design-principles

---
name: design-principles
description: 'Design principles for manifest-dev: how its maintainer wants the visual and interaction design guidance the plugin ships, and the surfaces it builds for people to look at, done, and why. Use before planning, writing, building or reviewing the design skills, their guides and instruments, or a page, canvas or draft a skill renders for a person.'
---

Edit rule: each line is a principle with its reason and when it yields. Decisions go to the
decision records, rules a check can hold go to the check, and a line is added only on a person's
yes, after sharpening an existing line is ruled out.

- Design guidance takes its direction from the artifact's subject and the person's moment — who is there, what they came to do, how long they stay — and lets that set the structure and how strong the feeling is; it ships no house style, and a guide describes how a kind of work is used or what a feeling is made of, never a look to apply by kind — catalogs pulled unrelated subjects to one look, and guidance blind to the work produced well-made artifacts arranged wrongly for it. Yields to explicit requirements, an existing design system, and a strength the request names.

Before calling design work done, check it against these principles from a fresh start — a new
session, or a reviewer who did not do the work. Fix what departs unless the person chose the
departure, and check again only after a fix, until a check finds none. Name each departure kept,
with the principle and why.