Sources
As of 10:34 · the period does not apply here
What the department runs on, what each part of it is allowed to do, and the figures it deliberately does not produce. A quality gate is where a machine is most tempted to sound certain, so this page starts with the rule about certainty and ends with the list of things nothing here claims to know.
How a rule is tested
Every rule in the book says which of these four it is, and that decides what it is allowed to do to a file. It is not a setting: a rule cannot be promoted out of the bottom row.
Arithmetic on the file. Fails on its own, because there is nothing to argue with.
Can stop a file on its own
Matched in the text, and the match is printed beside the finding.
Can stop a file on its own
A vision model raised it. It never fails a file; it asks a person.
Never stops a file on its own
Nobody automated this. It is a line a person ticks before approving.
Never stops a file on its own
46 of the 58 rules in force are arithmetic or a match in text, and those are the ones allowed to fail a file without asking anybody. The other 12 — what a vision model saw, what nobody has automated — reach a person instead. A model that is right four times in five is worth having and is not worth obeying.
What this department will and will not say
Seven sentences the rest of the demo is built on. Each of them costs something, which is how you can tell they are meant.
How a rule is tested decides what it is allowed to do
A measured rule is arithmetic — a ratio, a distance, a resolution, an ink total, a contrast — and a read rule is a match in text that is printed beside the finding. Those two can stop a file on their own, because there is nothing in either of them to argue with. Nothing else can, at any setting, and the setting is not where that is enforced: it is in the function that turns a rule into an effect.
A model marks; a person decides
Whether a mark has been recoloured, whether it is sitting on the busy part of a photograph, whether a ground is really white — a vision model sees these and is right about four times in five. Four in five is a good assistant and a terrible gate, so a flagged rule never fails anything. It raises a question, prints how sure it was, and waits.
The machine does not grade the work
There is no score for a design here and there is not going to be one. What the cards call a score is a count: rules broken out of rules run. Brand feel is not measured, there is no column called good, and the pile a file lands in was decided by arithmetic rather than by taste.
Nothing is approved by Omni
The gate counts rules and stops. Every approval and every return on every page in this demo carries the role of the person who made it, and there is no field anywhere in the data model for an automatic one.
A missing field is missing
Where the product record does not hold something the law requires, the job stops and the page says whose desk it is on. It is not filled in with something plausible, and a value typed into the artwork instead of set from the record is caught as its own finding. A machine that invents an origin is worse than one that cannot move.
Checked, never print-ready
Resolution, bleed, the safety margin, embedded faces, ink coverage and the height of the mandatory type are arithmetic and they are checked here. Certifying a file fit for a press is not: no open-source validator does it, and the press has the last word. Print files leave this building marked checked.
One book, every gate
The sentences that promise something about a body live in one file, and Customer Voice checks a reply against it, the Social Hub checks a caption against it and Content Studio checks a draft against it. The brand rulebook is shared the same way. This department owns both, which is the only reason a rule changed here is changed everywhere.
What it runs on
Nine connections, and three of them are honest about being less than a connection. The preflight reader is the cheapest part of this module and the one that does the most.
The upload gateConnected
Where a file arrives. A supplier or an agency uploads against a purchase order; an in-house draft arrives from Content Studio.
There is no inbox behind this and that is deliberate. A file attached to a message is a file somebody has to notice, and the ones nobody noticed are the ones that got printed.
The preflight readerConnected
What is actually inside a PDF: page boxes and bleed, which faces are embedded, the colour space and effective resolution of every image, and the ink each build puts on the sheet.
Deterministic, open-source and free — structure and boxes from pdfcpu, embedding from pdffonts, colour space and ppi from pdfimages, ink coverage from Ghostscript. This is the strongest part of the module and the cheapest.
Text on the artworkLimited
Reading the mandatory block off a label so the fields printed on it can be set against the product record.
A set block of type is read exactly. Type over a photograph, type on a curve and type in an outline are read badly or not at all, and where the reader is unsure the field is reported unread rather than guessed at.
The vision modelRaises questions only
The judgements arithmetic cannot make: the mark recoloured, the mark over a busy frame, a ground that is nearly white, a second accent in a layout.
Around four in five of these are right, and the ones that are wrong are confidently wrong. Every finding it raises carries its confidence and none of them can hold a file.
Channel APIsRead only
What is already published: our own listing titles, descriptions and galleries from the seller APIs, and our own profiles from the official social endpoints.
Our own listings, which is what makes this legal and reliable. Nothing here writes: a live page is changed by whoever owns it, after they have read the finding.
The product recordConnected
Origin, ingredients, net quantity, the importer and the storage line. Every field a label is set from.
The connection is complete and the content is not — one lot is missing two fields the law requires, and the label job for it has been stopped three rounds running.
Content StudioConnected
Drafts arrive here having already been run against the same book inside the studio's own editor.
Two gates on one book is not duplication. The studio's run saves a round trip; this one is the record, and it is the one a supplier's file goes through too.
The printer's specificationEntered by hand
The ink ceiling, the bleed, the safety margin and the minimum type the press it is going to will take.
A printer gives you these on a sheet of paper. There is no endpoint, and a second printer means a second set of numbers somebody types in.
PDF/X certificationNot connected
Certifying a file as conforming and fit to print.
No open-source validator does this. The licensed tools that do cost more per year than this module saves, so the module does not claim it — the press certifies, and the record says the press did.
Where a file can land
Every surface the gate checks against, and how many rules reach it. The number is the filter the audit itself applies, so a file going to one of these comes back with exactly that many results.
Social
6 surfaces| Surface | Going to | Rules that reach it | What it asks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram · Reel | Screen | 31 | Full-bleed vertical. Anything under the bottom fifth is covered by the caption and the buttons, not cropped. |
| Instagram · Feed | Screen | 31 | Four-by-five is the tallest the feed keeps. A carousel takes one ratio for every card in it. |
| Instagram · Story | Screen | 31 | Same frame as a reel, more furniture: the profile row above and the reply bar below. |
| TikTok | Screen | 31 | The button column takes the right edge. A headline set flush right disappears behind it. |
| Facebook · Feed | Screen | 31 | Square travels furthest here; the feed crops a taller frame on desktop. |
| YouTube · Short | Screen | 31 | Sixty seconds is the wall. A reel cut to ninety does not become a Short by uploading it. |
Marketplace
6 surfaces| Surface | Going to | Rules that reach it | What it asks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trendyol · Main image | Screen | 31 | 1200 × 1800 on white. No text, no badge, no logo on the main image — the listing is taken down for it. |
| Trendyol · Gallery | Screen | 31 | After the main image the gallery takes the spec overlay, the scale shot and the lifestyle frame. |
| Hepsiburada · Main image | Screen | 31 | Square, 1500 on the short edge, product on white and nothing else in the frame. |
| N11 · Main image | Screen | 31 | Square on white. The floor is lower here, which is not a reason to send a smaller file. |
| Amazon · Main image | Screen | 31 | Pure white, product filling 85 per cent of the frame, 1600 on the short edge so zoom works. |
| Rich content block | Screen | 31 | The scrolling blocks under the listing: a picture, a short line, the one thing the photo cannot say. |
Paid
4 surfaces| Surface | Going to | Rules that reach it | What it asks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta ads · Feed | Screen | 31 | The headline is the first line people read; 125 characters is where the body copy folds. |
| Meta ads · Reels | Screen | 31 | The largest safe area of any surface here: the ad furniture takes nearly a quarter of the bottom. |
| Google ads · Square | Screen | 31 | Performance Max wants both shapes of every image, or it fills the gap with something it made itself. |
| Google ads · Landscape | Screen | 31 | The same picture, cut wide. This is the crop that loses the cup if nobody checks it. |
| Surface | Going to | Rules that reach it | What it asks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poster · A2 | 39 | 420 × 594 mm at 300 dpi, 3 mm bleed, CMYK. Checked here, never called print-ready: the press has the last word. | |
| Label · 250 g bag | Packaging | 48 | 60 × 90 mm. Contents, net quantity, origin, importer and storage are set from the product record, not typed. |
| Catalogue · spread | 39 | Wholesale pages, laid out from the catalogue: name, lot, tasting notes, case size, price per kilo. |
Web store
1 surface| Surface | Going to | Rules that reach it | What it asks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web store · hero | Screen | 31 | One picture at the top of the shop, and it is cropped square on a phone. |
A label answers to more rules than a reel does, and not because packaging matters more: the law has an opinion about a bag of coffee and no opinion at all about a caption. A surface is a set of numbers somebody else chose, which is the only reason a verdict on another page can be argued with.
What it does not measure
Five figures a quality department is expected to produce and does not. Stated once, here, so that no page quietly invents one of them.
Whether the design is any good
The gate measures whether a file fits where it is going and whether it breaks a rule somebody wrote down. Everything past that is a person looking at it, which is why the desk has a pile called ready and no pile called good.
Whether a photograph is on brand
The palette is arithmetic; a mood is not. A model can be asked and is asked, and what comes back is a question with a number on it rather than a verdict.
How our design compares with a competitor's
Nothing here looks at anybody else's artwork. It is on the map as later work, and until it is built the module does not imply it by showing a comparison with one side empty.
Where an eye lands first
Attention prediction can be bought and it is indicative at best — a model's guess about a stranger's eyes, sold by the month. Nothing on these pages is drawn from one, and if it ever is, it will be labelled as a guess.
Whether a print file is ready
Checked is a measurement and ready is a certification. This module does the first and names the press that does the second.
The count on a card is rules broken out of rules run. It is not a grade, it does not improve when a file is prettier, and a file that breaks nothing has not been called good — it has been called clear, and then it waits for somebody to look at it.
The rules, the surfaces and the licences on this page are the same records the gate reads, which is why any verdict on any other page can be traced back to a row here. The states of the connections are written; everything they would return is sample data.
Sample data throughout. No press, marketplace or model was contacted to draw this page.