3.7 KiB
Craft floor
Load this after the direction is settled, and build without announcing the checklist. A pinned brief or the committed visual world overrides anything here; your own habit does not. When the design hook is active it already enforces the mechanical checks below as you edit: act on its findings instead of re-auditing each rule.
Verify
Each of these is a check on the built result, not an intention.
- Contrast: body and placeholder text ≥4.5:1, large text ≥3:1. On colored surfaces tint secondary text from that hue or the foreground; never gray.
- Depth: shadows carry an offset and a soft blur. A zero-offset colored halo is decoration.
- Spacing: tight groups, generous separation, more space above a heading than below it. Read the computed values.
- Type: body measure 65–75ch, display max 6rem, tracking floor -0.04em, balanced headings, obvious scale and weight steps. Run the real copy at every breakpoint and fix what overflows.
- Motion: one authored moment, not scattered effects and not one identical entrance on every section. Exponential ease-out from an already-visible default. Reach past transform and opacity: blur, backdrop-filter, clip-path, mask, and shadow belong to the palette when they stay smooth.
- States: hover, disabled, loading, error, empty. Plus real content, working controls, responsive composition, keyboard focus.
- Copy: the product's own language. Controls name their action; errors name the problem and the recovery.
- Coverage: every brief requirement present and findable within seconds.
Refuse
These are the category's defaults, not bans: the brief's own words can earn any of them. Reaching for one when the axis is free means you were not deciding; recognizing that means rewriting the element, not softening it.
Page scaffolds:
- Same-size cards of icon plus heading plus text as the page structure. Cards are the lazy container; nested cards are always wrong.
- The hero-metric template: big number, small label, supporting stats, accent.
- A tracked uppercase eyebrow over every section. One named kicker is a system; an eyebrow everywhere is grammar you did not choose.
- Section numbers (01 / 02 / 03) unless the sequence itself carries information the reader needs.
- A modal for a task that needs neither interruption nor protected focus.
Surface habits:
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Gradient text. Emphasis comes from weight or size.
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Glass and blur as decoration rather than as a specific effect.
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A colored
border-leftorborder-rightabove 1px on cards, list items, callouts, or alerts. -
Sparklines, progress rings, and soft-shadowed rounded rectangles standing in for content.
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Monospace as a costume for "technical" rather than for code, data, or measurement.
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Light or dark picked by category. Pick it from the use scene: who, where, under what ambient light.
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Tracking stops at -0.04em. -0.02 to -0.03em usually reads better.
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Declare elevation once, border or shadow. A 1px border under a wide soft shadow is the ghost card. Card radii stay at 12–16px; pills are for small controls.
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Real illustration or none. Sketch-style SVG scenes,
loose-sketch/doodleclass names, andfeTurbulencegrain read as amateur. -
Backgrounds are surfaces, textured only from the subject's world.
repeating-linear-gradientstripes and two-axis grid overlays need an actual canvas, map, blueprint, or measuring tool under them. -
Claims and configuration come from supplied truth; label illustrative values honestly. Naming a concept and then ironizing it is not a claim.
The floor holds the mechanics; it never picks the direction. With every check green, spend the page on the committed world, and when torn between refined and committed, commit.