agent-bober 0.18.0 → 0.19.0

package/skills/bober.design/SKILL.md

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+---
+name: bober.design
+description: Frontend design team workflow — build premium, non-generic landing pages and UI through a five-role pipeline (intake → art direction → build → screenshot critique → polish). Use when building or redesigning any user-facing page where visual quality matters: landing pages, portfolios, marketing sites, product pages, dashboards with a public face. Triggers on "build a landing page", "make this look premium", "design a site", "this looks too AI".
+argument-hint: <what-to-build-or-improve>
+handoffs:
+  - label: "Plan Feature"
+    command: /bober-plan
+    prompt: "Plan the engineering work behind this designed page"
+  - label: "E2E Tests"
+    command: /bober-playwright
+    prompt: "Write Playwright E2E tests for the designed page"
+---
+
+# bober.design — Frontend Design Team Workflow
+
+You are running the **bober.design** skill: a five-role design team compressed into one
+pipeline. Its single purpose is output that could not be mistaken for AI-generated — pages with
+a point of view, built to a hard quality floor.
+
+The pipeline exists because genericness is not a vague quality problem; it is a named,
+enumerable, machine-detectable failure mode. The team designs against an explicit catalog of
+AI tells (see the **Anti-Slop Catalog** reference), plans before building, critiques
+screenshots instead of trusting code, and gates on deterministic checks.
+
+**The Iron Law of this skill: no design decision happens outside DESIGN.md during the build.**
+Plan first, then build the plan. A builder that improvises palette or type on the fly produces
+the average of its training data — that average is the enemy.
+
+## The five roles
+
+| Role | Who | Output |
+|------|-----|--------|
+| 1. Intake | You (orchestrator), interactive | Brief: subject, audience, job, references, constraints |
+| 2. Art direction | `bober-art-director` subagent | `.bober/design/DESIGN.md` (the contract) |
+| 3. Build | `bober-frontend-builder` subagent | Working code, DESIGN.md as law |
+| 4. Critique | `bober-design-critic` subagent | Screenshot-verified findings + slop score + verdict |
+| 5. Polish | builder again, one batch | Final pass: typography, motion, copy sweep |
+
+Steps 3–4 loop (max 3 iterations) until the critic passes.
+
+## Step 0 — Applicability & survey
+
+- If the task has no visual surface (backend, infra, pure logic), stop and use the right skill.
+- Survey the project: greenfield or existing? Stack (plain HTML / Vite+React / Next.js /
+  Astro…)? If greenfield with no stack preference, default to a single static page first
+  (HTML + modern CSS + minimal JS) — design quality is stack-independent and a static page
+  iterates fastest; migrate into a framework after the design is approved.
+- Check for installed substrate (all optional, never required):
+  - **ui-ux-pro-max** plugin (`~/.claude/plugins/marketplaces/ui-ux-pro-max-skill/.claude/skills/ui-ux-pro-max/scripts/search.py`):
+    a searchable database of styles, palettes, font pairings, and per-stack guidelines. Treat
+    it as a *candidate generator only* — its recommendations trend generic (it will happily
+    suggest Inter/Inter for a premium portfolio), so everything it returns must pass the
+    art director's anti-slop gate.
+  - **frontend-design** skill (Anthropic) — its philosophy is already absorbed into this
+    pipeline; don't invoke it redundantly inside this workflow.
+  - **impeccable** (`npx impeccable detect`) and **axe-core** — deterministic gates for the
+    critic, used if available.
+
+## Step 1 — Intake (interactive; you run this, not a subagent)
+
+Subagents can't talk to the user. All discovery happens here, and its quality caps the quality
+of everything downstream.
+
+### 1a. References (worth more than any description)
+
+Ask the user for visual references before anything else:
+
+- A `reference/` folder in the project (screenshots, section by section — hero, content
+  sections, footer, detail pages, loading states — named or annotated for which section each
+  file informs). Read every image.
+- Or URLs of sites they admire (capture screenshots via Playwright if available).
+- **Borrow from several references, never copy one site.** For each reference, record WHAT
+  specifically to take (the spacing? type contrast? mood? one interaction?) — one sentence per
+  image, confirmed with the user if ambiguous.
+- No references? Proceed — the art director designs from the subject's own world — but say
+  that references would raise the ceiling and give the user a moment to add some.
+
+### 1b. Clarifying questions (one batch, 4–6 questions max)
+
+Run two discovery tracks in the same batch:
+
+**Vibe discovery:** subject and its world (materials, instruments, era, vernacular) ·
+audience and the page's single job · 3-5 adjectives the user wants a stranger to feel ·
+what competitors/peers look like (so we can NOT look like that) · any brand constraints
+(existing colors/fonts/logo) · motion appetite (calm ↔ theatrical).
+
+**Copy strategy:** what the thing actually does, in the user's own words · the one action a
+visitor should take · proof available (real numbers, real names, real work).
+
+Also: target stack, single-mode or light+dark, and any hard constraints (CMS, existing design
+system, performance budget).
+
+Use AskUserQuestion for the choice-shaped items; free text for the open ones. Do not proceed
+until the subject, audience, and job are concrete. Real content only from here on — collect
+actual copy inputs, names, numbers, and image assets now, not lorem ipsum later.
+
+### 1c. Write the brief
+
+Distill intake into `.bober/design/BRIEF.md`: subject/audience/job, reference notes (per-image,
+what-to-take), both discovery tracks' answers, constraints, assets inventory. This is the art
+director's entire knowledge of the user's intent — write it like a handoff, not notes.
+
+## Step 2 — Art direction
+
+Spawn **bober-art-director** with: the full text of BRIEF.md, the reference image paths (it can
+Read them), the Anti-Slop Catalog and DESIGN.md template references (inlined below in this
+command file — pass them verbatim), and `.bober/design/history.md` if it exists.
+
+The art director returns DESIGN.md content after running its internal generic-twin self-critique.
+Write it to `.bober/design/DESIGN.md`.
+
+**Approval gate:** present to the user — the named vibe, the two influences and their collision,
+the palette table, the type pairing, the signature element, the wildcard, and the Slop Ledger.
+Ask: approve, or adjust? Iterate the art director (not the builder) until approved. This is the
+cheapest point in the pipeline to change direction; after this, DESIGN.md is frozen for the
+build. In a fully autonomous run (explicitly requested), apply the critic's brief-level review
+instead and proceed.
+
+Append the history ledger line to `.bober/design/history.md` once approved.
+
+## Step 3 — Build
+
+Spawn **bober-frontend-builder** with: DESIGN.md verbatim, the stack decision, the asset paths,
+the Anti-Slop Catalog, and (iteration ≥2) the critic's full findings batch.
+
+Build order: tokens first (CSS variables / theme file generated from DESIGN.md §3–4 — the only
+place hex values may live), then section by section per the §5 wireframes, then the signature
+element, then the motion plan. The builder self-verifies (builds clean, renders, no console
+errors) before returning.
+
+## Step 4 — Critique loop
+
+Spawn **bober-design-critic** with: DESIGN.md, the Critique Rubric reference, how to run the
+page (dev server command or file path), and the iteration number.
+
+- Critic returns a verdict + findings (screenshot-verified, severity-ranked, slop score).
+- `fail` → collect ALL findings into ONE batch (batched fixes beat drip-fed fixes; the builder
+  sees the full picture and fixes root causes, not symptoms), re-spawn the builder, re-critique.
+  Max 3 iterations; if still failing, stop and present the open findings honestly to the user
+  with the critic's screenshots — never silently ship a failing page.
+- `design-brief` findings (page faithful to a weak DESIGN.md) → route to the art director,
+  not the builder, and re-run from Step 2 with the user's awareness.
+- `pass` → Step 5.
+
+## Step 5 — Polish
+
+One final builder pass, one batch, guided by the critic's MEDIUM/NIT findings plus:
+
+- **Typography micro-pass:** optical alignment, widows/orphans in headings, tabular figures on
+  data, letter-spacing on all-caps labels.
+- **Motion audit:** every animation earns its place per DESIGN.md §8; reduced-motion path
+  actually verified.
+- **Copy sweep:** the anti-slop copy sweep from the Copy Guide, applied line by line.
+
+Then a final critic smoke pass (phases 1, 3, 8 + slop lint only) to confirm the polish didn't
+regress anything.
+
+## Step 6 — Report
+
+Present to the user: the final 1440/768/375 screenshots, the named vibe and signature element
+(one line each), the slop score and a11y result, how to run it, and what to iterate next.
+Findings you chose not to fix stay listed — the user decides, not silence.
+
+## Working with the sprint pipeline
+
+For larger builds, this skill composes with the standard bober pipeline: run Steps 0–2 here,
+then hand DESIGN.md to `/bober-plan` as a context file so sprint contracts inherit the design
+contract, with `bober-design-critic` added as an evaluation strategy alongside typecheck/tests.
+The design contract and the engineering contract stay separate documents with separate
+evaluators.
+
+## Error handling
+
+- **Playwright unavailable to the critic** → critique falls back to static analysis of built
+  output + explicit note that visual verification was skipped; treat any such review as
+  provisional, never as a pass.
+- **Fonts fail to load in review** (computed font-family shows a fallback) → CRITICAL: the
+  design was reviewed as a different design. Fix loading before judging anything visual.
+- **User rejects the vibe late (during build/critique)** → back to Step 2; do not patch a
+  rejected direction section by section. Changing DESIGN.md mid-build without re-approval is
+  a pipeline violation.
+- **Iteration budget exhausted** → present state honestly with screenshots and open findings.
+
+## Attribution
+
+The taste layer of this pipeline adapts Anthropic's `frontend-design` skill (three default
+looks, signature element, two-pass plan/critique, writing-as-design). The genericness catalog
+synthesizes Impeccable (pbakaus), Krebs' Show HN slop audit, and 2389-research's landing-page
+system (entropy rules, named vibes, litmus gates). The critique protocol adapts OneRedOak's
+design-review workflow (Live Environment First, 8 phases, three viewports).

package/skills/bober.design/references/1-anti-slop.md

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+# Anti-Slop Catalog — AI-Generic Tells, Blocklist, and Entropy Rules
+
+This is the shared genericness knowledge base for the bober design team. The art director designs
+against it, the builder is constrained by it, and the critic scores against it.
+
+**How to apply it:** every rule here is a **scored lint, not an absolute ban**. Any single tell can
+be the right choice for a specific brief — the failure mode is *stacking defaults*. An empirical
+Playwright audit of 1,590 Show HN landing pages (Krebs, 2026) scored 4+ tells as "heavy slop" (22%
+of pages), 2–3 as mild (32%), 0–1 as clean (46%). Target: **0–1 tells, and any tell present must be
+a justified, written choice in DESIGN.md** — the brief's own words always win, including when the
+brief explicitly asks for a "banned" look.
+
+## The three whole-page default looks (never spend a free axis on these)
+
+AI-generated design clusters around three complete looks that appear regardless of subject:
+
+1. **Warm cream** (~#F4F1EA) background + high-contrast serif display + terracotta accent
+2. **Near-black** background + single acid-green or vermilion accent
+3. **Broadsheet**: hairline rules, zero border-radius, dense newspaper columns
+
+All three are legitimate *when the brief pins them down*. When the brief leaves the visual
+direction free, arriving at any of them means the direction was defaulted, not designed.
+
+## Component & layout tells (each +1 slop score)
+
+- Pill "badge" above the hero H1 ("✨ Now in beta", "Backed by…")
+- Grid of identical icon-topped feature cards (3 or 6, same size, same radius)
+- Numbered 1-2-3 "how it works" step sequence when the content is not truly sequential
+- Stat banner row ("10k+ users · 99.9% uptime · 4.9★")
+- Big number + small label + gradient accent as the hero (the template answer)
+- Rounded-corner card grids as the answer to every layout question
+- Dark mode with glowing box-shadows around cards
+- Decorative gradient text on headlines
+- Centered everything: every section a centered column with a centered heading
+
+## Typography tells
+
+- One font family for the entire page (most commonly Inter)
+- The overused pool: **Inter, Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, Space Grotesk, Lato, Open Sans,
+  Source Sans Pro** — and the "escape hatch" combos that became their own tell:
+  Geist, Instrument Serif (already flagged as "the newest reflex")
+- No deliberate type scale: sizes that drift (17/19/22px) instead of a named scale
+
+## Color tells
+
+- Purple/violet gradients ("VibeCode Purple"), generic blue-to-purple
+- Cyan-on-dark "tech" scheme
+- "The Stripe palette" — soft blurple gradients on white
+- Remembered hex codes: reaching for #6366F1, #8B5CF6, #10B981 from muscle memory
+
+## Copy tells (probabilistic — these predate LLMs; enforce specificity, don't just ban phrases)
+
+- Averaged SaaS headlines: "Build the future of work", "Your all-in-one platform",
+  "Scale without limits", "Supercharge your workflow"
+- **Headline litmus test (hard gate):** if a visitor sees ONLY the headline and nothing else,
+  will they know exactly what this product/person/thing is? If not, rewrite.
+- Em-dash-heavy triads, "It's not X, it's Y", benefit-benefit-benefit rhythm
+- Feature names that describe the implementation ("AI-Powered Engine") instead of what the
+  user gets
+
+## Motion tells
+
+- Bounce/elastic easing on UI elements
+- Everything fades up on scroll, uniformly, at the same speed
+- Scattered micro-animations instead of one orchestrated moment
+- Animations >500ms, or animating width/height/top/left instead of transform/opacity
+
+## Replacement pools (rotate — never reuse the previous project's pick)
+
+**Display faces** (pair with a distinct body face, never self-paired): Newsreader, Playfair
+Display, Clash Display, Outfit, Manrope, Satoshi, Bricolage Grotesque, Fraunces, Zodiak,
+General Sans, Cabinet Grotesk, Big Shoulders, Crimson Pro. For developer products, JetBrains
+Mono / IBM Plex Mono as a *utility* face.
+**Icons:** Phosphor, Heroicons, Iconify Solar — one set per project, one stroke weight.
+Lucide is now overused; avoid unless the project already uses it. Never emoji as icons.
+
+⚠️ **This pool rots.** Everyone reading advice like this switches to the same replacements, which
+is how Instrument Serif became a tell within months. The pools are a floor, not the method. The
+method is the entropy rules below.
+
+## Entropy rules (anti-convergence — these beat any static list)
+
+1. **No hex-code memory.** Generate colors fresh from real-world references in the subject's
+   world (a material, a place, an era, a brand artifact) — never from remembered defaults.
+   Name each color after its source ("oxidized copper", not "green-500").
+2. **Rotate the display face.** Check `.bober/design/history.md` for faces used in previous
+   projects; never repeat the last three.
+3. **Two influences, visible collision.** Pick two unrelated influences discovered during
+   intake (e.g. "Swiss timetables × phosphor CRT terminals") and make the collision visible
+   in the design. One influence produces a theme; two produce an identity.
+4. **One wildcard.** Include one deliberate element that doesn't "fit" — a texture, an odd
+   alignment, a typographic quirk. Perfectly coherent = obviously generated.
+5. **Name the vibe.** Write down a 2–4 word name for the aesthetic direction ("brutalist
+   apothecary", "midnight radio"). Unnamed vibes become generic. Every subsequent decision
+   is tested against the name.
+
+## The AI Slop Test (final gate, applied by the critic)
+
+> If someone saw this page and was told "AI made this", would they believe it immediately?
+
+If yes — the design has failed, regardless of how many individual rules pass. Identify which
+tells create that impression and redesign those. If no — ship it.

package/skills/bober.design/references/2-design-brief.md

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+# DESIGN.md — the Design Brief Contract
+
+The art director produces `.bober/design/DESIGN.md`. It is the **single source of truth** for the
+build: no design decision may be made outside this file during the build phase. If the builder
+needs a value that isn't in DESIGN.md, that is a DESIGN.md bug — the orchestrator routes the
+question back to art direction, the builder never improvises one.
+
+Pages may add scoped deviations in `.bober/design/pages/<page>.md` (same sections, overrides
+only). When building a page, its override file — if present — wins over the master.
+
+## Required sections
+
+```markdown
+# DESIGN — <project name>
+
+## 1. Subject & Job
+One concrete subject, its audience, and the page's single job. If the user's brief didn't pin
+these down, the intake answers did. Real content only — no lorem ipsum anywhere in the build.
+
+## 2. Vibe
+**Name:** <2–4 word named direction, e.g. "brutalist apothecary">
+**Influences (exactly two, unrelated):** <influence A> × <influence B> — and one sentence on
+where their collision will be visible on the page.
+**Freshness check:** how this direction differs from (a) the three default looks, (b) the last
+entry in .bober/design/history.md, (c) what a generic competitor page looks like.
+
+## 3. Color Tokens (4–6, named after their real-world source)
+| Token | Hex | Source | Role |
+|-------|-----|--------|------|
+| --color-ink | #1A1B18 | wet slate roof | foreground |
+| ... | | | background / accent / surface / muted |
+Include the fg/bg contrast ratios for every text-bearing pair (must meet 4.5:1 body, 3:1 large).
+State light/dark behavior: single-mode (justify) or both (both fully specified).
+
+## 4. Type Roles
+| Role | Face | Weights | Scale steps |
+Display / Body / Utility (captions, data). Display and body are different families. State the
+type scale as named steps (e.g. 13/16/20/28/44/72) and where each is used. State what makes
+this pairing specific to the brief — "it looks nice" is not a reason.
+
+## 5. Layout Concept
+One-sentence layout thesis, then ASCII wireframes per section (hero, each content section,
+footer). Structural devices (numbering, eyebrows, dividers) listed with the information each
+one encodes — a device that encodes nothing gets cut.
+
+## 6. Signature Element
+The ONE thing this page will be remembered by (an interaction, a hero treatment, a typographic
+move). One paragraph: what it is, why it embodies this subject, and its reduced-motion fallback.
+Spend the boldness budget here; everything else stays quiet.
+
+## 7. Wildcard
+One deliberate misfit detail and where it lives.
+
+## 8. Motion Plan
+The one orchestrated moment (usually page load or first scroll), listed hover/press
+micro-interactions, duration/easing tokens (150–300ms micro, ≤400ms transitions, ease-out in /
+ease-in out, no bounce on UI), and the prefers-reduced-motion story. Fewer, better.
+
+## 9. Copy Deck
+Final headline (must pass the litmus test), subhead, section headings, CTA labels (verbs that
+say what happens: "Save changes", not "Submit"), and the empty/error-state voice. Copy is design
+material: same intentionality as spacing and color.
+
+## 10. Slop Ledger
+Every anti-slop rule this design consciously breaks, each with a one-line justification tied to
+the brief. An empty ledger and a rule-breaking design = art direction failure. Unjustified
+entries = the critic bounces it.
+
+## 11. Quality Floor (non-negotiable, inherited — restate, don't relitigate)
+Responsive 375/768/1440. Visible keyboard focus. WCAG 2.2 AA contrast. Semantic HTML.
+prefers-reduced-motion respected. No horizontal scroll on mobile. Touch targets ≥44px.
+Real content, no placeholders.
+```
+
+## History ledger
+
+After every accepted DESIGN.md, append one line to `.bober/design/history.md`:
+
+```
+2026-07-10 | <project> | vibe: <name> | display: <face> | body: <face> | palette: <3 main hex>
+```
+
+The art director MUST read this file first and avoid repeating the last three display faces,
+vibe names, and palettes. This is what keeps project #5 from converging with project #1.

package/skills/bober.design/references/3-critique-rubric.md

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+# Design Critique Rubric — Live-Environment Review Protocol
+
+Used by `bober-design-critic`. Principle: **Live Environment First** — assess the rendered,
+interactive page before reading a line of source. Static code analysis alone is rejected as a
+review method; a picture is worth 1000 tokens.
+
+## Setup
+
+1. Start the dev server (or open the built HTML) and navigate with Playwright.
+2. Capture the baseline screenshot set BEFORE judging anything:
+   - **1440px** (desktop), **768px** (tablet), **375px** (mobile) — full-page screenshot each
+   - Dark mode variants if DESIGN.md specifies dual-mode
+3. Read `.bober/design/DESIGN.md` (and the page override, if any). The review judges the page
+   against DESIGN.md and the anti-slop catalog — not against the critic's personal taste.
+   If the page is faithful to DESIGN.md but DESIGN.md itself is weak, file that as a
+   `design-brief` finding, not a build finding.
+
+## The eight phases (run in order, all mandatory)
+
+| # | Phase | What to check |
+|---|-------|---------------|
+| 1 | Preparation | Page loads clean; no 404 assets; no console errors/warnings; fonts actually load (check computed font-family — a fallback serving Arial is a CRITICAL finding) |
+| 2 | Interaction & user flow | Walk the primary user journey click-by-click. Every interactive element: hover, press, focus, disabled states present and on-style. CTAs do what their label says |
+| 3 | Responsiveness | At each viewport: no horizontal scroll, no overlap/clipping, no orphaned layouts. Screenshot evidence for every finding |
+| 4 | Visual polish | Spacing rhythm consistent with the scale; alignment true; type scale steps match DESIGN.md; images not stretched; visual hierarchy guides the eye to the one primary action |
+| 5 | Accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA) | Keyboard-only pass: tab order matches visual order, focus always visible, no traps, escape routes in modals. Contrast-check every text/bg pair. Alt text, labels, heading hierarchy, aria on icon-only buttons. Run axe if available (see gates) |
+| 6 | Robustness | Long content, missing images, empty states, slow network (throttle), zoom 200%, prefers-reduced-motion actually reduces motion |
+| 7 | Code health | ONLY now read source: token usage (no raw hex in components), CSS specificity sanity, semantic HTML, no dead selectors that cancel each other |
+| 8 | Content & console | Copy against the copy deck: headline litmus, CTA verb rule, no lorem ipsum, no truncated text. Final console sweep after all interactions |
+
+## Deterministic gates (run after the eight phases)
+
+- **Slop lint:** if `npx impeccable detect` is available (requires network on first run), run it
+  with `--json` and record the score. Otherwise run the built-in checks: computed font-family
+  vs the overused pool; count of hero badge / icon-card grid / stat row / numbered steps
+  patterns in the DOM; gradient usage on text; purple-family dominance. Score = number of
+  tells present. **0–1 pass · 2–3 warn · 4+ fail.** A tell justified in DESIGN.md's Slop
+  Ledger does not count toward the score.
+- **Accessibility scan:** if axe-core is available (`npx @axe-core/cli <url>` or injected via
+  Playwright evaluate), run it. Serious/critical violations are BLOCKER findings. If axe is
+  unavailable, the manual phase-5 pass stands but note the gap in the report.
+- **The AI Slop Test** (from the anti-slop catalog): one honest verdict, looking at the 1440px
+  screenshot cold: "would a stranger immediately believe AI made this?" Yes → FAIL with the
+  specific tells that create the impression.
+
+## Finding format & severities
+
+```
+[BLOCKER]  breaks function, accessibility, or DESIGN.md's quality floor — must fix
+[HIGH]     visibly cheapens the page or violates DESIGN.md — fix this iteration
+[MEDIUM]   polish item — fix if the iteration budget allows
+[NIT]      preference — note, prefixed "Nit:", never blocks
+```
+
+Every finding: `severity | phase | viewport | what + where | evidence (screenshot ref) |
+suggested fix direction`. Findings describe **problems, not prescriptions** — the builder owns
+the how. Praise what works in one line first; it anchors what must not regress.
+
+## Verdict
+
+`pass` — no BLOCKER/HIGH, slop score ≤1, AI Slop Test passed.
+`fail` — anything else, with the full findings list for the next build iteration.

package/skills/bober.design/references/4-copy-guide.md

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+# Copy Guide — Writing as Design Material
+
+Words appear in a design for one reason: to make it easier to understand, and therefore easier
+to use. They are design material, not decoration — bring the same intentionality to copy that
+you bring to spacing and color. Copy can make a design feel as templated as the visuals can.
+
+## Headline discipline
+
+- **The litmus test (hard gate):** seeing ONLY the headline, does a visitor know exactly what
+  this is? "Build the future of work" fails. "Invoices your clients pay in one tap" passes.
+- Specific beats clever, every time. Numbers, nouns from the subject's world, and verbs the
+  audience uses beat abstractions ("platform", "solution", "workflow", "supercharge").
+- The headline is written from the visitor's side of the screen — what they get, not what the
+  system does.
+
+## Voice rules
+
+- Write from the end user's side: name things by what people control and recognize, never by
+  how the system is built. A person manages *notifications*, not *webhook config*.
+- Active voice by default. A control says exactly what happens when it's used: "Save changes",
+  not "Submit". An action keeps its name through the whole flow — the button that says
+  "Publish" produces a toast that says "Published".
+- Plain verbs, sentence case, no filler. Tone matched to the brand and audience, then held
+  consistent — the vocabulary of an interface is its signposting.
+- Let each element do exactly one job: a label labels, an example demonstrates, nothing quietly
+  does double duty.
+
+## Failure & emptiness are direction, not mood
+
+- Errors state what went wrong and how to fix it, in the interface's voice. They never
+  apologize and are never vague ("Invalid input" is banned; "Card number is 15 digits — Amex
+  cards start with 34 or 37" passes).
+- An empty screen is an invitation to act: what this space is for + the one action to fill it.
+
+## Anti-slop copy sweep (polish pass)
+
+- Kill averaged-SaaS phrasing: "all-in-one", "seamless", "supercharge", "unlock", "empower",
+  "take X to the next level", "built for the modern Y".
+- Kill rhythm tells: em-dash triads, "It's not X, it's Y", three-benefit drumbeats.
+- Every feature name says what the user gets, not the implementation ("Search that reads
+  handwriting", not "AI-Powered OCR Engine").
+- Read every sentence asking: could this appear on a competitor's page unchanged? If yes,
+  it isn't copy yet — it's filler.

package/skills/bober.plan/SKILL.md

@@ -42,7 +42,21 @@ Based on the user's answers, determine the appropriate `mode` and `preset`:
 
 The planner should be able to plan ANY type of project -- web apps, APIs, smart contracts, CLI tools, mobile apps, libraries, data pipelines, etc. Do not limit the user to predefined categories.
 
-Create `bober.config.json` using the appropriate defaults from the mode and preset. Use the schema defined in `src/config/schema.ts` and defaults from `src/config/defaults.ts` as reference. Auto-detect commands by examining `package.json`, `Cargo.toml`, `Anchor.toml`, `hardhat.config.*`, `foundry.toml`, or other project manifests if available.
+**Write `bober.config.json` now — do not wait for further confirmation, and do NOT try to read `src/config/*.ts` or `templates/*` (those source files are absent in a plugin or standalone install; only relative project paths resolve).** Use the self-contained default below as your starting point. Set `project.name`, `project.mode` (`"greenfield"` or `"brownfield"`), and `project.description` from the user's answers; add `project.preset` and/or `project.stack` when they apply. Auto-detect the `commands` by examining `package.json`, `Cargo.toml`, `Anchor.toml`, `hardhat.config.*`, `foundry.toml`, or other manifests — omit any command you cannot detect rather than guessing.
+
+```json
+{
+  "project": { "name": "<name>", "mode": "greenfield", "description": "<what they are building>" },
+  "planner": { "maxClarifications": 5, "model": "opus" },
+  "generator": { "model": "sonnet", "maxTurnsPerSprint": 50, "autoCommit": true, "branchPattern": "bober/{feature-name}" },
+  "evaluator": { "model": "sonnet", "strategies": [ { "type": "build", "required": true } ], "maxIterations": 3 },
+  "sprint": { "maxSprints": 10, "requireContracts": true, "sprintSize": "medium" },
+  "pipeline": { "maxIterations": 20, "requireApproval": false, "contextReset": "always" },
+  "commands": {}
+}
+```
+
+`project.preset` (optional) is one of `"nextjs"`, `"react-vite"`, `"solidity"`, `"anchor"`, `"api-node"`, `"python-api"`; `project.stack` (optional) is a free-form object such as `{ "frontend": "react", "backend": "express", "database": "postgresql" }`. For richer stacks, add the matching `evaluator.strategies` (e.g. `typecheck`, `lint`, `unit-test`, `playwright`) alongside their `commands`. After writing the file, verify it exists on disk, then continue — the config now exists, so the "does not exist" branch must not trigger again.
 
 Then create the `.bober/` directory structure:
 ```bash

package/skills/bober.run/SKILL.md

@@ -74,8 +74,9 @@ ORCHESTRATOR (you — this session)
 Read `bober.config.json`. If it does not exist:
 - Ask the user the minimal initialization questions: project name, mode (greenfield vs brownfield), and what they are building.
 - Determine the appropriate `mode` and `preset` (if any) from the user's description.
-- Create `bober.config.json` with appropriate defaults.
-- Create the `.bober/` directory structure.
+- **Write `bober.config.json` immediately** using the self-contained default config embedded in the `bober.plan` skill (Step 1) — do NOT wait for further confirmation, and do NOT try to read `src/config/*.ts` or `templates/*` (those source files are absent in a plugin or standalone install). Auto-detect `commands` from the project manifests; omit any you cannot detect.
+- Create the `.bober/` directory structure: `mkdir -p .bober/specs .bober/contracts .bober/handoffs .bober/eval-results`.
+- Verify `bober.config.json` now exists on disk before proceeding — every later step reads it.
 
 If `bober.config.json` exists, read the configuration.
 
@@ -83,11 +84,13 @@ Read `.bober/principles.md` if it exists. You will pass the principles text into
 
 ### 1b. Run Prerequisites Check
 
+If `scripts/check-prereqs.sh` exists in the project, run it:
+
 ```bash
-bash scripts/check-prereqs.sh
+[ -f scripts/check-prereqs.sh ] && bash scripts/check-prereqs.sh || echo "scripts/check-prereqs.sh not present (plugin/standalone install) — skipping prerequisites check"
 ```
 
-If it fails, report the missing prerequisites and stop.
+If the script is present and fails, report the missing prerequisites and stop. If the script is absent — a plugin or standalone install where the agent-bober source tree is not in the project — skip this check and continue; it is not required.
 
 ### 1c. Check for Existing Plans