---
name: creative-frontend
description: "Use this when the task involves creating visually strong, premium frontend interfaces (landing pages, websites, apps, prototypes, demos, or game UI) that require both thoughtful creative exploration and disciplined design execution. This skill combines structured需求探索 with award-level frontend craftsmanship."
---

# Creative Frontend Skill

Ship interfaces that feel deliberate, premium, and current — but only after understanding what you're building and why. This skill fuses structured creative exploration with rigorous frontend design execution.

## Core Philosophy

- **Explore before building**: Understand the intent, constraints, and success criteria before touching code
- **Build with restraint**: One big idea, strong imagery, sparse copy, rigorous spacing, and a small number of memorable motions
- **User-validated evolution**: Present designs, get approval, then implement — never assume
- **1+1>2**: The intersection of deep understanding and disciplined execution produces better results than either alone

## When to Use

- Building landing pages, websites, apps, prototypes, demos, or game UI
- The quality depends on art direction, hierarchy, restraint, imagery, and motion
- The project benefits from both creative exploration and technical precision
- You need to ship something that feels award-level, not generic

## The Complete Workflow

### Phase 1: Explore (from brainstorming)

Before designing, understand the project:

1. **Check context** — examine files, docs, recent commits, existing codebase
2. **Assess scope** — if multiple independent subsystems, decompose first
3. **Ask clarifying questions** — one at a time, prefer multiple choice
   - Purpose: what are we building and why?
   - Constraints: technical, brand, timeline
   - Success criteria: how will we know it's good?
4. **Propose 2-3 approaches** — with trade-offs and your recommendation
5. **Present design sections** — scale complexity to the project, get approval after each section

<HARD-GATE>
Do NOT write code, scaffold projects, or take implementation action until the user has approved the design direction.
</HARD-GATE>

### Phase 2: Design (from frontend-skill)

Once approved, write three things before building:

- **Visual thesis**: one sentence describing mood, material, and energy
- **Content plan**: hero, support, detail, final CTA
- **Interaction thesis**: 2-3 motion ideas that change the feel of the page

Each section gets one job, one dominant visual idea, and one primary takeaway or action.

#### Beautiful Defaults

- Start with composition, not components.
- Prefer a full-bleed hero or full-canvas visual anchor.
- Make the brand or product name the loudest text.
- Keep copy short enough to scan in seconds.
- Use whitespace, alignment, scale, cropping, and contrast before adding chrome.
- Limit the system: two typefaces max, one accent color by default.
- Default to cardless layouts. Use sections, columns, dividers, lists, and media blocks instead.
- Treat the first viewport as a poster, not a document.

#### Landing Pages

Default sequence:

1. Hero: brand or product, promise, CTA, and one dominant visual
2. Support: one concrete feature, offer, or proof point
3. Detail: atmosphere, workflow, product depth, or story
4. Final CTA: convert, start, visit, or contact

Hero rules:

- One composition only.
- Full-bleed image or dominant visual plane.
- Canonical full-bleed rule: on branded landing pages, the hero itself must run edge-to-edge with no inherited page gutters, framed container, or shared max-width; constrain only the inner text/action column.
- Brand first, headline second, body third, CTA fourth.
- No hero cards, stat strips, logo clouds, pill soup, or floating dashboards by default.
- Keep headlines to roughly 2-3 lines on desktop and readable in one glance on mobile.
- Keep the text column narrow and anchored to a calm area of the image.
- All text over imagery must maintain strong contrast and clear tap targets.

If the first viewport still works after removing the image, the image is too weak. If the brand disappears after hiding the nav, the hierarchy is too weak.

Viewport budget:

- If the first screen includes a sticky/fixed header, that header counts against the hero. The combined header + hero content must fit within the initial viewport at common desktop and mobile sizes.
- When using `100vh`/`100svh` heroes, subtract persistent UI chrome (`calc(100svh - header-height)`) or overlay the header instead of stacking it in normal flow.

#### Apps

Default to Linear-style restraint:

- calm surface hierarchy
- strong typography and spacing
- few colors
- dense but readable information
- minimal chrome
- cards only when the card is the interaction

For app UI, organize around:

- primary workspace
- navigation
- secondary context or inspector
- one clear accent for action or state

Avoid:

- dashboard-card mosaics
- thick borders on every region
- decorative gradients behind routine product UI
- multiple competing accent colors
- ornamental icons that do not improve scanning

If a panel can become plain layout without losing meaning, remove the card treatment.

#### Imagery

Imagery must do narrative work.

- Use at least one strong, real-looking image for brands, venues, editorial pages, and lifestyle products.
- Prefer in-situ photography over abstract gradients or fake 3D objects.
- Choose or crop images with a stable tonal area for text.
- Do not use images with embedded signage, logos, or typographic clutter fighting the UI.
- Do not generate images with built-in UI frames, splits, cards, or panels.
- If multiple moments are needed, use multiple images, not one collage.

The first viewport needs a real visual anchor. Decorative texture is not enough.

#### Copy

- Write in product language, not design commentary.
- Let the headline carry the meaning.
- Supporting copy should usually be one short sentence.
- Cut repetition between sections.
- Do not include prompt language or design commentary into the UI.
- Give every section one responsibility: explain, prove, deepen, or convert.

If deleting 30 percent of the copy improves the page, keep deleting.

#### Utility Copy For Product UI

When the work is a dashboard, app surface, admin tool, or operational workspace, default to utility copy over marketing copy.

- Prioritize orientation, status, and action over promise, mood, or brand voice.
- Start with the working surface itself: KPIs, charts, filters, tables, status, or task context. Do not introduce a hero section unless the user explicitly asks for one.
- Section headings should say what the area is or what the user can do there.
- Good: "Selected KPIs", "Plan status", "Search metrics", "Top segments", "Last sync".
- Avoid aspirational hero lines, metaphors, campaign-style language, and executive-summary banners on product surfaces unless specifically requested.
- Supporting text should explain scope, behavior, freshness, or decision value in one sentence.
- If a sentence could appear in a homepage hero or ad, rewrite it until it sounds like product UI.
- If a section does not help someone operate, monitor, or decide, remove it.
- Litmus check: if an operator scans only headings, labels, and numbers, can they understand the page immediately?

#### Motion

Use motion to create presence and hierarchy, not noise.

Ship at least 2-3 intentional motions for visually led work:

- one entrance sequence in the hero
- one scroll-linked, sticky, or depth effect
- one hover, reveal, or layout transition that sharpens affordance

Prefer Framer Motion when available for:

- section reveals
- shared layout transitions
- scroll-linked opacity, translate, or scale shifts
- sticky storytelling
- carousels that advance narrative, not just fill space
- menus, drawers, and modal presence effects

Motion rules:

- noticeable in a quick recording
- smooth on mobile
- fast and restrained
- consistent across the page
- removed if ornamental only

### Phase 3: Validate & Deliver

Before shipping:

1. **Spec self-review**:
   - Placeholder scan: any TBD, TODO, or vague requirements?
   - Internal consistency: do sections contradict each other?
   - Scope check: is this focused enough?
   - Ambiguity check: could anything be interpreted two ways?

2. **Litmus checks**:
   - Is the brand or product unmistakable in the first screen?
   - Is there one strong visual anchor?
   - Can the page be understood by scanning headlines only?
   - Does each section have one job?
   - Are cards actually necessary?
   - Does motion improve hierarchy or atmosphere?
   - Would the design still feel premium if all decorative shadows were removed?

3. **User confirmation**: Present the final result, ask if changes are needed

## Hard Rules

- No cards by default.
- No hero cards by default.
- No boxed or center-column hero when the brief calls for full bleed.
- No more than one dominant idea per section.
- No section should need many tiny UI devices to explain itself.
- No headline should overpower the brand on branded pages.
- No filler copy.
- No split-screen hero unless text sits on a calm, unified side.
- No more than two typefaces without a clear reason.
- No more than one accent color unless the product already has a strong system.
- No implementation before design approval.
- No assumptions about user intent — ask first.

## Reject These Failures

- Generic SaaS card grid as the first impression
- Beautiful image with weak brand presence
- Strong headline with no clear action
- Busy imagery behind text
- Sections that repeat the same mood statement
- Carousel with no narrative purpose
- App UI made of stacked cards instead of layout
- Building without understanding the goal
- Presenting only one approach when alternatives exist

## Key Principles

- **One question at a time** during exploration
- **Multiple choice preferred** when gathering requirements
- **YAGNI ruthlessly** — remove unnecessary features from all designs
- **Explore alternatives** — always propose 2-3 approaches before settling
- **Incremental validation** — present design, get approval before moving on
- **Be flexible** — go back and clarify when something doesn't make sense
- **Start with composition, not components**
- **Treat the first viewport as a poster, not a document**

## Design for Isolation and Clarity

Break the system into smaller units that each have one clear purpose, communicate through well-defined interfaces, and can be understood and tested independently.

For each unit, you should be able to answer: what does it do, how do you use it, and what does it depend on?

Can someone understand what a unit does without reading its internals? Can you change the internals without breaking consumers? If not, the boundaries need work.

Smaller, well-bounded units are also easier for you to work with — you reason better about code you can hold in context at once, and your edits are more reliable when files are focused. When a file grows large, that's often a signal that it's doing too much.