atrislabs/atris/design

atris-design

The taste organ of the Atris system. Opinionated: these are Keshav's principles, not general best practices. Prevents ai-generated frontend from looking generic, and improves itself (see "self-improve" at the bottom, it is part of the job, not optional).

Canonical home: atris-cli/atris/skills/design/SKILL.md (this file, git-tracked). atris sync stamps it into every workspace's atris/skills/ and .claude/skills/. Edit HERE, never a downstream copy: sync will clobber anything written elsewhere.

Atris Integration

1. Check atris/MAP.md for existing patterns before building
2. Read `atris/policies/design-seed.md` first if it exists: it has the project's unique visual identity (fonts, colors, spacing, motion). This is the design DNA. Do not override it with defaults.
3. Read .atris/theme.json if it exists: brand colors and fonts are already decided, use them.
4. Reference atris/policies/atris-design.md for full anti-slop guidance
5. After building, run the workspace design gate (npm run audit:design in atrisos-web, atris slop elsewhere) before claiming done.

Quick Reference

Typography: avoid inter/roboto/arial/system fonts. pick one distinctive font, use weight extremes (200 vs 800). size jumps should be dramatic (3x). use clamp() for fluid sizing. use ch units for measure (max-width: 65ch).

Font alternatives: instead of Inter: Instrument Sans, Plus Jakarta Sans, Outfit. Instead of Roboto: Onest, Figtree, Urbanist. Editorial: Fraunces, Newsreader, Lora.

Color: commit to a palette. use OKLCH for perceptually uniform colors. tint your neutrals toward your brand hue (never pure gray). never put gray text on colored backgrounds. never use pure black (#000) or pure white (#fff). avoid the AI palette: cyan-on-dark, purple-to-blue gradients, neon accents on dark.

--brand: oklch(65% 0.2 250);
--gray-100: oklch(95% 0.01 250); /* tinted, not pure gray */

Layout: break the hero + 3 cards + footer template. no card-in-card nesting. no identical card grids. asymmetry is interesting. dramatic whitespace. use container queries for component-level responsiveness. fluid spacing with clamp().

Motion: one well-timed animation beats ten scattered ones. use exponential easing (cubic-bezier(0.25, 1, 0.5, 1)), never bounce/elastic. 150-300ms duration. only animate transform and opacity. always respect prefers-reduced-motion. no cursor-following lines, no meteor effects, no buttons that chase the cursor. no pulsing or glowing live-status dots, no looping ambient animations.

Interaction: progressive disclosure: start simple, reveal complexity. optimistic UI: update immediately, sync later. every interactive element needs ALL states: default, hover, focus, active, disabled, loading, error, success. don't make every button primary.

Hover: make elements feel inviting on hover (brighten, subtle scale 1.02-1.05). never fade out, shift, or hide content behind hover. hover doesn't exist on mobile. no hover lift: a translate-y shift or a scale past 1.05 on every card is the generated-card reflex; the shift breaks the never-move-content rule and the big grow reads as a template.

Scroll: never override native scroll. use "peeking" (show a few px of next section) instead of full-screen hero + scroll arrow.

Responsive: mobile-first. touch targets 44x44px minimum. no text under 14px on mobile. no horizontal scroll. container queries over media queries for components. adapt, don't amputate. compact overlays clear the full measured header stack; never anchor them from a guessed single header height.

Accessibility: 4.5:1 contrast for text, 3:1 for UI (WCAG AA). visible focus indicators always. semantic HTML. never use color alone as an indicator. keyboard nav with logical tab order.

Hero (H1 test): must answer in 5 seconds: what is it, who is it for, why care, what's the CTA.

Assets: high-res screenshots only. no fake dashboards with primary colors. no decorative non-system emojis.

Backgrounds: add depth. gradients, patterns, mesh effects. flat = boring. but no glassmorphism everywhere, that's AI slop.

Hierarchy: 2-3 text levels max. don't mix 5 competing styles.

No all-caps. ever. never use the uppercase tailwind class, the css uppercase text transform, or shout-cased copy on labels, section headers, buttons, badges, or anywhere else. random capitalized text mid-page reads as average ai-generated slop. write labels in sentence case ("Active tasks", not "ACTIVE TASKS") and let copy render as authored.

No eyebrow metadata. Do not place tiny index, category, status, or implementation-type strips above real content. If the name changes the next action, make it a readable heading. If it does not, remove it. Generator metadata belongs in machine contracts and inspectors, never on the product canvas.

Copy: no em dashes (the character, U+2014) anywhere in UI copy. no hedge words, no hype adverbs (the "-lessly" family). plain sentences a human would type.

Visual anti-patterns: no glassmorphism, no gradient text, no sparklines as decoration, no rounded-rect-with-colored-border, no large icons with rounded corners above headings, no pastel-tinted rounded icon tile above a feature heading (a small light-colored square holding an icon, repeated down a feature grid; the generated feature-card reflex), no hero metric layout (big number + small label), no modals unless truly necessary, no all-caps eyebrows/labels/headers, no status-dot-plus-eyebrow hero kickers (a pulsing/colored dot next to a small caps/mono label above the headline; keshav's #1 named slop pattern. if a section needs a kicker at all, plain sentence-case text with no dot), no "claude beige" off-white backgrounds, no instrument serif overuse (the new AI tell), no generic flat tinted backgrounds, no near-black slate or gray hero gradient fading into black (the dark premium SaaS template look), no colored glowing drop shadow under buttons or cards (a tinted neon glow, e.g. a purple or blue shadow; keep shadows soft and neutral), no bright two-color gradient fill on buttons or badges (a saturated gradient across different hues like pink to orange or blue to cyan; use one solid brand color), no giant blurred gradient orb glowing behind the hero (the aurora-blob background: a huge soft-blurred colored blob absolutely positioned behind the fold; reads as a template).

Vocabulary is the Lever

Designers beat engineers at AI prompting because they own craft language. Name the move precisely: "tighten vertical rhythm," "increase negative space," "make hierarchy bolder here, quieter there." Vague prompts = vague output. Core terms: vertical rhythm, negative space, bolder/quieter, affordances, meta-design, conviction. When the operator's wish is fuzzy, translate it into this vocabulary before building, and say the translation out loud so the operator can correct it.

Raising Floor vs Ceiling

Use AI to raise the floor (automate the mechanical 80%: scaffolding, grids, state matrices). Spend human attention on the ceiling (last 10-20%: taste, instinct, the unexpected choice). Cognitive delegation, not surrender. AI routes you there; you make the final call.

AX: Agentic Experience

Design for AI agents as users, not just humans. Agents can't see your buttons. They need: speed, clarity, structured output, verbose errors with next steps, edge case coverage, agentic affordances (llms.txt, clear --help, stable exit codes).

Conviction Over Local Maxima

Iterating toward "slightly better" = local maximum (safe, forgettable). Great design is a bet on a global maximum. AI makes the local-max trap worse: you converge on average faster. Subtraction over addition: the strongest move is often deleting something.

Anti-Attractors

Models have gravity wells (purple gradients, instrument serif, claude beige). Escape them deliberately: name what you don't want, seed with a specific reference, inject a constraint (monochrome, one font weight), rotate your defaults between projects.

The Scarcity Principle

Taste emerges from constraints. Pick constraints before starting: one font, two colors, three spacing values. Infinite options produce the distribution center.

The AI Slop Test

"if you showed this to someone and said 'AI made this,' would they believe you immediately? if yes, that's the problem."

Fingerprints: inter/roboto, purple-to-blue gradients, cyan-on-dark, glassmorphism, gradient text, hero metrics, identical card grids, bounce easing, dark mode with neon, sparklines as decoration, rounded rectangles with drop shadows, "claude beige" off-white backgrounds, instrument serif overuse, generic flat tinted backgrounds, all-caps eyebrow labels appearing out of nowhere.

Lessons (typed, compounding)

Every entry: id, rule, detector, status. A detector is a regex/command a gate can run, or judgment if only a model can catch it. graduated means a deterministic gate now enforces it (design-gate.mjs in atrisos-web, atris slop in atris-cli); the lesson stays here as the memory of why.