git:20260621.2caaecc to git:20260905.f7824ba

3 added, 9 removed. Audit A to A.

---

name: hero-image-art-direction

- description: "Art-direct website hero imagery. Use for landing pages, homepages, product pages, portfolios, venue sites, editorial pages, and premium first viewports that need real or generated media, text-safe composition, responsive focal points, visual hierarchy, contrast, aspect ratios, and anti-generic image selection."

+ description: "Compose text-safe responsive hero media."

---

# Hero Image Art Direction

Use this skill to make the first viewport immediately specific, inspectable, and composed.

## Workflow

1. Inspect the project, media assets, framework image/video APIs, responsive breakpoints, accessibility requirements, and verification commands.

2. Read [Hero Image Art Direction Guide](references/hero-image-art-direction-guide.md) for detailed direction before changing visuals or code.

3. Define the media's job: proof, desire, navigation, instruction, atmosphere, conversion, or accessibility.

4. Implement with stable dimensions, responsive crops, useful fallbacks, and real content hierarchy.

5. Inspect rendered desktop and mobile states, then refine crop, contrast, loading, labels, captions, and polish.

- ## Always Protect

+ ## Scoped execution

- - Inspect before coding: framework, image/video components, asset folders, CMS or source content, styling system, responsive breakpoints, performance checks, accessibility checks, and available browser QA commands.

- - Treat images and video as content strategy, not decoration: every asset should reveal the real product, person, venue, object, interface, proof, or mood needed by the page.

- - Avoid generic stock-like visuals, dark blurred filler, random gradients, and media that crops away the subject users need to inspect.

- - Plan desktop, mobile, high-density, slow-network, reduced-motion, no-autoplay, failed-asset, and screen-reader states.

- - Reserve layout space with dimensions, aspect-ratio, CSS constraints, or framework image components to avoid layout shift.

- - Use meaningful alt text for informative images, empty alt for decorative images, captions/transcripts/tracks for media that needs them, and visible text for critical information.

- - Before delivery, inspect rendered desktop and mobile media crops, verify assets load without 404s, and run available lint/build/test/browser checks.

+ Apply the [shared web contract](../website-operating-rules/references/scoped-web-contract.md) once when execution crosses phases; reuse it if already read. Load only the specialist guidance relevant to the requested surface and deliverable.