Design canvas

Size the design work, not the t-shirt. A large design ask goes to the Claude Design canvas: produce or iterate a canvas through the Artifact tool's Design type, then review it. Large means a redesign, a new screen, several layouts to compare, or a design-system record, at any t-shirt. A small ask (a staff-ux flow review inside a plan, a spot check, one component's tweak) stays with the reviewer agent. A human designer is a PM-gated exception, named as one (brand sign-off). Offering the PM a "hand it to the designer yourself" fork for a large ask is the defect. Tripwire: A-LARGE-DESIGN-ASK-GOES-TO-THE-CANVAS.

The bar is a designed canvas, not an artifact. A ~30-page methodology canvas built from the plain Artifact type, with no design system and prose in cards, was rejected: "that's an artifact, not a design canvas." Layout, UI/UX and visuals are the deliverable.

The repo holds the design; the link is a view

A link belongs to the login that published it, and other logins reach it only if its owner shared it. After a login swap it is out of reach though it still exists, so the repo is the source.

1. Write the source into the repo first, under docs/design/<slug>/project/, committed in the step that produces it. Its README.md says the files are canonical, carries steps 2 and 3 as the republish recipe, and records the URL as "current published view, <date>, owned by <login>".
2. Start the canvas: Artifact action: "quickstart", intent: "design" returns the Design type's type_url; resolve it every time. Publish with that type_url, a title, no files and auto_open: "after_first_write". Attach the repo's design system (§ Design systems) and read every page the create result names before writing a board.
3. Fill it per the create result, publishing project/ with root set to the design folder.
4. A link out of reach (other login, deleted) is republished from the files under the current login. Never cite a link as the source of a value.

The designed-board bar

Each board is a composed screen, not a text page:

• Layout: one idea per board, a deliberate grid, the system's tokens for color, type and spacing.
• Diagrams, charts, stat tiles carry the claims; prose is cut to captions.
• Interaction: real navigation and states across boards, not static cards.
• A board that reads as a document in cards is the defect.

Design systems

A repo with a design system keeps it published as a Design System artifact, so a canvas can attach it. Build it from the token CSS and token record at HEAD, never from memory or an older artifact. Publishing is private and EM-autonomous; sharing is the gated act. Republish when the token files change or the link is out of reach, recording the URL in the design-system README as above. Tripwire: A-DESIGN-SYSTEM-ARTIFACT-IS-A-VIEW-REPUBLISHED-FROM-THE-REPO.

Quickstart lists the design systems the account can open; with no default, ask the PM which to attach. The repo's design-system record names its tokens and points at the CSS that declares their values, never copying them; a test checks each named token is still declared there.

Render and look

The Design type discourages visual verification; do it anyway. Open project/*.html locally in a browser or take a Playwright screenshot, at several widths, and Read the images. A review that rendered nothing says so.

A design-fidelity verify reads the external original, or records the verify BLOCKED with the unreachable-original reason. A harvested record or local render is never its proxy. Tripwire: A-DESIGN-VERIFY-READS-THE-EXTERNAL-ORIGINAL.

Review

• Reviewers read the committed source, never the link: staff-ux for flow, senior-front-end for design-system adherence. Neither holds the Artifact tool; the EM applies findings, commits, republishes.
• People's canvas comments are harvested, never skimmed: § Harvest. Claude replies or resolves only on a thread a person sent to Claude, and cannot open one.

Harvest before anything executes on it

A canvas is pulled down to a local record before a plan, brief or dispatch executes on it. The record is the source for execution; the link is never read. Token: A-CANVAS-IS-HARVESTED-BEFORE-ANYTHING-EXECUTES-ON-IT. Layout, fields, reason codes and rationale: coordinator/docs/wiki/schema-and-validation-contracts/canvas-harvest-record.md.

1. When: a canvas is approved, or a plan, brief or dispatch is about to cite it.
2. How: only the canvas's own project/** files are required and copied; the type's runtime files carry no design. The EM hand-reads nothing. Fire the one reader agent canvas-harvest reader-dispatch --url <artifact url> emits (it lists, reads project/** once, pages every comment), then at once, in the same sitting (saved frame files do not last), run canvas-harvest harvest --url <artifact url> --out docs/design/<slug>/harvest --reader --transcript <reader agent transcript>, resolved per snippets/resolve-coordinator-bin.md. The op lifts frames and threads to disk; the EM retypes none.
3. Settle: fill harvest/SETTLED.md, one [thread:<id>] item per decision ([no-threads] for a canvas with none), and commit the record in the same step. Thread files carry commenters' names and words verbatim, so a repo whose docs/design/ is published keeps the record out of the published set.
4. Cite: a plan or brief names the record's harvest/harvest.json path. Execution reads the record, never the link. At execute entry, re-read the canvas and run canvas-harvest probe; drift means re-harvest and update SETTLED.md.
5. Out of reach: a canvas owned by the other login (other-account) whose committed record is complete is admitted with drift unchecked; the dispatch warning names the login to swap back to for a re-probe. Any other unreadable canvas is refused with its reason. Republish from the committed files under the current login, or cite the committed source without the URL.
6. Register: add or update the board's entry in the repo's design registry (docs/design/registry.yaml, or the repo's design_registry_path), with sources covering the page and the component dirs it renders. A plan touching those files then cites the record or a ratified deviation. Contract: coordinator/docs/wiki/schema-and-validation-contracts/design-registry.md; token A-REGISTERED-DESIGN-IS-CITED-NEVER-RE-DERIVED.

Boundaries

• DesignSync is not the canvas: it syncs a local component library to a claude.ai design-system project.
• The canvas needs an authenticated claude.ai session. Without one, say so; never substitute a designer hand-off. A canvas already cited is not skipped: § Harvest.

Worked examples (example-stats-repo)

• docs/design/advanced-stats-canvas/ in example-stats-repo: a redesign canvas whose README carries the republish recipe; its harvest/ holds the frames, the verbatim threads and SETTLED.md a plan cites.
• design-system/cockpit/: its tokens.json copies values and has drifted from Cockpit's globals.css, the failure the record rule above exists for.