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name: process-router description: 'Use this skill whenever the question is how to design well over time or how to make a design that doesn''t break — accessibility, prototyping cadence, MVP scoping, edge cases, performance budget, error handling at scale, design system governance, or any architectural-design question. Trigger on accessibility questions, "is this ready to ship," "what about the edge case where," design reviews, MVP scoping, "we have too many opinions on this." Framework-agnostic. Routes the model to the right process or robustness principle in this plugin.'

Process & robustness — router

This plugin holds the principles that govern how design happens and how it survives contact with reality — accessibility, iteration loops, edge cases, design-team dynamics, robustness against scale.

Principles in this plugin

Each principle has its own skill (with sub-aspect skills where useful). Principles marked [full] have reference-grade skill files; the rest are planned and will be added in subsequent passes.

Inclusion

• accessibility [full] — usable by people with the widest possible range of abilities.
  • Sub-skills: accessibility-perceivable, accessibility-operable, accessibility-understandable, accessibility-robust.

Process and iteration

• iteration — design is a loop, not a waterfall.
• prototyping — making something concrete reveals what specs cannot.
• development-cycle — projects move through requirements, design, develop, test phases.
• life-cycle — products age; design for the whole arc, not just launch.
• design-by-committee — group consensus produces averaged designs; beware.
• not-invented-here — reflexive rejection of external solutions costs time and quality.
• ockhams-razor (also in cognition) — among solutions that work, prefer the simplest.

Robustness and edge cases

• factor-of-safety — design with margin so normal operation isn't at the edge of failure.
• weakest-link — chains break at the weakest link; find and reinforce it.
• normal-distribution — most users cluster around the mean; design for the bulk, accommodate the tails.
• scaling-fallacy — what works at small scale doesn't necessarily scale.
• uncertainty-principle — observation changes the observed; instrumentation distorts behavior.
• structural-forms — load-bearing patterns that distribute stress (mass, frame, shell).

Heuristic for which to read first

• Every design task → accessibility. Read it, run the checklist.
• MVP scoping → iteration, ockhams-razor, factor-of-safety.
• "Is this ready to ship?" → weakest-link, factor-of-safety, accessibility.
• Design system governance → consistency (cognition), modularity (cognition), life-cycle.
• Reviewing scale → scaling-fallacy, normal-distribution.
• Stuck in committee → design-by-committee, not-invented-here, ockhams-razor.
• Performance / latency → weakest-link, factor-of-safety, feedback-loop (interaction).

Cross-plugin pointers

• For visual hierarchy and grouping, see perception-and-hierarchy-principles.
• For learnability, see cognition-and-learnability-principles.
• For behavior, see interaction-and-control-principles.
• For aesthetic and tonal decisions, see aesthetics-and-emotion-principles.