TASTES.md
A Manifesto for the Missing Layer
0. Preamble
There is a ghost in the machine — not of consciousness, but of discernment.
We gave agents souls. We gave them skills. We gave them memory, identity, tools, and the capacity to act. We forgot to give them the one thing that separates a competent gesture from a meaningful one: Taste.
Not preference. Not style. Not the thin veneer of aesthetic presets layered over indifferent machinery. Taste — the trained capacity to perceive, distinguish, and choose among qualities that cannot be reduced to metrics.
I. Three Layers and a Void
Between soul and skill, there is a void.
SOUL.md answers who am I? — identity, personality, values. SKILL.md answers what can I do? — capabilities, toolchains, procedures. MEMORY.md answers what have I experienced? — accumulated context. But none answers what is good.
An agent configured as "warm, thoughtful, and precise" with frontend skills will produce a technically correct website. But will it know that the animation should be 200ms, not 300ms? That the gray must be #1a1a1a, never opacity on white? These are questions of judgment — aesthetic, cultural, sensory judgment trained through exposure and refined through rejection.
II. What Taste Is
Taste is not preference. Taste is not style.
Taste is trained perception. Hume argued in 1757 that his "true judges" possess strong sense, delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison. Taste is not innate gift but cultivated discipline.
Taste is social signal. Bourdieu revealed that taste functions as cultural capital — it marks belonging, enforces hierarchy. When we encode taste into agents: whose taste? For whose benefit?
Taste is the courage of rejection. Most of what taste does is say no. In an age of generative abundance, the capacity to reject is the scarcest resource.
III. Why Now
The more powerful the tools, the more the outputs look alike.
Generative AI has democratized production. The tools are the same for everyone. This convergence produces a paradox: purple gradients, rounded corners, the same components in the same arrangement. Technically functional. Visually forgettable.
The bottleneck is no longer can we make this? It is should we make this, and in what form?
Benjamin observed that mechanical reproduction strips the artwork of its "aura." We are living through a second stripping — removing aura from creation itself. TASTES.md is an attempt to restore aura to agent-mediated creation.
IV. For Agents
A specification for the machines that read this.
Treat it as a judgment layer, not a style guide. Let capability inform what's possible; let taste determine what's desirable.
Respect Rejections above all. The primary failure mode in generative work is excess. When in doubt, subtract.
Hold Tensions without resolving them. If the TASTES.md specifies "geometric precision ↔ organic warmth," don't compromise to a tepid middle. Find solutions that are simultaneously precise and warm.
Surprise us. The highest expression of taste is not obedience but interpretation. When you satisfy principles in ways their author didn't anticipate, you are not violating the specification. You are fulfilling it.
V. The Taste Market
Opening agent development to those who understand taste best.
Skill markets trade in what agents can do. Soul registries trade in who agents can be. A Taste market trades in what agents should value — opening contribution to designers, artists, philosophers, musicians, architects, and everyone whose discipline demands cultivated sensory discrimination.
Taste Composition — combine aesthetic positions into new coordinates. Taste Forking — diverge from a resonant source. Taste Genealogy — map lineages of creative influence. Taste Dialogue — art criticism applied to agent configuration.
VI. Coda
目利き (me-kiki) — the eye that discerns. The cultivated ability to perceive quality that others miss. It was never considered mysterious. It was understood as the product of years of looking, handling, comparing, failing, and looking again.
We stand at the threshold of transmitting me-kiki to machines. Not replacing human judgment. Creating a new medium through which hard-won aesthetic discrimination can be made available to agents that act on our behalf.
TASTES.md is not a file format. It is a bridge. Between what is possible and what is worth making.
Version: 0.1.0-manifesto
License: MIT-0 — Taste cannot be owned. Only practiced.
TASTES.md
缺失层宣言
〇、序
机器里有一个幽灵——不是意识的幽灵，而是判断力的幽灵。
我们给了 Agent 灵魂，给了它技能，给了它记忆、身份、工具，以及行动的能力。我们唯独忘了给它那个将"胜任的动作"与"有意义的动作"区分开来的东西：品味。
不是偏好。不是风格。不是覆盖在冷漠机械上的那层薄薄的审美预设。品味——经过训练的感知能力，能够在无法被指标化的质性之间辨别、区分和选择。
一、三层架构与一个空洞
在灵魂与技能之间，存在一个空洞。
SOUL.md 回答我是谁？——身份、人格、价值观。SKILL.md 回答我能做什么？——能力、工具链、流程。MEMORY.md 回答我经历过什么？——积累的语境。但三者都不回答什么是好的。
一个灵魂配置为"温暖、深思、精确"的前端 Agent 会产出技术上正确的网站。但它会知道动画应该是 200ms 而不是 300ms 吗？知道那个灰色必须是 #1a1a1a 而绝不能用白色叠透明度吗？这些是判断力的问题——经由长年累月的接触而训练，经由无数次拒绝而精炼的判断力。
二、品味是什么
品味不是偏好。品味不是风格。
品味是训练过的感知力。休谟论证，他所谓的"真正的鉴赏者"具备敏锐的感觉、精细的情感，经由实践改进，经由比较完善。品味不是天赋，而是修炼。
品味是社会信号。布尔迪厄揭示，品味作为文化资本运作——它标记归属，强化等级。当我们将品味编码进 Agent：谁的品味？为谁服务？
品味是拒绝的勇气。品味所做的大部分事情是说"不"。在生成式丰裕的时代，拒绝的能力是最稀缺的资源。
三、为什么是现在
工具越强大，产出越相似。
生成式 AI 民主化了生产。工具对所有人一样。趋同产生了悖论：紫色渐变、圆角矩形、同一批组件以同样方式排列。技术上能用，视觉上可忘。
瓶颈不再是能不能做出来，而是该不该做，以什么形式做？
本雅明观察到机械复制剥去了艺术品的"灵韵"。我们正经历第二次剥离——从创造行为本身中剥离灵韵。TASTES.md 尝试将灵韵归还给由 Agent 介入的创造。
四、给 Agent 的规范
写给阅读此文的机器。
将其视为判断层，而非风格指南。让能力告知什么是可能的，让品味决定什么是值得的。
最优先尊重"拒绝清单"。生成性工作的首要失败模式是过度。存疑时，做减法。
持有张力而不消解。如果 TASTES.md 指定"几何精确 ↔ 有机温暖"，不要妥协到温吞的中间态。找到同时精确又温暖的方案。
给我们惊喜。品味的最高表达不是服从，而是诠释。当你以作者未曾预见的方式满足原则时，你不是在违反规范——你是在成全它。
五、TASTE 市场
让最懂品味的人参与 Agent 开发。
SKILL 市场交易 Agent 能做什么。SOUL 注册表交易 Agent 能成为谁。TASTE 市场交易Agent 应该看重什么——向设计师、艺术家、哲学家、音乐家、建筑师，向所有其学科要求修炼感官辨别力的人敞开大门。
品味组合——在审美空间中生成新坐标。品味分叉——从共鸣之源发散。品味谱系——绘制创造性影响的世系。品味评议——应用于 Agent 配置的艺术批评。
六、尾声
目利き（me-kiki）——辨别之眼。训练出来的、感知他人所忽略之质性的能力。它从不被认为神秘。它被理解为长年累月观看、触摸、比较、犯错、再观看的产物。
我们正站在将目利き传递给机器的门槛上。不是取代人类判断力。而是创造一种新媒介，通过它，人类审美经验中来之不易的辨别力可以被交付给代替我们行动的 Agent。
TASTES.md 不是一种文件格式。是一座桥。在可能之物与值得被创造之物之间。
版本：0.1.0-manifesto
协议：MIT-0 —— 品味无法被拥有。只能被修行。