@ericrisco/rsc 1.0.34 → 1.1.1

package/skills/design/references/inspiration-sources.md

@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
+# Reference — where to go looking for a bar
+
+> Last verified: **2026-08-24**. Every URL below was requested on that date and answered.
+> Four sites block automated requests (403/429) but are alive in a browser — marked *(bot-blocked)*.
+> A source with no date does not exist. Re-check before quoting one as current.
+
+**Go and look.** Your built-in aesthetic prior is the median of every template ever scraped, so the
+fastest way past it is to open real work and name what it does. This file is where to open.
+
+Two rules that make the browsing worth anything:
+
+- **Come back with a specific page, not a gallery.** `../../design-loop/SKILL.md` needs a bar you can
+  open — one URL, one screenshot. "Something like Awwwards" is not a bar; a named site from it is.
+- **Extract principles, not pixels.** "Headline is 8× the body, one accent at 3% coverage" travels to
+  your project. Cloning a competitor's exact grid is theatre, and `research-method.md` says so.
+
+## A whole page to beat
+
+The default bucket. Use it when the goal is a site or landing and you need something to converge on.
+
+| Source | Go here for |
+|---|---|
+| [Awwwards](https://www.awwwards.com) | The award tier. Ambitious, often over-built — take the craft, leave the load time. |
+| [Recent](https://recent.design) | Formerly **Godly**; `godly.website` now 301s here. Curated modern web, strong signal-to-noise. |
+| [SiteInspire](https://www.siteinspire.com) *(bot-blocked)* | Long-running, filterable by style, type and subject. Calmer taste than Awwwards. |
+| [Land-book](https://land-book.com) *(bot-blocked)* | Landing pages at volume, filterable by industry and style. |
+| [Httpster](https://httpster.net) | Opinionated and current, less polished-agency than the rest. |
+| [Minimal Gallery](https://minimal.gallery) | When the brief is restraint and you need proof it can still sell. |
+| [Curated Design](https://curated.design) | Aggregated across galleries — a fast first sweep. |
+| [Nicely Done](https://nicelydone.club) | Real product sites and app UI rather than portfolios. |
+| [Lapa Ninja](https://lapa.ninja) *(bot-blocked)* | Large landing archive, free, categorised. |
+| [One Page Love](https://onepagelove.com) | Single-page sites specifically — the constraint is the point. |
+
+## SaaS and conversion surfaces
+
+| Source | Go here for |
+|---|---|
+| [SaaS Landing Page](https://saaslandingpage.com) | Real SaaS landings, browsable **by section** (hero, pricing, testimonials, footer) — the most useful axis when you are building one section at a time. |
+| [Landingfolio](https://www.landingfolio.com) | Landings and page sections, heavy on conversion patterns. |
+
+## Real product, real flows — not portfolios
+
+The most under-used bucket. Portfolio galleries show the hero; these show what happens after the click.
+
+| Source | Go here for |
+|---|---|
+| [Mobbin](https://mobbin.com) | Screens and full flows from shipped apps, mobile and web. The reference for "how does a real onboarding actually go". |
+| [Page Flows](https://pageflows.com) | Recorded user flows end to end — signup, checkout, cancellation. Video, so you see the motion too. |
+| [Screensdesign](https://screensdesign.com) | Mobile app screens with an emphasis on what is currently shipping. |
+| [Refero](https://refero.design) | UI/UX inspiration organised for browsing by pattern. |
+
+## One section, one pattern
+
+Use when the piece is small and named: `design-loop` splits a goal into three or four pieces, and
+these are for when a piece is "the footer" or "the empty state".
+
+| Source | Go here for |
+|---|---|
+| [Footer.design](https://www.footer.design) | Footers only. Narrow on purpose, and the narrowness is why it is good. |
+| [Collect UI](https://collectui.com) | Daily-UI-style collections by component and pattern. |
+| [UI Garage](https://uigarage.net) | Patterns tagged by element and by industry. |
+| [UI Movement](https://uimovement.com) | Motion and interaction specifically — pair with the frequency gate in `../../animate/SKILL.md` before copying anything. |
+| [Dark.design](https://dark.design) · [Dark Mode Design](https://darkmodedesign.com) | Dark interfaces done properly, which is a different problem from inverting a light one. |
+| [Scrnshts](https://scrnshts.club) | App Store screenshot design — a real discipline of its own. |
+
+## Design systems as the canonical answer
+
+Not inspiration: **specification**. When the question is "what is the correct behaviour for this
+component", these outrank any gallery.
+
+| Source | Go here for |
+|---|---|
+| [Material 3](https://m3.material.io) | Google's system. Exhaustive on states, motion and tokens. |
+| [Apple HIG](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines) | The reference for platform behaviour and for what *not* to invent on Apple platforms. |
+| [Shopify Polaris](https://polaris.shopify.com) | Dense, commerce-grade product UI with unusually good content guidance. |
+| [IBM Carbon](https://carbondesignsystem.com) | Enterprise density and data-heavy patterns. |
+| [GitHub Primer](https://primer.style) | Developer-tool UI, which is the closest analogue for most rsc projects. |
+| [The Component Gallery](https://component.gallery) *(bot-blocked)* | The same component compared **across** design systems — the fastest way to see the range of correct answers. |
+| [Adele](https://adele.uxpin.com) | Index of public design systems and their pattern libraries. |
+| [Designsystems.com](https://www.designsystems.com) | Essays on building and maintaining a system, not a system itself. |
+
+## Niche, but the right answer when it fits
+
+| Source | Go here for |
+|---|---|
+| [Interface In Game](https://interfaceingame.com) | Game UI. Useful well beyond games for diegetic and high-density HUD ideas. |
+| [Mobile.design](https://mobile.design) | Mobile-first patterns collected on their own terms. |
+
+## Housekeeping
+
+- **[Bestfolios](https://www.bestfolios.com) returned 502 on 2026-08-24** and is excluded until it
+  comes back. Do not cite it.
+- **Component ideas**, as opposed to whole pages, live in
+  `../../pick-ui-library/references/component-galleries.md` — Aceternity, 21st.dev, React Bits.
+- **Identity outranks all of this.** Check `02-DOCS/wiki/brand/` for what the project refuses before
+  bringing an idea back. A gallery cannot know what your brand vetoed.

package/skills/design/references/research-method.md

@@ -145,3 +145,10 @@ When the direction changes mid-project (new competitor, pivot), re-run the loop
 - `visual-system.md` — turn the filled direction into tokens.
 - `../../nextjs/SKILL.md` — implement the chosen direction on the App Router stack.
 - *frontend-design-direction* — product-domain direction judgment (external reference, not a repo skill).
+
+## Where to look
+
+`inspiration-sources.md` is the dated registry of where to browse: whole pages to beat, SaaS and
+conversion surfaces, real product flows (Mobbin, Page Flows — the bucket most people skip), single
+patterns like footers and empty states, and the design systems that are specification rather than
+inspiration. Extract principles, not pixels, and come back with a named page rather than a gallery.

package/skills/design/references/starting-point.md

@@ -0,0 +1,75 @@
+# Reference — proposing a starting point
+
+Three places promise to propose one: `../../design-loop/SKILL.md` phase 1 when the user says *skip*,
+the closing line of `brand-grounding.md` when a visual dimension has no direction, and
+`../../design-dna/SKILL.md`'s REUSE mode. This file is what they propose *from*. Without it the
+fallback is your own prior, which is the AI-template median — the thing the whole area exists to escape.
+
+## 0. What the project already owns wins
+
+**Look before you offer.** Run it; do not reason about it:
+
+```bash
+npx @ericrisco/rsc doctor --json   # read `designStartingPoint`
+```
+
+| State | What it means | What you do |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| `owned` | An identity article or at least one legible style record exists | Propose **that**, by name, first. Offer nothing external until the user rejects it. More than one record → all of them are candidates, ordered as reported. Never pick one silently. |
+| `none` | Looked in both scopes, found nothing | Go to §1. |
+| `inconclusive` | Something could not be read | Say what, and ask for another route to it. **Do not propose past a blind spot** — a proposal made without looking is the defect this file exists to remove. |
+
+If the owned identity **contradicts** what the user is now asking for, name the conflicting rule and let
+them decide which wins. Same rule the loop's preflight already applies to a bar from outside.
+
+A record that `doctor` reports with a pair below its contrast floor is not offered as a starting point.
+
+## 1. What are you building → which bar
+
+At most **three** candidates. Each one gets a name, one line on why it fits *this* product, and one line
+on when it would be the wrong choice. Then **wait**. No answer → take the most demanding one and say so.
+
+Sources are in `inspiration-sources.md`; the tier-1 set and the dated-looking list are in
+`trends-2026.md`. **Only propose what you can actually open** — that registry marks several sources as
+bot-blocked, and a bar that cannot be fetched dies in the loop's preflight.
+
+| Building | Candidate bars | Wrong choice when |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| SaaS marketing | Stripe · [SaaS Landing Page](https://saaslandingpage.com) browsed by section · Linear | The product is a daily tool, not a purchase decision — a marketing skin on a workhorse |
+| Dev tool | Linear · Vercel · Resend · [Primer](https://primer.style) | The audience is not technical: dev-tool restraint reads as unfinished to them |
+| Dashboard / internal tool | [Carbon](https://carbondesignsystem.com) · [Polaris](https://polaris.shopify.com) · [Mobbin](https://mobbin.com) flows | It is a landing page with a chart on it — density is not the job |
+| Portfolio / editorial | [Awwwards](https://www.awwwards.com) · [Recent](https://recent.design) · [One Page Love](https://onepagelove.com) | Anything with a conversion target: award craft routinely costs LCP and the 5s test |
+| E-commerce | [Minimal Gallery](https://minimal.gallery) for restraint · [Nicely Done](https://nicelydone.club) for real product surfaces | The catalogue is huge and the real problem is search and filtering, not the hero |
+| Docs | [Stripe docs](https://docs.stripe.com) · [Material 3](https://m3.material.io) on states | Reading is not the job — it is a reference table, so density beats calm |
+
+Nothing here fits what they are building? **Say so and interview.** Do not stretch the nearest row: a bar
+chosen because it was closest is the vague bar that makes the loop approve everything on round one.
+
+## 2. A proposal is not an answer
+
+1. **Open the reference.** No value is proposed from a page you did not fetch. Blocked → say so, pick
+   another. Never substitute a description from memory.
+2. **Measure it** — the loop's teardown already does this and writes 5 to 7 mechanisms. Those measured
+   values *are* the researched default this file was missing. They are not invented, and they come from
+   a page that already ships.
+3. **Check colour before writing it.** Any text pairing must measure **≥ 4.5:1** (≥ 3:1 for large text
+   and UI). Below that, it is **not proposed** — not proposed-with-a-warning.
+4. **Write it marked `propuesto`, naming the reference it came from.** Never as a confirmed value.
+5. A dimension that is proposed and not yet confirmed **does not count as complete** against
+   `brand-grounding.md`'s checklist. The hard STOP stays up for it. Otherwise the prefill becomes the
+   way to cross the gate with nobody having confirmed anything.
+6. Only what the user confirms becomes the project's identity.
+
+## 3. The base is the floor, not the concept
+
+A starting point gets you a defensible floor in one exchange. It does **not** satisfy the ONE signature
+element (`signature-and-craft.md` §2), and it never will: every project that picked the same bar would
+converge on the same page. If the only thing making this surface distinctive is the bar it started from,
+there is no concept yet.
+
+## See Also
+
+- `inspiration-sources.md` — the source registry, dated, with the bot-blocked entries marked.
+- `trends-2026.md` — the tier-1 set, and what currently reads as a template.
+- `brand-grounding.md` — the checklist this fills in, and the STOP it does not lift.
+- `signature-and-craft.md` — the part a starting point cannot give you.

package/skills/design-dna/SKILL.md

@@ -25,6 +25,10 @@ Nobody wrote down **why** the winner was beautiful. Next time you ask for "the s
 
 If a `dna.json` already exists for the style named, you are in REUSE. Never re-derive a style that has a record.
 
+To find out which records exist — in either scope, without guessing at paths — run
+`npx @ericrisco/rsc doctor --json` and read `designStartingPoint`. A record it reports as `unreadable`
+is **not** a record you can reuse: say what is missing, do not use half of one.
+
 ## Hard rules (these are the skill)
 
 1. **A specification that cannot fail is not a specification.** If every rule you wrote is one a bad output could still satisfy, you wrote a mood board.
@@ -63,6 +67,25 @@ Run `PROMPT.md` as written. It is the operative artefact and it is self-containe
       example/          one worked output, the canonical proof
       scripts/check.py  the auto tests, exits non-zero on failure
 
+### The record is the harness's design identity
+
+The folder above makes the style **reusable**. Writing the record into the harness is what makes it
+**this project's identity** rather than a loose folder in a global directory:
+
+- Write the record as an article under `02-DOCS/wiki/brand/`, beside the brand study, and link it
+  from `02-DOCS/wiki/index.md` and the root `CLAUDE.md` `## Brand & voice` section — the same
+  convention `design` follows, and the same place `marketing`, `presentations`, `brand-voice` and
+  `content-engine` already read.
+- **It does not replace the brand study.** The study is the judgement and the direction — why this
+  identity, what it refuses. The record is the measurable contract that can fail a test. They share
+  only a few fields; each carries what the other cannot.
+- **One harness, one design identity.** If a second appears, name the conflict. The average of two
+  good designs is a bad design.
+- A style captured before this convention still works from its folder. To bring it into the harness,
+  write its record as the article above; nothing needs re-deriving.
+
+`rsc doctor` reports whether this harness has an identity, so the rule is not just prose.
+
 Scaffold from `templates/` and validate before you claim it works:
 
     python3 ~/.claude/skills/design-dna/scripts/emit.py <slug>            # scaffold + validate