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gnome-hig-audit

Audit a GTK4/libadwaita app for GNOME HIG compliance across 12 categories (text, icons, layout, shortcuts, accessibility, color, dialogs, responsiveness, CSS, GSettings, i18n), then fix violations category by category. Use when asked to audit, review, polish, or "make HIG-compliant" a GNOME app, or before a release/Flathub submission.

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Skill: HIG Audit & Fix Loop

Audit a GTK4/libadwaita codebase against the GNOME HIG, produce a violation report, then fix violations in priority order with one commit per category.

Context budget: do NOT read the whole repo or the whole spec. For each category, read only the files listed in its "Reference" column, and only scan source files matched by its grep patterns.

Step 0 — Inventory (cheap, do once)

# UI definitions
find . -name "*.ui" -o -name "*.blp" | grep -v build
# Source language
ls src/ | head
# Schema + metainfo + desktop file
find . -name "*.gschema.xml" -o -name "*.metainfo.xml*" -o -name "*.desktop*" | grep -v build

If there are no .ui/.blp files, UI is built in code — grep source for icon_name, set_title, add_css_class etc. instead.

Step 1 — Audit categories

Run the categories below. Each is independent — parallelize across sub-agents if your harness supports it (give each sub-agent ONLY its row, the grep patterns, and the one reference file — not this whole repo).

#CategoryFind candidates withReference (read only this)
1Text stylegrep -rn 'title|label|tooltip' *.blp *.uireference/hig/writing-style.md + tokens/typography.md
2Buttonsgrep -rn 'Button|icon-name' *.blp *.uireference/hig/buttons.md
3Layout/marginsgrep -rn 'margin|spacing|width-request' *.blp *.uitokens/spacing.md
4Iconsgrep -rhoE '[a-z0-9-]+-symbolic' -r . | sort -uvalidate with scripts/check-icons.sh
5Shortcutsgrep -rn 'accel|<primary>|<Control>' src/reference/hig/keyboard.md
6Accessibilityicon-only buttons without tooltip-text; DrawingArea without accessible rolereference/hig/accessibility.md
7Colorgrep -rnE '#[0-9a-fA-F]{3,8}|rgb(' src/ data/reference/hig/palette.md
8Dialogsgrep -rn 'Dialog' *.blp *.ui src/reference/hig/dialogs.md
9Responsivenessgrep -rn 'Breakpoint|width-request' *.blp *.uiskills/adaptive-layout/SKILL.md
10CSS classesgrep -rn 'styles \[|add_css_class' .tokens/style-classes.md
11GSettingsread the .gschema.xmlskills/gsettings-backend/SKILL.md
12i18ngrep -rn '"' *.blp | grep -v '_(' (untranslated strings)reference/hig/writing-style.md

What counts as a violation (quick rubric)

  • Text: Title Case where sentence case belongs (menu items, descriptions, subtitles); ... instead of …; missing … on menu items that open a dialog. Header case IS correct for buttons, row titles, tab labels, group titles.
  • Buttons: non-flat buttons in header bars; labeled buttons where an icon is standard; icon-only buttons without tooltips.
  • Layout: margins/spacing off the 6/12/18/24 scale; window width-request below 360; missing AdwStatusPage for empty states.
  • Icons: any -symbolic name not present in the Adwaita icon theme (run scripts/check-icons.sh).
  • Shortcuts: missing standard accelerators (Ctrl+Q quit, Ctrl+comma preferences, Ctrl+N/O/S/W/F where applicable); conflicts.
  • Dialogs: GtkDialog/GtkMessageDialog instead of AdwDialog/ AdwAlertDialog; destructive response not styled destructive; wrong response order (Cancel first, affirmative last).
  • Color: hard-coded hex/rgb where a named Adwaita color (@accent_bg_color, @error_color, …) or CSS class exists.
  • i18n: user-visible strings not wrapped in _() / marked translatable.

Step 2 — Report

Write findings to HIG-AUDIT.md in the audited repo (or return them), one section per category:

## 4. Icons — 3 violations (1 critical)
| Severity | Location | Issue | Fix |
|----------|----------|-------|-----|
| critical | src/window.blp:42 | `trash-symbolic` does not exist | `user-trash-symbolic` |
| minor | src/window.blp:80 | icon-only button lacks tooltip | add `tooltip-text: _("Delete")` |

Severity: critical = broken (missing icon, crash, inaccessible), major = clearly violates HIG, minor = polish (casing, spacing values).

Step 3 — Fix loop

Only if asked to fix (an "audit" request alone delivers the report):

  1. Fix in category order 4 → 8 → 6 → 5 → 1 → the rest (breakage first, polish last).
  2. One commit per category: fix(hig): <category> — <summary>
  3. After each category, verify: blueprint-compiler format/build still passes, scripts/check-icons.sh is clean.
  4. Re-run the category's grep to confirm zero remaining candidates.

Audit report for this repo's collection

If auditing a GNOME app for inclusion in this repo's pattern library, use audits/TEMPLATE.md instead — that documents patterns, not violations.

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