Round 4: notes

Started by hand on 2026-10-12 with the five active strategies (s6, s7, s9, s10, s11), one build each.

What this round tests

Round 3's problem was convergence: three of five designs used the same library photo as the hero, the same panel over it and the same headline. Shared inputs had come to outweigh the methods. Changes, for every strategy:

• A direction per designer (DIRECTIONS.md: country inn, the garden, town paper, Main Street shop, modern heritage, family album), given in turn by bin/round.ts and written into the designer's TASK.md. The reviewer judges the page against it. Each workspace's direction file says which.
• Half the library each: every build gets a seeded half of each photo group (at least three), so no two designers start from the same set of heroes. Illustrations stay shared.
• Recolorable assets: the line illustrations traced to SVG (bin/vector.ts, library/svg/) with --ink and --shape variables; a tint tool (tools/tint.ts: duotone, wash, mono) to bring photos and textures into each design's palette.
• Short headlines (the owner's note on round 3; shipped in #5, first used here).

It worked if: the five pages are clearly different at a glance (no shared hero, no two with the same hero layout), headlines are short, and the review scores stay where round 3's were.

Results

Letters: A s10 (country inn), B s9 (modern heritage), C s7 (Main Street shop), D s6 (town paper), E s11 (the garden).

| | Strategy | Direction | Reviewer (final) | Claude | Custom | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | A | s10-frontend-design-skill | Country inn | 8, ship (3 rounds) | 8 | 8 | | B | s9-section-posters | Modern heritage | 8, ship (2 rounds) | 7 | 6 | | C | s7-blueprint-remix | Main Street shop | 8, ship (3 rounds) | 8 | 9 | | D | s6-photo-art-director | Town paper | 9, ship (3 rounds) | 9 | 9 | | E | s11-local-practice | The garden | 8, ship (3 rounds) | 7 | 7 |

What we learned:

• Directions broke the convergence. Five pages that look nothing alike, each clearly its direction, and the quality held (reviewer finals 8-9, all ship). D (town paper: a black-and-white photo essay with one blue) is the best page so far. Direction now matters more than method: compare strategies within a direction from here on.
• The library halves helped less: 7 heroes split in halves overlap, and A and E still share the trail photo. More hero images, or a smaller share (a third), would do more.
• The tools were used: every designer used the tint tool (D's black-and-white essay is built on it); E set the SVG illustrations in its sage palette.
• Headlines are short everywhere, but four of five H1s are the same: "We'll never rush you.", the practice's own line from facts.md. A short-headline rule makes the one quotable phrase the obvious pick. Fix: the direction now asks for a headline in that direction's voice, with the practice's own lines used below it.
• Designers' notes: s9's "at least one pattern ground" fought its reviewer twice (a required pattern became wallpaper); common/homepage.md still points at SKILL.md and docs/site-plan.md, which designers don't have.

Next: the evolve loop takes it from here (tonight, round 5).