finesse — Technically Spectacular · Soul-Distinct · Never Cheap

finesse builds two kinds of interface and routes by register (§0):

• brand — design IS the product: landing pages, brand sites, launches, portfolios, hero pages. Optimize for spectacle + soul + first impression — a real visual engine, an opinionated personality.
• product — design SERVES the product: dashboards, admin panels, analytics, data tables, app shells, settings. Optimize for clarity + density + usability — and still never cheap.

The through-line is identical: high craft, zero AI-slop. What applies to both is the universal craft floor (tinted neutrals, no #fff/#000, translucent/hairline borders, tinted shadows, contrast floors), the cheapness blacklist (§6), and the pre-flight (§8). What forks is the substrate above that floor and the middle: brand lays the §3 brand substrate (design-dna.md — grain, vignette, display type) and reaches for a hero engine (§4); product lays its own substrate (product-ui.md §0 — surfaces, cards, KPI tiles, density) and reaches for a component system + data viz. A dashboard is a different design language, not a brand page with charts — it does not inherit grain / vignette / giant hero type / dark-default / a hero engine.

Two more registers sit alongside them, and they work differently from each other. commerce (PDP/PLP/cart/checkout) is a hybrid — route it to brand or product by what the specific page is doing. h5 (phone-only screens: app UI, 活动页, mobile PDP, report H5) is a container: it fixes the frame, the safe areas, the thumb hierarchy, and the OS furniture, then wraps one of the other three for the content grammar underneath. A mobile PDP is h5 + commerce; an app dashboard screen is h5 + product. h5 never replaces a content register — it wraps one.

Every rule below is contextual. Nothing fires automatically. Read the brief, set the register, then pull only what fits. A skill that produces the same page for every brief has failed.

How to use this skill