ce-design

CE Design — the route that has a design leg

What this route fixes

The Compound Engineering loop (brainstorm → plan → work) spends most of its effort on what problem are we solving, and never answers what should this look like, given that problem. The result is that you find out the thing is ugly after the MVP exists — the single most expensive moment to discover it. This route moves the design decision to before any code is written, and then holds the build to it.

Two entry points — you choose whether design happens

You type	You get
/ce-design <pain point>	brainstorm → design → plan (this skill orchestrates the whole thing)
/ce-brainstorm <pain point>	brainstorm → plan (no design — upstream Compound Engineering, untouched)

Whether to design is decided by which entry point you pick — this skill never stops mid-flow to ask "should we design this?".

Why this is a wrapper, not a fork

This skill modifies no file inside the compound-engineering plugin. It calls that plugin's ce-brainstorm / ce-plan skills through the Skill tool. Reason: editing an installed plugin's files means the next plugin update silently overwrites your work and the feature vanishes. A wrapper keeps working.

The residual soft dependency, stated plainly: this skill depends on the names ce-brainstorm and ce-plan existing. If upstream renames or restructures them, this skill degrades gracefully (worst case: ce-brainstorm's own handoff menu appears and you pick "create implementation plan", which skips design) — it does not hard-fail.

Rule when editing this file: depend only on skill names. Never depend on their phase numbers, menu wording, or internal section headings — those change between versions.

Where it sits in the CE loop (order matters — do not invert it)

flowchart TB
  B["ce-brainstorm<br/>output: pain point / requirements"] -->|a pain point, not a feature list| A
  A["【Touchpoint A】ce-design<br/>parallel wireframes → pick → hi-fi mockup"]
  A -->|mockup + screenshot = acceptance criteria| P["ce-plan<br/>writes the mockup into the Verification Contract"]
  P --> W["ce-work<br/>build"]
  W --> TB["【Touchpoint B】ce-design / ce-markup<br/>screenshot vs mockup → name every deviation"]
  TB -->|drifted| W
  TB -->|passes| C["write back to design-lessons / your design system"]
  C -.consumed directly next time.-> A