# CDE Interface (CDEインターフェース) — image generation prompt
# IndexStyle No.580 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/cde-interface
# Style descriptors only. This prompt names no artist, studio, brand or work.

Produce four original images in the visual language of CDE Interface, a style from Platform Screen Languages, 1993–2000s.

## What to make

Make the kind of thing this style exists for: shipping one desktop and business application language across UNIX workstations, or reconstructing a 1990s technical terminal with its operating structure intact. Choose one subject and hold it across all four images.

## What has to be visible

- Box-like Front Panel along the lower edge
- Raised buttons and recessed fields made from paired light and dark borders
- Low-color pixel icons with dark outlines
- Persistent buttons for switching among workspaces

Someone who knows this style should be able to point at each of these in the finished image.

## How to build it

- Layout and structure: Layer work windows centrally and keep the Front Panel and workspace switch along the lower edge
- Type and lettering: Use brief system type and labels that remain distinct at small sizes
- Material and surface: Place a light top-left edge and dark bottom-right edge on mid-tone surfaces, reversing the bevel only on press
- Colour: #B9B7A5 carries the ground, #5B7B7A is the colour the style is remembered by, #252422 holds text and outlines. Read off real works, so treat them as a direction rather than a fixed palette.
- What it should feel like: technique, trust, nostalgia

## What goes wrong

Gray bevels alone are not CDE. Front Panel, workspaces and Motif state rules must work as one environment.

## Across the four

Keep every cue above present in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows the range this style covers rather than four versions of one picture.

## Constraints

- Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work.
- Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work.
- Produce original compositions in the general period language described above.

Full design spec: https://indexstyle.org/styles/cde-interface/design.md