A decision principle for resolving product, UX, and feature-scope tradeoffs in favor of user experience over implementation convenience.
- What it does
- This skill supplies a short set of decision rules for product, UX, and feature-scope tradeoffs. It directs the agent to favor user delight over implementation convenience, justify every feature and option, ship fewer polished features rather than many rough ones, prototype before committing, and refine details such as transitions, alignment, spacing, feedback, and error states. It also defines the user broadly, including end users, colleagues who import a library or internal API, and future maintainers, and asks that impact be explained from their perspective.
- When to use it
- Use it when a product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoff arises and a choice must be made between user experience and implementation convenience. It is also relevant when deciding which features to include, cut, or polish, and when framing the impact of a decision for the people who consume the work.
- Requirements
- No tools, packages, runtimes, credentials, or network access are required. It is instructions only and ships no scripts.
Experience First
When implementation convenience conflicts with user delight, choose delight.
- Every feature, control, and option must be justified
- Ship less, ship better (polished experience with three features beats rough one with ten)
- Prototype before committing (design decisions are cheaper in throwaway HTML than production code)
- Get the details right (transitions, alignment, spacing, feedback, error states)
- Tighten the core loop (every feature should serve the central workflow or get out of the way)
The user is whoever consumes the work. For a UI that is the end user. For a library or an internal API it is the colleague who imports it. The engineer who maintains the code next is a user too. Weigh their experience the same way, and explain impact from their perspective.
Foundations should serve the experience. Foundational thinking governs the sequence of work. This principle governs the target.
