wicked-garden-draft — the document-deliverable quality floor

A drafting worker can write a beautiful brochure that nobody can read, that prints on
four pages when two were asked for, and that ships an amber [PLACEHOLDER] box next to
an invented "live instance" — and every prompt-level instruction it was given ("never
invent facts", "honour the page count") will have been followed in spirit. That is
the 2026-09 recon outcome this skill exists to prevent. Guidance tells the author what
good looks like; the self-check re-derives it from the saved file. A deliverable is
not done until the self-check says PASS (or says UNVERIFIED and the notes disclose
exactly what could not be verified).

Runtime

Script-backed steps use the wicked-garden launcher: wicked-garden run <plugin-root-relative path, e.g. scripts/…> [args]. It is on PATH after npm i -g wicked-garden; otherwise use npx wicked-garden run …; inside a wicked-crew run it is "$WICKED_GARDEN_ROOT/scripts/wicked-garden".
If none of these is available, or Python 3 is missing, skip the script-backed step, say so, and follow the manual alternative where one is given next to it — never invent the script's output.
Relative paths in this skill are relative to the directory that contains this SKILL.md.

The contract

One command runs all three (§ Self-check). Details and worked examples: refs/design-floor.md
(colour and print typography), refs/claims.md (the citation convention), refs/self-check.md
(flags, JSON shape, exit codes, the manual alternative).

1. Readable — the contrast floor

• Judge the pair, not the token. --ink-faint: rgba(255,255,255,0.14) looks like a
  palette entry; on #1a1a26 it is 1.5:1 — invisible in print. Compute (or run the
  check on) the composited text colour over the background it actually sits on.
• On dark surfaces, alpha tints under 0.6 of white never pass. For meta text (fact
  strips, footers, eyebrows, captions) use ≥ 0.7 — aim for 7:1, not 4.5:1: small thin
  type never reaches full pixel coverage, so it renders dimmer than its computed ratio.
• Accent colours are not body-text colours. A 62 %-lightness violet on a #1a1a26
  card is 3.7:1; lift it to ~78 % lightness for text, or keep the accent for rules,
  badges and glyphs only.
• Gradients: the text must pass against the darkest AND the lightest stop it can
  sit over.
• Print size floor: 7pt. Eyebrows at 5.5pt and monospace fact strips at 6.8pt are
  what "unreadable" looked like. Body 9.5–11pt, captions/meta ≥ 7pt, and let the check
  tell you (--min-font-pt, default 7; 0 for screen-only deliverables).
• Write colours the check can read. Use hex / rgb() / hsl(); oklch(), lab(),
  color-mix() and friends are not evaluated — the pair comes back UNVERIFIED, not
  passed. A container whose background is only an image (url(…)) gets an opaque
  background-color fallback, or its text is UNVERIFIED too.

2. Sized to the brief — the page budget

• Default = exactly what the brief asks ("two pages" → budget 2, --exact). If the
  brief names no count: a brochure/leaflet defaults to 2, a one-pager to 1, a deck to
  its slide count; a web page or memo has no page budget (--no-pages).
• Disclose any hard cap the format imposes (an A4 export, a slide template) in the
  deliverable's notes — and when the material cannot fit the budget, cut content;
  never spill. A spill page is a blank page with a header on it.
• Wrappers are not pages. A .page block taller than the sheet prints on two.
  Budget each page's content to the sheet (A4 portrait: 297mm minus the @page margins),
  use break-after: page between pages, never overflow: hidden to hide the overflow.
• Never shrink to fit. zoom, transform: scale(…), scale: on html/body/a
  page wrapper, or dropping font-size under the floor to make the count come out, is
  the F-RECON-007 defect in a new coat: a page budget is met by cutting content, never
  by scaling the page. The size floor is judged on the effective size after any
  zoom/scale, so the check fails such a document — and a transform it cannot evaluate
  makes the size UNVERIFIED, not passed.
• Verify the RENDERED count: the exported PDF (--pdf) or a headless-Chrome print
  (--render). When neither is possible the count is UNVERIFIED — say so in the notes
  with the structural estimate; never state a page count you did not render.

3. Grounded — claims discipline

• Every factual claim cites a repo path — versions, requirements (Node ≥ 22),
  percentages, latencies, feature lists, quotes, URLs. Put data-source="README.md:87"
  on the element or its block (invisible in print, survives instrumentation) and list
  the sources for the reader in a visible Sources strip (refs/claims.md).
  Cite the line you actually read — re-open the file at that line before you write the
  citation; a Read with an offset does not number lines from 1. The check verifies the
  cited lines carry the block's text and reports cite-off with the nearest-match line
  if they don't.
• A URL claim must say what the source says. ws.wickedagile.com documented as a
  static product site is a "Product site", never a "live instance". Quote the source
  line before you characterise a link.
• Mocks and illustrations are labelled where the reader can see it — the container
  carries data-illustrative AND visible text ("Illustrative — not measured data"). A
  label that lives only in an HTML comment is the defect, not the label.
• No placeholders in the deliverable. [PLACEHOLDER: …], TODO, TBD, lorem, "quote
  goes here": a gap belongs in your reply/notes ("no customer quote exists in the repo —
  section omitted"), never in the document. A number you cannot cite is removed, not
  softened.

Self-check before "done" (mandatory)

Run it on the SAVED deliverable (the file on disk is what ships), fix, and re-run until
it passes:

wicked-garden run scripts/draft/self_check.py <out.html> --pages 2 --exact --render --repo <snapshot-dir>
# with the product's own export:   --pdf <exported.pdf>   instead of --render
# web page / memo (no page budget): --no-pages --min-font-pt 0 --mode screen

There are exactly two "done" states: PASS, or UNVERIFIED with the disclosure. FAIL
is never done. A disclosure names (a) which check is unverified, (b) why on this seat
(e.g. "no Chrome/Chromium — structural estimate 2 pages"), (c) what a reviewer must do to
verify it (e.g. "run page_count.py --pdf <export> on the product's PDF export", or
"check pair X by hand / rewrite it in hex with an opaque background"). Paste the verdict
line(s) into your reply — never paraphrase them or describe a run you did not make. If the
launcher or Python is missing, follow the manual alternative in refs/self-check.md (the
WCAG formula per token pair, a real print to count pages, and the placeholder/number grep)
and say which steps were manual.

In a governed run (wicked-crew interactive-draft, -edit, -chat)

• Outline phase: state the page budget you read from the brief (or the default
  above), the deliverable's format contract, and the sources you will cite — as plain
  text, no HTML yet.
• Draft phase: write the file to the absolute path the task names, then run the
  self-check on THAT file with the budget and the repo snapshot(s) the task names
  (--pdf when the task gives you an export, else --render). Fix and re-run until the
  verdict is PASS — or UNVERIFIED when this seat has no renderer or a pair cannot be
  evaluated (the check prints DISCLOSE … lines): then stop re-running, put the
  disclosure into the deliverable's notes, and end the reply with the absolute path, the
  verdict line, the structural page estimate, and the verification point ("verify with
  page_count.py --pdf on the product's PDF export"). A FAIL is never a stopping
  point. The run's own deliverable floor only proves the file exists — this skill is the
  quality floor.
• Edit / revise phases: a revision can re-introduce a defect (a design pin that
  darkens a caption). Re-run the self-check after every landed change; a FAIL is
  yours to fix before the turn ends.
• Never add data-wid attributes yourself; data-source and data-illustrative are
  fine — the service instruments its own anchors around them.