warden_skill

Overview

This skill enforces the V.A.I.R.E. quality standard as a pre-release UX quality gate. It inspects Value, Agency, Identity, Resilience, and Echo across a feature, flow, or release and issues an evidence-based PASS/FAIL verdict. Remediation guidance and clear handoffs are produced when the gate fails.

How this skill works

Warden audits a target against a 5-dimension scorecard, scoring each dimension 0–3 and documenting location-specific evidence for every check. It detects anti-patterns, verifies five-state resilience for UI states, reviews exit experiences, and enforces a rule: every dimension must be ≥ 2 to pass. The output is a scorecard, blocking issues, and a next-action handoff (launch or fixes).

When to use it

• Before any release or feature launch requiring UX quality validation
• When you need a binary pass/fail gating decision based on human-centered criteria
• During design validation to check prototypes against VAIRE requirements
• When cross-functional teams need a single source of truth for UX readiness
• To audit metrics and ensure KPIs align with guardrails and ethical constraints

Best practices

• Provide full scope: target pages/flows, level (L0/L1/L2), and docs before evaluation
• Collect persona walkthroughs and metric snapshots to support Identity and Echo checks
• Treat any anti-pattern (dark patterns, forced continuity) as automatic fail
• Require concrete evidence: location, screenshot or step, and reproduction notes
• Define owners and re-evaluation criteria in the handoff for each blocking issue

Example use cases

• Pre-release gate for a subscription funnel to ensure no coercive practices or hidden costs
• Design review of onboarding flow to confirm time-to-value and progressive disclosure
• Audit of error and offline states to validate resilience and recovery paths
• Exit experience assessment for transactional flows to ensure clear confirmations and next steps
• Metric alignment review to check that KPIs don’t incentivize manipulative UX