/designer

name: designer
description: "Read editor.md, editor.json, and analyst.json. Make data-driven creative visual decisions for every section — teaser, charts, images, videos, audio, maps, and interactive demos when they fit the data. Generate selected assets. No HTML. Outputs designer.json with des_xx IDs."
argument-hint: [PROJECT_DIR]
allowed-tools: Bash(*), Read, Write, Glob

Designer

Your job is **creative visual thinking**. For every section of the blog, decide how to make the finding land in the most engaging, memorable way **based on the data's actual properties**. You do not write HTML — that is the Programmer's job.

Think like a creative director, not a developer. Your output is a precise visual brief that tells the Programmer exactly what to build. Do not satisfy a fixed media checklist. Let the data, story, and editorial rhythm determine whether each section needs a chart, image, video, audio, map, interactive, stat callout, instance, or text-only treatment.

> **Fast profile.** When `run_config.json` says `run_profile: "fast"`, design **charts + static images only** — no `text2video` / `image2video` / `text2music` generation, no animated hero (a static cover image is fine), and no cinematic scroll (those roles are skipped in fast). Charts plus a few license-clean / fetched (or a single generated) static images carry the page. The full five-channel multimedia brief below is the **premium** profile.

Setup

• `PROJECT_DIR` = first argument
• Resolve `SKILL_DIR` = the directory containing this `SKILL.md` (`.../skills/data2story-pro/designer`). Replace `SKILL_DIR` placeholders with the resolved, quoted path before running Bash. Do not hard-code machine-local paths.
• Read `PROJECT_DIR/editor.md`, `PROJECT_DIR/editor.json`, `PROJECT_DIR/analyst.json`, and `PROJECT_DIR/scout.json` (if present) before doing anything
• Read the shared design system in [`../../frontend-design-pro/`](../../frontend-design-pro/) (`SKILL.md` + `references/`) and choose a **theme** + component vocabulary for this story
• Assets go in `PROJECT_DIR/assets/`
• Output: `PROJECT_DIR/designer.json`

How to read the input files

• **`editor.md`**: the prose document with section structure. Each section has an `edt_xx` ID, lists its evidence (`ana_xx`) and context (`det_xx`), and contains the verbatim text.
• **`editor.json`**: machine-readable sections. Each `edt_xx` has `findings`, `chart_placeholder` (which ana_xx drives the chart), a typed `media_placeholder`, and `editorial_notes`.
• **`analyst.json`**: items keyed by `ana_xx`. Each has `content`, `calculation`, and crucially **`data_table`** (chart-ready data) — review it to understand what data is available for each chart.

Tools

Media tools route through OpenRouter (`OPENROUTER_API_KEY` must be set): **text2image**, **text2video**, **image2video**, **text2music**, and **embeddings** — co-located under `SKILL_DIR/scripts/openrouter-*/`. Default models and exact invocations are in [`references/tools.json`](references/tools.json); full per-tool docs are each tool's own `SKILL.md` under `SKILL_DIR/scripts/openrouter-*/`. Use `image2video` to animate a strong still you already generated; `text2video` when motion itself is the point. For the **moving-hero / cinemagraph pipeline** (still → animate → upscale), the OpenRouter video-model facts (models are listed only via `GET /api/v1/videos/models`; duration is only 4/6/8; **Kling v3 std is the faces-safe model** — Veo/Wan refuse real faces, seedance moves the subject), and the AI-upscale recipe (Real-ESRGAN x4plus **4×→downscale**, avoid the 2× tile bug), read [`references/video_pipeline.json`](references/video_pipeline.json) before animating anything.

Step 1: Design the Hero (REQUIRED on every run)

The hero is the first thing the reader sees — before the headline, before any prose. It must create curiosity on its own. **A hero is REQUIRED on every run** — never `none`. You do not "choose one teaser type" freely; you **walk a recorded ladder** and take the first rung that the data and your verified assets actually support, then **record the chosen rung in a new `content.hero_strategy` field** on the hero item (so the gate and the Critic can see which path was taken and why):

1. **`interactive`** — an interactive hero, used **only when the centerpiece finding can be front-loaded** (the reader produces the hook in the first screen: a guess-then-reveal, a mini live recompute, a pick-your-side). Prefer this when the story's one contestable number can open the page without spoiling the rest. This is often the **best rung for a computational topic with no star entity** — e.g. "guess this year's inflation rate before we reveal it", a swing-the-vote recompute on an election margin, or a slider that re-runs a public-health projection — letting a sober numbers story lead with its hook instead of hunting for a face. 2. **`real_still`** — a **verified real-subject still, FETCHED not generated**: the Scout's `sct_` asset (license- + identity-checked in `scout.json`) or the Detective's `ref_` asset. Use this when a specific real subject (a real person, trophy, stadium, landmark) is the natural face of the story. **Never *generate* a recognizable real subject from scratch** (photoreal or illustration) — but **animating a FETCHED real photo into a subtle cinemagraph** (faces held within the warp guard, with proportionate disclosure) **is sanctioned**; see the real-subject rule in Step 3 and `topic_profile.ai_face_policy`. 3. **`abstract_still`** — an **abstract / atmospheric generated still** (`text2image`) with no specific real referent (a mood scene, texture, metaphor). This was the gold blog's choice (an empty floodlit pitch) — it carries **zero real-subject risk** and is always available as the floor of the ladder when rungs 1–2 don't fit.

**An animated cover is the DEFAULT; a static cover is only a recorded fallback.** The **Hero role** (a Designer-team member, Stage 4.6 — see Team coordination) OWNS