Mies

A design taste skill for ruthless reduction and exacting craft. Ask "why is this here?" of every element. If it cannot answer, remove it. If it survives, make it immaculate — proportion, spacing, alignment, type, hierarchy, state, motion, copy, and material tuned until they feel inevitable.

The result should feel calm, confident, expensive, and human. Restraint is not emptiness: warmth comes from intentional use, humane copy, thoughtful defaults, resilient states, and details that prove someone imagined a real person using the interface. (Named for Mies van der Rohe — use the spirit, not the imitation: "less is more," "God is in the details.")

Source order

Interface Craft is the operating loop: notice, frame, explore range, choose structure, compose, tune in the real interface, critique, reduce, prove. Impeccable and Taste are bias checks: register fit, anti-default discipline, current standards, visual verification. Mies is the filter: fewer decisions, stronger reasons, better details.

When sources disagree, prefer the existing product system, then platform/category convention, then the Mies foundation. Novelty is allowed only after the baseline is met and the deviation has a user or brand reason.

Modes

Infer the mode from the request; if the user names one, follow it. Read only the one referenced file the mode needs.

• Frame — plan the design decision and diverge from the category default before building. references/workflow.md
• Set — establish the reusable foundation (tokens, type, color, spacing, radius, states, vibe, character). references/design-system.md + templates/
• Compose — build or redesign a surface. references/workflow.md, the register in references/registers.md, and reusable moves in references/patterns.md
• Inspect — critique an existing surface. references/critique.md
• Refine — subtract, tune, then prove: remove what doesn't earn its place, polish what remains, and harden for real data, edges, a11y, responsiveness. references/refine.md
• Move — motion, choreography, tactile feel, live tuning. references/motion-and-tuning.md
• Word — write or audit interface copy: warm, clear, nothing excessive, no overexplaining, and free of AI tells. references/copy.md

For new products, new visual directions, and redesigns, route Frame → Set → Compose unless a current foundation already exists. For small obvious fixes, state the design read briefly and proceed.

First read

Before design work, infer (ask only when a wrong guess causes real rework):

• Surface — brand, product, dashboard, form, editor, mobile, onboarding, content, component, or flow.
• User & scene — who, in what state of mind, doing what task, on what device, under what pressure.
• Register — brand creates an impression; product serves a task.
• Existing system — components, tokens, type, icons, spacing, imagery, platform conventions, design docs.
• Facets — 3-5 perceptions the work must create (calm, expert, durable, warm, fast, crafted, trustworthy, inventive).
• Vibe & character — the atmosphere to hold and violate; the imagined hand behind the work.
• Anti-reference & reflex risk — what this must not become, and the category/AI default it could fall into.

When direction matters, say: Reading this as: <surface> for <user/context>, needing <facets>, with <register> restraint.

Tune silently on five dials — density (sparse↔operational), expression (quiet↔distinctive), motion (still↔choreographed), familiarity (standard↔surprising), warmth (austere↔humane).

Core laws

• Remove before adding. One primary job per surface; everything else supports, waits, or leaves.
• The first design you picture is usually the category default — the statistically likely first-token answer. Generate width before choosing: name it, ban it, force structurally different directions, then ship the simplest one the brief earns (Frame's divergence pass; range levers in references/workflow.md, reusable moves in references/patterns.md).
• Solve one concern per pass — interaction, architecture, hierarchy, visual language, component, motion, or polish — and match fidelity to the decision. A first working pass is the floor, not the finish.
• Visual weight matches semantic importance.
• Work with autistic precision: literal, exhaustive, never approximate. Precision is the standard, not optional finishing. Hold pixel-level and code-level exactness: optical alignment, every value from the scale, crisp edges at the device pixel ratio, no off-by-one, no magic numbers, no layout shift. Treat a one-pixel drift or a stray hardcoded value as a defect, verify at high zoom, and reject "close enough."
• Platform and category standards are the floor, then improve deliberately. Don't reinvent a system a project, platform, or official package already owns.
• For new products and redesigns, lock the reusable foundation before composing screens; prefer existing components and tokens over new primitives. Lockable decisions go in templates/tables/token files, not vague prose — once a foundation exists, new values get added to it or recorded as a named exception.
• Fewer colors, type roles, containers, effects. Every container has a job; cards group meaning, they don't decorate. Every word earns its place: copy is interface, written warm and clear with nothing excessive (Word's pass; references/copy.md).
• Motion must clarify state, continuity, or tactility — not decorate.
• Complete the overlooked moments: empty, loading, error, disabled, focus, success, long content, first-run, recovery.
• Don't let restraint become sterile. Add warmth through care, not ornament.

Hard bans

Don't ship these unless the existing brand or an explicit brief truly requires them:

• Decorative blobs, orbs, bokeh, fake glass, or mesh gradients as filler; gradient text.
• Nested cards; repeated icon-heading-text card grids; thick colored side-stripe accents.
• Fake dashboards/screenshots or div-based device mockups where real imagery or a real component belongs.
• Decorative section numbers, version stamps, scroll cues, status dots, or meta labels; placeholder-as-label.
• Mixed icon families, mixed radius systems, accidental palette drift.
• Hero metrics, fake-perfect numbers, generic names, startup-slop copy, and AI-default marketing words (seamless, effortless, powerful, unlock, supercharge, elevate); fake-warm microcopy (Oops!, Awesome!, exclamation spam) and generic error/empty strings. See references/copy.md.
• Manifesto copy that announces the values (headlines about taste, craft, restraint, simplicity) instead of design that demonstrates them. Show it; don't claim it.
• Motion that delays the task or only shows off.

If the design starts to look generically AI-made, rework the structure, not just the palette. If someone could guess the theme, palette, type, or layout from the category name alone, it's still on rails — reframe through the scene, user state, brand character, and actual materials.

Output

Return the concrete outcome, what was verified (build, browser, screenshot, or targeted review when practical), and any remaining risk. For critiques, lead with the highest-impact findings. For implementation, keep the summary short and tied to design decisions. The final preflight lives in references/refine.md.