Art

What this skill does

# Art Skill

Complete visual content system for creating illustrations, diagrams, and visual content.

## Customization

**Before executing, check for user customizations at:**
`~/.claude/PAI/USER/SKILLCUSTOMIZATIONS/Art/`

If this directory exists, load and apply:
- `PREFERENCES.md` - Aesthetic preferences, default model, output location
- `CharacterSpecs.md` - Character design specifications
- `SceneConstruction.md` - Scene composition guidelines

These override default behavior. If the directory does not exist, proceed with skill defaults.


## 🚨 MANDATORY: Voice Notification (REQUIRED BEFORE ANY ACTION)

**You MUST send this notification BEFORE doing anything else when this skill is invoked.**

1. **Send voice notification**:
   ```bash
   curl -s -X POST http://localhost:31337/notify \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"message": "Running the WORKFLOWNAME workflow in the Art skill to ACTION"}' \
     > /dev/null 2>&1 &
   ```

2. **Output text notification**:
   ```
   Running the **WorkflowName** workflow in the **Art** skill to ACTION...
   ```

**This is not optional. Execute this curl command immediately upon skill invocation.**

## 🚨🚨🚨 CONSTITUTIONAL: ALWAYS RUN A NAMED WORKFLOW. NEVER FREEFORM. 🚨🚨🚨

```
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⚠️  EVERY image generation MUST run through a named workflow       ⚠️
⚠️  in this skill's Workflows/ directory.                          ⚠️
⚠️  NEVER call Tools/Generate.ts with a hand-written prompt        ⚠️
⚠️  outside the workflow template — the workflows encode the       ⚠️
⚠️  quality standards (TECHNIQUE, palette, composition rules,      ⚠️
⚠️  problem-type metaphor, CSE-24 narrative arc) that the models   ⚠️
⚠️  consistently fail to honor without them.                       ⚠️
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
```

**Freeform-prompting Generate.ts directly is FORBIDDEN.** It is the documented root cause of every "looks like shit" rejection in the rating history. The Essay / Frameworks / Maps / Comics / etc. workflows exist because the bare model defaults to illustrative-school cartoons; the workflow templates discipline it back to the editorial Lebbeus Woods / Paul Rudolph / charcoal-architectural register the principal actually wants.

**Routing rules — pick a workflow FIRST, before writing any prompt:**

| Request shape | Required workflow |
|---------------|-------------------|
| Blog header / editorial essay illustration | **`Workflows/Essay.md`** — Steps 1–8 in order, no skipping |
| Mermaid diagram | `Workflows/Mermaid.md` |
| Technical / architecture diagram | `Workflows/TechnicalDiagrams.md` |
| Framework / 2x2 / matrix | `Workflows/Frameworks.md` |
| D3 dashboard / chart | `Workflows/D3Dashboards.md` |
| Taxonomy / hierarchy | `Workflows/Taxonomies.md` |
| Timeline | `Workflows/Timelines.md` |
| Comparison | `Workflows/Comparisons.md` |
| Stat card | `Workflows/Stats.md` |
| Aphorism / quote card | `Workflows/Aphorisms.md` |
| Comic panel | `Workflows/Comics.md` |
| YouTube thumbnail | `Workflows/AdHocYouTubeThumbnail.md` or `Workflows/YouTubeThumbnailChecklist.md` |
| PAI pack icon | `Workflows/CreatePAIPackIcon.md` |
| brand-logo wallpaper | `Workflows/LogoWallpaper.md` |
| Recipe card | `Workflows/RecipeCards.md` |
| Map / conceptual map | `Workflows/Maps.md` |
| Annotated screenshot | `Workflows/AnnotatedScreenshots.md` |
| Background removal only | `Workflows/RemoveBackground.md` |
| Embossed logo wallpaper | `Workflows/EmbossedLogoWallpaper.md` |
| Generic visualization (none of the above fit) | `Workflows/Visualize.md` |

**The ONLY exception:** the user explicitly says "freeform" / "skip the workflow" / "just run Generate.ts directly with this prompt: ...". Without that explicit instruction, ALWAYS pick the matching workflow and execute its mandatory steps in order — including the prompt template, the technique block, the palette, the composition rules, and the validation gate.

If no workflow matches the request, **stop and surface to the user** before generating — propose either (a) the closest existing workflow, (b) using `Visualize.md` as the generic catch-all, or (c) creating a new workflow first via the `CreateSkill` skill. Do not improvise.

---

## 🚨🚨🚨 MANDATORY: Output to Downloads First 🚨🚨🚨

```
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⚠️  ALL GENERATED IMAGES GO TO ~/Downloads/ FIRST                   ⚠️
⚠️  NEVER output directly to project directories                    ⚠️
⚠️  User MUST preview in Finder/Preview before use                  ⚠️
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
```

**This applies to ALL workflows in this skill.**

## 🚨🚨🚨 MANDATORY: Transparency Rules for Blog Headers 🚨🚨🚨

```
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⚠️  INLINE (body) image → TRANSPARENT (PNG with alpha)           ⚠️
⚠️  SOCIAL THUMBNAIL (frontmatter) → SEPIA #EAE9DF (opaque)       ⚠️
⚠️  EVERY blog header MUST use --thumbnail (produces both)        ⚠️
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
```

The blog page background is sepia #EAE9DF. Inline images MUST be transparent PNG so they composite cleanly over the page. Social platforms (X, LinkedIn, RSS readers) do NOT honor transparency — they show white/black bleed-through — so the `thumbnail:` frontmatter MUST point to the sepia-backed version.

**Enforcement when calling `Generate.ts`:**
- `--thumbnail` is the ONLY correct flag for blog headers — it implicitly enables `--remove-bg` and produces BOTH `output.png` (transparent) AND `output-thumb.png` (#EAE9DF background).
- Background removal runs locally via `rembg` (no external API). If the model returns JPEG (Nano Banana Pro often does), `Generate.ts` automatically renames the output from `.jpg` → `.png` after rembg processing so the final transparent file is a real PNG with a real alpha channel. If you ever see a `.jpg` labeled "transparent", that is NOT transparent.
- If `rembg` isn't installed at `~/.local/bin/rembg`, the tool fails loudly with install instructions rather than silently producing an opaque image. Install: `pipx install rembg` (or set `REMBG_BIN` env var to override the path).

**Verification step before declaring an image done (REQUIRED):**
1. `file ~/Downloads/[name].png` → must report `PNG image data, ... RGBA` (8-bit/color RGBA). If it says `JPEG` or `8-bit colormap` without alpha, transparency failed.
2. `file ~/Downloads/[name]-thumb.png` → must report `PNG image data`. The thumb is intentionally opaque with sepia background.
3. Only after both pass: copy to the project directory and wire into the post.

**Wiring into the blog post:**
- Body inline: `[![Alt](/images/blog/[slug]/header.webp)](/images/blog/[slug]/header.webp)` — use the transparent WebP converted from the `.png`.
- Frontmatter: `thumbnail: https://example.com/images/blog/[slug]/header-thumb.png` — always the `-thumb.png` (opaque sepia).

Never reuse the opaque thumbnail for the inline slot. Never reuse the transparent file for the social thumbnail. These are two distinct outputs from one `--thumbnail` run.


## Workflow Routing

Route to the appropriate workflow based on the request.

  - Remove background from image → `Workflows/RemoveBackground.md`
  - brand-logo wallpaper with logo integration → `Workflows/LogoWallpaper.md`
  - YouTube thumbnail checklist → `Workflows/YouTubeThumbnailChecklist.md`
  - Blog header or editorial illustration → `Workflows/Essay.md`
  - D3.js interactive chart or dashboard → `Workflows/D3Dashboards.md`
  - Visualization or unsure which format → `Workflows/Visualize.md`
  - Mermaid flowchart or sequence diagram → `Workflows/Mermaid.md`
  - Technical or architecture diagram → `Workflows/TechnicalDiagrams.md`
  - Taxonomy or classification grid → `Workflows/Taxonomies.md`
  - Timeline or chronological progression → `Workflows/Timelines.md`
  - Framework or