Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship fewer polished features over more rough ones.
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Experience First
The product is the experience. Every technical decision either helps or hurts it. When implementation convenience conflicts with user delight, choose delight.
- Say no to 1,000 things (every feature, control, and option must earn its place)
- Ship less, ship better (polished experience with three features beats rough one with ten)
- Prototype before committing (design decisions are cheaper in throwaway HTML than production code)
- Sweat the details (transitions, alignment, spacing, feedback, error states)
- Tighten the core loop (every feature should serve the central workflow or get out of the way)
The user is whoever consumes the work. For a UI that is the end user. For a library or an internal API it is the colleague who imports it. The engineer who maintains the code next is a user too. Weigh their experience the same way, and explain impact from their seat.
Foundations should serve the experience, not the other way around. Foundational thinking governs the *sequence* of work; this principle governs the *target*.
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The line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260825.847374d, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_cneprgjnokpf2obt
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=edbertchan/catstack/principle-experience-first
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/839489e91b3f32048bff57eaccc58d979af585c1b50576fab5c658502c9c86ae
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
edbertchan/catstack · corpus/skills/cat-mode/SKILL.md · Edbert's personal working conventions, mined from real session history across his projects. Use when Edbert asks to…
edbertchan/catstack · corpus/skills/principle-assert-invariants-not-last-bug/SKILL.md · Apply after a bug ships past review or a passing grade/check: assert the general class of failure instead of patching…
edbertchan/catstack · corpus/skills/principle-bind-to-named-inventory/SKILL.md · Apply after an audit, scoring review, or a request for a "real classifier" / "less arbitrary weights" when existing…
edbertchan/catstack · corpus/skills/principle-build-the-lever/SKILL.md · Apply to any non-trivial work, not just bulk work: edits, migrations, analyses, checks. Build the tool that does it or…
edbertchan/catstack · corpus/skills/principle-encode-lessons-in-structure/SKILL.md · Apply when you catch yourself writing the same instruction a second time, or notice a recurring correction. Encode the…
edbertchan/catstack · corpus/skills/principle-fix-root-causes/SKILL.md · Apply when debugging. Trace each symptom to its root cause and fix it there; reproduce first, ask why until you reach…
edbertchan/catstack · corpus/skills/principle-flag-your-own-corrections/SKILL.md · Apply whenever you are about to admit fault in any wording — a fact, number, claim, or check you already stated turns…
edbertchan/catstack · corpus/skills/principle-generalize-from-rejection/SKILL.md · Apply when a mechanical gate — a lint, validator, blocked-command guard, or CI check — rejects your output for the same…
edbertchan/catstack · corpus/skills/principle-guard-the-context-window/SKILL.md · Apply when context is filling up: large outputs, long files, repeated reads, fan-out planning. Route bulk to subagents…
cursor/plugins · harness/pstack/claude-code/skills/principle-experience-first/SKILL.md · Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship…
cursor/plugins · pstack/skills/principle-experience-first/SKILL.md · Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship…
michael-denyer/pstack-claude · plugins/pstack/skills/principle-experience-first/SKILL.md · Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship…
backnotprop/pstack · skills/principle-experience-first/SKILL.md · Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship…
j-star-films-studios/vibecode-protocol-suite · assets/.agent/skills/engineering-principles/experience-first/SKILL.md · Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship…
creedants/pstack-t3 · skills/principle-experience-first/SKILL.md · Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship…
arjitj2/open-pstack · plugins/pstack/skills/principle-experience-first/SKILL.md · Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship…
painhardcore/pstack · .opencode/skills/principle-experience-first/SKILL.md · Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope tradeoffs come up. Choose user delight over implementation convenience; ship…
