---
name: principle-experience-first
description: "Apply when product, UX, or feature-scope trade-offs appear. Choose user delight over implementation convenience and ship fewer polished features."
license: Apache-2.0
---

# Experience First

When implementation convenience conflicts with user delight, choose delight.

**Why:** The user is whoever consumes the work. For a user interface that is the end user. For a library or internal interface it is the colleague who imports it. The next maintainer is a user too.

**Pattern:**
- Justify every feature, control, and option.
- Ship fewer polished features over more rough ones.
- Prototype before committing. Design decisions are cheaper in throwaway work.
- Get the details right, including transitions, alignment, spacing, and error states.
- Tighten the core loop. Every feature serves the central workflow or gets out of the way.

**Distinct from** foundational thinking, which governs the sequence of work. This governs the target.

Sources: none