← Design · c122
discovery.md
c122 — Discovery (2026-10-23)
Contents
What exists before any ingestion work: the formats on disk, what the design repo already does with early work, and how the cycle pages read today. Nothing here was moved, converted or committed.
1. Formats on disk
| Source | Where | What's there | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Procreate | iPad (local library) | the sketches themselves | ~/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~au~com~savageinteractive~procreate/Documents is empty. Procreate keeps its gallery on the iPad, not in iCloud, so nothing reaches this Mac unless it's exported. |
| Procreate PSD exports | ~/Downloads/Untitled_Artwork{,2,3,4,5}.psd | 5 files, Mar 2023 → Dec 2025 | Canvases from 1725² up to 15058×8905, so some are big boards and not single sketches. Layered PSD is Procreate's richest export; it keeps the layers. |
| Early PSD boards | ~/Desktop/m.QPT.sketches.early-deck-9.10-Recovered.psd (Sep 2023), 2024.01.24.psd, qpoint-design.psd (Mar 2026) | 3 files | The "early-deck" file is named as sketches, so it's probably Procreate → Photoshop. |
| Illustrator: history boards | inbox/design.marketing.history.3.ai; boards .history.1/.2 + design.dashboard.history.1.ai (cited as source-file) | 4 boards → 27 archive entries | These are already ingested (see §2). |
| Illustrator: cycle exports | cycles/c114…/illustrator/ (4 .ai + .jsx), c115…/illustrator/, c121…/illustrator/ (v1–v4) | 12 .ai | Made from pages by the /illustrator skill and then hand-edited. Today nothing brings the edited version back as a record. |
| Illustrator: other | brand/letterhead/…letterhead.ai, app.qpoint.io/…/2025.Q3/working.ai, X_Archive/…/dashboard-workshop.ai | 3+ | dashboard-workshop.ai (in the archived PIXI app) looks like early product work. |
| Figma | 2 file keys cited in repo (AGxdHnJ1cf847C7WRuybch, o2WxJJn1WkfESrDhTPSdVI) | unknown frame count | The Figma MCP is connected (screenshots, metadata, design context), so frames can be pulled by URL. We don't have a list of Figma files. |
| Sketch (the app) | ~/Desktop/app.qpoint.io - 3.0.sketch (Sep 2024), ~/Downloads/qpoint․box - 3․0.sketch (Mar 2024), iCloud Untitled.sketch | 3 | The "3.0" generation. Nothing here can read .sketch yet; it's a zip of JSON and previews, so its page previews can be extracted. |
| Old sites | X_Archive/ (webflow, craft, qpoint.io BAK) | PSDs, favicons, logos | Already partly archived under the 2022-q2 / 2023-q3 eras. |
Gap: the hand sketches, the thing this cycle names first, are not on this Mac. The first ingestion step is an export protocol on the iPad, not a script.
2. What we already do with early work
| Piece | What it does | Fit for c122 |
|---|---|---|
Visual archive (content/archive/, /archive, /archive skill, server/data/archive-meta.ts) | 74 entries. type: 47 screengrab, 24 sketch, 2 screenshot, 1 document. era: 47 seed, 24 ideation, 3 pre-seed. Frontmatter already has designer, source-file, design-phase, tool, gallery, narrative, plus a markdown body. | This is the natural home. But all 24 sketch entries are Illustrator history boards, not hand drawings, so type: sketch currently means "early", not "drawn". |
inbox/ | Drop zone the /archive skill reads | It holds 9 mixed files (a PDF case study, JSON schemas, txt dumps) that aren't all archive material. It needs a sweep. |
Timeline (/timeline, content/timeline-manual/) | 3 hand-written kickoff entries (Apr 2026) | This is a storytelling surface that's barely used. |
Capture system (/capture, shot programs, manifest.json, cycle atlas) | Screengrabs of live surfaces, grouped by thread, with subject for evolution | It covers built work only. Sketches and prototypes come before anything renders. |
Evolution (/cycles/evolution, c96) | One subject across cycles, as compare strips | This is the strongest storytelling form we have. It could start at the sketch instead of the first capture. |
| c97 gen-1 origin | Rebuilt a lost prototype from git + replay | Precedent for "archaeology" on early work |
/illustrator skill | page → editable .ai (one way) | We have no return path from .ai to a record. |
/document-cycle skill | close-out checklist (record, captures, archive, history) | Ingestion should become a step in it. |
/figma-to-vue, /figma-to-component | Figma → code | Not Figma → record |
3. The cycle pages today
Measured on the live dev server (:3000):
/cycles/design/c121: 7,300 px tall, ~2,270 words. In order: Why 72 words, Objective 85, Scope 48, Key Changes 522, Outcome 209, Decisions 662, Execution 42, then the Visual record and Artifacts. The first image shows up about 5,000 px down.- The page renders
CYCLE.mdsection by section (app/pages/cycles/[project]/[id]/index.vue), so commit hashes, file paths and D-numbers come through inline. - The header packs status, a long status note, created, last activity and mode into one line of 13 px text.
- Artifacts is a plain file list.
- The page renders
/cycles: 29,000 px tall, 221 links, ~4,000 words. A 100 px+ project heading leads; most cards are "text only" placeholders. Two view switches (Number ⇄ Week, Cards / Micro / List) and a project filter row sit above everything.
Diagnosis: the page is the record file, not a story. The record is right for the agents and for audit. The reader needs to know what changed, what it looks like and what was decided, in that order, and only then the ledger.
4. Patterns to consider
- Two layers per cycle: story and record. The story is a short
STORY.md(c107 already has one), or a## Storysection, with 3–7 beats. Each beat is an image plus 1–3 sentences. The page leads with the beats and folds the record (Key Changes, Decisions, Artifacts) below, collapsed. Hashes become small chips, not prose. - Beats, not galleries. A beat is a moment where the problem's shape changed: a sketch, the first prototype, a rejected direction, the shipped state. The same beat model serves cycle pages, evolution strips and the timeline.
- Sketch → prototype → page, as one subject. Give hand sketches and Illustrator/Figma frames the same
subjectkey the captures use. Then/cycles/evolution/<subject>runs from the napkin to production with no new UI. - Separate
typefromfidelity.typekeeps saying what the file is (sketch, prototype, screengrab…). Addfidelity: sketch | wireframe | mock | builtandmedium: procreate | illustrator | figma | sketch-app | paper. The 24 history boards then read correctly as Illustrator mocks. - Ingestion has three verbs: export → place → tell. Export is per medium: Procreate on the iPad → PNG or layered PSD to an iCloud Drive folder; Figma by URL through the MCP;
.aiartboards by script;.sketchpreviews by unzip. Place converts and drops the file inpublic/archive/<era>/as a draft entry. Tell is a short interview: what was the question, what did this try, what happened next. The interview is where the story comes from, so ask it before the metadata. - An iCloud drop folder (
iCloud Drive/Qpoint/inbox/) that the iPad writes to and the Mac reads. It replaces the AirDrop-to-Downloads path that leftUntitled_Artwork 1–5unnamed. - Close the Illustrator loop. When an
/illustratorexport comes back edited (c114, c121 v1–v4), export its artboards as PNG and attach them to the cycle as beats. - Mode: archaeology for the backlog (surfacing what already happened), then formula for the protocol.
5. Open questions for Mark
- Roughly how many Procreate sketches are there, and are they in Procreate stacks by project or by date?
- Which Figma files matter? There are two keys in the repo. Is there a team or project to list?
- Is the story for us (re-entry, method), for partners and new hires, or for the c8 video and talks? The answer sets the beat length and the tone.
- Should the cycle-page redesign cover only the detail page first, or the
/cyclesindex too? - Can sketches be published on the deployed site (behind Access), or are some private?