Design it first — concept sheet and storyboard

Drawing from nothing asks one model to invent a character, a pose, a camera, a palette and the placement of every pixel, all at once. It is the step where generated pixel art falls apart. Split the job:

• An image model owns the design — the look of the character, the key poses, the storyboard. That is what those models are good at.
• You own the pixel interpretation — reading that design into a canvas, a palette and a set of shapes, then drawing it with the rules.

The reference is a guide for proportion, pose and colour masses. It is never the pixels: a concept downscaled onto the canvas is anti-aliased mush, and no amount of cleanup turns it into pixel art (see What this must not do).

The user gave you	Mode	Start at
Only words ("a fire mage with a walk cycle")	Creative — spec → prompt → offer	step 1
An image — concept art, a sketch, a screenshot, a sheet	Reference — read it, import it	step 5
An edit to art that already exists	neither — use aseprite:fix	—

aseprite:brief has already fixed canvas size, palette, view, light, outline and destination. Do not ask any of it again. The prompt needs colours, not a palette's name: for a preset, read its hex values from the knowledge://palettes resource (no document has to exist yet); for an open sprite, palette op="get".

Short, concrete, in working notes. Everything the image model and, later, you will be held to:

• Subject and scenario — who or what, one line of personality, and for an animation what happens from the first frame to the last.
• Target — canvas W×H, how many pixels tall the subject stands, view and facing, light direction, outline style.
• Silhouette — heads tall, the two or three shapes that must read at 1× (a pointed hat, a long coat, an oversized sword).
• Palette — the exact hex list with roles: outline, skin ramp, cloth ramp, metal ramp, accent. Its size is the ceiling.
• Animation — cycle, frame count, one line per key pose, timing in ms, loop or one-shot. Plan it with rules://05-animation (or the animation-director agent) — the storyboard panels are these keys.
• Must not — text, background scenery, props that are not in the brief, camera changes between panels.

In English whatever language the conversation is in — image models follow English prompts best. It has to produce something you can slice with reference op="import" grid=…, so the layout contract is not optional: equal panels, one row, same scale and ground line in every panel, flat background, no text.

For a character or prop — a concept sheet:

Pixel art character concept sheet of {subject}: {one-line personality}.
{view} view, {facing}, light from the {light}. Low-resolution pixel art look:
the character is about {height}px tall on a {W}×{H} sprite, hard pixel edges,
no anti-aliasing, no gradients, {outline style} outline.
Palette — use only these colours: {hex list with roles}.
Layout: {n} panels in a single horizontal row, equal width, evenly spaced,
the same character at the same scale in every panel, feet on the same ground
line: {panel 1: front | panel 2: side | panel 3: back | …}.
Flat plain {#ffffff or #808080} background, no scenery, no text, no labels,
no borders, no watermark.

For an animation — a storyboard, one panel per frame:

Pixel art animation storyboard of {subject} performing a {cycle}.
{view} view, facing {facing}, camera locked, light from the {light}.
Low-resolution pixel art look: the character is about {height}px tall on a
{W}×{H} sprite, hard pixel edges, no anti-aliasing, {outline style} outline.
Palette — use only these colours: {hex list with roles}.
Layout: exactly {N} panels in a single horizontal row, equal width, evenly
spaced, identical character size and ground line in every panel — each panel
is one frame, left to right:
1. {key pose 1}
2. {key pose 2}
…
{N}. {key pose N}
Flat plain {background} background, no motion lines, no text, no numbers,
no borders, no watermark.

Ask for both when the request is an animated character: the sheet fixes the design, the storyboard fixes the motion. Fill every {…} — a prompt with a placeholder left in it produces a generic character.

Put the prompt in a single fenced code block, so it copies in one action. If the brief is still awaiting confirmation, this is the same message — decisions, prompt, choice — not a second round trip. Then offer exactly these options, through the harness's question tool when it has one (Claude Code's AskUserQuestion, omp's ask), otherwise as a numbered list:

1. "I'll generate references" — the user pastes the prompt into any image model (ChatGPT, Gemini, Midjourney, …) and sends the result back. Ask for the image as a file path — saved to disk, or dragged into the chat where the harness turns that into a path — because reference import reads files, not pixels you have only seen in the conversation.
2. "Continue without references" — go straight to drawing from the spec. The spec still binds: it is the design now.

If your harness has an image-generation tool, add it as a third option ("you generate it"), never as a silent default. When the user chooses option 1, stop and wait for the image; do not start drawing in the meantime.

Look at the image first, then write down what you read — before any pixel is placed. This is where the design becomes decisions you can check against:

{
  "canvas": [32, 32],
  "view": "front-3/4",
  "source": { "path": "…/storyboard.png", "panels": 4, "panelSize": [256, 256] },
  "silhouette": { "head": [11, 3, 20, 11], "torso": [10, 12, 22, 22], "staff": [23, 2, 25, 30] },
  "landmarks": { "eyesY": 8, "waistY": 18, "feetY": 30 },
  "palette": { "outline": "#1d2b53", "robe": ["#7e2553", "#ff004d"], "skin": ["#ab5236", "#ffccaa"] },
  "frames": ["contact, staff forward", "down, 1px lower", "pass, 1px higher", "up"],
  "deviations": ["belt buckle and runes dropped — 1px at this size is noise"]
}

• Coordinates are target pixels, not source pixels: scale what you see down to the canvas and write the result. Bounding boxes are [x0, y0, x1, y1].
• Palette: sample the panel — reference op="sample_palette" path=… region=… — then map each colour mass onto the sprite palette. Do not adopt the sampled colours; an image model's "four colours" are forty.
• Deviations are the design decisions the pixel version makes on purpose: what does not survive at this size and is simplified or dropped. Listing them here is what lets the review loop tell a deliberate change from a miss.
• No reference (the user chose to continue)? Write the same PixelSpec from the art spec alone. It is still the thing the drawing is checked against.

After aseprite:new has made the document:

• A concept sheet — import the panel for the view you are drawing: reference op="import" path=… region={x, y, width, height} (source pixels).
• A storyboard — create the frames first (frame op="add" count=N-1), then one call puts panel i on frame i of a single reference layer: reference op="import" path=… grid={columns: N, rows: 1}. Panels that are not evenly spaced: one region import per panel, each with its frame.
• look op="compare" on frame 1: the left half is what you imported. Wrong panel, or the character cut off? Fix the region now, not after drawing.

aseprite:draw (or aseprite:animate for a storyboard) does the work, over the reference. The loop that makes a reference pay off:

1. look op="compare" — reference left, art right, same scale.
2. Name the three to five largest mismatches — silhouette, proportion, pose, placement of colour masses. Not "improve it": a list.
3. Fix only those, in one draw call.
4. Compare again. Stop when every remaining mismatch is a listed deviation.

Two rounds is normal. Remove the reference layer before export (reference op="remove") — aseprite:export checks for it.

• Pixelize the concept. Importing the reference and calling it the art, copying its pixels through read_pixels into draw, or recolouring it into the palette all produce the same AI mush. Draw the sprite; use the reference.
• Ask twice. The spec, the prompt and the choice are one message.
• Hide the prompt in prose, translate it, or leave {placeholders} in it.
• Draw while waiting for a reference the user said they would send.
• Treat the reference as more authoritative than the brief. If the image model changed the palette, the view or added a cape nobody asked for, the brief wins — note it as a deviation.

aseprite:brief before this, aseprite:draw and aseprite:animate after it. rules://03-silhouette-and-form for reading proportions, rules://01-palette-and-color for mapping colours onto a palette, rules://05-animation for key poses. rules://36-character-design for shape language and silhouette, rules://37-views-and-directions for the camera, rules://91-composition-and-scenes for anything with a background, and the subject rows of skill://studio.