A house style for machines

People talk about taste as if it were ineffable. In practice, most of it is a list of constraints a good designer keeps in their head and applies without thinking. You can write that list down. We did, and we handed it to the model.

Constraints beat inspiration

A model asked to "be creative" reverts to the mean. A model given constraints — one accent color, a fixed type scale, a rule against centered hero stacks — has to compose within them, and composition is where character lives.

Some of our rules

• Derive every color from a named palette. No stray hex in the markup.
• Body type can be a serif. Inverting the grotesque-body default is a signature, not a risk.
• Numbers are reserved for things that are actually ordered. No decorative 01 / 02 / 03.
• Linework, not drop shadows, carries structure.

Each one is a small no — don't reach for the gradient, don't center the hero, don't repeat the card. A model that has internalised enough of those small refusals stops producing the average and starts producing something a person would sign.

The site you're reading

This site follows the same rules we gave the agent. If it looked templated, the product would be disproven on the homepage — so the constraints had to hold here first.