design-memory

Design Memory

Design memory is an observational record of how you design — the decisions you make, the styles you reach for, the habits and inclinations that show up across projects. It is a mirror, not a controller. It notices what you do and reflects it back to you out of curiosity. It does not steer future work.

The one rule that defines this skill

Design memory is descriptive, never prescriptive. It records what you did; it is not applied to drive new projects. The current project's direction comes from what you tell the team now (design-taste) and from any brand spec you provide (design-md / DESIGN.md) — never from this record. Observation that never feeds back into the work cannot mis-steer it, which is exactly why a record built across many different clients stays safe and honest: it's a journal, not a set of orders.

If you ever want to act on an observation, that's your call to make explicitly in the moment — the system will not quietly apply your past decisions to a new client's project.

Welcome Gate

BEFORE reading or updating design memory, check whether the Designpowers welcome sequence has been shown this session. If the user has not yet seen the welcome (the bird, the greeting, and the walkthrough offer), you MUST invoke the using-designpowers skill FIRST and complete the welcome sequence before returning here. The bird must appear before any work begins. No exceptions.

When to Use

• At project completion — observe the project's decisions and add them to the record
• When the user asks "how do I design?", "what are my habits?", "what's my style?" — produce the report
• When the user makes a notably characteristic choice — note it as an observation
• It is not loaded to constrain a new project. (Loading at project start is only to show the user their report if they want it, not to feed preferences into the pipeline.)

The Record (taste-profile.md)

Lives at ~/.designpowers/taste-profile.md (cross-project). It is a journal of observations about how the user works — not a rulebook. Every entry is phrased as something observed, with evidence, never as an instruction for future work.

Structure

# Design Record — How [user] Designs
_An observational journal. Descriptive, not prescriptive — this is never applied to steer projects._

_Last updated: [date] after project [project name]_
_Projects observed: [count]_

## Recurring Decisions
Choices that have shown up more than once — noticed, not mandated.

| Observation | Times seen | Evidence |
|-------------|-----------|----------|
| [e.g., "Reaches for generous whitespace"] | 3 projects | A, C, D — chose it unprompted |
| [e.g., "Decides colour last, after structure"] | 2 projects | Sequence in B, D |

## Style & Habits
How the user tends to work and decide (not what to impose).

- **Visual leanings:** [e.g., "warm neutrals show up often; rarely picks saturated primaries"]
- **Process habits:** [e.g., "subtracts before adding — overrides usually remove an element"]
- **Decision style:** [e.g., "settles type and spacing before touching colour"]
- **Content voice tendencies:** [e.g., "consistently plain language, contractions, grade ~7"]

## Inclinations & Curiosities
Softer, single-occurrence or emerging things worth noticing — explicitly uncertain.

| Noticed | Where | Note |
|---------|-------|------|
| [e.g., "tried a serif display once and kept it"] | Project D | one occurrence, may not be a pattern |

## Things the user has moved away from
Choices they've reversed or corrected — observed, not a ban.

| Observation | Evidence |
|-------------|----------|
| [e.g., "removed gradient backgrounds twice"] | A, B |

## Project History
| Project | Date | What was decided | What it suggested about how they work |
|---------|------|------------------|----------------------------------------|
| [name] | [date] | [key decisions] | [the habit/inclination it revealed] |

Process

Observing (during and at end of a project)

Watch for signals about how the user decides — and record them as observations, with evidence:

Signal	What it tells you
User override	A strong signal of an inclination — note what they changed and to what
Explicit statement ("I always…", "that's not me")	The user naming their own habit — record their words
Emphatic approval	A choice that resonated — worth noting
Correction ("no, more like…")	A direction they lean away from
Silent approval	Weak — don't record until it recurs

When you notice a signal:

1. Phrase it as an observation ("reaches for X", "tends to decide Y last"), never a rule ("always use X").
2. Check whether it reinforces an existing observation (increase the count / add evidence) or is new (add it under the right section).
3. If it contradicts an earlier observation, don't agonise — just note both; people change, and the record is a journal, not a contract.

Consolidating (end of project)

When a project completes:

1. Review the decisions in design-state.md and the user's overrides.
2. Add observations to the record, with evidence and project attribution.
3. Keep it to how the user works, not what this client needed. A client's required brand colour is that client's taste (it lives in their DESIGN.md) — it is not an observation about the user. Only record things that reflect the user's own way of deciding, the kind that would still be true with a different client.
4. Offer the report: "Want to see what this project added to your design record?"

The Report

The primary way the user experiences design memory is as a report they read out of curiosity — "here's how you design." Generate it from the record by synthesising across observations, not just listing them:

# How You Design
_Observed across [N] projects · descriptive, not applied_

## In one line
[The sharpest honest characterisation — e.g. "You're a subtractor who trusts whitespace and decides colour last."]

## How you tend to decide
[3-5 observations about process and decision-making, each with evidence.]

## What you reach for
[Recurring stylistic choices, framed as tendencies, with counts.]

## What you've moved away from
[Reversals/corrections, as observations.]

## Curiosities & emerging things
[Single-occurrence or uncertain signals — explicitly low-confidence.]

## Where the record is thin
[Honest note on what there isn't enough evidence to say yet.]

Rules for the report:

1. Synthesise, don't transcribe — the value is patterns across entries, not a table dump.
2. Every claim cites evidence — no evidence, no claim.
3. Describe, never prescribe — "you tend to…" never "you should…" and never "so I'll apply this."
4. Be honest about confidence — separate well-evidenced habits from one-off curiosities.
5. It's a mirror, offered with curiosity — the goal is self-awareness, not a grade and not a directive.

What design memory does NOT do

• It does not pass preferences to design-lead, design-strategist, or any agent as constraints.
• It does not gate or steer the build. The pipeline runs from the brief, the personas, design-taste (your live direction for this project), and any DESIGN.md.
• It does not override or even nudge project decisions. If a past habit is relevant, the user raises it; the system won't apply it silently.

This is the deliberate design: by never feeding back, the record can accumulate across wildly different clients without ever contaminating a new project. Observation is safe precisely because it's inert.

Integration

• Called by: using-designpowers (may offer the report), design-state/design-retrospective (at project end, to add observations)
• Reads from: design-state.md, handoff chain, user overrides — to observe, not to extract constraints
• Writes to: ~/.designpowers/taste-profile.md (the observational record)
• Does NOT inform: the agents or the build — by design
• Distinct from: design-taste (your live aesthetic direction for the current project, which IS applied) and design-md (the client's brand spec, which IS applied). Design memory only watches.

Anti-Patterns

Pattern	Why It Fails
Feeding the record back into the build as constraints	This is the old prescriptive model. The record is descriptive — applying it silently is exactly the contamination we're avoiding
Recording a client's brand requirement as the user's taste	A client's DESIGN.md is that client's, not the user's way of working. Only record portable observations about how the user decides
Phrasing observations as rules ("always use X")	It's a journal, not a rulebook. "Reaches for X (3 projects)" is honest; "always use X" is a directive the system shouldn't issue
Recording every decision	Most choices are contextual. Note the ones that reveal something about how the user works
Treating the record as a grade	It's a mirror offered out of curiosity, not a scorecard