Artifact Flow

Artifact Directory

Each domain stores artifacts in a dotfile directory named after the domain. The Design plugin uses .metapowers/design/:

.metapowers/design/<component-name>/
  empathize-brief.md
  component-contract.md
  ideation-options.md
  prototype-notes.md
  test-report.md

This directory is created in your project root when you first run a design skill.

Phase Dependencies

Artifacts form a dependency chain — each phase reads from previous phases:

empathize → define → ideate → prototype → test
   ↓          ↓        ↓         ↓          ↓
 brief    contract   options    notes     report

Quality gates enforce this ordering. You can run phases out of order with --skip-checks, but the output quality may suffer without prior context.

Artifact Format

All artifacts are Markdown files with structured sections. They are designed to be:

• Human-readable — review and edit them directly
• Machine-consumable — subsequent skills parse them for context
• Version-controllable — commit them alongside your code

Gitignore

The .metapowers/design/ directory is typically gitignored since artifacts are project-specific working files. Add it to your .gitignore:

.metapowers/design/

The Biome config already ignores .metapowers/design/ for linting and formatting.