The design substrate that W-027..W-031 will inherit. Pins tokens,
typography, motion, semantic state mapping, the StableJsonViewer
trust-surface invariants, empty/error/loading contracts, the
keyboard-first contract, the five-region shell, the v1 component map,
and an explicit no-go list — before any frontend code exists.
Headline decisions:
- Semantic tokens only. `--color-surface-base`, not `--color-zinc-900`.
- Inter (UI) + JetBrains Mono (hash/JSON/trace), self-hosted.
- Badges bound 1:1 to ratified Python enums:
EpistemicState (15), NormativeClearance (4), ReviewState (4),
grounding source (6). No aspirational badges; adding an enum
value to the engine without a badge fails the test.
- Motion: reveals structure, not cognition. Allowed set is small
and tokenised; reduced-motion collapses everything to instant.
- StableJsonViewer ships six tested invariants (deterministic order,
lossless strings, no semantic auto-format, copy-path as JSON
Pointer, structural diff, large-doc / oversize safety).
- Every route ships empty / error / loading states from day one,
each following an explicit contract. No empty-empty, no
"Thinking…", no indefinite shimmer.
- Five-region shell; routes may collapse the right inspector but
not the top bar, left nav, or status footer.
- v1 must-ship component map is narrower than the vision; named
follow-ups are anticipated but not committed.
No-go list is explicit: no chat-clone styling, no animated cognition
theater, no glassmorphism, no purple gradients, no accept buttons,
no dashboard soup, no color-only encoding.
Status: proposed. Implementation lands in Branch 1
(workbench-ui/ scaffold + design tokens + StableJsonViewer +
badges + empty/error/loading + a /preview page) before W-027
starts.
Scope discipline: docs-only. No code, no UI, no API changes.
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