code-factory-4-design 0.5.0

The Digital Architect of Prestige — a coding-agent skill for designing premium, high-conversion websites and mobile UIs using applied psychology and trust engineering. Ships a SKILL.md contract plus an executable design-linter that audits generated HTML/CSS against the Halo Effect, Cognitive Fluency, Trust Engineering, Peak-End Rule, and Horn-Effect triggers.

The Digital Architect of Prestige 💎

A coding-agent skill for designing premium, high-conversion websites and mobile UIs — for Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, and any agent that reads a project skill file. It moves the agent beyond aesthetics into applied psychology and trust engineering, and ships an executable design linter so the agent can verify its output against the principles, not just intend them.

Users judge credibility in ~50ms from visuals alone. If it looks professional, they assume the service is too (the Halo Effect). This skill engineers that halo — and refuses to let a pretty page ship over a broken one.

Workflow at a glance

flowchart LR
    A["User journey or page brief"] --> B["Select workflow and purpose"]
    B --> C["Build premium UI"]
    C --> D["Audit five laws"]
    D --> E["Score bias, CTA, hook, mobile, and purpose fit"]
    E -->|"fails"| F["Fix ranked recommendations"]
    F --> D
    E -->|"passes"| G["Ship UI with design receipt"]

Install into your agent (any OS)

python install.py                 # Windows / macOS / Linux (installs + verifies)
# then, inside your project:
prestige install claude           # or: codex · opencode · cursor · generic

That drops SKILL.md where your agent auto-reads it. From then on, any "design a landing page / make this premium / build a checkout" request triggers the skill.

What the agent gets

A design contract (SKILL.md) encoding five laws it applies every time:

1. The 50ms Halo — hero section, one bold headline, high-fidelity cover imagery.
2. Cognitive Fluency — Hick's/Miller's Law, extreme whitespace, one goal per section, line-height ≥ 1.6.
3. Trust Engineering — security + social-proof cues at decision points, total price incl. fees upfront, guest checkout.
4. Peak-End Rule — micro-interactions at the peaks, inline form validation, a rewarding confirmation ending.
5. Horn-Effect Defense — one Visual DNA in CSS variables, mobile-first stability, no dated cues.

An executable linter (prestige audit) that scores generated HTML/CSS on all five laws and hard-fails on major functional flaws — because the skill's one non-negotiable rule is never let aesthetics mask a broken primary action or an inaccessible UI.

prestige scaffold site.html        # premium starter (scores 100/100)
prestige brief PRD.md --purpose developer # opinionated design brief before UI work
prestige audit site.html           # score the five laws + catch Horn-Effect triggers
prestige purpose site.html --purpose developer  # opinionated purpose-fit audit
prestige audit site.html --strict  # exit 1 if failing — use as an agent/CI gate

Design brief compiler

Prestige now compiles an opinionated Visual DNA before implementation and collects browser evidence after implementation:

prestige theme developer --out prestige.theme.json
prestige brief PRD.md --purpose developer --out DESIGN_BRIEF.md
prestige audit app.html --strict
prestige render-audit app.html --out-dir .prestige/render
prestige challenge app.html --purpose developer --workflow product

theme controls palette semantics, typography, density, spacing, geometry, imagery, motion, trust placement, and purpose-specific anti-patterns. render-audit captures desktop and mobile screenshots and blocks hidden pages, horizontal overflow, incoherent region overlap, and missing visible actions. challenge proves the instrument rejects hidden, mobile-broken, and action-hollow mutants before its receipt can enter a Factory Passport.

prestige brief turns a PRD or page brief into an opinionated design contract: the audience psychology, purpose-fit directives, anti-patterns, required sections, and verification commands. Use it before generating UI so the agent does not pick a generic landing-page style for a developer tool, healthcare workflow, fintech surface, marketplace, SaaS dashboard, luxury brand, or editorial page.

The brief is intentionally prescriptive. A developer tool should lead with docs, commands, screenshots, GitHub/demo trust, and receipts. A healthcare workflow should feel calm, consent-aware, private, and clinically restrained.

Example on a deliberately clunky page:

Overall: 18/100   Verdict: NEEDS WORK
halo:15  fluency:20  trust:20  peak:20  horn:15
⛔ HARD FAILURES (fix before shipping — function over aesthetics):
   MAJOR_FLAW: primary action button has no accessible label/text.
   ✗ [trust] T_NO_SECURITY: Transactional UI with no security cue near actions.
   ✗ [horn]  C_NO_VIEWPORT: Missing viewport meta — mobile layout will break.

The workflow the skill teaches

Discovery (audit the journey for trust gaps) → Build (apply the five laws) → Verify (prestige audit, fix flags, then present). The agent treats a failing audit like a failing test — which is exactly how "premium" stops being a vibe and becomes a checkable property.

The psychology, sourced

Halo Effect & the 50ms window · Aesthetic-Usability Effect · Hick's & Miller's Law · Fitts's Law · Peak-End Rule · Negativity/Horn Effect. Detailed playbooks in references/ (hero-halo, cognitive-fluency, trust-engineering, peak-end).

v0.2 — deeper psychology, stricter scoring, five workflows

• Cognitive Bias Engine — six research-backed biases (Von Restorff, Anchoring, Social Proof, Loss Aversion, Reciprocity, Cognitive Fluency) with detectors, quality scoring, and precise recommendations.
• CTA & Hook Verification — scores whether your call-to-action and headline are engineered to convert (weak-verb detection, reader-focus, power words, CTA-competition penalty) with exact rewrites.
• Strict Mobile Judge — thumb-reach tap targets, viewport discipline, real breakpoints, legible base text, sticky-CTA guidance — because trust breaks on mobile first.
• Five Design-Principle Workflows — Conversion Architect, Luxury Minimalist, Trust Engineer, Editorial Storyteller, Product-Led Pragmatist. Each is a distinct optimization strategy that re-weights the score.
• Precision Scoring — prestige score <file> --workflow <key> fuses laws + biases + CTA/hooks + mobile into a 0–100 conversion-readiness grade with recommendations ranked by conversion impact.

prestige workflows                          # see the five lenses
prestige score site.html --workflow trust   # precise score + ranked fixes
prestige score site.html --strict           # exit 1 if not conversion-ready

Grounded in established design research, the psychology profiles are design hypotheses and lint rules, not measured conversion lift. Product conversion claims require the project's own experiment or analytics receipt.

v0.3 - purpose-fit design judgment

Workflows answer what the page optimizes for. Purpose lenses answer what psychological job the design must do for this audience and domain.

Prestige now ships deterministic purpose-fit profiles:

• developer - concrete proof, docs, CLI/API clarity, GitHub/demo trust.
• healthcare - calm reassurance, privacy, clinician proof, no miracle hype.
• fintech - security, transparent fees/rates, control, compliance cues.
• luxury - restraint, craft, whitespace, fewer louder elements.
• marketplace - bilateral buyer/seller trust, reviews, protection, comparison.
• saas - product visibility, integrations, ROI, low-friction activation.
• editorial - narrative rhythm, sources, evidence, satisfying end beat.

prestige purposes
prestige purpose site.html --purpose healthcare --strict
prestige score site.html --workflow trust --purpose healthcare

The purpose gate scores intent clarity, proof fit, visual theme fit, action language, and purpose-specific anti-patterns. This makes Prestige more opinionated in the right way: not just "pretty," but fit for the decision the interface exists to change.

License

Dual-licensed Apache-2.0 OR MIT — pick whichever your project prefers.

Criterion attribution

Prestige 0.2.1 wraps its existing five per-law scores in the factory attribution envelope. Run prestige audit page.html --json to receive one unit per design criterion, its score and threshold, and the unchanged overall verdict.