Browser Web Application Profile

Purpose and intended artifacts

Use this profile when the affected artifact is primarily a browser-executed user interface. Intended artifacts own interaction, rendering, navigation, accessibility, and client-side state, without substantial server responsibility in the same scope.

Do not select this profile merely because another product contains a small administrative or diagnostic interface.

Priority order

Apply this order after higher-precedence safety and explicit requirements:

1. correctness of user-visible behavior;
2. accessibility;
3. usability and predictable interaction;
4. browser-side security boundaries;
5. maintainability of features and state ownership;
6. measured rendering and interaction performance.

Default Core Skill modes

This profile selects existing Core Skill rules; it does not redefine them.

Core Skill	Mode	Profile rationale
code-clarity	balanced	Keep user behavior and state transitions readable within the touched feature.
abstraction-and-reuse	conservative	Prefer local feature clarity until repeated behavior and a stable variation axis are demonstrated.
modular-design	feature-oriented	Keep behavior, state, and interaction tests close to the user capability they serve.
contracts-and-errors	strict-boundaries	Treat external data, persisted state, and user-controlled input as boundary data.
state-and-side-effects	localized-state	Give state the narrowest owner that coordinates all legitimate writers.
testing-strategy	integration-balanced	Verify interaction behavior across rendering and boundary seams.
safe-change	local-safe-change	Keep ordinary interface changes bounded to the affected behavior.

Explicit configuration and active modifiers MAY override these defaults through normal precedence.

Typical risks

• inaccessible semantics, focus, keyboard operation, or feedback;
• duplicated or ambiguous state ownership;
• stale asynchronous results and unhandled failure states;
• trusting client-held identity, authority, or validation;
• abstractions organized around visual resemblance instead of shared behavior;
• performance work without an interaction or rendering budget.

Common modifiers

• accessibility-required makes accessibility an explicit correctness constraint;
• offline-first adds synchronization and recovery requirements;
• security-sensitive strengthens handling of untrusted data and authority.

Modifiers apply their own Core Skill refinements and MUST NOT be inferred solely from the profile.

Prohibited default assumptions

• Do not assume client input or client-held authority is trustworthy.
• Do not assume global state is needed for data used by one feature boundary.
• Do not assume visually similar elements require one shared abstraction.
• Do not assume every failure should be hidden behind a generic user message.
• Do not assume performance problems or solutions without measurement.

Non-goals

This profile does not define server deployment, persistence architecture, distributed consistency, a framework, a component library, or visual design conventions.

Profile decision example

When two nearby interactions contain similar markup but represent different behavior, abstraction-and-reuse: conservative keeps them local until shared knowledge and a stable variation point exist. This resolution protects locality and YAGNI; a reusable-library profile can resolve the same DRY-versus-YAGNI tension differently when independent consumers require an extension contract.