siftlode/docs/DESIGN.md

DESIGN.md — how Siftlode looks and behaves

This is the one written source of truth for the UI: principles, tokens, the canonical solution per pattern, and the interaction rules. Screens are measured against it. A pattern that has more than one look in the code is either a decision still open here (marked Pending) or a violation to fix.

Status: written in E28; every chapter is Decided and in force. The design lab (below) renders each rule's chosen form. A new question opens a Pending item here, with its variants in the lab, until the product owner settles it.

How this document changes

• A rule changes only through an explicit decision recorded in the decision log: what was decided, the options it was chosen from, and why. No mid-sprint taste changes. A new idea goes on the list for the next design round.
• Every rule rests on a named standard: Nielsen's heuristics, WCAG 2.2 AA, WAI-ARIA APG, Apple HIG or Material. The tag is in brackets after the rule.
• A rule stated here should also be enforced in code (an eslint rule, a primitive's type, a test). A rule that lives only in prose drifts. That is the finding that started this document.

Conformance — the check before a UI change is done

A screen is measured against this document, not against taste. Every change that renders something new runs this check before it is called done (E28 S3g):

1. Primitives at a named rung. Each control goes through its primitive (lint refuses the raw element, and a <div role="button"> with it), at a rung or role this document names: a Button size, an IconButton size, a Chip size, the SegmentedToggle rung, a SURFACE role. The lint holds the element, not the rung, so the rung is checked by eye and by measure.
2. The pattern's chapter, re-read. The change matches the chapter of every pattern it touches, or it opens a Pending item and a log row. It never quietly adds a second look.
3. Measured. On the changed pages, the rendered elements are grouped by kind (button, icon button, chip, field, tab, segment, menu row, surface) and by their computed look (radius, height, type, fill, edge). Each distinct look maps to a rung or role named here; a look that maps to none is a violation or a new decision. The S3g baseline across the 15 pages at 1920 × 1080: every button, icon button, chip, field, tab, segment and menu row is drawn by its primitive. What the measure still counts as hand-drawn is by design: text links (no primitive), surfaces painted by their SURFACE role (a class, which the measure cannot trace to a component) and the playlist table's own rows.
4. Seen. A screenshot of every changed state, thin edges at 1:1; the tablet widths (1024 × 768, a narrow split screen) when the layout can reflow. Phones are the E29 epic's, not this check's.
5. Judged as a whole (E30 S6). For each screenshot, one written line on its composition: where the empty space is, what hugs one side, what the eye lands on first. Then the screen at 125% and 133% browser zoom and at the largest text size. All are held to Composition and the reader. A rule that holds is not the same as a screen that works: the person page passed every rule above with half its panel empty.

The design lab

npm run dev, then open http://localhost:5173/design-lab. The lab renders each open decision's variants with the app's real CSS, tokens, glass and themes, and has its own switches for theme, scheme, text size and backdrop. It is dev-only: main.tsx reaches it behind import.meta.env.DEV, and the build plugin frontend/devOnlyGuard.ts fails a production build that would contain it. Once a decision is taken, the losing variants are deleted and the chosen one stays as the reference rendering: the lab is the living style guide.

Principles

1. Glass over a calm background is the look. Surfaces are translucent layers (.glass, .glass-card, .glass-menu, .glass-media) over a per-scheme backdrop. Depth comes from the header + fade: a crisp sticky header with a short gradient just below it, so content dissolves as it slides under. The reference is DataTable's sticky header. A flat opaque box where a glass surface belongs is a violation.
2. Built for one known, daily user, on a desktop and a tablet. Density is welcome where a mouse is the pointer; on touch every target grows. Nothing is designed for phones.
3. One primitive per pattern. Where a components/ui/ primitive exists and is used, the looks don't drift. The drift lives in hand-rolled markup. A new generic control goes into ui/, and a screen composes primitives rather than restyling them.
4. Measured, not eyeballed. Contrast, target sizes and layout at the contract sizes are measured in a real browser before a UI change is called done.
5. Honest states. An error never renders as an empty state; loading, empty and error are three different screens (QueryState / StateMessage).

Device adaptation — Decided

• Supported: tablet portrait and landscape and every size above them (from 768px wide). Phones are not a target. Measure a UI change at 1024×768, 820×1180 (portrait) and a desktop size.
• Adapt by capability, never by user agent: @media (pointer: coarse) and (hover: none) decide touch behaviour; container queries decide how a panel lays itself out. Breakpoints are named tokens, never literal pixel values scattered in call sites. [HIG, WCAG 1.4.10]
• Touch never loses a function. Anything revealed on hover is visible at rest on hover: none (the .reveal class), or it is removed on touch because the same action is reachable another way (.reveal-hover). [WCAG 1.4.13, Nielsen #6]
• Targets: at least 2.75rem (44px) on a coarse pointer, as a real box, not an invisible hit area: overlapping hit areas fire the wrong control. It covers every control primitive, not only Button (A3, under Controls). [HIG, WCAG 2.5.8]
• Text inputs use at least 1rem text on a coarse pointer, so a tablet browser doesn't zoom the page when an input gets focus.
• Side panels (C2): on touch, and at any width below 768 (a narrow window, split screen), the rail tab or the band's "Filters · n" button slides the panel over the content with a scrim; a tap outside, Esc or Back closes it, and the content never reflows. Pinning is its own button in the panel header, offered only where a pinned panel leaves the content room (≥ 1024 wide). The mouse keeps hover-to-peek and click-to-pin. A filter is never unreachable at any supported width. Built in S3f3: ui/SidePanel opens ui/Modal's drawer-start placement (the dialog's own Esc, Back, scrim, focus trap and scroll lock); the tab shows at every width and is 44 wide on touch; a pin saved on a desktop is left alone below 1024, not honoured. [Nielsen #7, WCAG 1.4.10]
• A row answers to its own width. A list row that must fit a narrow column (the download row, the playlist table, the Channels tag row) stacks by a container query on its own box, not by the window: the same list sits beside a rail, in a split-screen tablet and in a zoomed-in browser. A line of facts (the download row's "Ready · MP4 · 18.9 MB · 1:11 · 1w ago") is one line cut at its end, never a flex row that breaks its pieces apart.
• A table gives its secondary columns back. By the table's own width, as a row does: below 42rem a column marked narrowHidden steps aside, below 64rem (a 1024 window) one marked tabletHidden does, so the name keeps its room. The Channels table drops Prio, About and Length there (at 1024 the name had 60 px); the row's "…" still sets the priority.
• Players on touch (C3): see Players.

Tokens

• Colour: only semantic tokens (--bg --surface --card --fg --muted --accent --accent-fg --danger --warn --success --info --border, each with a -fg partner where text sits on it), and no palette class (text-amber-500: lint-refused). A score's gold is --rating (theme-scoped, 4.5:1 on the page and on its own chip), never --warn: a score is not a warning. What sits on a picture looks the same in both themes, because the picture does: the broadcast red --live under --live-fg (never --danger: "live" is not an error), --rating-media on a poster's scrim, and --media-chrome for the always-dark player's menus (owner decision F16). Black and white are the media scrims and their text. Five schemes × dark and light (B2): Midnight (blue), Forest (cyan), Slate (fuchsia), Matrix (moss) each earn their place with their own hue family; Fjord (Midnight's navy with a calm steel-blue accent) is the one kept exception, the calm twin of the vivid Midnight. A new scheme still needs its own hue family. Normal text ≥ 4.5:1 and a control's edge ≥ 3:1 in every scheme and mode. [WCAG 1.4.3, 1.4.11] The input edge token is set under Controls (A4). The ≥ 3:1 edge is the field family's (a field, the form's dropdown trigger), whose edge is the only thing that says "type here". A labelled pill (a chip, a toolbar trigger, a tab, a segment) keeps the faint --border: its text names it, and 1.4.11 does not ask an edge of a control its label already identifies (owner decision F14).
• The accent never looks like a status. A scheme's accent is at least 30° of OKLCH hue away from --danger, --warn and --success, and passes 4.5:1 both as text on --bg and under --accent-fg on the fill, in dark and light. A primary button must never read as a destructive one. A new scheme is measured against this before it ships (the lab's B2 tiles do the arithmetic). [WCAG 1.4.1, 1.4.3]
• Held in code: frontend/src/lib/theme.contract.test.ts measures every scheme × mode in index.css against the two rules above (text 4.5:1, a control edge 3:1, the status and rating colours as text, the accent's hue gap), and the media colours against what they sit on. A scheme or a retuned colour that breaks them does not pass the gate.
• No per-user colour tuning. The schemes are the only colour choice; the old floating glass tuner was retired (E28), because free tuning is exactly the drift these rules exist to stop.
• Backdrops: one per scheme and mode (public/backdrops/), soft pools in the accent's family, with a grey overlay grain that breaks the gradient banding (measured by pixel-scanning a canvas, never a screenshot, which rescales).
• State layers (B3): hover and pressed are a layer, not a colour swap: the text colour mixed at 10% (hover) / 16% (pressed) over whatever the control sits on, so it reads on the page, a card and glass alike. A filled control mixes its own text colour into its fill at 14% / 24%. Opacity dimming and bg-card hovers are violations (invisible on a light card). Selected stays the solid accent. The one exception is an edged pill (a chip, a toolbar or form trigger, a segment): its hover is the accent edge (.pill:hover, glass-hover), which reads on every surface too (owner decision F14). A card that is one row with actions answers as a whole: the layer is the card's, under its badges and buttons, and the row's open button spans the card beneath the actions (a hover that stopped at the first badge read as broken; owner, E28 — AdminUsers user rows).
• Tokens as utilities: the decided values live once in index.css — --hover / --press, --edge-strong, --touch-target, and the utilities state-layer, state-filled, state-danger, edge-strong, fade-below, fade-below-panel, fade-above-panel, fade-edges-x. A primitive or a lab rendering uses them; restating one as an arbitrary class is a violation.
• Type and size: everything is rem-derived off --font-scale (the Settings text-size slider), so a px font size or a px-frozen box is an eslint error.
• Radius: chips and segmented controls rounded-full; tabs rounded-lg. Buttons, icon buttons and form fields rounded-lg; toolbar triggers and search a pill (Controls). Surfaces: see Surfaces.
• Layers: the fixed z-index scale in index.css (base < menu < chrome < paneltab < panel < rail < overlay < popover < tooltip), plus under, a surface's own layer under its content inside its isolate. No ad-hoc z-index. [maintainability]

Controls — Decided (batches A and B)

The chosen rendering of each rule is in the lab under "Decided". The primitives are built to it in S3.

• Buttons (A1): rounded-lg (r8): a control's corner is smaller than the surface it sits on (card r12, dialog r16). The rung follows the context: md in forms and dialog footers, sm in toolbars and panel headers, xs inside a table row. Glass is a Button variant, not a hand-built glass button. [HIG, Material]
• Density (B1): compact, by explicit height. md 2rem (32), sm 1.75rem (28), xs 1.5rem (24); icon buttons 1.75rem / 2rem. A toolbar's search pill, dropdown trigger, sm button and small icon button are the same 28, so the row lines up. Nothing goes under 24 (WCAG 2.5.8); touch grows it to 44 (A3).
• Icon buttons (A2): two sizes (28 / 32), r8: the smaller in rows and dense toolbars, the larger on its own. On a picture, a round, dark translucent button, readable on any thumbnail. Round means "floats over something": on media, or the one floating button over the page (back to top, a 48 glass circle, the FAB); a button inside a pill field is round too, so the radii nest. A text button on a picture is a pill (the card's Continue in the accent, Restart dark translucent, C5), and the one 48px glyph is the Play in the middle of a not-started card (C5).
• Touch (A3): on a coarse pointer every control primitive (Button, SegmentedToggle, FilterSelect, Tabs, Switch, chips, the nav rail) grows to 2.75rem (44px) through one token, as a real box. Mouse sizes don't change. [HIG, WCAG 2.5.8]
• Input (A4): one bordered input primitive, ui/Input (Textarea for several lines; a frame that also holds an icon or chips is painted with fieldClass around an InnerInput). The edge is color-mix(in srgb, var(--fg) 55%, var(--bg)), ≥ 3:1 against the page in every scheme and mode; focus turns it into a 2px accent edge, invalid into the danger edge. A form field is r8 at the md height (32); a toolbar search, a field in a popover or an inline rename is sm (28), the toolbar search a pill; the page's one hero field is lg (40): the header search, a glass pill floating over the page (the YouTube/Gmail shape), and the command palette's field; a field in a table row or the pager xs (24); an inline rename of a page title keeps the heading's type (heading). Text is 1rem and the box 44 on a coarse pointer. [WCAG 1.4.11]
• Dropdown trigger (A5): ui/SelectTrigger. A pill in a toolbar (where the pill means "a filter or a choice"), r8 and full width in a form, where it wears the field's frame (see-through, the ≥ 3:1 edge) and lines up with the inputs. Open is the accent edge and the chevron turned over.
• Checkbox, switch, slider (A6): the browser's own controls tinted with accent-color (Checkbox, CheckRow, Slider); ColorInput is the browser's colour well, which accent-color does not reach (it tints only checkboxes, radios, ranges and progress bars). The whole labelled row is the 44px target. Keyboard, screen reader and forced-colours support come from the browser. The switch stays form's Switch: no browser has a native one yet. A raw <input> or <textarea> outside those primitives is a lint error (a hidden file picker passes). A checkable row that cannot hold an <input> — a menu row, a whole-row button whose role says checkbox — draws the ONE ui/MenuCheck in its leading icon slot: a box filled with the accent for a set (tags, playlists, a filter's values; a minus for a group only partly in), a bare tick for one choice (a language, a sort, a priority step), an unticked choice keeping the slot empty so the labels line up.
• In-place editing: a field that replaces its trigger (a title rename, the priority number) hands the focus back to that trigger when Enter or Escape closes it (useReturnFocus), never to <body>. [WCAG 2.4.3]

Also in force:

• One primitive per button family (E28 S3b): a labelled action is Button (a rung from the ladder, plus lg 40 for a page's single hero call to action, and nothing else); a glyph is IconButton (a required label); a card, row, tile or menu row whose content is the control is Pressable; a filter or tag chip is Chip; a sortable row's grip is DragHandle. On the always-dark player chrome both Button and IconButton use the overlay variant (white, a white layer), whatever the theme; the Plex control row is IconButton's player rung (36, a 20px glyph, round, 44 on touch). A pressed toggle is pressed: the solid accent on a Button, the accent glyph on an IconButton. A raw <button> (or a bare FocusSafeButton) outside the control primitives (eslint BUTTON_PRIMITIVES) is a lint error. A text-less button must have an accessible name, and the type enforces it. [WCAG 4.1.2]
• The chip family (Chip, E28 S3b): rounded-full, never under 24 (A3 grows it to 44 on touch). filter is a selectable option, solid accent when pressed; the "+N" and "More…" triggers are filter chips too, and while their popover is open they show it as an open trigger does, the accent edge and text (not the solid fill, which would say "selected"); token is an applied narrowing, the accent tint, the whole chip removing it; tag is a user's tag, the solid accent; suggest is a suggestion not yet taken (dashed accent); ghost the quiet "add a tag" (dashed neutral). A chip whose label is not the control but carries its own × is DismissibleChip: two sibling controls at most, never a button in a button. An overflowing chip lane measures a hidden mirror painted with chipClass, so the mirror cannot drift from the chips.
• Unavailable with a reason stays focusable: aria-disabled plus the reason in the label or tooltip, never native disabled, which drops it from the tab order with its explanation. [WCAG 2.1.1]
• A choice between a few values is SegmentedToggle; a long list or a user's own list is FilterSelect. Never a native <select> (lint-enforced). Its rung is the toolbar's, 28 with text-xs, so it lines up with the triggers and the pager's buttons; the 24 rung with the smallest type is only a side panel's captioned match toggle (S3g: the old small default had put a pager and a toolbar count on 10px type).
• A multi-value filter's any/all switch (tags, topics, languages, genres, collections, actors) is ui/MatchToggle, on the panel right above its picker, from two picks on — never in the picker's popover, where a closed picker hid that "all" was on. One wording: Match · Any / All. [Nielsen #1]
• The pager is four glyphs — first, previous, next, last — round the page box (IconButtons, their names as the tooltip); no words, at any width.
• A single-select row of filter chips goes through FilterChipGroup (its options are Chips).
• A button that starts slow work shows loading (a spinner, aria-busy) and can't be pressed twice. [Nielsen #1]
• A glyph means one thing. Play (▷) starts playback, or resumes a paused transfer; a retry is the refresh arrow (RefreshCw); a reset or revert is the counter-clockwise arrow (RotateCcw). A failed download's Retry had worn the Play glyph, which promised a video. [Nielsen #4]

Surfaces and page chrome — Decided (batch B)

• Surface per role (B5): a dialog or panel is .glass r16; a card or picker .glass-card r12; a menu .glass-menu r12 with 4px padding and r8 items (12 − 4, so the corners nest); a tooltip .glass-menu r8. Translucency comes only from the tiers (the app backdrop, Plex media, light); a per-site alpha override is a violation. A call site names the ROLE (SURFACE.panel / drawer / card / menu / popover / tooltip, ui/surfaces.ts), which brings the tier AND the radius; a page section is a panel, and what floats over undimmed content (a menu, a hover card, a status popover, a toast, a tooltip) is .glass-menu. A bare glass class is a lint error. A role's depth is its own shadow (the top highlight + the drop); a shadow-* size beside a role would replace both and is a lint error too — a field that floats takes shadow-float, the same shadow.
• Static vs pressable (owner, S3d): a label that does nothing (a topic, a keyword, a status, a count) is a flat, tonal Badge with no edge; everything that does something has an edge (a chip, a trigger, a field). A genre that filters the library is a chip; the same genre where it can't is a badge. A badge's tone (neutral / accent / warn) is its own colour at 6%, measured at 4.5:1 in every scheme; a <span> drawn with a round edge is a lint error (F29). A toggle button states itself through pressed (the solid accent), never a bare aria-pressed, which the type refuses (F28).
• A link that looks like a button (a download, a sign-in that leaves the app) is LinkButton / IconLink: still an <a>, wearing the button's own face.
• Page chrome (B4): a page's tabs and filters sit in ONE sticky band of the page colour, with the fade under it (below). Below ~600px of height the filter row folds into one "Filters · n" button. Every page has a visually hidden h1; the nav rail and the browser tab title are the visible identity. [WCAG 2.4.6] Built as: the band is PageShell's toolbar slot (PageToolbar), above the one scroller; a console whose toolbar lives inside its frame (the server log) makes that toolbar sticky with fade-below instead. The band holds controls only: an intro paragraph scrolls with the content (in the band it ate three lines of a short window). The fold is useFilterFold + FilterFoldButton: the same row shown or hidden in place, never copied into a popover. The hidden h1 is PageShell's title; a view with its own visible title (a channel, a Plex show, a playlist) renders it as PageHeading and the hidden one steps aside, so a page has exactly one h1 (a hand <h1> inside the shell is refused by a contract test). A section's caption is SectionLabel, an h2 (an h3 in a dialog), never a styled div. The first Tab stop is "Skip to content" (SkipLink), which focuses the scroller's <main>. [WCAG 2.4.1, 1.3.1]
• The header + fade edge (B9): a crisp band and a 1rem gradient of the colour it sits on, so content dissolves as it slides under; it shows only once something is under it, never over a list at rest. It goes on sticky toolbars and table headers, tabs over a scrolling panel, a long dialog's header and footer, and the clipped ends of an overflowing chip row. Not on thumbnails (they are the content) and not on buttons (it becomes a dated gloss). Built as: a sticky element takes the fade-below utility (fade-below-panel / fade-above-panel on a panel); the page band and a scrolling panel under its header fade by the scroller's own edge mask (useScrollFade), because what they sit on is the backdrop, not a colour. The chip rows fold their overflow into "+N" rather than scroll, so no row has clipped ends; the carousels fade theirs. The dialog edges come with C4's pinned footer (S3f).
• Viewport height: dvh, never vh / h-screen: 100vh is the viewport with a mobile browser's toolbar retracted, so an h-screen shell runs its last rows under the toolbar (contract-tested).
• Nav rail (B7): the ui/NavRail primitive, slim: 3.75rem wide. "You are here" is a soft accent tint plus a 3px edge bar. Labels under the icons are optional, a per-user switch in Settings (off by default); they add height, never width, so each module has a short rail label that fits, and the full name stays in the tooltip. No wide padding around the icons. The switch is Settings → Appearance → "Labels in the side menu"; with the labels on, a row's accessible name is its visible short label (WCAG 2.5.3), and an unread count is part of the name, not only drawn.
• Loading (B8): a first load of a grid, list or table shows its skeleton (LoadingState shape="grid" | "poster" | "list" | "table", built from the Skeleton primitive), so nothing jumps when the data lands; a control's own work shows its spinner (loading). Neither appears before ~300ms. [Nielsen #1]
• The public watch page (B6) follows these same rules (glass, Button, the pressed-pill toggle, the scheme's backdrop); only the video keeps the browser's own controls, because a stranger's device is unknown.

Already in force:

• The glass role is load-bearing: a dropdown or menu is .glass-menu (it floats over undimmed content, so a card alpha would bleed through), a dialog is .glass, and a grid card is .glass-card.
• Every overlay is a Modal/Overlay or an anchored popover from the one popover engine. Escape closes the topmost layer only, and focus returns to the control that opened it. [WCAG 2.4.3, 2.1.2]

Action placement — Decided

Which actions are visible and which live in a menu.

• One menu, several triggers. An object's actions are ONE list. The visible "…" button, a right-click, a long-press (touch) and Shift+F10 / the Menu key all open the same ContextMenu built from that list. A second, hand-made menu for the same object is a violation.
• Nothing is reachable only by a gesture. Every menu action also has a visible path: the "…" button, the page toolbar, or the object's detail view. A right-click is a shortcut, never the only door. [Nielsen #6, #7]
• What stays visible: the object's primary action (play or open) and any state the user needs to see (watched, saved, downloading). What goes into the menu: rare, secondary and destructive actions. Destructive ones keep their confirmation. [Nielsen #8, #5]
• On touch, a card shows fewer actions and a "…" button. The rest are in the menu.
• The classification (C1) says, per object, what is visible at rest, on hover and on touch; its full table is the lab's C1 reference, and S3 turns it into each object's one action list in code. In short:
  • A video or Plex card: play and its state (watched, progress) at rest; the everyday toggles (watched, save, add to playlist) and "…" on hover; on touch the state and a 44px "…" beside the title. Details, download, hide and reset live in the menu.
  • A row (playlist item, channel, download): its primary action and its values (priority, tags, error) stay visible; destructive and rare row buttons (unsubscribe, delete, cancel, remove) move into the menu. A playlist item's X column goes: Delete key plus an undo toast.
  • Downloads, Notifications and the Scheduler get a menu (they have none today); a page's destructive header action ("Clear everything", "Purge discovery") goes into the header's "…".
• Built as: one useContextMenu per list; the row spreads triggerProps (right-click, long-press, Shift+F10) and its "…" is ui/MoreButton with buttonProps (the same menu, under the button; a second press closes it). An object's list is one builder (useVideoActions for a video, usePlexCardActions for a Plex title, composed by their lists and by Home's rails); a row that opens a panel ("Add to playlist…", "Details") anchors it to menu.anchor, the element the menu came from. "Copy title" / "Copy link" come from useCopyItems and run inside the click (inGesture, Safari's clipboard rule). The card's hover row sits on its picture (the duration steps aside while it shows); on touch the toggles are gone and a 44px "…" sits beside the title (.touch-only). The hover chrome and what steps aside for it are one pair of class strings (ui/reveal.ts), shared by the video and the Plex cards. A table or rail ROW shows its "…" at the row's end on hover or focus and always on touch (.reveal). A playlist's rows take Remove from the Delete key too (the listDelete key scope, registered only by a list that can remove) and answer it with an undo toast whose Undo puts the row back at its index in one request; a playlist itself has one list (usePlaylistActions.items) that its rail row and its page header's "…" both open. A subscribed channel's row ends in its "…" (useChannelActions: open, pin, Tags, Priority, YouTube, copy, full history, hide with an undo toast, unsubscribe behind its confirm), docked beside the name in the card layout. Its Tags submenu lists the reader's tags A–Z, each a check that toggles in place (the menu stays open for the next); its Priority submenu offers the fixed steps 10 · 5 · 3 · 2 · 1 · 0 (an off-scale current value shows ticked in its place), and a pick re-sorts the list at once — only that row moves — with the pager and the focus (its "…") following it. The row's stepper still sets any value and leaves the order until the next load. A Plex playlist's title, show group and season each open the page's one row menu (a title's is its usePlexCardActions list plus the removal); removals take the same undo toast, j/k walk the visible rows and Delete removes the walked one; its rename and delete sit in the header's "…". A toast that carries an action lives at least 8 s, whatever the toast setting. A download row keeps play (pause / resume / retry in the queue) and the save link, a library row also Share (the link copy, ahead of save), and ends in its "…" (useDownloadActions: the editors, managing the shares, re-download, the copies, cancel / delete / remove behind their confirms); a link inside a row keeps the browser's own right-click menu. A notification row keeps its link and its unread mark, shows its dismiss on hover (in the "…" on touch), and its "…" holds find / undo for an activity notice. The notification center's band keeps Mark all read and puts Clear everything, now behind a confirm, in its "…"; the Scheduler's strip keeps Run all and Pause and puts Purge discovery in its "…". A list whose row objects are rebuilt each render or replaced by a poll passes useContextMenu({ keyOf }) (its id), so the "…" still closes its own menu. A menu's groups are ui/menuGroups: a rule between two non-empty groups only.
• Background menu: a right-click on EMPTY content area (not over text, inputs, links or media) may open a page menu. It only mirrors page-scope actions that already exist in the toolbar (sort, view, quick filters, select all); it adds no new function. Shift+right-click falls through to the browser's own menu. Desktop only: on touch a long-press on the background clashes with scrolling and text selection, so the toolbar stays the touch path. Built (ui/PageMenu; PageShell listens, lib/backgroundTarget decides "empty") on five pages: the feed (sort, reshuffle, view, watch state, content types, source, clear filters), the Plex library grid (sort, watch state, clear filters), the channel manager (layout, the cards' sort, sync status, edit tags, clear the tag filter, read subscriptions from YouTube), a playlist (play all, group by channel, reset view, save order, undo / redo, and the list's own "…") and the notification center (mark all read). Never a destructive row (delete, revert, clear everything) and never a long quota run (backfill): a stray right-click must not be one click from those. The tab-only pages keep the browser's menu; pageMenuScope.contract.test.ts holds the list.

Text stays selectable — Decided

Wherever there is text, the user can select it and copy it, and no click action overrides that.

• A title or a name inside a click surface stays selectable: the card, row, person, channel or log line that opens is selectable (ui/FocusSafeButton, under Pressable and Button). Chrome selects no text inside a <button> unless it is user-select: text (measured), so the flag sets that and the click guard below. A control's own label (a menu row, an option, a tab, a nav item, a switch) is not a title and stays plain; pressableSelectable.contract.test.ts makes every new Pressable choose.
• A click that ends a text selection does nothing: if the selection inside the element is non-empty, or the pointer moved past the drag slop, no play or open fires.
• A right-click on selected words opens the browser's own menu (Copy, Search, Translate), not the object's; a right-click beside the selection still opens the object's menu (ui/useContextMenu).
• On touch the long-press belongs to the context menu, so the object's menu offers Copy title and Copy link.

Media card — Decided (S3h)

A film, a show, an episode, a video or a pinned channel is ONE card wherever it appears: the Plex grid, the feed, Home's shelves and hero, the Plex rails, the media-info page's collection strip. A place may pick a density step; it never changes the anatomy or loses an action. [Nielsen #4]

• Anatomy (the owner's pick C). One frame: the picture, the title, the meta line pinned to the frame's bottom edge, so a one-line title leaves no hole above the meta. What is ON the picture: the length (a film's runtime, a show's season count, a video's duration) as a dark badge in the corner, the watched mark, the progress bar along the bottom. Built as ui/MediaCard + the classes in ui/mediaCardStyles (MEDIA_PICTURE, MEDIA_IMG, MEDIA_BADGE, MEDIA_HOVER_LAYER, MEDIA_BAR, mediaTitleClass, mediaPictureBox).
• Play only where the click plays. The hover layer dims the picture and shows MediaPlayGlyph, the one round media Play (the button family's media variant), only on a card whose click starts playback; a show without a next episode opens instead and shows none. The hover row (watched, save or add, "…") docks at the picture's bottom-right; the length badge steps aside while it shows.
• Density. A grid card: a two-line title and the full meta (Plex: year · ★ score; a video: the channel, then views · age). On a shelf (any horizontal strip) the title is one line, cut with an ellipsis, over ONE meta line (Plex: year · ★; a video: the channel; a tile: its count), so every card on the strip is the same height. A Home shelf slot is 232px: at 200 the Play and the hover row overlapped by 2px, at 232 they stand 6px apart; a landscape shelf picture takes the smaller Play.
• A mixed shelf is landscape. Beside videos a Plex title shows its wide art, not its poster; a rail's slot is a grid cell, so each card fills the height the strip stretches to. A carousel turns the cards' content-visibility off (mediaRail.contract.test.ts): an off-screen card's reserved height had become the strip's.
• The preview (the owner's pick C). Resting the mouse on a Plex card for ~0.9 s opens a panel beside it: the whole title, year · length · ★, and the synopsis in short lines (ui/MediaPreview + useMediaPreview). Mouse only (a keyboard walk or a tap never opens it; "…" → Media info has the same), passive (it never takes a click), and any press on the card closes it. Long text never goes in a native title tooltip.
• Home's hero is a card (the owner's pick A): the same hover row and Play on its picture, the same whole menu on right-click, long-press and a touch "…" in its button row. In a wide window it stands three quarters wide and centred, with even padding; its text is one centred stack — kicker, title, subtitle (dropped when it is only the year), one fact line, a summary only when there is one.
• Home's shelf tiles act like their object. A pinned channel or playlist: Play when it has a next video, ↗ to open it, "…" with an Open row. A show carries its next episode: the Play, the watched toggle and add act on that episode ("Next: S6·E16" is its meta line), and an ⓘ opens the show. A channel's Home menu is play, open and the shelf's own rows; its tags, priority, hide and unsubscribe stay on the Channels page.
• The compact list row (the owner's pick B). The title leads; a faint "…" is always at the row's end; on hover or focus the quick toggles float in beside it over the date, which steps aside (the Gmail row). On touch only the "…".
• The media-info page (layout B). Under the hero a main column — the collection strips (the same card), then the crew, then the cast — beside a 20rem sidebar of facts (details, keywords). Every section is the reader's to hide; a column with nothing in it is not drawn and the other takes the width. A show's page uses the same meta row: a value that filters is a chip, a plain fact is flat text, spaced by the gap, no "·".
• Browse tiles (genres, playlists, collections) answer the pointer as a card does: the edge takes the accent, the shadow lifts and the art zooms.
• A missing picture says what the item is. No picture at all (a link that failed before its details, a poster that never came) shows a quiet glyph — a film, a note, a file — never an empty box, which reads as "still loading". A download with no name yet is titled by its short link, once: no channel line, no second link line.
• Reading measure. Prose (a synopsis, a biography, a channel's description) is capped at ~65 characters a line (the measure utility) wherever its container can be wider. [WCAG 1.4.8]

Composition and the reader — Decided (E30 S6)

The rules above say how each piece looks; these say whether the screen works as a whole, for the one reader it is built for. Found when the person page passed every rule with its biography in the left half of a full-width panel and nothing on the right.

• The space is used. A narrow element in a wide container (prose at measure, a form, a short list) comes with a decision about the rest of the width: a second column with related content (the person page: facts and bio left, "Known for" right), a container sized to its content, or a layout that stacks. A band of nothing wider than about a third of a panel, beside content that stops short, is a finding. [Material layout, Gestalt proximity]
• One focal point, then an order. A screen has one thing the eye lands on first (the page heading, the hero, the player), then the sections, then the metadata. A heading level keeps one look across screens; a second focal point competing with the first is a finding. [Nielsen #8, HIG hierarchy]
• Worst real data, not the demo row. A screen is judged with the longest title, the Hungarian label, zero items, the largest list, a missing picture and a missing field. None of them clips, overlaps or leaves a hole where a value was. [Nielsen #9, WCAG 1.4.10]
• Where am I. The browser tab names the place and the object in it ("Nicolas Cage · Plex · Siftlode"), the rail marks the place, and Back returns to the same view at the same scroll position with focus where it was. [Nielsen #1, WCAG 2.4.2]
• A click answers at once. A control shows its pressed or changed state within ~100ms (an optimistic update, a spinner in the control); what a screen opens with is the app's own data — an outside service (TMDB, YouTube) is fetched ahead of time by a job, not on the click, so a page never waits on it. Late content keeps its place (B8). [Nielsen #1, RAIL]
• Zoom and text size are first-class. The owner reads with the browser zoomed and a large text size. Every screen holds at 125% and 133% browser zoom on a 1080p desktop window (what the owner uses: the layout of a 1536 × 729 and a 1444 × 685 viewport) and at the largest Settings text size at 1024 wide: nothing clipped or overlapping, no sideways page scroll, every control reachable and at least its rung, text wrapping rather than cut. Measured, not assumed, on every UI change. [WCAG 1.4.4, 1.4.10, 1.4.12]

Interaction rules — Decided

• Keyboard: everything works by keyboard, in visual order, with no traps. A shortcut is a row in lib/keymap.ts; list and grid navigation is NavGrid/keyboardNav. [WCAG 2.1.1, 2.4.3, 2.1.2]
• Focus: every control has a visible focus ring (the base ring in index.css; don't add a second). A sticky or fixed layer never covers the focused element. A list item the keyboard lands on rings 2 px outside itself where it has a gap round it (a card); a table row, a log line or a row flush in a clipping card rings inside itself, following its corners, since outside the ring ran under the table head or was clipped away. [WCAG 2.4.7, 2.4.11]
• Menus and tabs follow WAI-ARIA APG: arrow keys move, Home/End jump, Escape closes and returns focus; tabs carry tablist/tab/tabpanel roles.
• Feedback: a finished action is confirmed briefly (a toast that leaves by itself); anything that must be read or acted on is not only in a toast. Status changes are announced through a live region. [Nielsen #1, WCAG 2.2.1, 4.1.3]
• Errors: a failed write goes through meta.failTitle / notifyActionError, never a silent catch. An error sits next to what failed and says how to recover; a field error is under its field and linked with aria-describedby. Colour is never the only signal. [Nielsen #9, WCAG 3.3.1, 1.4.1]
• Loading: anything slower than ~300ms shows a loading state; a near-instant load doesn't flash one. Space is reserved for late content so the layout doesn't jump; the form is under Surfaces (B8).
• Reordering: anything you can drag also has a button or menu way to move it (Top / Up / Down / Bottom), and a drag handle carries touch-action: none so a finger drags instead of scrolling. [WCAG 2.5.7] A list whose rows have a "…" (a YouTube playlist, a Plex playlist: a block among the blocks, an episode within its show) puts the four moves there (ui/useOrderItems); the saved views' editor shows them as four buttons with the item's place beside the selected view; a side panel in edit mode gives each group an Up / Down pair (ui/OrderButtons, compact). A move that would go nowhere is shown off, not hidden. A grip also picks up from the keyboard (space, the arrows, space).
• Motion: 150–300ms micro-interactions, transform/opacity only; prefers-reduced-motion is respected. [WCAG 2.3.3]

Players — Decided (C3, C5, built in S3f)

• A tap on the Plex video only shows or hides the controls (C3); play/pause is the button. The mouse keeps click-to-pause. Measured live: before this, a tap with the bar hidden both revealed it and paused. [Nielsen #3]
• The hide timer starts with playback, not with the first touch (before, on touch, the bar stayed up until the first tap however long the video played).
• The bars stay up while the pointer rests on them (F22, owner); leaving starts a fresh 3 s. YouTube and Plex Web do the same: before, the row faded out from under a mouse parked on Next.
• Volume is the native Slider (A6); the hand-drawn bar had no hover, focus, keyboard or screen-reader state. A pointer drag gives the focus back, so Space and the arrows keep driving the player.
• The seek bar: the track stays thin inside a 2.75rem (44px) hit area with touch-action: none, so a finger drag scrubs instead of panning; the scrub head is always visible on touch. Controls are 44 on touch. [WCAG 2.5.8]
• The Plex control set (C5, the owner's model): one row that fits a portrait tablet.
  • No Stop (closing the player is stopping), no Restart, no ±10 s buttons.
  • Back: more than 3 s in → back to the start; within the first 3 s → the previous item, at its resume point if it has one, else its start. The first item has only the restart.
  • Next shows only when there is a next item (an episode, a playlist queue). It starts that item at its resume point and leaves one behind on the current item, which does not count as watched unless it is already inside the finish margin (the credits).
  • ±10 s: the keyboard keeps ← / →; on touch a double-tap on the left or right third of the picture skips ∓10 s, while a single tap still only shows the controls. Touch never loses a function. [WCAG 2.5.1]
  • The row: play/pause, Back, Next, mute, the time, audio & subtitles, a fixed ⋯ (player settings, media info, stats, keyboard shortcuts, download the original file), fullscreen. The volume slider is mouse only: a tablet's volume is its buttons.
• Restarting lives on the media card (C5): not started → Play; started → Continue (primary) + Restart, the video card's own pair and words (MediaResumeButtons, one component for every card and Home's hero). A poster stacks the pair; a landscape picture sets it side by side, icon-only on a small one. On touch a tap continues and the card's "…" has "Play from the beginning" under its Play row. The restart applies to the item the player opened on (fromStart); every item it moves on to resumes.
• The YouTube modal: its chrome uses the Button rungs (44 on touch), the side arrows stay inside the screen, and the description opens from an ⓘ button, because a hover popover never opens on a tap (measured live). [WCAG 1.4.13]

Dialogs — Decided (C4, built in S3f)

• Initial focus by purpose (Modal's required initialFocus, so no dialog inherits "the first focusable", which is always the ✕): field — a form opens on the body's first control, and one that loads after opening moves the focus there when it arrives, as long as the focus still rests on the ✕; action — a confirm, where the least destructive button takes autoFocus; close — anything to read, browse or manage. [WAI-ARIA APG]
• The header and the footer are fixed; only the body scrolls, with the B9 fade at each edge, so the primary action stays on screen when the on-screen keyboard takes half of it (the viewport's interactive-widget=resizes-content makes the keyboard shrink the layout, where Chrome would otherwise slide it over a fixed dialog). A fade shows only while content is under it (the body's scroll timeline): a dialog that fits draws none. [Nielsen #3, WCAG 2.4.11]
• The footer is the dialog's commit row — Cancel / Save, Start, Retry / Close, a confirm's choices — placed with ModalFooter from any depth of the body. A section's own buttons (a sub-form inside a manager, a list row's Delete) stay in the body; a manager with no commit row has no footer.

Copy — Decided (S3g)

• Every user-facing string is in both Hungarian and English with zero key drift, and a user-facing error is a structured {code, reason} translated on the client. Hungarian speaks to the user as "te".
• One name per feature. The nav rail's label is the feature's name; page titles, menus, shortcuts, settings tabs and onboarding use the same words. The rail may shorten them ("Config" for "Configuration", "Listák" for "Lejátszási listák"), never swap in another word. [Nielsen #4]
• One verb per meaning. Delete / Törlés: gone for good. Remove / Eltávolítás: out of a list, the thing itself survives. Dismiss / Elrejtés: a notice leaves the view. Discard / Elvetés: unsaved edits are thrown away. A confirm uses its action's verb. [Nielsen #4]
• Sentence case. Capitals only for brand names (YouTube, Plex, Google) and the app's places used as places ("Hide from Feed", "Megnézés a Könyvtárban"). [Material, HIG]
• "…" when the command asks first. A label ends in "…" when it opens a dialog, form or picker before anything happens ("Edit tags…"); not on a submenu (its chevron says it) or an immediate action. Progress text ("Loading…") keeps its own. [HIG, Windows]
• Messages. A toast or error of one sentence has no full stop and no "✓": "Couldn't sync subscriptions" / "Nem sikerült szinkronizálni". Two sentences keep their stops. Help text is prose.
• Quotes around a name are curly: “abc” in English, „abc” in Hungarian.
• Dates, in the UI language, only from lib/format.ts (lint: local/locale-format): recency in a list is relative ("3d ago" / "3 napja") through ui/RelativeTime, which carries the exact minute on hover; a date is "Sep 27, 2026" / "2026. szept. 27."; a moment "Sep 27, 2026, 08:30 AM" / "2026. szept. 27. 08:30"; seconds only in the server log, the audit and the recorder.
• Units. A figure with a unit (a length, a countdown, a range of days) is the browser's short form (Intl), through formatUnit / formatRuntime: "90 min", "2 hr 13 min" / "90 p", "2 ó 13 p"; a fixed label holding one is written in that same form ("Under 90 min"). Never a bare letter ("90m", "24h", "7d"; test-held). In a sentence, and in a list of time spans named in words ("24 hours", "1 week"), the unit is a word. A clock-style length on a picture stays "2:34:11".
• Numbers in the UI language, from lib/format.ts (same lint): the decimal mark and grouping are the language's ("8.3" / "8,3", "1,234" / "1 234"); a big count is compact ("1.2K" / "1,2 E"); a size keeps its symbol ("5.0 GB" / "5,0 GB"), as do a stream's (Mbps) and "%" / "px". Never toFixed on screen.
• Order. An A→Z list is in the UI language's alphabet ("Ö" after "O", "Cs" after "Cu" in Hungarian), by the name the reader SEES: compareText (lib/collate.ts) on the client, the ICU collation of app/collation.py on the server, so both sort alike.
• Hungarian words, not English ones (E30 D3). Kept as Hungarian users say them: Feed, Shorts, Admin, Token, Port, and technical tokens (log levels, ffmpeg presets, remux). Everything else is Hungarian: közvetítés (stream), Prioritás, Feladat (job), Eseménynapló (audit), Demó, Automatikus, Infó, Felület / Szerver (frontend / backend), videók behúzása (backfill), átkódolás (transcode), e-mail. A longer Hungarian word gets its room — a column is sized to it, a pill truncates — never clipped.
• A label says what happens ("Delete playlist"), not "OK"; a destructive confirm names the object.

Anti-patterns

• A flat bg-card / bg-surface box where a glass surface belongs.
• A hand-rolled control that restyles what a primitive already does.
• Information or actions that exist only on hover, or only behind a right-click.
• A click handler on text that swallows the user's text selection.
• A colour literal, a px font size, a px-frozen box.
• An empty state shown for an error.
• Half a panel left empty beside content that stops short.
• A page that waits on an outside service when the user opens it.
• A screen checked only at 100% zoom and the default text size.

Decision log

Date	Decision	Chosen	Over	Why
2026-09-24	Floating button	Back to top: a round 48 glass FAB; "round" = floats over something (media or the page)	A Material 3 rounded square; a labelled pill; the old 64 circle	The common web convention for back to top; round tells it apart from every toolbar button; 64 was oversized
2026-09-24	Device contract	Tablet portrait + landscape and up; phones out	A 1024px floor with a "too small" message	Portrait tablet use is real, and the app already renders at 820 portrait
2026-09-24	Card actions on touch	Fewer visible, the rest in a "…" menu	44px buttons that no longer fit the card	Six 44px targets need more width than a card has
2026-09-24	Action placement	One menu with several triggers, never gesture-only, a desktop background menu that mirrors the toolbar	Visible buttons for everything	Fewer non-critical buttons on screen, without hiding any function
2026-09-24	Text selection	Text stays selectable; a click that ends a selection does nothing	Click-to-play on titles	The user must be able to copy any text the app shows
2026-09-24	A1 Button shape	r8 + a rung per context; glass is a Button variant	r12; a pill	Nested corners (r8 in r12 in r16); the pill already means "a filter or a choice"
2026-09-24	A2 Icon buttons	Two sizes, r8; a round button only on media	One size; all round	A lone toolbar icon at the row size looks lost; round rows read as tags
2026-09-24	A3 Touch size	44 for every control primitive	36 + gaps; Button only	One rule (HIG 44) instead of two sizes nobody remembers
2026-09-24	A4 Input	Bordered, a 55% fg-into-bg edge (≥ 3:1)	Filled; today's look as a primitive	The only option that clears WCAG 1.4.11 without a heavy fill on glass
2026-09-24	A5 Dropdown trigger	Pill in a toolbar, r8 in a form	Pill everywhere; r8 everywhere	Matches the neighbours in each context
2026-09-24	A6 Checkbox, switch, slider	Native, accent-tinted, the row is the target	Drawn primitives	Free keyboard / screen-reader / forced-colours support; only 3 sites
2026-09-24	B1 Density	Compact 32 / 28 / 24 by explicit height	Standard 38 / 32 / 26	The owner's read of the lab; touch is covered separately (A3), and one toolbar row lines up at 28
2026-09-24	B2 Scheme set	Midnight, Forest→cyan, Slate→fuchsia, Matrix→lime	Today's six	The accent collided with danger (YouTube), warn (Slate) and success (Forest, Matrix); Midnight and Starship were one scheme twice; 4 of 6 light accents failed 4.5:1
2026-09-24	B3 State layers	Text colour at 10% / 16% over anything	Material's 8 / 12%; today's opacity + bg-card	Visible in every scheme and mode (≥ 1.2:1); today's row hover was 1.00:1 on a card
2026-09-24	B4 Page chrome	One sticky band + fade; filters fold when short	A floating glass bar; everything scrolls	Tabs and filters always in reach, in one place; a keyboard-up tablet keeps its content
2026-09-24	B5 Surfaces	One class + radius per role	Today's per-site mix	Nested corners and no per-site alpha drift
2026-09-24	B6 /watch	The app's surfaces, native video controls	Flat and minimal	The page strangers see should look like the product; native controls work on any device
2026-09-24	B7 Nav rail	Soft tint + edge bar, optional labels (a user setting), slim	Solid accent (recommended); a Material rail	The owner's combination: calmer than a solid fill, labels for who wants them, no width cost
2026-09-24	B8 Loading	Skeleton by shape, spinner in a control	A spinner everywhere	Nothing jumps when data lands; a long wait doesn't look stuck
2026-09-24	B9 Fade	Toolbars / headers, panel tabs, dialog edges, chip rows	Thumbnails; buttons	The north-star depth where content scrolls under chrome; not on content or small controls
2026-09-24	C1 Action classification	The table (lab C1): state + primary at rest, everyday toggles on hover, "…" on touch, destructive into the menu	Visible buttons per site, as today	One action list per object, nothing gesture-only, fewer buttons without losing a function
2026-09-24	C2 Side panels	A tap opens an overlay drawer; pin is a separate button ≥ 1024	A tap pins and the content reflows	Below 768 the filters were unreachable; on touch a tap pinned and pushed the grid
2026-09-24	C3 Players on touch	Tap = show the controls; 44px seek hit area; 44 buttons; the YT description behind ⓘ	Today (tap also pauses; 7.5px seek bar)	Measured live: you couldn't reach the seek bar without pausing, and the hover-only description never opened on a tap
2026-09-24	C4 Dialogs	Focus by purpose; a pinned footer	Focus on Close; the footer scrolls	A form starts in its first field, and Save stays on screen with the keyboard up
2026-09-24	C5 Plex player controls	The owner's lean set: no Stop / Restart / ±10 s buttons, Back by position, Next only with a next item, Resume + From the start on the card, touch double-tap ±10 s	Every control in one row (it ran off-screen below 1024); Back by a press counter; ±10 s keyboard-only	The row fits a portrait tablet; the decision to restart is made on the card; a tablet keeps the 10 s skip
2026-09-24	Glass tuner	Retired; the schemes are the only colour choice	Keep it with ranges clamped to the rules	Free tuning is the drift the constitution exists to stop (owner)
2026-09-24	Matrix toned down	Moss #86a05a at Midnight's lightness, near-neutral greys; every white-on-accent part → --accent-fg	The B2 lime #a3e635	The owner found the lime neon and tiring; it was the loudest accent (L 0.85, C 0.21), and fixed white parts sat on it at 1.5:1
2026-09-24	Field primitives	Input / Textarea / InnerInput + fieldClass, SelectTrigger, the native controls; the lint rule "no raw <input>"	inputCls and ~40 hand-styled boxes	Six edges, four radii and two focus looks for one control; the ≥ 3:1 edge held nowhere
2026-09-25	Surface roles	SURFACE roles in ui/surfaces.ts; the lint rule "no bare glass class"; menus p-1 with r8 rows	Three tiers paired ad hoc with five radii and three menu paddings	~140 sites drifted; nested corners only hold if the radius comes with the role
2026-09-25	Static labels	Flat tonal Badge, no edge; a filtering tag is an edged chip	A glass pill with an edge, like the chips	Edged = pressable at a glance; a static tag that looks like a chip gets clicked and does nothing
2026-09-25	Header search	A 40 glass pill with the field edge (lg); what sits inside it is round	44, r16, a glass box with a faint edge	The one rounded box among pills, and its edge under 3:1; the hero search is the YouTube/Gmail pill
2026-09-25	Switch row (F12)	The whole settings row toggles (SwitchRow; a hand-laid row points a label at the switch)	Only the 36×24 switch toggles	The iOS / Material settings row; the text was a dead click beside the control it names
2026-09-25	Edges and hovers (F14)	The ≥ 3:1 edge on the field family (fields, the form trigger); labelled pills keep the faint edge and the accent-edge hover	The ≥ 3:1 edge and a state-layer hover on every control	1.4.11 asks an edge only where nothing else identifies the control; a heavy edge on every chip and tab weighs the whole UI down
2026-09-25	Rating and live (F16)	Own tokens: --rating (theme-scoped gold), --live/--live-fg, --rating-media, --media-chrome; palette classes lint-refused	Map them to --warn / --danger	A gold star and a red LIVE are what the eye expects; as warn/danger they would read as a status. The old amber score was 2:1 on light
2026-09-25	Fjord trial (B2 exception)	A fifth scheme, temporary: Midnight's neutrals, Playnite's steel accent (#337599 lifted to #5aa1cb) and steel rules; exit = fold into Midnight or remove	Retune Midnight straight away; borrow only the qualities	The owner wants to live with the calmer palette app-wide before it replaces the default; it breaks "own hue family" on purpose, and only until that call
2026-09-25	Whole-card row (owner)	A card row's B3 layer is the card's ::before under its content; the open button's hit layer spans the card, the actions sit above it	The name button's own hover, ending at the first badge or button	A row that half-answers the pointer reads as broken; a badge click did nothing
2026-09-25	Badge tones (F29)	Badge tone neutral / accent / warn at 6%; light --warn #b45309 → #a14a07; edged label spans lint-refused	Keep edged status pills (a private Badge in Users, Settings "Granted", the suggestions count)	Edged = pressable at a glance; amber-700 was 4.58:1 as text and fell under 4.5 on its own tint
2026-09-26	Page band built (B4)	Controls only in the band (intros scroll); the fold shows the same row in place; one h1 per page (PageHeading steps the hidden one aside); SectionLabel headings; Skip to content	A popover of the folded filters; the page title kept visible	A folded row is still the same controls, nothing duplicated; the rail and the tab title already name the page
2026-09-26	Fade built (B9)	fade-below on sticky toolbars and table headers; the scroller mask where the band sits on the backdrop	A painted band over the backdrop	The backdrop is the colour under the band, so fading the content into it is the same edge
2026-09-26	Viewport units	dvh everywhere (the Plex player stage with S3f)	vh / h-screen	100vh hides the last rows under a tablet browser's toolbar
2026-09-26	Video actions built (C1)	One list per video (menu, right-click, long-press, "…"); the card keeps watched / save / add to playlist on its picture on hover; download, details, copy, hide, reset in the menu	The six-button row under the card and the hover ⓘ	The menu is the one door every device has; the card loses a line of height and the touch card its row of 28px buttons
2026-09-26	Plex actions built (C1)	One list per Plex title (play/open, watched, add to playlist, media info, copy title, pin); the poster keeps watched / add / "…" on its picture on hover; seasons get open / watched / add / copy	The hover ⓘ, the pin-only menu, an episode's add button at rest, a collection's "Remove" X on the card	The same door as a video's; the collection grid goes to two columns on a phone so the touch "…" leaves the title its line
2026-09-26	Playlist actions built (C1)	A playlist row's "…" (play, pin, copy title / link, move, order, remove), Delete + an undo toast; one list per playlist (rename, pin, YouTube open / push / revert, delete) from its rail row and its header's "…"	The row's X column and its confirm; the header's pencil, YouTube link, push, revert and trash buttons	Remove is reversible, so it needs no confirm; the header keeps Play all; a narrow table drops "#" and Channel so the title keeps a width
2026-09-26	Channel + Plex list actions (C1)	A channel row's "…" (open, pin, YouTube, copy, full history, hide + undo, unsubscribe); a Plex playlist's title / show / season "…", Delete + undo; its header's "…" (rename, delete); an action toast lasts ≥ 8 s	The channel row's full-history, hide and unsubscribe buttons; the Plex list's red X on every row, show and season; the header's pencil and trash	Hiding and removing are reversible, so they need no confirm and the undo needs time; unsubscribe and deleting a playlist keep theirs
2026-09-26	Download / notification / Scheduler actions (C1)	A download row's "…" (play, share, save, edit, details, re-download, manage sharing, copies, cancel / delete / remove); a library row's Share stays in sight, ahead of save; a notification row's "…" and hover dismiss; the inbox band's and the Scheduler strip's "…"	The download row's five rare buttons and its cancel / delete / remove; the source link's copy button; an activity notice's Find / Undo links; the band's Clear everything; the strip's Purge discovery	The destructive rows keep their confirm, and Clear everything gains one; a row link keeps the browser's own menu; Find in feed drops the tag / search / age filters that could hide its video
2026-09-26	Channel menu: Tags + Priority (C1)	Tags A–Z as in-place checks; Priority as fixed steps 10 · 5 · 3 · 2 · 1 · 0, the current one ticked; a pick re-sorts at once and the page + focus follow the row; one drawn MenuCheck for every checkable row that cannot be an <input>	Relative steps (+1 / +5); straight to the top; the stepper only; seven hand-drawn check marks (three box sizes, a tinted box, a × for "on", a trailing tick)	Bubbling a channel up is one pick; fixed levels keep the scale the reader already uses; the list moving where the reader can see it is the feedback
2026-09-26	Reorder without a drag (WCAG 2.5.7)	Row menus: Top / Up / Down / Bottom (YouTube + Plex playlists); saved views: four buttons with the place beside the selected view (owner: A); side panels in edit mode: an Up / Down pair per group (owner: A), the name wrapping there	A "…" on every saved-view row; a "…" on every panel group; drag only	A visible, one-click path where the list is edited; the edge moves shown off so the buttons never shift
2026-09-26	Titles in click surfaces	The surface stays a button, flagged selectable: its text selects, and the click that ends a selection does nothing; every plain Pressable pinned with its reason	Rebuilding each card and row so the title sits outside the button; exceptions for master-detail lists	Chrome selects inside a button once it is user-select: text (measured), so one flag on the primitive keeps the keyboard, focus and list walking every surface already has
2026-09-26	Right-click on a selection	The browser's own menu opens on selected words; beside them the object's menu	A "Copy selection" row in the app menu	The reader selected the words to do something with them; the native menu copies, searches and translates, and changes nothing else
2026-09-26	Keyboard ring on a flush row	Inside the row (a table row by its tag, a log line, a show header in its clipping card, with the card's corners)	The ring outside, as on a card	Outside it ran under the table head and past the table, and a clipping card cut it away entirely (invisible focus)
2026-09-26	Fade at rest	The sticky header's fade appears with the first 1rem of scroll (a scroll-driven animation; no fade where unsupported)	A fade that is always drawn	At rest it dimmed the first row and hid its ring's top edge; nothing is under the header yet
2026-09-26	Narrow playlist table	"#" and Channel hide by the table's own width (under 42rem), not the window's	Hiding below the sm window width	Beside the playlist rail a desktop window left the table 432 px and the title 0 px
2026-09-26	Background menu built	Five list pages (feed, Plex grid, channels, playlist, notifications); the toolbar's sort / view / filters and the band's actions; no destructive row	Every page with a toolbar; the "…" menus copied whole, delete included	The tab-only pages have nothing a menu would add; a blank-area right-click must not be one click from delete
2026-09-26	Media card anatomy (C)	One frame; the meta line pinned to its bottom; the length a badge on the picture; the Plex card on the same primitive as the video card	A: the year as an overline over the title; B: the year inline after it; a fixed two-line title slot	A one-line title left a hole the eye reads as a missing line; C puts nothing under a variable-height title
2026-09-26	One Play	MediaPlayGlyph (the media button variant) and only where the click plays	The Plex card's hand-painted accent circle; a playable dot on every card	One Play for every card; a dot that only a colour and a tooltip explain says nothing
2026-09-26	Filtering values on the info page	A value that filters (year, certificate, studio, director) is an edged chip; a fact is flat text	Everything flat, the clickable ones only hover-tinted	The S3d rule: edged = pressable, so the reader sees which values do something
2026-09-26	Shelf density	On any strip: one title line over one meta line	The grid's two lines and full meta on a strip	The tallest card set the strip's height and left holes in the cards with less to say
2026-09-26	Compact list row (B)	The title leads; a faint "…" at the end; the toggles float over the date on hover	A leading 128px action column	That column sat empty at rest, a hole at the start of every row
2026-09-26	Media-info layout (B)	A main column (collections first, crew, cast) beside a facts sidebar; an empty column is not drawn	Every section full width, stacked	The collection is the most used; the keywords' column left a void beside a short details box
2026-09-26	Mixed Home shelf (A)	Plex titles as wide art beside videos	Posters, with the videos not stretched	Stretching a video card to a poster's height left an ~80px gap
2026-09-27	Home hero	A card (hover row + Play on the picture, the whole menu, a touch "…"; owner: A); three quarters wide and centred on a wide window; one fact line; the summary at the measure	The hero's pin row alone; full width; an 18rem picture column	The one answer stands in focus, and it offers what the same card offers anywhere
2026-09-27	Home shelf tiles	A channel / playlist tile: Play, ↗ open, "…" with Open; a show acts on its next episode, ⓘ opens it; the shelf slot 232px	The tile's pin row alone; 200px	A tile without its object's actions read as broken; at 200 the Play touched the hover row
2026-09-27	Synopsis preview (C)	A ~0.9 s mouse rest opens a passive panel beside the card	The synopsis as the picture's title tooltip; an ⓘ to hover; none	One long tooltip line fired anywhere on the art and clashed with the cut title's own tooltip
2026-09-27	Reading measure	Prose capped at ~65 characters a line (measure)	The container's full width	At 110–130 characters a line the eye loses the next line's start
2026-09-24	Chip family	One Chip (filter / token / tag / suggest / ghost) + DismissibleChip; nothing under 24; the lint rule "no raw <button> outside ui/"	Five chip geometries in five files	The applied-filter row, the tag cells, the year picker and the saved-view editor each drew their own chip; a one-letter tag was 21px wide
2026-09-24	Button families	Button / IconButton / Pressable / chips / DragHandle; lg 40 for a hero CTA; pills and a 48 Play on media (from C5)	Every button hand-painted	268 hand-rolled buttons in 79 files drifted into as many looks; the ladder only holds if every button stands on it
2026-09-27	C4 as built	initialFocus required on every Modal; the commit row in ModalFooter, portalled under the body from any depth; the fades driven by the body's scroll timeline; interactive-widget=resizes-content	An optional prop defaulting to the ✕; a footer prop (the issue composer's buttons live three components down); always-on fades	A default is how 21 dialogs came to open on the ✕; lifting the composer's state to reach a prop is the larger change; a resting fade dimmed the first line
2026-09-27	C3 + C5 as built	A tap toggles the bar through pointerType from pointerdown; a double-tap takes back its first tap's toggle; the card's pair is the video card's MediaResumeButtons (Continue / Restart), a sibling over the picture; the YT description is an ⓘ click popover	A delayed single tap (wait out the double-tap window); new "Resume / From the start" words for Plex; the pair inside the picture's button	A delayed tap feels dead; one media card says one pair of words; a button inside a button is invalid and the hover row already sits beside the picture
2026-09-27	C2 as built	The side panel's drawer is ui/Modal drawer-start; drawer = a coarse pointer or below 768; the pin offered in its header ≥ 1024	A drawer of its own inside SidePanel	Esc, Back, the scrim, the trap and the scroll lock are the dialog's; a second implementation is how two shells drift
2026-09-30	Composition and the reader (E30 S6)	A chapter and a Conformance step: the space is used, one focal point, worst real data, where am I, a click answers at once, zoom and text size first-class; the person page as two columns (facts and bio left, "Known for" right)	Rules for pieces only; the bio in a full-width panel; a narrower panel	The person page passed every piece rule with half its panel empty; the owner reads zoomed in, so zoom is a requirement, not a nicety
2026-09-30	Hungarian words (E30 S5)	The D3 list: Feed, Shorts, Admin, Token, Port stay; stream, Prio, Job, Audit, Demo, Auto, Info, Frontend/Backend, Backfill, transcode get the Hungarian word; one name per thing (kérelem, behúzás, one "Test connection")	Keep every loanword; translate Feed/Shorts too	The owner chose the list (D3); the final sweep found the same feature under two names in three places
2026-09-29	Numbers and order in the UI language (E30 S3)	Every number through lib/format.ts in the UI language (decimal mark, grouping, compact, units); A→Z by the shown name in the UI language's alphabet, client and server alike; the language comes off useTranslation, never the singleton	toFixed, hand-built "1.2K", localeCompare in the browser's locale, byte-order server sorts	A Hungarian reader saw "8.3", "1.2K", "Életrajzi" after "Z"; the singleton read also left values in the old language after a switch (React Compiler)
2026-09-27	Narrow rows by container	The download row, the playlist table and the Channels tag row stack by a container query; a fact line never wraps	Breakpoints on the window	The iPad zoomed in, split screen and a column beside a rail are narrow while the window is not; the zoomed download row broke "18.9 / MB" apart
2026-09-27	Phones deferred	A phone-only layout (the hamburger nav, a folded feed band) waits for its own epic; E28 stays desktop + tablet	Fix the phone views inside E28	Principle 2; the first phone attempts made the feed worse, and the epic's review grows with every sprint
2026-09-27	Conformance check (S3g)	A four-step check before a UI change is done: primitive at a named rung, the chapter re-read, the rendered page measured by kind and look, every state seen	A reviewer's eye per sprint	The S1 probe found 69 button looks; after S3 every control kind is drawn by its primitive, and the check keeps a new look from arriving unnoticed
2026-09-27	Segmented rung	SegmentedToggle defaults to the toolbar rung (28, text-xs); 24 only for a panel's captioned match toggle	The small default	Two toolbars had inherited 10px type from the default beside 28px buttons
2026-09-27	Copy rule (S3g)	One name per feature (the rail may shorten it); four verbs for four meanings; sentence case with the app's places capitalised; "…" when a command asks first; one-sentence messages without a stop; curly quotes; dates relative in lists with the exact minute on hover, three absolute forms; units from Intl, short	Word-for-word names everywhere; the verbs as they were; all lower case; no "…"; always a stop; always absolute dates; long or compact units	The copy survey found 7 EN and 6 HU double names, 22 Delete against 27 Remove, five date shapes and three spellings of a minute; the owner picked every recommended option
2026-09-27	One glyph, one meaning (S4)	Play only for playback or resuming a paused transfer; Retry = RefreshCw; reset / revert = RotateCcw	Retry drawn with Play	The first UI-review run (Downloads) found a failed row whose Retry showed ▷ in the row and its menu
2026-09-27	Fjord kept	Fjord stays a fifth scheme beside Midnight; the trial wording goes	Fold it into Midnight; remove it	The owner lived with it and likes it; the vivid Midnight stays for those who want it. B2's own-hue rule still binds any new scheme
2026-09-27	Tablet columns	A table hides tabletHidden columns below 64rem of its own width; Channels drops Prio, About, Length	Hide About only; give the name a bigger share	At 1024 the channel name had 60 px; the owner chose to drop all three there
2026-09-27	Glyph pager	First / previous / next / last as glyph buttons round the page box, names as tooltips	Words beside the arrows (hidden only on a phone)	The owner's call: the words widened the row; four arrows are the shared convention
2026-09-27	Match switch on the panel	ui/MatchToggle above the picker from two picks, everywhere; one wording (Any / All)	The picker's popover footer (Feed, Plex collection)	A closed picker hid an active "all"; six pickers had drawn it two ways
2026-09-27	Missing picture, bare link	A glyph of the kind for no picture; a download with no name is titled by its short link, once	An empty box; the URL as title, channel and link	The owner's picks 4A and 3A: an empty box read as loading, the URL showed three times
2026-09-27	Copy on a selection	Right-click on selected words keeps the browser's menu; no app Copy row	An app menu with Copy first	A real browser's menu has copy, search and translate; only the desktop pane's is thin
2026-10-01	Zoom target 125–133%	Screens are held at 125% and 133% browser zoom (1536 × 729, 1444 × 685 on a 1080p window) and the largest text size	200% browser zoom	The owner: 200% was a guess; 125–133% is what they read Siftlode and most sites at, so 200% would be an upper bound nobody uses