This page is the condensed method the skill executes. The full version — with the reasoning and the models we overturned — lives in SKILL.md and DESIGN.md.
For every page: is this sayable in a line, or does it only hold up when several things sit side by side? Hearing is linear; seeing is simultaneous. A claim gets a HEADLINE page (one word, one number, one sentence). Evidence gets a DETAIL page (things laid out to scan). Two automatic rules: evidence pages must be detail — evidence you can't see doesn't count; and after a dense page, prefer a page that breathes.
| Axis | What it is | Who decides |
|---|---|---|
| Density | headline ↔ detail | the agent, per page |
| Skeleton | how the frame is cut (grid / light-band / flowline / color-field / standoff… or none) | auto, by the page's job |
| Device | the page's argument, drawn as a thing | per page — the highest-value axis |
| Material | what it's made of (ink wash / copperplate / cinematic…) | once, whole deck |
Material says what a page is made of; skeleton says how it's cut. Neither says what to draw. The device fills that gap: "a score" becomes a measuring stick; "asking once is luck" becomes dots scattering then converging; "AI names only two brands" becomes a funnel. The test: looking at the object, can you guess what the page says? One main device per page — two competing illustrations equal none. And illustration is a scale, not a switch: margin studies, typography-as-image, small marks that replace a sentence, and full hero devices all stack.
Material is the deck's identity: skeleton and device vary per page, the material holds. Choose it in three layers — medium (the craft), hand (whose treatment of it), world (the scene the deck lives in). The gallery ships every style with a reproducible formula, and styles.json lets an agent resolve a named style deterministically.
The judgment layer owns how a page looks — never what it claims. The skill's hard rule: no invented metrics, quotes, prices, dates, or names. Facts come from your input; unknowns become visible [TO CONFIRM] placeholders. A beautiful slide with a made-up number is a liability, not a feature.