Experiments, tool tests, and workflow observations.

We wired agenticdesign.school so that DESIGN.md, the components folder, and the live pages continuously rebuild a file-backed OpenPencil canvas: token layers, shadcn primitives, custom components, and full-length page snapshots, regenerated on every watched change.

The same payload that rebuilds the OpenPencil canvas also targets Figma: a generated canvas payload, a local plugin that writes native frames and page snapshots, and a remote MCP path that is partly blocked. This note documents what worked, what is blocked, and the workaround that ships today.

A growing share of agent-assisted design work ships as a single self-contained HTML file: prototypes, slides, review boards, even motion studies. This note re-grounds that signal for designers — when an HTML artifact is the right deliverable, and when it quietly becomes unreviewable debt.

New agent tools can pull a live site's tokens, type scale, spacing, and brand assets straight from the terminal. That is genuinely useful for audits, migrations, and competitive teardowns — and it raises rights questions a designer should answer before the extracted system touches production work.

What field notes are, how they differ from the long-form articles, and the five-part spine every note follows: signal, what we tried, what changed, evidence, next test.