v0.3.0Engineering

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

Screenshot for DIRECTION.md v2 — dark futuristic visual contract locked

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 #0A0F1A deep ink. Never pure white, never cream.
  • One signature color — #E07B3A burnt orange — with an accent-glow rgba variant for hover and focus states.
  • All borders are hairline, rgba(240, 242, 248, 0.08). Drop shadows are forbidden. Depth comes from the canvas → surface → surface-elevated stack.
  • 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.