team-ui

When this skill is invoked, orchestrate the UI team through a structured pipeline.

Decision Points: At each phase transition, use AskUserQuestion to present the user with the subagent's proposals as selectable options. Write the agent's full analysis in conversation, then capture the decision with concise labels. In collaborative mode, the user must approve before moving to the next phase. In guided mode the pipeline advances automatically unless a phase is BLOCKED; in autonomous mode it runs end to end, recording each phase outcome via log_decision. Decisions in automation_always_ask categories (is_always_ask_category helper) always prompt regardless of mode. See .claude/docs/automation-modes.md.

Phase 0: Resolve Config

!bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../hooks/yaml-helper.sh" resolve_config --keys review_mode,automation,team.size

Resolved above — use as-is; --review overrides review_mode. No block → defaults in .claude/docs/config-resolution.md.

review_mode sets gate depth:

• full — spawn all director and lead gates as described
• lean — skip director gates unless they are PHASE-GATE type (CD-PHASE-GATE, TD-PHASE-GATE, PR-PHASE-GATE, AD-PHASE-GATE)
• solo — skip all director gate spawning entirely; run the skill without any agent gates

automation drives the Decision Points note above. See the Decision Points note above and .claude/docs/automation-modes.md for how each mode changes pipeline behavior.

team.size: which agents are active (orthogonal to review_mode gate-depth and workflow docs).

• individual (default): ui-programmer + ux-designer. Other agents consulted via these two, not spawned separately.
• small: + accessibility-specialist + art-director.
• studio: + engine UI specialist + an adversarial review pass. Directors (CD/TD/PR) still spawn at phase gates regardless of size; a non-core agent needed at individual routes through the nearest active core agent with an informational note. "Phase gate" means any phase that ends in an AskUserQuestion decision point before the pipeline advances — not every phase. Apply the test literally: if the phase below has no decision point, it is not a gate, and an agent restricted to "phase gates only" is not spawned for it. This active-set scoping applies throughout the pipeline below: any phase that names an agent outside the active set routes through the nearest core agent rather than spawning it.

Announce the active set before Step 1 — never let the collapse be silent. Before spawning anything, state in one line which agents this run will actually spawn, and which the pipeline below names but will not spawn at the resolved team.size. For example:

Active set (team.size: <resolved>): <the agents listed for that size above>. Not spawned this run: <every other agent this pipeline names> — consulted through <nearest active core agent>. Raise team.size (or modes.rigor) to widen.

Fill it from the team.size list directly above and the agents this file's own pipeline names — not from an example. Both sets differ per orchestrator.

The pipeline below reads as a multi-agent fan-out and at the shipped default it is one or two agents — team-release names eight and runs one, team-narrative names six across five phases and runs writer alone. The collapse is correct: team.size is rigor-fronted and the narrow default is the token lever, measured at roughly 10x. What was wrong is that nothing said so, so a reader could not distinguish a correctly-collapsed run from a broken pipeline, and the per-agent "routes through the nearest core agent with an informational note" rule above fires at routing time and never states the shape of the run as a whole.

This is the same rule as the skipped-check reporting elsewhere in this file: a constraint that is enforced but never surfaced is indistinguishable, to the person reading the output, from one that was never enforced.

Director gate skip rule: Before spawning creative-director, art-director, or any other Tier 1/2 director for review (outside of PHASE-GATE triggers), apply the resolved mode: skip if solo mode; skip if lean mode and this is not a PHASE-GATE.

Team Composition

• ux-designer — User flows, wireframes, accessibility, input handling
• ui-programmer — UI framework, screens, widgets, data binding, implementation
• art-director — Visual style, layout polish, consistency with art bible
• engine UI specialist — Validates UI implementation patterns against engine-specific best practices (specialists.ui from project.yaml; if absent, the UI Specialist line of ## Engine Specialists in .claude/docs/technical-preferences.md)
• accessibility-specialist — Audits accessibility compliance at Phase 4

specialists.ui: null means UNSET. Treat it as absent and skip the engine UI specialist; never spawn null as an agent name. The v1.0 migration writes the whole specialists block whenever any one member is set, so null here is ordinary — and the config reader returns it as the non-empty string "null".

Templates used by this pipeline:

• ux-spec.md — Standard screen/flow UX specification
• hud-design.md — HUD-specific UX specification
• interaction-pattern-library.md — Reusable interaction patterns
• accessibility-requirements.md — Committed accessibility tier and requirements

How to Delegate

Use the Agent tool to spawn each team member as a subagent:

• subagent_type: ux-designer — User flows, wireframes, accessibility, input handling
• subagent_type: ui-programmer — UI framework, screens, widgets, data binding
• subagent_type: art-director — Visual style, layout polish, art bible consistency
• subagent_type: [UI engine specialist] — Engine-specific UI pattern validation (e.g., unity-ui-specialist, ue-umg-specialist, godot-specialist)
• subagent_type: accessibility-specialist — Accessibility compliance audit

Brief each agent — do not dump context. Read the shared inputs once and pass a distilled brief inline: the lines each agent actually needs, never a file path for a document you have already read (an agent handed a path re-reads the whole file). Pass a path only for a document you have not read and only that agent needs.

End every agent prompt with a return contract: "Write your full output to [path] — that named path is your write authorisation under the bounded exception below, so write it without a separate approval prompt. Return only (1) the path written, (2) a ≤5-bullet summary of decisions, (3) any BLOCKED/CONCERNS items, one line each. Do not restate the documents you read." Without it, an agent returns everything it read back into this session.

Why this does not violate the Collaboration Protocol. CLAUDE.md requires an agent to ask "May I write this to [filepath]?" before Write/Edit. A subagent spawned here writes without asking, and that is a deliberate, bounded exception rather than an oversight — the same call already made for consistency-check appending to active.md. The exception holds only when all three are true: (1) the path is one you named in the prompt, so the user approved the destination when they approved the phase; (2) it is a new artifact under production/, docs/ or tests/, never an edit to existing source or config; (3) the phase that produced it is itself gated by an AskUserQuestion before the pipeline advances. Outside those three, the agent must ask. Do not "fix" this by asking per subagent — a prompt per agent per phase makes an orchestrator unusable, which is why the exception exists.

Launch independent agents in parallel where the pipeline allows it (e.g., Phase 4 review agents can run simultaneously).

Pipeline

Phase 1a: Context Gathering

Before designing anything, read and synthesize:

• design/gdd/game-concept.md — platform targets and intended audience
• design/player-journey.md — player's state and context when they reach this screen
• All GDD UI Requirements sections relevant to this feature
• design/ux/interaction-patterns.md — existing patterns to reuse (not reinvent)
• design/accessibility-requirements.md — committed accessibility tier (e.g., Basic, Enhanced, Full)

Report the status of every document above before designing anything. Phase 1a reads five inputs; for a long time only the pattern library was guarded, and the other four could be absent without anything noticing. List each as present or ABSENT.

design/accessibility-requirements.md is the one that must not pass silently. It carries the committed accessibility tier, which Phase 3 implements against and Phase 4 gates on ("verify compliance against the committed accessibility tier … flag any violations as blockers"). If the file is missing there is no tier, so that gate has no criterion and would pass while checking nothing — a gate made of an absent standard, the same shape as an assertion that can never fail. When it is absent:

• Say so here, and carry it forward: Phase 4 must report Accessibility: NOT ASSESSED — no committed tier (design/accessibility-requirements.md absent) and must NOT report the accessibility gate as passed.
• The ux-designer states which tier they designed against as an explicit assumption, so a later reader can see it was assumed rather than committed.
• Recommend /ux-design accessibility to establish the tier.

Absence of design/gdd/game-concept.md, design/player-journey.md or design/ux/hud.md is not blocking, but name each missing one in the brief you pass to the ux-designer so they design knowing what context they lack, rather than inferring it.

If design/ux/interaction-patterns.md does not exist, surface the gap immediately:

"interaction-patterns.md does not exist — no existing patterns to reuse."

Then use AskUserQuestion with options:

• (a) Run /ux-design patterns first to establish the pattern library, then continue
• (b) Proceed without the pattern library — ui-programmer will treat all patterns created as new and add each to a new design/ux/interaction-patterns.md at completion

Do NOT invent or assume patterns from the feature name or GDD alone. If the user chooses (b), explicitly instruct ui-programmer in Phase 3 to treat all patterns as new and document them in design/ux/interaction-patterns.md when implementation is complete. Note the pattern library status (created / absent / updated) in the final summary report.

Summarize the context in a brief for the ux-designer: what the player is doing, what they need, what constraints apply, and which existing patterns are relevant.

Phase 1b: UX Spec Authoring

Invoke /ux-design [feature name] skill OR delegate directly to ux-designer to produce design/ux/[feature-name].md following the ux-spec.md template.

If designing the HUD, use the hud-design.md template instead of ux-spec.md.

Notes on special cases:

• For HUD design specifically, invoke /ux-design with argument: hud (e.g., /ux-design hud).
• For the interaction pattern library, run /ux-design patterns once at project start and update it whenever new patterns are introduced during later phases.

Output: design/ux/[feature-name].md with all required spec sections filled.

Phase 1c: UX Review

After the spec is complete, invoke /ux-review design/ux/[feature-name].md.

Gate: Do not proceed to Phase 2 until the verdict is APPROVED. If the verdict is NEEDS REVISION, the ux-designer must address the flagged issues and re-run the review. The user may explicitly accept a NEEDS REVISION risk and proceed, but this must be a conscious decision — present the specific concerns via AskUserQuestion before asking whether to proceed.

Phase 2: Visual Design

Delegate to art-director:

• Review the full UX spec (flows, wireframes, interaction patterns, accessibility notes) — not just the wireframe images
• Apply visual treatment from the art bible: colors, typography, spacing, animation style
• Check that visual design preserves accessibility compliance: verify color contrast ratios, and confirm color is never the only indicator of state (shape, text, or icon must reinforce it)
• Specify all asset requirements needed from the art pipeline: icons at specified sizes, background textures, fonts, decorative elements — with precise dimensions and format requirements
• Ensure consistency with existing implemented UI screens
• Output: visual design spec with style notes and asset manifest

Phase 3: Implementation

Before implementation begins, spawn the engine UI specialist (specialists.ui from project.yaml; if absent, the UI Specialist line of ## Engine Specialists in .claude/docs/technical-preferences.md) to review the UX spec and visual design spec for engine-specific implementation guidance:

• Which engine UI framework should be used for this screen? (e.g., UI Toolkit vs UGUI in Unity, Control nodes vs CanvasLayer in Godot, UMG vs CommonUI in Unreal)
• Any engine-specific gotchas for the proposed layout or interaction patterns?
• Recommended widget/node structure for the engine?
• Output: engine UI implementation notes to hand off to ui-programmer before they begin

If no engine is configured, skip this step. Record Engine validation: NOT ASSESSED — no engine configured (engine.nameunset inproject.yaml) in this run's output. A skipped check that says nothing is indistinguishable from a check that passed; the reader cannot tell engine guidance was never sought.

Delegate to ui-programmer:

• Implement the UI following the UX spec and visual design spec
• Use patterns from design/ux/interaction-patterns.md — do not reinvent patterns that are already specified. If a pattern almost fits but needs modification, note the deviation and flag it for ux-designer review.
• UI NEVER owns or modifies game state — display only; emit events for all player actions
• All text through the localization system — no hardcoded player-facing strings
• Support both input methods (keyboard/mouse AND gamepad)
• Implement accessibility features per the committed tier in design/accessibility-requirements.md
• Wire up data binding to game state
• If any new interaction pattern is created during implementation (i.e., something not already in the pattern library), add it to design/ux/interaction-patterns.md before marking implementation complete
• Output: implemented UI feature

Phase 4: Review (parallel)

Delegate in parallel:

• ux-designer: Verify implementation matches wireframes and interaction spec. Test keyboard-only and gamepad-only navigation. Check accessibility features function correctly.
• art-director: Verify visual consistency with art bible. Check at minimum and maximum supported resolutions.
• accessibility-specialist: Verify compliance against the committed accessibility tier documented in design/accessibility-requirements.md. Flag any violations as blockers. If that file is absent there is no committed tier, so this gate has no criterion: report Accessibility: NOT ASSESSED — no committed tier (design/accessibility-requirements.md absent) and do NOT report the gate as passed. Carry forward whatever tier Phase 1a recorded as assumed, and say plainly that it was assumed.

All three review streams must report before proceeding to Phase 5.

Phase 5: Polish

• Address all review feedback
• Verify animations are skippable and respect the player's motion reduction preferences
• Confirm UI sounds trigger through the audio event system (no direct audio calls)
• Test at all supported resolutions and aspect ratios
• Verify design/ux/interaction-patterns.md is up to date — if any new patterns were introduced during this feature's implementation, confirm they have been added to the library
• Confirm all HUD elements respect the visual budget defined in design/ux/hud.md (element count, screen region allocations, maximum opacity values)

Quick Reference — When to Use Which Skill

• /ux-design — Author a new UX spec for a screen, flow, or HUD from scratch
• /ux-review — Validate a completed UX spec before implementation
• /team-ui [feature] — Full pipeline from concept through polish (calls /ux-design and /ux-review internally)
• /quick-design — Small UI changes that don't need a full new UX spec

Error Recovery Protocol

First, verify the artifact. If the return contract named a path, check the path exists before treating the phase as done — a named artifact that is not on disk is a failed phase, however fluent the response reads. An agent can burn a full phase and return a plausible preamble having written nothing, which is neither BLOCKED nor an error nor "cannot complete", so the trigger below never fires. Resume it naming the unmet contract; the context is usually still there.

If any spawned agent returns BLOCKED, errors, or cannot complete: surface it immediately, don't proceed past a dependency it blocks, and always produce a partial report. Full procedure: .claude/docs/error-recovery-protocol.md.

Common blockers:

• Input file missing (story not found, GDD absent) → redirect to the skill that creates it
• ADR status is Proposed → do not implement; run /architecture-decision first
• Scope too large → split into two stories via /create-stories
• Conflicting instructions between ADR and story → surface the conflict, do not guess

File Write Protocol

All file writes (UX specs, interaction pattern library updates, implementation files) are delegated to sub-agents and sub-skills. The two follow different rules:

• Sub-agents spawned via Agent (e.g. ui-programmer) follow the bounded exception documented above under "Why this does not violate the Collaboration Protocol" — the path is one you named, the artifact is new under production/, docs/ or tests/, and the phase is gated by an AskUserQuestion. A sub-agent does not prompt per write inside those bounds; outside them it must ask.
• Sub-skills (/ux-design) are not sub-agents and the exception does not reach them. They follow the normal Collaboration Protocol and ask before writing.

This orchestrator does not write files directly.

Output

A summary report covering: UX spec status, UX review verdict, visual design status, implementation status, accessibility compliance, input method support, interaction pattern library update status, and any outstanding issues.

Verdict: COMPLETE — UI feature delivered through full pipeline (UX spec → visual → implementation → review → polish). Verdict: BLOCKED — pipeline halted; surface the blocker and its phase before stopping.

Next Steps

• Run /ux-review on the final spec if not yet approved.
• Run /code-review on the UI implementation before closing stories.
• Run /team-polish if visual or audio polish pass is needed.