auxfirst — agentic UX as a named discipline

Patterns, heuristics, and trust systems for AI products. We don't design interfaces. We design relationships between users and agents.

AUX (Agentic User Experience) is an open standard. The 10 AUX Heuristics, the 4-stage Trust Architecture, and the Trust Gap Taxonomy are published as editable YAML schemas — forkable, citable, not vendor-locked. Definitions are CC BY 4.0; executable tooling is MIT.

If you ship AI products, you are no longer designing screens. You are designing an ongoing relationship between a user and an agent that has memory, initiative, and judgment. Classical UX was built for tools. AUX is built for relationships.

Start here

Pick the role that's most you. Read five minutes. Walk away with one artifact you can forward.

Who you are	Read this	Walk away with
Business operator / GTM	for-business-operators	10 questions for any AI vendor
CTO / VP Engineering	for-ctos	CTO one-pager
Engineer shipping the agent	for-engineering	aux-audit CI workflow
Solo / indie builder	two-patterns	Two patterns, copy-paste

Or read onboarding/README.md — the router with all four side by side, plus appendices and principles.

What's in here

.
├── onboarding/                    ← audience-routed onboarding (R1–R4 + forwardables A1–A4)
│   ├── README.md                  ← the router
│   ├── for-business-operators.md  ← R1 (3 pages, plain English)
│   ├── for-ctos.md                ← R2 (4 pages, peer-to-peer technical)
│   ├── for-engineering.md         ← R3 (4 pages, code-heavy)
│   ├── two-patterns.md            ← R4 (3 pages, copy-paste patterns)
│   ├── appendix-a-vocabulary.md   ← AUX vocabulary
│   ├── appendix-b-index.md        ← project file index
│   ├── principles.md              ← the five principles
│   ├── traps.md                   ← common ways this goes wrong
│   ├── auxfirst-onboarding-v0.2.docx  ← R1–R4 as one Word bundle
│   └── forwardables/              ← standalone take-aways A1–A4
│
├── schemas/                       ← canonical YAML — the standard
│   ├── aux-heuristics.yaml        ← the 10 heuristics
│   ├── trust-architecture.yaml    ← the 4 trust stages
│   ├── trust-gap-taxonomy.yaml    ← named failure modes
│   ├── trust-contract.yaml        ← example Trust Contract
│   ├── agent-spec.schema.yaml     ← audit input format
│   └── memory-policy.schema.yaml  ← memory governance format
│
├── repos/                         ← first-wave repo READMEs (split out as v0.x ships)
│   ├── aux-frameworks/            ← Definition
│   ├── aux-audit/                 ← Executable (CLI · v0.1 contract)
│   ├── trust-gap-classifier/      ← Executable
│   ├── agent-memory-policy/       ← Executable
│   ├── agent-ux-teardowns/        ← Reference
│   └── agentic-ux-patterns/       ← Reference (intent-handshake, memory-in-motion)
│
├── visuals/storyboard.html        ← single-page visual overview
├── one-pager/                     ← business one-pager (Word, editable)
├── profile/README.md              ← the github.com/auxfirst org profile
│
├── ARCHITECTURE.md                ← big-picture system view
├── REPO_STRUCTURE.md              ← naming + layout conventions
├── CONTRIBUTING.md                ← contribution bar (the bar is high)
├── CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md             ← Contributor Covenant 2.1
├── LICENSE                        ← CC BY 4.0
└── .github/                       ← Issue templates, PR template, CI

What you won't find here

• Random experiments, SaaS clones, tutorials, or think-pieces dressed as code.
• Opinions without benchmarks.
• Frameworks without schemas.

The principle

One technical post with runnable code + benchmark numbers will out-earn ten soft think-pieces.

This is the proof layer for the category. Every claim ships with a schema, a CLI, or a reproducible scenario.

Read order (if you want the whole picture)

1. onboarding/README.md — the router. Pick a slice, skip the rest.
2. ARCHITECTURE.md — how the pieces fit.
3. visuals/storyboard.html — download and open in a browser; the whole story on one page.
4. repos/ — the six first-wave repos.
5. schemas/ — the YAML that makes this real.
6. one-pager/auxfirst-github-onepager.docx — for business conversations.

Principles

1. GitHub = receipts for AUX, not a projects page.
2. Every repo is exactly one of three kinds: Definition, Executable, Reference.
3. Every claim has a runnable example.
4. Name before you tool.
5. The internal execution layer and the public standard layer share one taxonomy.

Contributing

The bar is high. Patterns need diagrams, heuristics need examples, benchmarks need a runnable script. See CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a PR. Open an Issue first for anything that touches an ID or introduces vocabulary — five Issue templates are set up: pattern-request, gap-proposal, debate, schema, bug.

License

• Definition content (schemas, frameworks, heuristics, vocabulary): CC BY 4.0.
• Executable tooling (when shipped): MIT.
• Teardown content: CC BY-NC 4.0 (attribution, non-commercial).

See LICENSE for the full text and per-repo variation.

Status

v0.2 · 2026-04-19 — First public release. Onboarding layer live: audience-routed docs (R1–R4) + four forwardable artifacts + two canonical patterns + six first-wave repo READMEs + canonical schemas. aux-audit CLI (v0.1 contract) in active development. Next: pressure-test the router with a real CTO reader; ship the aux-audit binary.

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auxfirst — agentic UX as a named discipline.