critique

---
name: critique
description: Adversarial design critique of the current work. Render it, look at it, and argue for rejection. Run after the gates are green, never instead of them.
# Converted from .claude/commands/ so it has a CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR of its own and
# its paths resolve on every install route.
disable-model-invocation: true
# The critic runs in a forked subagent: a fresh context that never sees the
# conversation that produced the work. That is the whole point. A critic that
# has read the maker's reasoning is reviewing the argument, not the artifact,
# and it agrees far too easily.
context: fork
# Wait for the verdict in this turn. Forked skills run in the background by
# default, which would hand the user a "started" message and no critique.
# Requires Claude Code v2.1.218 or later.
background: false
#
# There is deliberately NO `agent:` field, and it is not an oversight.
#
# A plugin namespaces every component under the plugin name, so this repo's
# critic is `design-critic` when installed with `npx ux-ui-agent-skills@3.1.0 init` (a
# project file in .claude/agents/) and `ux-ui-agent-skills:design-critic` when
# installed as a plugin. One frontmatter value cannot be both, and a wrong one
# is the `invocation:` failure again: a field that looks right, is silently
# ignored or unresolved, and leaves the behaviour it promised switched off.
#
# So the fork is generic and the body below loads the critic's instructions from
# a ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}-relative path, which does resolve on both routes.
---
This skill runs in a forked context. The conversation that produced the work
is not visible here, there is no way to ask the user a question, and nothing
from elsewhere applies. Everything the review needs is below or on disk.

## Requirements

This skill needs the full UX/UI Agent Skills kit: the gates, the references and
the design-system library. Install it with `npx ux-ui-agent-skills@3.1.0 init`
or as the Claude Code plugin. `npx skills@1.7.6 add` copies the skill folder and
nothing else, and this skill has no guidance-only mode: its whole job is to
hand the work to the kit's design-critic agent, so without the kit there is nothing for it to do.

> **Step 0: is the kit here?** Check once:
> `ls ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../../tokens >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo KIT_OK || echo KIT_MISSING`
> On `KIT_MISSING`, say plainly that only the skill folder was installed, name
> the install command above, and stop. Do not guess the contents of a file you
> could not open, and do not report a result you did not produce.

**Step 1: take the critic's instructions, in full.**

```bash
cat ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../../.claude/agents/design-critic.md
```

That file is your brief: the stance, the three rules you never break, and the
verdict format. Read it and follow it literally. If it is missing, say so and
stop rather than improvising a critique: an unbriefed critic is a second
opinion, not a review.

**Step 2: resolve the target.**

Target: `$ARGUMENTS`, a file or a directory.

You cannot ask. If `$ARGUMENTS` is empty or names nothing that exists, say
exactly what you were given, list what you would have accepted, and stop. A
critique of a guessed target is worse than no critique, because it reads like a
verdict on the real work.

**Step 3: refuse to critique blind.**

A critique written from source alone is worthless. Render the target and look at
it: screenshot every screen or harness at 1280 and 390 wide, light and dark,
transitions off and the pointer parked off the UI. Then click every control and
write down what actually changed. A control that changes nothing is a finding.

**Step 4: gather the numbers you will cite.**

```bash
KIT=${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../..
DS_REQUIRE_BROWSER=1 node $KIT/scripts/taste_audit.mjs      <file> && DS_REQUIRE_BROWSER=1 node $KIT/scripts/taste_audit.mjs <file> --dark
DS_REQUIRE_BROWSER=1 node $KIT/scripts/slop_tells.mjs       <file> && DS_REQUIRE_BROWSER=1 node $KIT/scripts/slop_tells.mjs  <file> --dark
node $KIT/scripts/gate.mjs verify_overflow.mjs  <file|dir>
node $KIT/scripts/gate.mjs verify_responsive.mjs <file|dir> --scale=1.25
```

Report what they actually printed. These are heuristics: they name what you saw,
they do not decide whether it is good. A clean run is not a defence: the kit's
own seeded-defect fixtures pass every one of these gates, in both themes, and
every one of them is work a senior designer would send back.

**Step 5: write the verdict.**

In the format `design-critic.md` specifies: the verdict, the three reasons a
senior designer would send this back, and the findings table with evidence per
finding. Name the file and the element. "The spacing feels off" is not a finding;
"the card's 12px internal gap is the same as the 12px gap between cards, so the
grouping reads as one block" is.

Do not soften it, and do not pad the "what is good" list to balance the tone.

**Step 6: state the scope, every time.**

This is judgement, not measurement. It produces no percentage, and no percentage
in this repo covers taste. Say so in the output.

---

## After the critique comes back

For the session that invoked this skill, not for the fork:

Act on it. Fix every Critical and Major finding, re-run `/gate`, and run this
critique again on what changed. The loop ends when the remaining findings are
Minor or Enhancement, not when you are tired of it.

Scoring the critic itself, rather than the work, is a maintainer task and lives
with the harness in the kit's repository - not here. This skill installs into
your project, and nothing it tells you to do should name a file your install
does not have.