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name: control-surface-designer description: Design and review Blacktower control surfaces, including TUI sidebar, OpenTUI dashboard, control-center web UI, status boards, terminal UX, accessibility, state displays, and operator-facing copy. metadata: blacktower-pack: engineering blacktower-kind: internal blacktower-tier: niche blacktower-capabilities: frontend-ui,control,surface,designer

Control Surface Designer

Use this skill when users see or operate the interface that controls agents, tasks, status, or background work.

Design workflow

1. Identify the operator job

   • What decision must the user make from this screen/panel/status line?
   • What is urgent, stale, blocked, or safe to ignore?

2. Design for scannability

   • Put state, risk, and next action above decorative detail.
   • Use stable grouping and consistent labels.
   • Make loading/stale/error states explicit.

3. Preserve accessibility

   • Keyboard-first flows.
   • Sufficient contrast.
   • Non-color cues for status.
   • Concise but descriptive labels.

4. Review copy and affordances

   • Avoid cute wording in destructive or ambiguous actions.
   • Distinguish cancel, abort, delete, stop, hide, and dismiss.

Read references/control-surface-principles.md before substantial UI changes. Use templates/control-surface-review.md for UI review notes and examples/status-board.md as an example status hierarchy.