SmolForge design assets#

This directory contains the visual language and canonical art used by SmolForge. Product behavior belongs in the owning package; these documents explain the reusable design decisions, source assets, and generation contracts.

For product UI composition and accessibility rules, see Workbench interface primitives.

Collections#

• Clay UI defines the tactile workshop direction used by the product shell, top-level screens, social cards, and light/dark themes.
• Thunder Smith kit contains the official character source, animation contract, prompts, validation, export tooling, and generated review previews.
• Workshop prop atlas documents the prop-only runtime art used to give product empty states and headers page-specific physical objects.

Binary artifact policy#

Commit binary art when it is canonical source material, a required conformance fixture, or a deliberately curated design reference. Generated previews may be committed when they materially improve reviewability and their source and regeneration path are documented.

Before adding another large board or animation set:

1. prefer lossless WebP or an appropriately compressed PNG/GIF;
2. avoid committing multiple equivalent exports;
3. keep generated output beside its source contract and document how it was produced; and
4. consider Git LFS when a single asset approaches the host limit or repeated revisions would create substantial repository history. Forge migration and builds do not require the local helper; install it only for transparent local checkout/add/edit hydration.

Do not commit temporary image-model outputs, local build directories, or machine-specific paths.

Run npm run test:design-assets before committing design changes. The check rejects review PNGs over 1 MiB, any design binary over 2 MiB, and machine-specific paths in design Markdown or JSON. Runtime workshop atlases under packages/web/public/forge-art/ are capped at 200 KiB so page-specific clay props do not quietly inflate product routes. Runtime sprite strips may remain PNG when their transparency contract requires it.