DIRECTION.md v2 — dark futuristic visual contract locked
The site moved off cream and onto a #0A0F1A canvas with a single burnt-orange signature accent and Geist Sans + Geist Mono typography. DIRECTION.md v2 is now the law for every page and every tool.
Published
15 May 2026
UTC
Version
v0.3.0
semver-ish
Category
Engineering
engineering
Format
.mdx
utf-8 · hand-curated

DIRECTION.md moved to v2. The marketing site, every tool route, and
the Dev API console now sit on a #0A0F1A dark canvas with #E07B3A
burnt-orange as the only signature color. Typography is Geist Sans for
body, Geist Mono for everything technical (timestamps, IDs, version
chips, code blocks), and a single Instrument Serif italic accent phrase
per page.
The rules
- Page background is
#0A0F1Adeep ink. Never pure white, never cream. - One signature color —
#E07B3Aburnt orange — with anaccent-glowrgba variant for hover and focus states. - All borders are hairline,
rgba(240, 242, 248, 0.08). Drop shadows are forbidden. Depth comes from thecanvas → surface → surface-elevatedstack. - No gradient backgrounds, no decorative icons on list items, no rounded-corner cards as primary layout. Cards are reserved for the catalog grids that need them.
- Every page renders at least one "technical product" signal — a mono metric, a status dot, a code block, a grid backdrop, or a status pulse.
Why the move
The cream palette read as "editorial studio" — accurate for the journal
but wrong for the tools and the Dev API, which are technical products.
The dark canvas reads as "engineering surface" without giving up the
serif italic moment that anchors the brand. Every Tailwind class in the
codebase now resolves to a token in globals.css; raw hex values are
banned in JSX.