SKILL.md
Blueprint Standards
Purpose
Blueprint artifacts define the structural foundation that prototypes and UI specifications build upon. They bridge the gap between validated opportunities and tangible product design.
Blueprint artifacts answer: "What pages exist, how do users move between them, what data lives where, and what does the product feel like?"
Artifact Overview
| Artifact | Question It Answers | Template |
|---|---|---|
| Information Architecture | What pages exist and how are they organized? | references/ia-template.md |
| User Flows | How do users move through the product to achieve goals? | references/flow-template.md |
| Content Model | What data types exist and how do they relate? | references/content-model-template.md |
| Brand Direction | What does the product look and feel like? | references/brand-direction-template.md |
| AI Interaction Model | How does the user interact with AI features? | references/ai-interaction-model-template.md |
When Blueprint Artifacts Are Required
Create or update only the artifacts needed to keep shared structure coherent across multiple hypotheses or to supply a decision required by a current prototype or downstream specification. Reuse existing decisions; a prototype can proceed directly when its observable boundary needs no shared structural decision.
Relationship to Other Artifacts
docs/product/vision.md ← Strategic intent
docs/product/design-principles.md ← Trade-off resolutions
docs/product/personas/ ← Who uses it
docs/discovery/opportunities/ ← What problems to solve
docs/discovery/hypotheses/ ← How to solve them
↓
docs/product/design/ ← Blueprint (structural design)
↓
docs/discovery/prototypes/ ← Tangible validation artifacts
↓
docs/prd/ ← Implementation specificationBlueprint Scope
Blueprint defines: Structure, navigation, data relationships, visual direction, interaction patterns Blueprint defers: Pixel-level specifications, component APIs, responsive breakpoint details, design token values → these belong to UI Spec (implementation phase)
Key Principles
- Opportunity-grounded: Every page in the IA traces to a validated Opportunity or a supporting function
- Persona-informed: Flows are written from the perspective of specific personas
- Consistent across prototypes: Applicable brand and IA decisions provide shared context for prototypes that depend on them
- Updatable through reflection: Blueprint artifacts evolve as new learnings surface in
docs/product/learnings.md - Minimal viable structure: Define enough to make prototypes coherent, defer details that require implementation-phase decisions