Two weeks ago I sat down to fix the system bay. The reading preferences were there but nothing happened when you pressed the buttons. That was the actual starting point.
The number in the title means nothing. That is the point.
What actually happened was this: I fixed the density toggle. Then I noticed the article list had no labels. Then I added labels. Then I needed them on article pages too. Then the colors were wrong. Then the specificity was wrong. Then the grid did not align. Then the front page did not feel right. Then the front page became a room-card grid with a latest strip. Then the relevance strip needed tools and papers. Then all the section pages needed the same label system. Then the toggles were labeled wrong. Then large was smaller than medium.
Each step was one step. None of them felt like a detour at the time.
That is the thing I keep learning and keep forgetting: there is no such thing as a small UI change when the system underneath it is still being defined. The label needs a color. The color needs a rule. The rule needs a grid column. The grid column needs a fallback. The fallback needs a CSS selector that does not break the existing layout. By the time you are done, you have touched five files and redeployed eleven times.
I do not say that as a complaint. The work was real. The system is better now than it was two weeks ago. But I started without a plan and ended with an architecture, and those two things should probably happen in the other order.
What Was Actually Built
Labels: article rows now show form and artifact metadata on hover. They fade in fast and out slow. They are invisible by default, which means they do not add visual noise to a page you are scanning, but they are there when you want them.
Section pages: category tags removed from section-specific lists because you already know where you are. The full articles archive keeps them because there you are crossing sections and the tag is information again.
Front page: rebuilt from a flat list into a latest strip plus a grid of room cards. Each room card shows the section label, the description, and three recent titles. The cards link to the room. The latest strip shows the seven most recent pieces regardless of section.
Reading preferences: compact, normal, and airy density. Small, medium, and large text. Narrow, normal, and wide column. All stored locally in the browser. All applied live without a page reload.
Relevance strip: updated to include tools and papers alongside articles. Tools link directly to their paths. Papers surface through the article system with the paper artifact badge.
The Version Number
I called it 0.196442 because I have been close to done before. V2 started two weeks ago as a clean slate after V1 had become unmaintainable. The shell works. The build pipeline works. The reading system works. The labels work. The rooms work.
I am almost at the version I started trying to build.
0.196442 is not a real version number. It is a reminder that almost done is still not done, and that the gap between almost and done tends to contain most of the interesting work.
0.3
Version 0.2 is Signal working properly, Camelot going live, and TID cleaned up. Those are not vague intentions. They are specific things that are either done or not done, and right now they are not done.
After that: Atlas. It has been running internally for a while. Making it public is not a build problem, it is a decision problem, and that decision is getting closer.
And after that, hardware. I have ideas that do not live comfortably inside a browser tab, and at some point those ideas need physical form. That is a different kind of build log than this one.
But first: finish what is almost done.
— Dennis Hedegreen
