gentle-ai-tui-design

1## Activation Contract
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3Use for designing, reviewing or refining a terminal interface (panels, rails, status bars, cards, prompts), especially Gentle Shell. The target feel is an IDE inside a terminal: dense, calm, developer-first, never a costume of retro TUI chrome. Not for web pages (use `gentle-design`).
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5## Hard Rules
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7- Never judge a terminal UI from code or memory: capture it (`references/visual-loop.md`) and look at the PNG before and after every change.
8- Read `references/terminal-craft.md` before any UI edit; it is the floor, not a suggestion.
9- Operate mode: familiarity beats expression. Use IDE vocabulary (panes, tree, tabs, status bar, command palette); the brand lives in palette, density and one signature move.
10- Every row costs. Hierarchy comes from color role, weight and alignment, never from blank rows or nested boxes.
11- Say each fact once per screen. Data shown in the header never repeats in a panel.
12- One command, one target. Refinement preserves the system; redesign replaces it. Never polish a look being thrown away.
13- Rendering stays cheap: no I/O or recomputation in render paths, cache keyed on everything that changes output (style, width, theme).
14- Mockups (via `gentle-design`) must be terminal-expressible: monospace cell grid in `ch` units, only fg/bg colors, bold/dim/italic/underline/strikethrough, box-drawing and glyphs.
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16## Decision Gates
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18| Ask | Command | Load |
19|-----|---------|------|
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