Lane A: Direction & Discovery

Lane A feeds ulw-plan. It does not replace Prometheus, write a parallel plan, or start implementation. Its job is to translate designpowers discovery, research, persona, taste, debate, and state capabilities into prompt context that lets ulw-plan produce a decision-complete work plan with design-specific acceptance criteria.

Phase Owner

Capability	Source boundary	owner	Mapping
Discover the human problem, constraints, audience, success criteria, and early taste signals	Authored concept preserved from excluded raw `design-discovery`	`ulw-plan`	Inject a compact design brief request before Prometheus drafts tasks. Prometheus still decides the plan structure and asks only unresolved owner decisions.
Identify research gaps and inclusion-aware research methods	`research-planning`	`ulw-plan`	Convert research questions into plan discovery tasks or explicit assumptions with evidence requirements.
Define principles, experience map, positioning, and success metrics	Authored concept preserved from excluded raw `design-strategy`	`ulw-plan`	Add strategy constraints and design principles to the plan's acceptance criteria.
Represent the full ability spectrum	`inclusive-personas`	`ulw-plan`	Require personas and stress cases in plan inputs, including permanent, temporary, and situational contexts.
Calibrate current-project taste and quality bar	Authored concept preserved from excluded raw `design-taste`	`ulw-plan`	Add live taste constraints for this project only; do not import cross-project memory as a design rule.
Surface competing directions and trade-offs	`design-debate`	`ulw-plan`	When direction is ambiguous, ask Prometheus to present 2-3 options with accessibility and usability trade-offs before choosing defaults.
Curate references and inspiration without copying	`inspiration-scouting`	`ulw-plan`	Add evidence-backed inspiration notes as optional plan context, with "what to take" and "what to leave."
Maintain shared design state	Authored concept preserved from excluded raw `design-state`	`ulw-plan`	Read and update `.omo/frontend-design/state.md` as the OpenAgent-native state ledger.

Materialized agent references for this lane: design-strategist, design-scout, and inspiration-scout. They are role-reference material for OpenAgent-native prompts, not separately installed agents.

Prompt Injection

Prepend this lane to a ulw-plan planning prompt when the work is UI, UX, product surface, visual direction, design-system, accessibility, or user-flow shaped:

text

Load Lane A Direction & Discovery. Use designpowers only as design-process context.
`ulw-plan` remains the planner and must write the final `.omo/plans/<slug>.md`.

Before planning, extract or infer:
- problem statement, primary users, constraints, out-of-scope
- inclusive-personas ability spectrum and stress contexts
- design principles, success metrics, quality bar, and current-project taste signals
- research gaps that affect design decisions
- competing directions and trade-offs when direction is not settled
- existing `.omo/frontend-design/state.md` decisions, debt, and open questions

Add design-specific acceptance criteria to the Prometheus plan:
- each UI task names the persona or journey it serves
- each task has accessibility and cognitive-accessibility checks where relevant
- each visual decision traces to a design principle, taste signal, or design-system token
- deferred design questions are explicit owner decisions, not hidden assumptions

Evidence Requirements

Lane A passes only when the plan has inspectable design context, not vague intent. Required evidence:

.omo/plans/<slug>.md names the design brief, personas, success criteria, constraints, and owner decisions.
.omo/frontend-design/state.md contains or references the current brief summary, personas, design principles, taste signals, decisions log, open questions, and design debt register.
The plan's verification entries include real-surface QA expectations for UI work, plus persona or ability-spectrum checks for affected flows.
Any adopted default is named with the reason it was safe to default instead of asking the user.

Guardrails

ulw-plan owns the final plan. Lane A may enrich prompts, but it must not create a second planning lane or standalone design plan.
writing-design-plans content is used only as task-quality guidance; Prometheus remains the source of executable TODOs.
Cross-project memory is descriptive only and must not steer this project's direction unless the user states the preference now.
Direction debates pause for user decision when the trade-off is product-shaping, accessibility-critical, or hard to reverse.
No new scheduler, background automation, or project root design-state convention is introduced; state stays at .omo/frontend-design/state.md.

Pass / Fail Behavior

PASS when ulw-plan receives this lane context and produces a decision-complete plan whose tasks are design-aware, persona-aware, and evidence-bound.

FAIL when the plan skips inclusive-personas, buries accessibility as a final polish item, treats taste as generic style, writes a parallel design plan, or leaves design decisions for start-work workers to invent.