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Aesthetic Lanes · v0.2.0 · 2026-06-03

Premium taste,
made plural.

Liquid-glass and Ghibli-grade anime are both “on brand” — because the brand is premium, on the chosen lane. Each lane below is a complete art direction: its own references, palette, prompt fragments, refusal list, and a quality bar the gate holds every output against. Not modes. Standards.

See the lanesThe engines that render them

Why lanes, not a style guide

One bar would force everything to look the same.

taste.md encodes one aesthetic — the premium dark editorial register the site lives in. But a music cover and an enterprise architecture diagram should not share a quality bar. So taste goes plural without going loose: each lane is fully specified, and the visual-creation gate checks output against the chosenlane's bar.

The refusal lists are the point. A lane is defined as much by what it rejects as by what it renders. That's what keeps anime from collapsing into generic AI tropes and liquid-glass from becoming a blur filter.

The six lanes

Each a complete premium standard.

Source of truth at lib/gen/lanes.ts. Pass --lane <id> to /gen and the router bakes this art direction into the prompt and the gate.

Liquid Glass

tech

Apple visionOS made still — frosted translucency, real refraction, specular depth. The premium default.

References
  • Apple visionOS / Liquid Glass material — The reference for depth, refraction, and parallax done with restraint.
  • Apple Pro product pages — Dramatic near-black staging, one hero object, motivated key light.
  • Linear app surfaces — Glass that frames structure, never decoration.
Best for
Page heroesProduct shotsOS/dashboard marketingCourse covers
Best engines
infogeniusgpt-image-2

Quality bar

  • Refraction reads as real glass, not a blur filter
  • A single, nameable hero subject
  • Depth is layered (foreground/subject/ground), not flat
  • Accents are emerald/cyan light, never decorative gradient
  • No banding in the dark gradient (grain present)

Refuses

  • Glassmorphism with nothing underneath to refract
  • Plastic or toy-like sheen instead of true glass
  • Pure black (#000) ground — use void #0a0a0b
  • More than one hero subject competing for focus

Anime / Cel

soul

Ghibli light and Makoto Shinkai skies — hand-painted warmth, volumetric god-rays, emotional composition.

References
  • Studio Ghibli production stills — The light and the composition. Cinema, not stock — already in taste.md.
  • Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, Weathering With You) — Hyper-detailed skies, lens bloom, saturated emotional color.
  • Kyoto Animation — Clean cel linework with soft ambient occlusion.
Best for
Music/album artStory coversSoul-spectrum socialNewsletter headers
Best engines
infogeniusfalgpt-image-2

Quality bar

  • Background is hand-painted, not a blurred photo
  • Light is volumetric and motivated, not a flat overlay
  • Linework is clean and confident, no malformed anatomy
  • Composition carries an emotion you can name
  • Reads as a film still, not a character sheet

Refuses

  • Generic "AI anime girl" tropes — character must serve a scene
  • 3D/photoreal output mislabeled as anime
  • Oversharpened linework with no painterly background
  • Saturation cranked past emotional truth into candy

Editorial

bridge

The New Yorker meets Kinfolk — typographic discipline, restrained palette, prose treated as art direction.

References
  • The New Yorker (online) — The discipline of editorial typography. Prose deserves art direction.
  • Kinfolk / Cereal magazine — Quiet, warm, generous margins, muted natural palette.
  • Monocle — Information density that still breathes.
Best for
Blog heroesContemplative railsLong-form headersQuote cards
Best engines
infogeniusgpt-image-2

Quality bar

  • Every element has a nameable editorial job
  • Palette stays muted and warm, never neon
  • Typography (if present) is disciplined and gridded
  • Negative space is generous, the page exhales
  • Reads like a magazine spread, not a slide

Refuses

  • Decoration with no editorial purpose
  • Neon or high-saturation accents (this lane is muted)
  • Walls of equal elements — editorial picks a focal point
  • AI-tone copy in any on-image text

Cinematic

bridge

A frame pulled from a film — anamorphic, motivated light, shallow depth, Deakins-grade restraint.

References
  • Roger Deakins cinematography — Motivated light, single source, restraint over spectacle.
  • Blade Runner 2049 — Atmosphere as subject, negative space, color as emotion.
  • Denis Villeneuve framing — Scale, stillness, the subject small in a vast frame.
Best for
Video B-rollTalking-head cutawaysCinematic heroesThumbnails
Best engines
higgsfieldfalinfogenius

Quality bar

  • Light has a single motivated source
  • Shadows are deep but retain detail
  • Depth of field isolates the subject
  • Grain present, no digital oversharpening
  • The frame could be paused from a film

Refuses

  • Flat, evenly-lit "snapshot" with no motivated source
  • HDR over-processing that kills shadow
  • Busy frame with no clear subject in the negative space
  • Digital oversharpening — film is organic

Noir Tech

tech

Dark product cinema — neon-on-void, emerald and cyan light cutting through black, the AI-architect register.

References
  • Vercel brand surfaces — The deepest-dark, most precise dev brand. Restraint at the core.
  • Apple "dark" product films — Black stage, single object, light as the only color.
  • Stripe technical illustration — Precision presented as inevitability.
Best for
ACOS/OS surfacesTechnical heroesArchitecture diagramsDev-tool marketing
Best engines
infogeniushiggsfieldgpt-image-2

Quality bar

  • Black stage is #0a0a0b with grain, never #000
  • Color comes only from emerald/cyan light
  • A single isolated subject
  • Geometry is precise, edges are crisp
  • Feels like a Vercel/Apple dark product film

Refuses

  • Daylight or warm palette (this is the cool tech register)
  • Pure black #000 — void is #0a0a0b
  • Clutter — noir-tech is one object on void
  • Color beyond the emerald/cyan light

Studio Organic

soul

The inside of a working studio — natural materials, golden hour, warm amber, human and lived-in.

References
  • Ableton Live studio photography — Pro-tools energy creators trust; instruments, evidence, warmth.
  • Kinfolk lifestyle — Warm natural materials, golden light, lived-in calm.
  • Teenage Engineering product world — Tactile objects, honest materials, playful restraint.
Best for
About/personal pagesMusic studio contentWorkshop warmthLifestyle social
Best engines
infogeniushiggsfieldfal

Quality bar

  • Light is warm golden-hour, never fluorescent
  • Materials are natural and tactile
  • Scene feels lived-in, not staged
  • Amber palette holds, no cold neon intrusion
  • Feels like a real working studio

Refuses

  • Cold or clinical light (this lane is warm)
  • Plastic or fluorescent "stock office" energy
  • Staged stock-photo people on laptops
  • Neon — this is the warm soul register

Pick a lane. Generate on it.

The router pairs the lane with the validated prompt pattern for your use-case and the engine that renders it best — then walks the lane's quality bar before anything ships.

Example

/gen "the ACOS orchestrator" \
  --use-case hero --lane noir-tech --format web-wide