# Rule of Odds

> A styling check for trinket shelves, curio cabinets and display ledges. List each piece with its shelf, size, colour and material. The page draws the shelf to scale as a cabinet front, every piece as a silhouette in its own colour, and measures it: how full each shelf is, the tallest piece against its opening, flat runs of equal heights, a balance beam showing which side carries the visual weight, how many colour families are in play. A metered read traces where the eye lands first and the path it takes, marks each shelf settled, uneasy or broken and gives a balanced / tune / rework verdict; a second metered run re-arranges the same pieces in odd-numbered groups, which the page re-measures for fit. https://rule-of-odds.skillsafe.ai/

## What it does

- Free, in the browser (shelfkit.js, cabinet.js): one piece per line, `shelf | name | height x width | colour | material`; shelf 1 is the top, 0 or "box" means off display, a leading * marks the piece the owner wants seen first. Sizes in cm, or inches when the line says in or ". A piece with only a height gets an estimated width from its kind (vase, candle, books, frame, plant, figure, bottle, bowl, box and so on), marked est.
- Measurements per shelf: full = widths added up against the shelf width (over 80% crowded, over 100% does not fit); tallest = the tallest piece against the opening (over 100% does not fit); flat = three or more pieces within 15% of one height; balance = area x material factor (glass light, stone heavy) x colour darkness, weighed about the centre - an estimate. Colour families ignore neutrals and metals; five or more is busy.
- Flags. Blockers (rework): a piece taller than its opening, a shelf wider than its board. To tune: crowded, flat, leaning, an empty shelf, one shelf far fuller than another, a busy palette. Notes: even counts, everything sitting low, a colour that appears once, estimated sizes.
- Metered task `read` (from the skill critique-visual-hierarchy): the entry point `{item, why}`, an eye path of three to seven pieces, every shelf `{row, status, weight, note, fix}` (settled / uneasy / broken), one to five findings by principle (entry, flow, weight, emphasis, spacing, colour), a title, a summary and a balanced / tune / rework verdict.
- Metered task `arrange` (from the skill arrange): every shelf as left-to-right groups of pieces, pieces sent to the box with a reason, two to four placement tips, and a light-touch / reshuffle / edit-down verdict counted from its own moves. It answers the read's findings when the read was run first.
- The page holds both replies to the shelf: every shelf once, every piece named exactly as listed, nothing invented; the plan places every piece once, fits every opening and width (it re-measures), and its verdict matches its own count of moves.

## Limits

- The page does not see the shelf: colours, sizes and the balance sum come from the list, and the balance is an estimate. Pieces are drawn as simple silhouettes, evenly spaced.
- Exports: Markdown (the shelf, the read and the plan), a pieces CSV with each piece's shelf now and in the plan, and the cabinet drawing as SVG.
- After a plan: copy a plain-text move list to tick off while moving pieces, and put the plan into the list in one step (with undo) so the next read starts from the shelf as it now stands.

## Sources

- Built on the SkillSafe skills @owl-listener/critique-visual-hierarchy (entry point, eye flow, weight distribution, emphasis): https://skillsafe.ai/skill/@owl-listener/critique-visual-hierarchy and @pbakaus/arrange (layout, spacing and visual rhythm; breaking monotonous runs, grouping): https://skillsafe.ai/skill/@pbakaus/arrange - both written for screens, applied here to a physical shelf.
- Why now: Pinterest's 2026 hobbies trend report names "curated clutter" a trend, with searches for trinket shelf ideas up 852% and vintage trinket shelves up 193%: https://newsroom.pinterest.com/news/2026-pinterest-hobbies-trend-report/
- API: https://rule-of-odds.skillsafe.ai/api.html