the brand, from first principles
# a design system is a set of claims; these are ours
the name
three readings, all intended
sudo scienceDo science with elevated privileges. The lab takes root on the systems it studies — permissionless inspection, extension, and reinterpretation.
pseudo-scienceThe accusation, embraced. Every project here looks unscientific exactly until it is implemented and evaluated. The method is the rebuttal.
$ sudo !!Run the last command again, with privileges. Most lab projects are an existing idea — webhooks, shells, diffs, attachments — re-run as root.
derivation
principle → design decision
Nothing below is an aesthetic preference. Each visual rule is the cheapest faithful encoding of a principle the lab already holds.
take root
One phosphor cursor color (#39FF14) owns the brand voice. Headers are lowercase and imperative. The $ prompt prefixes anything the lab says in its own name.
show your work
Everything machine-true is set in mono: labels, paths, statuses, provenance. Every artifact carries a status chip; every project page ends with where the idea came from. No claim without a state.
everything is a graph
Each project owns an accent channel, used for its node everywhere it appears. Related work renders as visible edges, and edges are links — navigation is traversal.
build to find out
The status vocabulary (concept → sketch → prototype → live, with roadmap for the future tense) is a design token, not copywriting. A page is allowed to say 'concept' out loud.
palette
one voice, seven channels
The core surfaces and the phosphor voice are fixed. Each project owns one accent channel — its node color in the graph, its left border on the index, its edge color everywhere it is referenced.
type & voice
mono is machine-truth; sans is argument
Geist Mono carries anything the system asserts: paths, statuses, labels, provenance, the prompt. Geist Sans carries anything the lab argues: theses, problems, explanations. A reader can tell data from rhetoric at a glance — that distinction is the brand.
- lowercase, imperative — Headers are commands or findings, not slogans. 'show your work', not 'Our Commitment to Transparency'.
- status honesty — Never describe a roadmap item in the present tense. The chip system exists so prose doesn't have to inflate.
- no marketing adjectives — 'powerful', 'seamless', and 'delightful' are banned. Specificity is the brand's only superlative.
- plain words under technical ones — Every term of art gets a one-line plain-language shadow nearby.
status vocabulary
the lab’s tense system
Five states, rendered as chips wherever an artifact is named. They are the brand’s grammar for honesty about time.
concept: an argued idea · sketch: a shape on paper · prototype: runs somewhere · live: deployed and linkable · roadmap: future tense, labeled as such