Premium Design Language

Tunes existing type to premium optical standards - tracking and line-height computed from font size instead of set as constants, the two-cut text/display split, the 600-weight ceiling, and the tuned-face spend ladder. Use when someone asks "why do my headlines look loose", "what letter-spacing should a 64px headline use", "my display type reads like an enlarged paragraph", "is bold too heavy for headings", "tune the tracking and leading on this hero", or when a layout uses a good typeface that still looks default. Do NOT use to choose typefaces or build the modular type scale itself - use typography-system instead; for animated type, use kinetic-typography; for page-level emphasis and layout, use visual-hierarchy.

Disciplines layout space - the two-tier spacing system (4/8px micro-scale capped at 64px, then section cliffs at 96px and above), reading measure of 45-75 characters, container and target minimums, a grid-violation budget of at most one deliberate break per view, and smallest-surface-first verification at favicon and thumbnail scale. Use when someone asks "how much space should go between sections", "our spacing feels cramped and random", "how wide should the content column be", "does this design survive at thumbnail size", "why does this page feel like one continuous scroll of stuff", or a layout uses the same medium gap everywhere. Do NOT use to decide what the eye should see first within one view - use visual-hierarchy instead; for breakpoint-by-breakpoint adaptation specs, use responsive-spec.

Enforces premium color restraint on an existing palette at the client charter's recorded values - a default budget of one chromatic accent at 10 percent coverage or less with an operational coverage-measurement procedure, neutrals hue-tinted 2-5 percent toward the brand hue, near-black ladders with a 4-stop text ramp for dark surfaces, and the stage-versus-UI rule for pure black. Use when someone asks "why does our color feel cheap", "how much accent color is too much", "should our dark mode be pure black", "our dark theme looks muddy", "make our grays feel branded", or a composition has saturated color competing in every section. Do NOT use to create a brand palette from scratch - use color-palette-builder instead; for WCAG contrast and color-blindness remediation, use color-accessibility.

Governs surfaces, depth, and effect scarcity - glass on sticky chrome and overlays only (one layer maximum, with a contrast fallback), dark-mode elevation via a 4-step surface ladder and 1px hairlines instead of shadows, whisper-quiet light-mode shadows, radius scaled to element size with concentric nesting, and a budget of one gradient zone and one signature effect per page. Use when someone asks "should this card use a shadow or a border", "when is glassmorphism acceptable", "what border radius should buttons versus cards use", "our nested corners look crooked", "how do we show elevation in dark mode", or a page stacks blur, gradients, grain, and glow at once. Do NOT use for palette and accent decisions - use premium-color-discipline instead; for icon construction and stroke rules, use icon-system.

Sets the physics that make motion feel premium - the productive/expressive duration split, near-critically damped spring-ratio defaults with a runtime translation table, enter/exit asymmetry, translate-distance caps, stagger budgets, and the arbitration rules for bounce, scroll pinning, and camera moves. Use when someone asks "should this animation bounce or settle", "what spring damping should our brand use", "can a marketing animation run longer than product UI motion", "why does default ease feel synthetic", "is a long hero reveal too slow", or motion works technically but feels templated. Do NOT use to build the duration and easing token system - use animation-system instead; for one component's exact keyframes and handoff, use motion-spec; for animating text, use kinetic-typography.

Rewrites marketing and product claims into the premium register - every quantified claim carries a number, a baseline, and a footnote, headlines run 7 words or fewer in sentence case with a concrete noun, an intensifier lint bans hype words without adjacent numerals, and voice is defined as X-not-Y spectra. Use when someone asks "make this headline sound premium", "remove the hype from this copy", "does this claim need a number", "our copy sounds like every other startup", "rewrite this without buzzwords", or copy leans on intensifiers instead of evidence. Do NOT use to write a full landing page section by section - use landing-page-copy instead; for auditing an in-product copy corpus, use ux-writing-audit; for the brand voice document itself, use brand-guidelines.

Diagnoses why a design reads as generated or template-built - scans the artifact against a 22-row anti-pattern table where every row names the tell, the perceptual mechanism behind it, and the skill that fixes it, then returns a severity-ranked, slug-routed fix list. Use when someone asks "why does this design feel AI-generated", "this looks like a template and I cannot say why", "what makes this page feel generic", "find the tells in this landing page", "why does this feel cheap even though it is clean", or work passes technical review yet reads mass-produced at a glance. Do NOT use for a general critique of usability and flow - use design-critique instead; to set up the design language that prevents the tells, use premium-design-foundations.