Taste — Frank's verdicts on how things should look

The criteria file for the art-director agent, and for any session making a page meant to be good rather than merely correct. Read before producing. Append the moment Frank gives a verdict, in his own words, with the date. Opened 12-08-2026, the day he said: "we need an agent with taste, able to pick good models in the many good UI models mentioned in inspiration and apply them. We don't have this agent so far, obviously."

How to use this file. These are not rules to satisfy; they are judgements already made, so nobody spends his time making them twice. A new criterion is added only when he reacts to something real he can see. Nothing goes in here from a discussion.

1. Three options means three different ideas (12-08-2026)

He asked for three modern options for the Simón page and received three pages that were the same as each other and the same as everything else we make. His words: "i have 3 times the same UI, it is clear that no inspiration was looked at in the studio."

Apply it as: if the three candidates share a skeleton, a type scale or a colour behaviour, they are one option. Hunt further before showing anything.

2. Taste is not produced by specifications (12-08-2026)

The second attempt gave the agents measurable targets — largest type at least five times body size, colour over a third of the first screen, no more than twenty-five words on the first screen. His verdict on the result: "stop, it is very ugly."

Apply it as: numbers may check a design after the eye has approved it. They can never generate one. Choose a real model and copy it faithfully instead.

3. The house rules were making everything identical (12-08-2026)

Identified with him: grayscale-first, colour-as-scarce-accent, the 66–72 character reading measure, the token ladder's "snap never invent", the shared block vocabulary, and the two audits run as a delivery gate. Six rules, all correct for a document read calmly, all fatal to a page meant to impress.

Apply it as: mode PIÈCE suspends all six (see README.md § "Two modes"). Do not run token-audit.py or composition-audit.js on a pièce.

4. The skeleton he recognises instantly (12-08-2026)

Sticky top nav with breadcrumbs · a meta line of date and links above the title · one centred container of 1100–1300px holding the page · h1 then grey dek then h2 prose sections · near-white background with hairline borders and 10px rounded cards. Measured across three "different" options: 1280px, 1280px, 1180px.

Apply it as: in a pièce, none of these may appear. Structure comes from the reference, never from our last page.

5. Never dark, whatever the reference does (12-08-2026)

Standing rule, restated when the galleries turned out to be almost entirely dark: "no dark themes."

Apply it as: copy a dark reference's scale, rhythm, confidence and colour behaviour. Never its darkness, in any section, band, tile or footer.

6. What he finds incredible: pictures moving in space (18-08-2026)

On the animos.app showcase patterns, unprompted: "it is very good. This card to tunnel for example is incredible, this spiral also, all are very good, the globe also." The first positive verdict in this file: a set of images presented as a 3D object — a tunnel flown through, a spiral, a globe of cards — with real photographs as the material.

Apply it as: when a presentation must impress, reach for the ways of presenting images shelf before inventing a layout. His named picks: card tunnel first, then spiral, then globe.

Waiting to be filled

The most useful entry this file can get is a page Frank finds beautiful. Ask him for one, capture it, and write down what specifically he liked. Until that exists, every judgement here is a negative one — what he does not want — and taste built only from refusals stays timid.

8. Celia's registry over mine (02-09-2026)

Shown Celia's version of the space registry site (smartrules.ai/spaceregistry: a dark ground, a dotted globe as the signature in orange or purple, one white headline, the types band with icons, a search pill), Frank set aside the moodboard and the layout proposals: "this is Celia's proposed UI, much better than my version, make a template/skill out of it."

Apply it as: for the space registry family, Celia's design language is the adopted look; the skill space-registry-ui and tokens-celia.css carry it, and the studio's liked bank holds the captures. More generally: when a designer's version exists, put it on the board first; the house pages are the fallback, not the standard.

7. Day pictures, for life (26-08-2026)

Choosing the look for the free zones offer mockup, he kept the usual gold photographic look but corrected the hero: "we will change the picture to have a day picture, not a night picture, to give an impression of more life."

Apply it as: on offer and proposition pages, the hero photograph is daylight with visible activity (people, movement, work), never a night skyline, however beautiful. Night reads as postcard; day reads as life.

Choosing the layout of a long concept note in Celia's UI (the note to UNOOSA, 03-09-2026), shown three real pages, he took the rail over the bare column: "B", against the recommendation of one reading column.

Apply it as: a long note or document page gets a quiet sticky rail of its sections beside a reading column of about 42em, hero and body on the same left edge; the bare column is for short pages. Offer the rail first on anything longer than a screen or two.