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Alloy and a Design Intent System ​

Within the The Alloy Ecosystem, a future design intent system should own experience intent. Alloy references and combines that intent during Formation Brief compilation, and does not duplicate it.

Experience intent ​

The design intent system should own interaction behaviour, flows, affordances, tone, visual language, accessibility, and user experience constraints. Possible design-owned model elements include:

  • Interaction design constraints.
  • UI flows.
  • Screens.
  • Visual language.
  • Affordances.
  • Tone.
  • Accessibility and usability expectations.
  • Experience-level evidence.

How Alloy relates to it ​

Just as Alloy references product intent from Epilogue Tracker rather than re-expressing it, Alloy should not duplicate design intent either. It should reference and combine it during Formation Brief compilation, so that a run is shaped by experience constraints alongside engineering intent — without Alloy becoming the system of record for design.

Until such a system exists, this relationship is a forward-looking placeholder in the ecosystem: a clearly reserved layer so that experience intent has a home of its own, and Alloy's compilation step is ready to draw on it.

Source: Integration Architecture §5.4; Product Brief §4 (design intent mention).

Alloy owns meaning. Foundry owns execution.