the guided session
The loop is a dial, not a leap
Two dials decide how much of the build you touch and how big the build is. Turn them both down and it runs alone; turn them both up and you sign off at every milestone.
dial 01 · engagement
Costs minutes of your time — the only currency this dial spends.
- hands-off
- 0 blocking checkpointsIt runs end to end. Every checkpoint still opens, logs its verdict, and auto-passes.
- guided
- 3 blocking checkpointsthis buildDirection, the built homepage, final acceptance — the default, and what built this site.
- studio
- 6 blocking checkpointsSign-off at every milestone, from brief read-back to preflight.
dial 02 · scope
Sizes the pipeline — relative, never a promised token count.
- sketch
- 2 mockups · thinner pipelineFewer candidates, fewer phases — the fast look at an idea.
- standard
- the full 12 phasesEvery phase runs once, in order, with the gates at the end.
- flagship
- + showpiece · up to 5 critique roundsthis buildAdds a showpiece budget and up to five visual-critique rounds. This site.
Any cost sizing here is a back-of-envelope estimate, in the plugin README's own words — relative pipeline size, not a measured bill. The minutes are the number worth trusting: they are yours, and they are listed per checkpoint below.
step one · the interview
Questions generated from your prompt
Not a form. The pipeline reads what you asked for, works out what it cannot infer, and asks up to four questions about that — scope and substance, never aesthetics. Aesthetics is the mockup round's job, and it happens with your eyes on it.
Every question is skippable, and a skipped answer falls back to a recorded default instead of stalling the build. This site was asked three. All three answers are load-bearing: they are why there is a reading room, why the roster lists all eighty, and why no measured table from an older build appears anywhere here.
q1
How deep should this build's paper trail go?
Full reading room — every committed artifact rendered on-site.
q2
How should the eighty-skill roster be presented?
Full browsable index — all 80, not a curated excerpt.
q3
Should the older build's measured table appear here?
This build only — a prose mention and a link, no table anywhere.
answers recorded in design/BRIEF.md · one round, no follow-ups
step two · the mockup round
You point before anything expensive starts
approved: C · round 1 · 2026-08-14
Three candidates, built as real throwaway HTML and deliberately pulled apart — different palette, different type, different structural idea. You pick one, mix two, or send them back. Nothing expensive runs until one is approved: no tokens, no components, no copy.
This page shows the two that lost, because a round only counts if you can see the roads not taken. Both originals are still served, untouched, exactly as they were on the day — click through and judge the call yourself.
A — The Ledgernot picked
Cool paper + one cobalt · Archivo + JetBrains Mono · the hero IS the build's live report card, unmeasurable cells honestly em-dashed.
view the real artifact →
B — The Dossiernot picked
Warm paper + one oxblood · Instrument Serif over Public Sans · the client's dated verdicts as full-bleed pull quotes.
view the real artifact →
C — The Terminalapproved · CP2 round 1
Warm black + one terracotta — no navy, no glow · Space Grotesk + JetBrains Mono · a real claude terminal frame as the hero.
view the real artifact →
step three · the checkpoints
Priced in minutes of your time
six checkpoints · which ones stop the build is the engagement dial's only job
| checkpoint | what you see | your time | blocks at |
|---|---|---|---|
| CP1Brief read-back | your brief in the pipeline's words, before a single decision is made | ~2 min | studio |
| CP2Direction approval | three real HTML mockups, side by side, on one contact sheet | ~10 min | guided · studio |
| CP3Structure sign-off | the page list and the section blueprint for each one | ~3 min | studio |
| CP4First-page review | the built homepage at 375 and 1440, before any inner page exists | ~5 min | guided · studio |
| CP5Voice review | the copy for the whole site, headline by headline | ~8 min | studio |
| CP6Preflight / UAT | the working site, the gate table, and a what-to-click list | ~15 min | guided · studio |
Hands-off blocks at none of them: every checkpoint still opens and still writes its verdict to the ledger. A checkpoint that cannot reach a human auto-passes and logs that it did — the loop upgrades quality, it never deadlocks.
two clocks
You can walk away
One file — design/PROGRESS.md — answers the same four questions at every phase boundary, and every status reply is read from it rather than re-derived from the transcript.
- Which phase is running?
- What is it doing right now?
- Is it waiting on me?
- When am I needed next, and for how long?
- clock one
- how far away the next interruption is
- clock two
- how many minutes of yours it costs
coming back
The artifacts are the memory. The pipeline commits at every phase boundary, so a new session started in the directory resumes from the record, re-presents any checkpoint you were mid-answer on, and never re-runs a phase you already paid for.
while it runs · between builds
It watches itself and remembers you
/studio
A construction-site route your dev server serves while the build is still running — open it in a second tab and watch instead of asking. It reads what is already on disk, so a refresh costs zero tokens, and it is hard-wired to 404 in production.
- phase progress, phase by phase
- the gate table going green
- the checkpoint ledger, with verdicts
- a contact sheet of every screenshot
On the record: this build first claimed its hooks weren't registered — the Phase 0 probe wrote a file the hook is scoped to ignore. Mid-build, the hook proved otherwise: the activity feed filled with this build's own agents, and the write-time anti-slop grep fired on real source. The wrong claim, and this correction, are both in the paper trail.
~/.claude/ultraweb/taste.md
Which mockup you picked, and what you said in review, accrues to one file across builds. Next time, it is a tiebreaker between two defensible options — never a vote that outranks the brief in front of it.
- the heretic seat
- Every round seats one candidate that argues against your profile, so the file can never quietly narrow what you get shown.
- decay
- It keeps the last ten builds. Older entries are pruned, so taste you have moved on from stops voting.
The dial is yours to set
Install it, answer three questions, pick a mockup. Everything after that is the pipeline's problem until it needs you again.