Every visible decision should support meaning, action, identity, accessibility, or comprehension. Remove what does none of those.
The Intentionality Law is Layr's foundational rule for resisting generic interface design, unnecessary explanation, decorative behavior, and the visual sameness commonly described as AI slop.
It applies to layout, typography, color, components, motion, icons, illustrations, interaction states, product copy, documentation copy, and the small technical details that shape how an interface feels. It also applies to the decisions a coding agent makes when the prompt leaves something unspecified.
A design can be polished and still feel unconsidered. A design can use popular components and still feel original. A design can be minimal and still contain wasted elements. A design can contain many details and still be precise. The deciding factor is whether the interface has a reason for the choices it makes.
Layr treats slop as a decision-quality problem. The system should look for places where defaults, trends, or generated filler have replaced a project-specific decision.
This rule is intentionally broad because AI slop rarely comes from one color, one card, one font, or one phrase. It emerges when several familiar defaults accumulate until the product loses specificity.
Sections
- 01Foundation and testsAn interface should explain itself through structure before it asks copy to explain the structure.
- 02Visual slop catalogThe following patterns are signals. Layr should combine them with project context and look for clusters before creating a finding.
- 03Copy slopVisual design and product writing share the same failure mode: adding material because an empty area feels unfinished.
- 04Interaction slop and clustersA page can look carefully designed while loading, error, empty, disabled, partial-success, and offline states fall back to generic components.
- 05The correction modelA good anti-slop review should improve decision quality while preserving the project's own visual direction.
- 06Agent executionReview the interface for clusters of unchosen defaults, generic visual recipes, redundant language, and decorative behavior.
- 07Review checklist and examplesA designer or founder should be able to use this section without reading the agent schema.
- 08Writing, maintenance and evidenceBecause this law will appear on the Layr website, its own copy should follow the same standard.