House Style

There's a difference you can feel but not always name between an app that works and an app that feels finished — the empty page that says something kind instead of nothing, the form that doesn't jump around on a phone, the error that apologizes instead of shouting. Restaurants call this the house style: nobody points at it, everybody senses it.

In First Kitchen Lesson 9 you gave your agent eyes and had it look at your page. Today it does something better: it uses your app. Fills the form, submits a card, checks the wall, tries the pass — a full meal, as your most thorough guest. Watching your agent test what it built, end to end, with its own eyes, is the closest this course gets to showing you what professional quality work actually looks like.

What you'll plate today

A finished-feeling card box: inspected by an agent-guest at desk and phone size, rough edges fixed, empty states and error moments handled with grace — shipped and verified.

Ingredients

• Your live card box, pass and all
• Playwright MCP from First Kitchen Lesson 9 (claude mcp list should show it — if not, that lesson's install is two minutes)
• About 35 minutes

Cook

1. Send in the inspector

Be my first thorough guest. Using your browser, visit my live
card box and have the full meal:

1. Read the front page as a stranger — is it obvious what this
   place is and what I'm supposed to do?
2. Fill in the card form and actually submit it — sign it
   "Inspector". Confirm your card appears on the wall.
3. Resize to phone width and do it all again.
4. Try to visit /pass without the code. (You should be refused.
   Tell me if you aren't.)

Report everything odd, ugly, cramped, confusing, or broken as a
numbered list — harshest first. Just the list; fix nothing yet.

Read the list slowly. Some findings will sting a little — the button that clips on phones, the wall that reads badly with long notes. Good. An inspector who finds nothing wasn't inspecting.

2. Taste the edges guests actually hit

The inspector saw the sunny path. Now order the shadows — the three moments every real guest eventually meets:

Three more tastes, with your browser, on the live app:

1. The empty room: what does a brand-new visitor see when the
   wall has no cards? (If it's blank, that's a finding.)
2. The mistake: submit the form with the note left empty. Is the
   response kind, or a shrug?
3. The essay: submit a really long note. Does the wall survive it?

Add what you find to the list.

These three — empty, wrong, and too much — are the classic edges of every app you'll ever build. Learning to ask about them is a bigger deal than tonight's fixes.

3. Fix in rounds, not heaps

Resist "fix everything." You're the chef; the inspector advises:

From the full list, here are the ones I care about, in order:
[pick 3–5 numbers]. Fix those. Skip [any you disagree with] —
here's why: [one line each]. Test locally, then ship, then
verify each fix live with your browser, at both sizes.

Disagreeing with a finding, out loud, with a reason — that's not attitude, that's being the chef. The agent inspects; you decide what the house style is.

4. Make it law

Add a rule to CLAUDE.md: after every ship, do a quick guest pass
with your browser — front page, one real submission, phone width
— and tell me what you saw before we call it done. Then make a
save point: "house style".

From now on, nothing leaves your kitchen unverified. You've had this rule since First Kitchen for pages; today it grew hands and started filling in forms.

When it burns

• The browser tools aren't there — /exit, claude, and check claude mcp list. Missing entirely? First Kitchen Lesson 9 has the two-minute install.
• The inspector "sees" an old version of the page — caches again: "hard-refresh before inspecting." You met this dragon in First Kitchen; it never really dies.
• Its report is vague ("looks fine overall") — vague in, vague out applies to inspections too. Re-order with the numbered-list-harshest-first framing; agents match the precision you demand.
• The Inspector's card is still on your wall — it earned its place tonight, but: pass → remove. Your moderation button, doing honest work.
• A fix broke something else — the round system is your friend: restore the save point, re-order the round with one fix at a time, verify between. Small bites, like Lesson 10 of First Kitchen taught you when things spiraled.

Order up

□ Your agent ate a full meal at your app — desk and phone — and filed a report
□ Empty, wrong, and too-much all got tasted, and handled
□ You picked the fixes AND vetoed at least one finding, with a reason
□ Every shipped fix was verified live by the agent's own eyes
□ CLAUDE.md has the guest-pass rule; save point "house style"

Next up — Lesson 08: The Regulars. Inspection by agent is rigor; the real menu changes come from humans. Next lesson you ask your actual guests one question, ship what they ask for, and learn the loop that turns visitors into regulars.

Stuck on a step? Question box below.