procgen-design

Procedural Generation Design

Purpose

Design procedural content systems with seeds, constraints, and validation gates so generated output stays fun and shippable.

Use When

• levels, loot, encounters, or world content will be generated rather than authored
• generated output quality varies wildly and needs constraints
• determinism, seed sharing, or reproducibility matters for testing or community features

Inputs

• content type and generation goals (variety, replayability, scale)
• authored content that generation must complement
• difficulty and pacing constraints
• determinism and seed requirements

Process

1. define what generation must guarantee versus what may vary
2. choose the authored-versus-generated split per content type
3. specify seed handling, determinism scope, and reproducibility rules
4. define validation gates that reject degenerate output before the player sees it
5. plan telemetry to detect quality drift in shipped generation
6. define how designers tune generators without touching generation code

Outputs

• generation constraint specification
• seed and determinism rules
• validation gate definitions with rejection criteria
• tuning surface for designers

Quality Bar

• supports the core fantasy and player goals
• defines readable rules, edge cases, and feedback
• creates concrete hooks for tuning, telemetry, and QA

Common Failure Modes

• generation without validation gates, shipping degenerate output
• non-deterministic systems that QA cannot reproduce
• variety goals that ignore pacing and difficulty constraints

Related Agents

• systems-designer
• level-designer
• gameplay-programmer

Related Commands

• procgen-design
• level-beat
• qa-plan

Related Skills

• level-design
• core-loop-design

Notes

• Keep this skill aligned with the relevant rules layer and current project documentation.
• If engine-specific constraints materially change the workflow, hand off to the matching engine skill or engine-specific reviewer.