Go wild on a screen

The gobanana-explore skill turns “make it cooler” into 3 or 4 sharp, buildable directions for one page. You steer it with five dials. You can set all of them in one sentence, or none.

Go wild on the paywall of our meditation app on iPhone, wildness 4,
taste: grainy, big typography. Japanese ma lens.

Dial 1: the platform

GoBanana treats a phone, a tablet, a website and a web app as different worlds. The platform decides the grid, the type sizes, the density, what to avoid, and which galleries search uses.

Say	Platform	What changes
iPhone, iOS, Android, app screen, paywall	mobile	4 columns, 16px margins, 44pt targets, tab bar and bottom sheet, display 34px, body 17px
iPad, tablet	tablet	8 columns, 24px margins, split view, 44pt targets
landing page, launch page, homepage, campaign	website	12 columns, fluid type up to 120px, one clear first action
dashboard, admin, SaaS, CRM, web app	webapp	Sidebar shell, dense 8px rhythm, tables, full keyboard

If your words do not say, the agent asks once (“Is it for a phone app, a website or a web app?”). The server also detects a platform from the brief, but the agent’s read wins. Full rules: Platforms.

A phone brief never gets web dashboards or 12 column grids. Off platform results are rated bad and never placed.

Dial 2: the pages

Pass 1 to 3 pages, each up to 60 characters: “checkout”, “first run onboarding”, “/launch”. Name one page for the sharpest result.

If you name the whole product, the agent will not bend it. It asks “Where should the weirdness go?” and lists the spots that pay off on your platform. See Where weirdness pays off.

Dial 3: wildness

Level	Label	Moves	Feels like	Say
1	Fresh	1	Same layout, new surface	“a bit fresher”, “subtle”
2	Bold	1	One strong move, layout may bend	“bolder”
3	Weird	2	Two ideas collide on one screen. Default	nothing
4	Wild	2 or 3	Further than feels safe	“go wild”, “push this”
5	Bananas	3	Usability rules ignored on purpose	“bananas”, “unhinged”

Each move borrows from one place:

Move	What it does	Example
transplant	Borrows the format, print and wear of an object	“checkout as a boarding pass”
material	Renders surfaces as a material with real light	“cards in frosted glass”
era	Takes type, color and grid from a period or movement	“Fluxus 1962”, “Swiss 1957”
constraint	Obeys one hard rule	“flat color, no gradients”
scale	Makes one thing enormous and shrinks the rest	“giant sparklines everywhere”
lens	Pulls from a visual tradition	“Sadu weaving”, “Memphis”

Ask for a kind of bend with “only material and era moves”. Details: Wildness, moves and lenses.

Dial 4: taste words

Taste is 1 to 5 short style words for the look you like: minimal, glassmorphism, liquid glass, dark mode, big typography, monochrome, luxury, swiss style, bento grid, editorial, grainy, skeuomorphic. They search well because galleries tag work with them.

• Taste is saved on the canvas, so later searches on that board use it.
• Without taste, each direction uses its own style words from its spec. GoBanana has no house style and never forces one.
• Some words also pick galleries: “bento grid” pulls Bento Grids, “dark mode” pulls Dark Design, “big typography” pulls Httpster. See Sources.
• Share a Pinterest board or screenshots? The agent describes them in these words. It never downloads them.

Dial 5: culture lenses

A lens makes every direction pull from one visual tradition.

Lens id	Tradition
sadu	Sadu weaving
najdi	Najdi architecture
kufic	Square Kufic geometry
mashrabiya	Mashrabiya
talli	Talli braiding (Emirati metallic braid)
qatt-asiri	Al Qatt Al Asiri (Asir wall painting)
desert-modern	Desert modern
memphis	Memphis design
swiss-international	Swiss International Style
japanese-ma	Japanese ma (negative space)

The skill suggests a lens when you mention Saudi, Gulf, Arabic or regional heritage. It never uses sacred text or religious verses.

What a direction looks like

Each direction comes back with a full visual spec. A real one from the bend engine (website, launch page, wildness 3):

Specialty coffee launch as a spa-like cereal box (Twist: giant sparklines everywhere) [scale + transplant]
Spec: type rounded: A soft rounded sans for display at clamp(48px, 8vw, 120px), a plain sans
for body at 18px | color: Eucalyptus green, stone and white; text at 4.5 to 1 contrast or more |
layout: 12 column grid, fluid type, a scroll story that opens on a hero with one clear action |
motion: Slow 300ms fades and eases, nothing loops, and none with reduced motion on
Signature: The hero section built like a cereal box.
Pattern: A loud front panel with a puzzle panel on the side, as the section divider.
Steal: The print details and wear of a cereal box; The scale jump of giant sparklines.
Avoid: A hero with no clear first action; Body text wider than 75 characters; Scroll jacking.
Art queries: cereal box; oversized sparklines poster

The agent shows a compact card per kept direction. The full spec lives on the board and in DIRECTION.md.

Why only 3 directions?

The agent bends 8 and keeps an idea only if:

1. it gives your page a concrete UI move on this platform (“fare cards that stack like boarding passes”),
2. it finds at least 6 usable UI references after search and audit (art does not count), and
3. it is not a near duplicate of a kept idea.

It shortlists 3 (or the number you asked for, at most 4), so you spend at most 4 searches. The rest are dropped with reasons and never shown. Later bends suggest often dropped ideas less.

Turning it up, down or sideways

Say	Result
“Wilder” / “calmer”	A new bend at wildness N+1 or N-1, as new sections on the same board
“Another take on direction 2”	One more bend with the same move kinds
“Try it on the 404 too”	A new page from the wild spots
“Less UI, more raw inspiration”	The Art direction row gets its full 4 items; the UI grid stays UI only
“Start a new board”	new_canvas instead of adding to the current board

Boards grow, they do not multiply

Ask for more on the same product and the agent adds sections to the board you already have. It only makes a new board when nothing matches or you ask.