AOS/skills/design/horizontal-craft

Horizontal Craft

Horizontal craft files are cross-cutting design constraints. They are not artifact skills, templates, or scenario principles.

Use them after a lightweight design understanding step has determined what the artifact needs. Do not read every file by default.

skill_bundle:
  horizontal_craft:
    # Always for Chinese artifacts
    - horizontal-craft/chinese-typography.md

    # Generative craft, loaded when needed
    - horizontal-craft/color.md
    - horizontal-craft/icon-system.md
    - horizontal-craft/animation-discipline.md
    - horizontal-craft/laws-of-ux.md
    - horizontal-craft/technique-library.md

    # Guardrail craft, usually applied during review or when triggered
    - horizontal-craft/anti-ai-slop.md
    - horizontal-craft/accessibility.md
    - horizontal-craft/state-coverage.md
    - horizontal-craft/form-validation.md
    - horizontal-craft/data-integrity.md
    - horizontal-craft/link-and-proof.md

quality-gate.md verifies whether the relevant horizontal craft checks passed. It should not duplicate the full rulebooks.

Loading Priority

Do not read every horizontal craft file by default. Load only what the task needs.

Baseline for Chinese visual design

• Read chinese-typography.md whenever the artifact contains meaningful Chinese text.
• Read reference/fonts.md when font choice materially affects the visual direction: font-related user requests, typography-led covers/posters/cards/deck covers, official documents, classical/literary content, academic/report tone, industrial/technology display type, or when title/body font attitudes must differ.
• Do not read reference/fonts.md for every Chinese task; for ordinary Web/App/Dashboard output without font intent, use a safe system font stack.
• Read other deep files in reference/ only when their trigger conditions apply.

Generative craft

Read these before or during drafting when their trigger applies:

• color.md — read when no strong design system is provided, when color direction is vague, when semantic colors/status colors are used, or when the artifact risks default blue-purple gradient styling.
• chinese-typography.md — read for all Chinese-language artifacts. It provides principles and diagnostics, not a universal type-scale preset; concrete sizes should come from the artifact skill, template, design system, or canvas/device registry.
• icon-system.md — read when the artifact uses icons, pictograms, status marks, or icon-like decoration.
• animation-discipline.md — read when motion, transitions, scroll reveal, microinteractions, or animated H5 behavior are requested or implied.
• laws-of-ux.md — read for decision-heavy or interaction-heavy surfaces such as pricing pages, onboarding, dashboards, forms, H5 tools, and product flows.
• technique-library.md — read only for advanced front-end effects such as GSAP, Three.js, shaders, rich motion, or data visualization technique selection.

Guardrail craft

Usually apply these during review, or earlier only when the task clearly triggers them:

• anti-ai-slop.md — use as an anti-default check, not as the primary creative direction.
• accessibility.md — apply as a final baseline check for web artifacts.
• state-coverage.md — read for interactive, data-driven, form, tool, dashboard, or prototype surfaces.
• form-validation.md — read for signup, login, checkout, calculators, input-heavy H5, settings, admin forms, or any artifact with validation/error messaging.
• data-integrity.md — read when charts, metrics, benchmarks, forecasts, calculations, or proof-like numbers appear.
• link-and-proof.md — read when links, CTAs, customer proof, testimonials, logos, awards, or external claims appear.

Removed boundary

There is no standalone chinese-copy.md. Copywriting is not a core design craft. Only short copy-related failure smells that visibly affect design quality remain in anti-ai-slop.md.

Boundary with Scenario Principles and Templates

Templates live outside horizontal craft in templates/. They provide optional concrete structure seeds.

Scenario principles decide business priorities. Horizontal craft decides cross-cutting execution quality.

Horizontal craft files are universal constraints that can apply to any scenario or template. technique-library.md is here because advanced front-end technique selection is a cross-cutting implementation rule, not an artifact skill.

Reference Loading Rule

Deep reference files are not passive appendices. When a selected horizontal craft file contains a clear trigger condition, add the matching reference file to required_reference_files_to_read. Do not rely on the summary file alone for typography-heavy, publication, report, fixed-image, or punctuation-sensitive work.

For normal UI work, read only the top-level craft file. For typography-heavy work, read 1–3 relevant files from horizontal-craft/reference/.

Deep Reference Files

reference/ lives inside horizontal-craft/ because these files are deep typography and layout references used primarily by chinese-typography.md. Keep them here instead of the design root.

• reference/directions.md
• reference/title-and-breaking.md
• reference/punctuation.md
• reference/grid-system.md
• reference/text-detail.md
• reference/fonts.md