Swatches

Show the user a few real, rendered options next to each other and let them choose. The pick is the deliverable: a decision someone can build on, and a record of the user's taste that gets sharper with every round. User instructions, the project's brand and its design system outrank everything here.

Entry gate

Use this when the user wants a say in how something looks and the choice is still open: a whole direction for a page or screen, or one variable of a settled one (type, colour, spacing, layout of a section). Not for a choice the user has already made, a fix with one right answer, or building the full page; once a pick exists, building it is the job of whatever was building before.

1. Pick the mode and the material

• Directions (coarse, the default when nothing is settled): each option is the same first screen, built whole in a different direction.
• Variables (fine, once a direction is picked): each option changes exactly one variable. Everything else stays byte-identical, so the difference the user sees is the one being asked about.

Every option shows the same real content: the user's own name, line, action and one piece of real work. If that content is missing, ask for it once in one sentence, or take it from the project, and list anything you wrote yourself in the reply. Read .swatches/picks.md if it exists: earlier picks and the reasons given are constraints, and an option that repeats something the user rejected is wasted.