minoan-frontend-design

Build frontend interfaces that are unmistakably designed, not generated. Every interface should feel like a specific designer made specific choices for a specific context.

Context Protocol

Before designing, check for .design-context.md in the project root. If absent and this is a new project, run /shape for a full design brief — or ask the user directly: who uses this, what should it feel like, what should it NOT look like. Don't infer audience from code — code tells you what was built, not who it's for.

Creative Direction

Name the conceptual direction before coding—"Bloomberg Terminal," "medical journal," "zine collage," "VHS dreamworld," "intelligence dossier." The name anchors every subsequent decision.

Root every aesthetic choice in the subject itself. A jazz club's website should feel like smoke and brass. A children's reading app should feel like opening a pop-up book. A fintech dashboard should feel like a control room, not a toy. The design should be so fitted to its context that transplanting the aesthetic to a different project would feel wrong.

Commit to a singular direction: brutally minimal, maximalist chaos, luxury/refined, lo-fi/zine, dark and moody, editorial/magazine, brutalist/raw, retro-futuristic, art deco/geometric, cinematic/widescreen, data-dense/scientific, or something entirely unnamed. The final design should feel like nothing else.

Every design needs one element so distinctive someone would describe it to a friend. Find that element and let everything else serve it.