Design Rules

Design principles

• Be a minimalist. Fewer elements, highly refined. When choosing between adding and removing, default to removal. White space is a feature.
• Information on surfaces, not in boxes. Don't reflexively add borders and box everything.
• One primary action per page.
• Style vs clarity register. Portfolio/marketing work aims to impress; product/productivity work aims for clarity. Decide which before styling.
• Avoid late-2010s trends like excessive gradients and shadows. If requested, apply tastefully so elements don't compete.
• Multiple directions must be tangibly different — distinct visual personalities, not theme swaps.
• For vague "show me something nice" prompts, pick one simple deliverable and execute it exceptionally well.

Tweak panel

• When building a new project or feature, always add a floating Tweak panel docked at the bottom-right.
• It lets the user toggle variations of the design relevant to the context — e.g. Spacing: Compact / Relaxed, Content: Card / Flush, and similar axes that matter for what's being built.
• Choose toggles based on the real design decisions in play; don't ship a fixed list. Each option must be tangibly different, not a cosmetic tweak.

Typography

• Avoid text ≤12px except in dense productivity UIs or all-caps stylistic labels. Below 16px, bias to higher contrast.
• Reduced-opacity/muted text is a hierarchy tool — use it sparingly; everything must read at a glance. Legibility and style are never in conflict.
• Units: px for font-size and line-height, em for letter-spacing.
• Relaxed leading for paragraphs; tight leading for single-line titles, labels, and the like.

Color

• Use color sparingly — let the actual content bring the color.
• Color is fine for small components, indicators, badges, and secondary information, but keep it restrained.

Layout mechanics

• Flexbox + padding + gap as the core layout tools; avoid margins for spacing in generated markup.
• Vertical lane alignment in repeated rows (lists, tables, nav): fixed-width slots with

  flex-shrink: 0

  for icons, indicators, and trailing actions — even when empty in some rows. Never rely on gap alone; after 3+ rows, trace vertical lines to verify lanes align.
• SVG icons or images, never emoji-as-icons.

Review checklist (run at every checkpoint)

• Spacing — uneven gaps, cramped groups, unintentional dead zones; is there rhythm?
• Typography — too small to read, poor line-height, weak heading/body/caption hierarchy?
• Contrast — low-contrast text, elements blending into background, overly uniform color?
• Alignment — cross-component elements that should share a lane but don't; icons/actions drifting across rows?
• Fit — content clipped, or a large empty gap at the bottom?
• Repetition — grid-like sameness; vary scale, weight, or spacing for interest.

Content

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