# Concept Rounds

Use this workflow to move from evidence to visual judgement without allowing explanation, quantity, or production detail to drown the initial idea.

## Minimum-evidence gate

The first directions need a generative seed, not a completed creative brief. Default to zero questions. Proceed when the existing message provides:

- **Subject:** enough real context to know what the work belongs to;
- **Intent:** an audience, desired effect, central tension, or meaningful proposition.

Treat the user's own words, proposition, and tensions as the seed. Infer what is already present before asking anything. Do not make the user repeat information or supply extra history merely to satisfy a process.

Ask only when the subject or intent is fundamentally unclear, two plausible readings would create opposite work, or an assumption risks harm or false representation. Ask no more than two short questions in one batch. Do not explain the whole workflow, announce a phase, estimate completion time, or present an intake form. Do not ask a second question batch before showing round one. Resolve remaining uncertainty with reversible assumptions.

Do not ask the human to choose from style categories, favorite designers, or websites. If an aesthetic adjective is load-bearing and unclear, ask what concrete behavior, feeling, memory, or situation it names; otherwise infer a testable interpretation and proceed.

## Defer production facts

Before round one, do not collect information merely because it will matter eventually. Defer:

- final copy, offers, dates, legal text, and calls to action;
- every output channel, dimension, crop, quantity, schedule, and budget;
- complete participant biographies, public permissions, and credits;
- photography plans and complete asset inventories;
- printing specifications, implementation stacks, and vendor details;
- full accessibility and regulatory requirements beyond any known immediate boundary.

Ask early only when omission would make the direction harmful, falsely attribute a real person, expose private information, or make visual comparison impossible. Production readiness is not the goal of round one.

Use the same working content across A through J so the human judges the visual language rather than completeness. Use anonymous roles or unmistakable placeholders when identities are unresolved. Never invent personal facts. Preserve exact user-provided copy; when no final wording exists, use minimal provisional working copy and disclose it after the first visual reaction.

## Evidence capsule

Record what is already known:

- a factual subject summary;
- audience and context;
- first-party language and content;
- a small number of high-value observations;
- tensions or contradictions worth preserving;
- any medium or production constraint that actually changes round one;
- accessibility and cultural boundaries;
- allowed and prohibited sources;
- unresolved questions.

Do not delay concept creation to fill every field. Privately derive at least ten possible typographic premises, then select ten that depend on different subject relationships. Do not show written premises before the first visual reaction.

## Independent authorship

Ten genuinely different designs must come from ten different causal premises in the subject evidence. Do not create a divergence matrix, parameter table, numeric uniqueness quota, dice roll, style menu, or combinatorial sampler. Mechanical variation produces combinations, not authorship.

For A through J, independently establish:

- the primary relationship taken from the evidence capsule;
- the typographic compositional law;
- the font choice or combination;
- the size scale and hierarchy;
- the uppercase, lowercase, or mixed-case rule;
- the weight, width, spacing, alignment, and line-break behavior;
- the flat canvas and text-color rule;
- the whitespace, rhythm, and density rule;
- the variation rule;
- the emotional and cultural posture;

Do not create A and then modify it into B through J. Begin each from the evidence capsule and a blank HTML file, with no reuse of another direction's composition, palette, type system, or spatial logic.

Typography-only describes the visible ingredients, not the scope of design. Each direction must be a complete design decision across typography, color, hierarchy, composition, margins, padding, alignment, density, rhythm, reading order, and empty space.

After all ten exist, compare them as whole designs. Rebuild the weaker direction when any pair:

- becomes substantially equivalent after swapping its font or colors;
- shares the same hierarchy, page skeleton, reading path, or whitespace rhythm;
- expresses difference through one conspicuous parameter while the rest remains the same;
- could exchange its premise with the other direction without forcing a redesign.

## Round-one typography-led HTML design directions

Create one professional typography-led HTML design for each direction using the same working content. Each must make a possible visual language perceptible without turning it into an artifact, illustration, labelled design board, or fake campaign.

Every direction must integrate:

1. **Font voice:** one typeface or a deliberate combination, with clear display, supporting, and small-text roles where the working copy needs them.
2. **Font relationship:** serif, sans, slab, script, display, monospaced, or hybrid behavior selected from subject-derived requirements rather than a style menu.
3. **Size scale:** a distinct proportional relationship between primary, secondary, supporting, caption, date, number, attribution, and minor language where present.
4. **Case behavior:** deliberate uppercase, lowercase, title case, sentence case, small capitals, or mixed case.
5. **Font behavior:** genuine weight, width, grade, optical size, italic, slant, or variable-font axes; never artificial deformation.
6. **Typographic detail:** intentional letter spacing, word spacing, line height, line length, kerning, ligatures, hyphenation, punctuation, alignment, and line breaks.
7. **Language coverage:** considered numerals, diacritics, abbreviations, and multilingual text where present.
8. **Palette behavior:** one flat canvas plus one to four active letterform colors used in clear proportions and relationships, never shown as disconnected swatches. Where present, primary, secondary, tertiary, and accent roles must have different jobs in hierarchy, rhythm, or language behavior.
9. **Space and placement:** deliberate outer margins, internal padding, gaps, gutters, text-block widths, maximum widths, column count and proportions, indents, hanging punctuation, baseline offsets, alignment, vertical placement, and edge relationships.
10. **Whitespace and rhythm:** deliberate silence, density, symmetry or asymmetry, repetition of supplied language, placement, and scale changes.
11. **Hierarchy:** an intentional reading path that remains legible at normal size and convincing at thumbnail size.
12. **Signature relationship:** one memorable interaction between language, type, color, and space derived from subject evidence and capable of extending into later artifacts.

These decisions must form one coherent system inside each direction. Across the set, every direction must establish a materially different:

- flat canvas and letterform palette, including color roles, contrast, and proportion;
- font combination and typographic behavior;
- hierarchy, scale contrast, and case behavior;
- outer-margin and internal-padding system;
- alignment, columns, placement, and reading path;
- density, language rhythm, repetition, and use of empty space.

The complete A-through-J set must include at least one credible example of each letterform color depth:

- one active text color on the flat ground;
- two active text colors with primary and secondary roles;
- three active text colors with a distinct tertiary or accent role;
- four active text colors with separate primary, secondary, tertiary, and accent roles.

The flat canvas is the ground and does not count toward this one-to-four letterform color depth. The remaining directions may use any of the four depths when their subject-derived premises require them. This is coverage across the authored set, not a parameter matrix or a reason to assign arbitrary palette sizes. Every active color must appear in the supplied copy at a deliberate proportion and do real compositional work. Do not add palette labels, swatches, dummy copy, or meaningless highlighted words.

When a direction uses primary, secondary, tertiary, or accent colors, their different roles should be visible during the first visual encounter. A color does not count merely because it exists in the CSS or appears on one insignificant fragment. Each role should govern enough meaningful supplied text to affect hierarchy, rhythm, language, or reading order—without arbitrary highlighting.

Do not satisfy this list by assigning ten arbitrary values. Every choice must follow from that direction's own premise.

Use lean HTML and CSS only. The HTML body may contain only the text needed for the direction and neutral structural containers. CSS may control typography, placement, whitespace, a single flat background, and letterform colors.

Do not use CSS shapes, borders, rules, lines, boxes, panels, bands, circles, blobs, pseudo-elements, gradients, shadows, filters, masks, clipping paths, textures, patterns, icons, logos, punctuation used as decoration, SVG, an HTML `<canvas>` element, image generation, raster images, photography, illustration, UI libraries, animation libraries, design-token packages, or motion. Nothing non-typographic may enter round one.

Do not artificially stretch, warp, skew, or distort letterforms. Use genuine font variants and axes. Controlled overlap, ordinary overflow cropping, vertical type, and repetition of supplied words are allowed when they remain readable, professionally typeset, and semantically honest. Never turn letterforms into abstract illustration.

Preserve every supplied word exactly. A direction may change sequence, dominance, line breaks, or repeat supplied language when doing so does not alter meaning. Explore whether the voice feels continuous, interrupted, compressed, ceremonial, conversational, forceful, restrained, or quiet by changing type and space rather than adding visual objects.

The SVG ban continues after round one. Never convert a selected concept into SVG, use SVG as an editable master, or solve a difficult composition by generating path data.

Use the same working copy across all ten directions. An optional shared browser viewport may be used when fair side-by-side comparison is useful, but it is an evaluation condition rather than a design template. Do not impose a shared fixed canvas, artifact ratio, layout, or palette. Each direction is a complete browser page with its own flat background color and composition. Do not simulate a poster, campaign, publication, package, interface, device, billboard, social-media post, or production mockup.

The direction is not a moodboard, style tile, swatch sheet, annotated foundation board, abstract illustration, interface, component sheet, or finished brand guideline. It should feel like a disciplined typographic proposition: resolved enough for human judgement, open enough to become a visual language after selection.

Author the typography, alignment, spacing, cropping, optical balance, and browser behavior with professional intent, but do not claim they succeeded visually before the human judges the HTML. Do not add category labels, a direction name, or an explanation before visual judgement.

## Round 1 file contract

```text
round-1/
  A.html … J.html        one complete dependency-free design each
  index.html             neutral links to the ten HTML files
  capsules/A.md … J.md   written during Round 1, withheld until reaction
ROUND-2-CONTEXT.md       written at project root only after an explicit lock
```

The `.html` files are the Round 1 design deliverables. Do not create PNG, WebP, JPEG, PDF, screenshots, contact sheets, thumbnails, or any other image export in Round 1. `index.html` must provide neutral access without cropping, restyling, ranking, or turning the directions into cards, buttons, or a comparison dashboard.

## Concept capsules

Create one concise Markdown capsule beside every direction. It records the direction so later work does not depend on visual memory or an improvised prompt:

- subject-derived premise;
- exact font or combination, primary source, license status, and fallback status;
- hierarchy and type roles;
- size, case, weight, width, grade, optical size, italic or slant, tracking, spacing, line, punctuation, and language rules;
- canvas and every active text-color value with its primary, secondary, tertiary, or accent role and approximate proportion;
- margin, padding, gap, gutter, column, text-block, alignment, edge, density, repetition, overlap, cropping, and whitespace rules;
- signature typographic relationship;
- candidate invariants, allowed variation, and prohibited normalization;
- provisional assumptions and unresolved risks;
- translation instructions for concrete Round 2 artifacts.

Write neutral operational prose. Do not use style names, mood words, prestige, external references, or persuasive claims. Save the capsules as part of Round 1, but withhold them from the first visual encounter.

## Pre-handoff source pass

Do not open or render the directions. Check the HTML, CSS, working copy, and capsules as source only. Reject and rebuild a direction before handoff when the source shows that:

- supplied copy was changed, invented, or omitted;
- an excluded HTML element, CSS property, asset, effect, or dependency entered Round 1;
- its capsule cannot trace the premise to subject evidence;
- its source reuses another direction's page skeleton, palette, font combination, hierarchy, or spatial rules;
- changing only its font or color values would make its source substantially equivalent to another direction;
- a claimed primary, secondary, tertiary, or accent color exists only in CSS or on an insignificant fragment instead of governing enough meaningful supplied text to affect hierarchy, rhythm, language, or reading order;
- required font, color, hierarchy, spacing, language, or licensing facts are missing from its capsule.

Rebuild only the failed direction. Do not make the others safer to match it.

Do not claim that source inspection proves visual quality, legibility, optical balance, professional typesetting, or genuine visual independence. Only the human may judge those qualities after opening the HTML files.

## First presentation

Link the ten HTML designs with equal status for the human to open. Identify them only as A through J.

Do not open, render, screenshot, inspect, compare, or judge the files with Claude in Chrome, Chrome, browser automation, Computer Use, Playwright, Puppeteer, image analysis, or any other rendering tool. Round 1 visual inspection belongs only to the human.

Do not include:

- concept names;
- mood words;
- rationales or claimed meanings;
- source explanations;
- font names or foundry prestige;
- implementation notes;
- buttons, scoring controls, forms, a comparison dashboard, shapes, lines, illustrations, icons, device frames, or production mockups.

Do not provide PNG previews or screenshots as substitutes for the actual HTML files.

Ask the human for an immediate response in ordinary language. Useful questions are:

- Which one remains in your mind when you look away?
- Which one feels alive rather than merely competent?
- What specific part feels true or false?
- Does one deserve to be developed, or did the premise fail?

Tell the human plainly that selection is optional. If none of the ten deserves commitment, they may reject the complete set and ask for another ten. There is no fixed limit to how many ten-direction rounds they may request.

After the human gives this unprimed response, reveal the neutral concept capsules only for the directions they want to consider. Do not bury the human under all ten texts unless they request them.

## When no direction is selected

Treat rejection as evidence. Identify whether the failure came from missing subject knowledge, a weak premise, false cultural assumptions, an inappropriate medium, insufficient divergence, or poor execution.

Ask the smallest number of new questions required, revise the evidence capsule, and create a new set of ten when the human asks to continue. Do not preserve a rejected direction. Repeat as often as the human requests, but keep each batch at ten rather than making one unmanageable comparison set. Never pressure the human to choose merely to advance to Round 2.

## Selection and lock

Interest, praise, a shortlist, or a request for refinement is not a lock. Before locking, keep any requested refinement typography-only and preserve the same Round 1 boundary.

When the human explicitly locks one direction:

- terminate the other nine;
- preserve its HTML and capsule;
- add the human's corrections and locked decisions without rewriting the original premise;
- copy the capsule into `ROUND-2-CONTEXT.md`;
- use that document as governing context for every concrete artifact.

## Round 2: concrete artifacts

Build what the project actually needs rather than another abstract direction. Depending on the brief, Round 2 may produce a working component library and representative screens, campaign formats, publication pages, packaging, environmental pieces, presentations, motion, or another concrete artifact family.

Shapes, lines, photography, illustration, generated imagery, icons, material effects, or motion may enter only after the lock and only when required by the artifact or approved by the human. Derive them from the locked typographic context and prevent them from importing a second style.

For interfaces, build real components with real states, content, responsive behavior, keyboard access, visible focus, and recoverability. A component library must be usable implementation, not a decorative component sheet. For graphic artifacts, use real dimensions, content, and medium constraints.

Preserve the artifact scope from the original prompt. If the prompt requested three items, rebuild those same three with real copy after the first Round 2 proof, rather than inventing more variants. Give the rebuilt set to the human and ask whether the locked direction's character survived the translation. Keep the direction locked while repairing an artifact; do not reopen A through J unless the human explicitly asks.

After explicit approval, freeze the approved artifacts and their generation rules. Record the invariant rules, allowed variation, and reopening conditions. Create a self-contained HTML style guide from the locked direction, tell the human that it exists, and link the file. The guide must carry all applicable rules from the locked capsule and production constitution, not merely show colors and font samples. Include copyable prompt examples for continuing the work in the current or a new thread. State that any further artifact can now be requested from the approved visual language. Do not create further artifacts until the human requests them.

Use `ROUND-2-CONTEXT.md` in every Round 2 handoff or continuation. If a new task or production process cannot access the project files, include the capsule in its input. Do not replace it with a short aesthetic adjective.

Build in the existing project stack when one exists. Round 2 may add rendered PNG, WebP, or JPEG evidence when practical and appropriate to the concrete artifact. Never create SVG during development or handoff.

After the lock, do not volunteer more directions. Record any later reopening reason and the human decision that authorized it.