png are the web case,
   not the contract. Baking web-viewport names into the reviewer's spec
   would have hardened a web assumption into paths that a native
   (ios/android/adaptive) build cannot honestly write.

2. Precedence restored to explicit-beats-convention: paths the calling
   brief names are authoritative when the files exist; the canonical
   directory is where the reviewer looks when the brief names none or a
   named path is missing. This avoids stale canonical files from an
   earlier run silently winning over fresh explicit paths. The observed
   failure (the verdict round inventing a round-stamped filename) stays
   fixed: recapture happens over the same files, and invented filenames
   are still called out as pointing at nothing.

Assisted-by: Claude Code

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-08 19:26:43 -07:00
Paul BakausandGitHub fc05472a20 Restore reduced-motion animation guidance (#540)
* Restore reduced-motion build guidance

Restores the accessibility requirement and verification step to the animation playbook, with a regression test that keeps it on the build path.

Implemented and validated with OpenAI Codex assistance under standing maintainer authorization.

* Harden reduced-motion guidance regression

Normalizes CRLF input and accepts either reduced-motion spelling so the contract stays portable and intent-focused.

Implemented and validated with OpenAI Codex assistance under standing maintainer authorization.

* Anchor skill reference test to its module

Resolve the repository fixture path from the test module so the regression test is independent of the caller's working directory.

This change was prepared with AI assistance under maintainer authorization.

* Clarify reduced-motion guidance

Replace the double negative in the canonical animation guidance and keep the source contract aligned with the clearer wording.

This change was prepared with AI assistance under maintainer authorization.
2026-08-08 15:49:43 -07:00
dbff0880e6 Decision page: full-fidelity comps, raise cycler, declined sizing, canon order, full card anatomy (#545)
* Polish the decision page: raise cycler, declined height, canon order, full card anatomy

Field feedback from the first real rolls of the verdict-routed hand:

- Several raises stacked on the assigned card blew it out of proportion.
  More than one raise now renders as a compact cycler: one visible, a
  counter, click or Enter advances. A single raise stays inline.
- Declined cards inherited the row's stretch alignment, so a narrow card
  stood at the tallest contender's height, a strange stilt beside the
  hand. They now size to their content.
- Deck order becomes a gradient of standing: contenders, then the canon,
  then declined dead last. The canon between full alternates and the
  demoted row reads as the familiar door rather than the last resort
  after the rejects.
- Root cause of bare-bones challenger and canon cards in the field: the
  --schema example only gave the assigned card palette, materials, and
  risk, and models author payloads by imitating the example, so the
  "same anatomy on every card" instruction lost to it every time. The
  example now carries full anatomy on every card and the schema note says
  a card with no palette chips is an authoring gap, not a data gap.

AI-assisted change.

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

* Decision cards carry full-fidelity comps instead of sketches

Field verdict on the sketch contract: the sketches came back too simple
to inform the choice, and generation takes the same time at any
fidelity, so the deliberately-unfinished frame paid comp cost for sketch
quality. The decision card's image is now that direction's north-star
comp, produced under visualize.md's comp discipline (structure-led
prompt, real name and content, no invented commercial claims), saved
under .impeccable/mocks/ with its prompt sidecar. Fairness between cards
comes from equal fidelity in each card's own grammar rather than shared
unfinishedness.

The chosen card's comp is never spent by the choice: on a comp-led build
it enters the comp round as compositional option one (visualize.md now
generates two variations beside it; a round arriving with no decision
comp still renders all three), and on a code-led build it returns at the
finish review as the critique reference. Produce order still front-loads
a re-roll's spend onto the cards read first.

serve-question keeps the sketch field's wire name for payload
compatibility; docs, schema paths, shimmer labels, and the answer
directive (CHOSEN COMP) speak comp.

AI-assisted change.

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

* fix: address PR review bot findings on the comp round

- Producer still forced sketches (cursor, high): the asset producer's
  Decision Sketches contract still mandated deliberately unfinished matte
  sketches, so the parallel path would keep shipping sketch-era images.
  The section is now Decision Comps: full-fidelity north-star comp,
  structure-led prompt, equal commitment across siblings, no invented
  claims, sidecar written.
- Mocks collided with the approval check (cursor, high): decision comps
  now live under .impeccable/mocks/decision/, visualize.md scopes the
  no-approval finding to comp-round output, new-work.md states the
  unchosen hand implies no approval, and the code-led finish packet names
  the chosen decision comp as the critique reference in the approved-comp
  slot.
- Raise cycler announces (greptile, both P1s): a visually hidden
  aria-live region reads out the newly active raise and its position on
  advance; initial render stays quiet.
- Declined width in the vertical deck (cursor, medium): align-self:
  flex-start shrank declined cards to content width in the portrait
  column layout, where the cross axis is horizontal; they stretch there
  and keep content height in the row layout.

AI-assisted change.

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

* fix: raise cycler tooltip and label name both input modes

Copilot: the tooltip said Click while the control also answers Enter and
Space; the title and a new aria-label now say activate/press Enter.

AI-assisted change.

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

* fix: finish reviewer exempts decision comps from the approval check

cursor[bot] follow-through: the reviewer's Persistence check still
treated any comps under .impeccable/mocks/ as approval-gated, and the
reviewer never reads visualize.md by design, so code-led and spent-hand
rounds could draw a false skipped-approval finding. The check now scopes
to comp-round comps, exempts .impeccable/mocks/decision/ as the direction
round's dealt hand, and defines how a code-led build's decision comp is
judged in the approved-comp slot: the critique reference, under the
no-approved-comp fidelity rules plus what the image dared that the build
did not.

AI-assisted change.

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

* fix: the critique reference is its own reviewer input, not the approved-comp slot

cursor[bot]: passing the code-led decision comp through the approved-comp
slot dragged in that slot's obligations (inventory-first reading, the
fidelity matrix, Truth's shipped-asset demand for every image-native
region), which contradicts code-led's premise. The input contract now
names it a separate labeled critique-reference input that nothing binding
"the approved comp" touches, and Fidelity defines its treatment where the
no-approved-comp rules live: provocation, not spec; no matrix, citations,
or asset obligations; its dares enter material_fixes as ordinary fixes.

AI-assisted change.

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

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Code <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-08 15:47:11 -07:00
c70bcbf6b4 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>
2026-08-08 14:17:21 -07:00
Paul BakausandClaude Opus 5 d417ff1f01 Craft floor: theme the surfaces you did not draw
A well-made site was audited for what separates it from a competent one, and the
answer was not its ingredients. It runs the default stack, Next and Tailwind and
Geist, with no world and no unusual technique. What it has is attention to the
surfaces a browser renders for you: 29 focus-visible rules, 15 scrollbar rules,
and styled text selection, caret, underline offset and scroll behaviour.

Those are the cheapest signal that a page was built rather than assembled, and
the ones a model skips most reliably, because nobody asks for them and nothing
looks broken without them. The floor already covers contrast, depth, spacing,
measure, motion and states; this is the layer under all of it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-04 13:32:08 -07:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 ca7981f669 Comp outranks the brief: close the inventory sandbagging gap
probe-compking-sol-4 (evals) executed its staged inventory faithfully and
still lost the comp: the brief had already recorded the comp's materials
down (low-contrast textures, a 70-path lake against the comp's hundreds,
a sculpted plate as flat CSS), and the build thread never loads
visualize.md, so nothing told it the comp wins that disagreement. The
comp-is-king block now says the record gets corrected upward, that the
comparison runs against the freshly reopened comp rather than memory,
and that a texture under a near-opaque wash is not shipped material.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-04 11:26:02 -07:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 bcfb7efc46 The comp is king: phased reproduction doctrine
Phase one is near-pixel-perfect reproduction at the comp's breakpoint,
with exactly three concessions (closest font, icons unless a library
was chosen, genuine comp defects); the overlap comparison is the
authority because models systematically believe their code recreation
succeeded when it did not, and regions that keep losing the comparison
ship as composited rendered assets instead. Phase two brings the
reproduction to life (interaction, motion, responsiveness), and
anything beyond the comp inherits the recorded system, never invented
container chrome.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-02 19:56:39 -07:00
Paul BakausandClaude Fable 5 b1c5707fde Cross-harness, cross-OS: boot-time tool detection and native-first image gen
context.mjs now probes cwebp/sips/magick/ffmpeg once (which/where per
OS) and prints IMAGE_TOOLS, replacing macOS-specific prose; the
IMAGE_GEN_AVAILABLE directive leads with the harness-native tool so a
present OpenAI key stops reading as an instruction to bill it; and the
sandboxed board-start guidance sheds codex vocabulary.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 17:54:55 -07:00