Illustration Plan

Turn the brief into a useful visual direction and semantic scene plan. Stop at planning: do not generate images, author SVG paths, or start production unless the user requested it. This skill works independently of the production skills.

Establish what is already decided

Read the brief and any supplied plan or reference. Inspect actual reference images when available; distinguish inspiration from an image that must be copied faithfully. For faithful conversion, extract the source's direction rather than inventing a new one. Preserve existing IDs, approved decisions, and source files.

Record the subject, intended use and display size, aspect ratio, background, required text or branding, and features that must remain unchanged. Do not turn a local edit into a new art-direction exercise. Update only affected decisions when continuing an existing plan.

Resolve visual direction

Separate mood, rendering language, and material rather than treating style names as mutually exclusive presets. A calm illustration can also be softly three- dimensional and glass-like. Read art-direction.md when the brief needs style exploration or feasibility decisions.

Ask only about missing choices that materially change the result. Use plain language or a few distinct directions when the user does not know design terms; do not require a questionnaire. Infer low-impact defaults from context and make important assumptions visible. If the user asks only for options, return those options and stop rather than silently selecting one and producing artwork.

For SVG output, balance appearance with editability and the intended renderer. Do not promise photographic fidelity or unsupported effects. The current bundled SVG tools support gradients and opacity but not SVG filters, including blur. Explain a consequential approximation or renderer requirement before adopting it.

Write the semantic plan

When a direction is chosen or production needs a handoff, write scene.json using scene-model.md. Keep simple plans short. Use version 2 with phase: "plan", a concise art_direction.description, a canvas, and meaningful element IDs and roles. Record only useful assumptions, palette hints, and spatial or preservation constraints.

Do not precompute path commands or control points. Leave actual SVG tag and parent fields unset: the author adds these and changes the phase to bound after constructing and inspecting the SVG. Planned relationships belong in plain-language constraints. A plan is not a geometry compiler or executable prompt.

Existing version 1 scenes remain supported bound maps; do not migrate them just to make a local edit. When deliberately adopting v2 art direction for an existing SVG, retain its mapping as bound and have the production workflow verify it. Do not demote a bound map to a plan or discard implementation details accidentally.

Validate and hand off

Resolve SKILL_DIR to this skill's directory. Python 3.10+ is sufficient:

python3 "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/validate_scene.py" scene.json

This checks the scene contract without needing an SVG or renderer. It does not judge design quality or verify actual SVG mappings. Report unresolved assumptions and summarize the selected direction in the user's language. Return the plan path when one was written; do not automatically call a production skill. When another workflow requested planning, hand back the plan and let that workflow continue.