unslop — remove the vibecoded look at the root, prove the crafted floor

Someone says "this looks vibecoded" or "make it feel premium and crafted with care". unslop runs one arc over the whole codebase and ends with a PR whose gate is green or whose remaining reds are named and handed to a human — never a cosmetic pass over the pages someone happened to open.

The one rule

Fix the class, not the example — and prove it on the rendered result.

A default (Inter, Lucide, purple-to-black, rounded-2xl, glass cards, em dashes) is declared in one place and consumed in forty. Edit the one place. Then screenshot at 1280 and 390 and run the gate; reasoning is not validation. Twenty-six of the thirty tells are surface and a prompt removes them; the four that are absence of substance (no real demo, no loading states, no TOS, no privacy policy) are removed only by the real product — the gate keeps them red until a human makes them true.

Deterministic core (scripts/)

Script	What it does	Exit
scripts/unslop_survey.py <repo> [--detect] --json OUT --md OUT	Full-repo inventory: framework + routes; roots (each default → declaring file + blast radius + the single fix); copy tells; substance (legal, async-state coverage, placeholders, testimonials, pricing scaffold, product evidence, motion, design docs); impeccable findings if --detect	0 / 2 usage
scripts/unslop_gate.py <repo> [--manifest M | --detect] --evidence DIR [--waivers W] [--profile] [--strict]	The crafted floor as PASS/WARN/FAIL per check (direction.authored, detector.clean, fonts.deliberate, icons.single-system, tokens.*, copy.*, substance.*, motion.reduced-motion, evidence.render); waivers need a reason ≥20 chars	0 clear · 1 FAIL · 2 usage

Stdlib Python, no edits to the target, any framework (Next app/pages, SvelteKit, Astro, Nuxt, Remix, Vite+React, static HTML). The detector is composed: it is found in the installed impeccable skill or via npx impeccable detect; when absent the survey says unavailable and the gate WARNs — it never pretends classes A–C were checked. Override with UNSLOP_DETECTOR="node /path/detect.mjs".

The arc (references/arc.md — read it before running)

0 Snapshot → 1 Survey → 2 Direction (decide once, DESIGN.md) → 3 Root plan
→ 4 Fix at root → 5 Structure + copy → 6 Class D (states · legal · evidence · truth)
→ 7 Render + inspect at 1280/390 → 8 Gate → 9 PR + report

Never hand control back mid-arc. Never ask "what style do you want?" — infer the direction from the product's own material and state it in DESIGN.md; if there is none, choose the quietest committed world and say so. Never fabricate substance (policy text, testimonials, demos) to turn a red green.

Composition map (bstack-native names; generic behavior in parentheses)

Step	Composes
Survey / gate	scripts/unslop_survey.py, scripts/unslop_gate.py (this skill)
Mechanical tells (classes A–C)	impeccable detector detect --json <dir> (64 rules) + its per-edit hook
Direction	impeccable init / document / new-work; Anthropic frontend-design; broomva-design DESIGN.md as the house example of stated decisions
Root fixes	impeccable extract, typeset, colorize, layout, quieter; references/root-cause-playbook.md
Structure + copy	impeccable shape, distill, clarify, polish
Class D	impeccable harden, onboard + a human for what must be true
Render evidence	Playwright / agent-browser screenshots (bstack P11 Empirical)
Audit	impeccable audit (a11y / perf / responsive) — never re-implemented
Ship	bstack P4 Pipeline, P20 Cross-Review for design-system-touching diffs

References

• references/arc.md — the nine steps, with what each composes and the anti-rationalizations.
• references/crafted-floor.md — the operational definition of "crafted" (typography · spacing · color · motion · states · copy · a11y · perf · consistency · trust), every rule tagged [M] machine-checkable or [J] judgment, sourced (Kowalski, Freiberg, Linear, Comeau, Refactoring UI, Butterick, Rams, Apple, Material, GOV.UK, Vercel, Stripe, NN/g, Fogg, WCAG, web.dev), contradictions resolved explicitly.
• references/tells.md — the dated, regenerable list of current LLM defaults (the reel's 30 → class → machine check), Vercel's reject list, the no-ai-slop prose-pattern catalog (dated), and why a static ban-list decays.
• references/root-cause-playbook.md — per root kind: where the default lives, the one edit, the order.

Anti-rationalization

Excuse	Reality
"The pages I opened look fine now."	Traversal is the point. Run the survey; roots[] and routes[] are the scope, not your tabs.
"I replaced Inter in every component."	You fixed the example. Re-survey: the old face's site count must reach zero by one edit at the root.
"The impeccable detector is clean, done."	Classes A–C only. The gate's other half is substance + render evidence; a clean detector with lorem and no privacy route is still slop.
"I'll generate a privacy policy / testimonials to pass the gate."	That turns an absence-of-substance tell into a fake-content tell. Leave it red, hand it to a human, name it in the PR.
"The tell list says no Lucide, so I'll switch icon sets."	The list detects, it doesn't ban. Keep it and state the decision in DESIGN.md; the gate reads it.
"It renders fine, I can tell from the JSX."	Screenshots at 1280 and 390 or it did not happen (P11).
"Should I ask which direction they want?"	No. Infer from the product's material, state it in DESIGN.md, proceed. A stated quiet choice beats an unstated loud default.

Validation (skill self-test)

• python3 -m pytest tests/ green (survey + gate, both polarities, waivers, strict, evidence, CLI, and one regression per P20 finding — every case a false positive or fail-open a reviewer hit on a real repo).
• Dogfood: scripts/unslop_survey.py <a real repo> --detect produces roots with a root_file; the detector status is ok when impeccable is installed and unavailable (never a silent pass) when not.
• unslop_gate.py on the crafted fixture exits 0 with evidence; on the sloppy fixture exits 1 naming fonts.deliberate, substance.legal, substance.placeholders, motion.reduced-motion among others.
• skillify gate: skillify_check.py skills/design/unslop --run-tests exits 0.

Provenance

BRO-2184. Origin: /checkit on an Instagram reel ("30 reasons your site looks vibecoded", 2026-08-15, 34k likes) → research/entities/pattern/vibecoded-tells.md (the 26-surface / 4-substance finding) → this skill. Research synthesis: research/notes/2026-08-18-unslop-what-others-point-to-synthesis.md.