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name: variant-brief description: >- Creates or revises the variant build brief, the document handed to every agent that builds one design variant, from the plugin template plus the project's fixed items, off-limits files, traps, and verify commands. Use when setting up or updating what variant builders get handed.

Variant brief

The variant build brief is the one document every builder reads first. It carries the discipline that makes variants comparable (one method per variant, a different argument rather than a different skin, the first variant sets the system, self-review by screenshot, a fixed report format) and the project's own facts (what is frozen, what is off limits, which traps have already cost an afternoon). Keep the two apart: the discipline is shared across projects and lives in the template; the facts are the project's and live in its slots.

Produce it

1. Read ../../templates/Variant Build Brief.md. Everything outside a {slot} is the shared discipline; copy it as written. Rewording it is how two projects end up with briefs that disagree.
2. Read the project's frozen brief, its directions README (or equivalent), and its existing verify commands. Fill each slot from those sources and point at them; do not restate a rule that already lives in one of them. One fact, one owner.
3. Write the brief to the project's docs folder under the project's naming convention (docs/Variant Build Brief.md when there is no convention).
4. Record in the brief's header which template version it was cut from, so a later template change can be diffed in.

Revise it

A brief earns a revision when a builder hits something that cost real time and was not written down: a framework rule that fails silently, a capture that paints blank, a file that must be appended to rather than edited. Add it to the Traps slot as a short paragraph with the symptom, the cause, and the fix already in the codebase. Do not add taste; taste belongs to the direction brief.

Slots

Slot	Source	Notes
{frozen brief}	the identity or brand brief	sections a builder must read, by number
{copy rules}	voice or copy rules doc	followed exactly
{directions readme}	how a direction folder (html) or branch (code) is laid out and run
{facts files}	typed content, case studies, settings	real names and numbers only; invent nothing
{fixed items}	frozen brief	palette hex values, marks, textures, brand rules
{off limits}	project layout	shared layout, globals, chrome, package exports, other variants' routes
{registry}	the one shared file a variant appends to	with the entry shape
{route convention}	where variants live	e.g. routes/<letter>/ or variants/<letter>/
{traps}	past afternoons	symptom, cause, fix in the codebase
{imagery rule}	frozen brief	generated stand-ins, provenance log, never ship
{done gates}	project's craft floor	pass/fail lines only
{banned}	frozen brief lane list plus house design law
{skills installed}	the machine	one line each; the task names which one to invoke
{verify}	scripts and checks	the commands and the browser checks at two widths
{report}		the fields the round index needs