pilot

Design software interfaces to a premium bar — the agent-era methodology for the one discipline whose correctness spec lives in a human nervous system (so taste is load-bearing and cannot be outsourced) and whose unit of quality is a SYSTEM, not a pile of hand-picked values. A pipeline of eight gated lenses across the visual-design system: canon (the design-judgment spine — choose a non-default visual language and a surface archetype, set the quantified targets the other lenses inherit, keep the visual serving the user's job), color (a perceptual oklch palette as tokens — neutral ramp with a temperature, semantic roles, a dark ramp that is re-tuned not inverted, contrast verified at design time, colorblind-safe data-viz), type (a modular type scale + a spacing scale on one rhythm, the optical tells that separate pro from amateur, and text that survives every language — BiDi/RTL, CJK, locale), layout (composition as a decision — the grid and hierarchy, measure and spatial rhythm, designed empty/loading/error states and form visuals, robustness for reality's long tail), form (depth from one light model — layered shadows and a tokenized elevation scale, concentric radii, gradient/texture with a job and without banding), graphics (DOM-first, dropping to Canvas/WebGL/GPU only where the DOM can't go and always with a fallback, plus one icon system and a coherent imagery system), motion (every animation with a purpose and real physics — spring vs easing, gesture intent arbitration, a true reduced-motion path, compositor-only at 60fps), and systems (the design system as one source of truth — tokens that cross the CSS↔JS boundary without drift, a living component library, a design→code handoff that stays in sync). Across all eight the agent emits plausible-but-incoherent values and feels no wrongness — so each layer is a taste decision the human makes and the system enforces. A separate un-gated navigator, pilot, routes a design task to the right entry lens — most design work isn't greenfield — or out to a sibling suite (surface for the CSS mechanism / what-to-build / state / unhappy paths, engineering for code craft, quarry for a library). Installs every skill under the /atelier: prefix. Note: the gates are enforced by the `checklist` CLI, which installs separately — see the repository README.