# Changelog — guidelines/

*Curated record of the interface guidelines — added, revised, retired. Newest first. A line lands
here in the same PR as the change.*

---

## 2026-08-07

- **Added** `GUIDE.presentations.md` — deck law, extending the area beyond app surfaces.
  Prompted by a recorded failure: the v1 investor Introduction deck shipped with tool-default
  substitute fonts (Cambria/Calibri) because no presentation guideline existed, and was
  retired. Covers the living-page standard (a deck's primary form is a page; provenance
  stamps in comments, never on the face), the slide type scale, the three slide surfaces
  with a drenched budget (bookends + one earned interior moment; amber as the single sharp
  accent — recommended stance pending RCTX-96), layout grid, six archetypes mapped to the
  Master Copy Deck M-ID families, the motif rules, an explicit font-delivery policy for
  exports (living page → PDF-of-record with OFL fonts embedded → PPTX only on explicit
  request, with a governed substitution stack), and the do/don't list.
- **Revised** `GUIDE.presentations.md` — two rules from defects found on the first page built
  to it (both fixed in `relay-resources` `7421469`): links inside slide sections must use
  **built URLs, not `.md` source paths** (a slide is raw HTML, so the generator never rewrites
  them — the investor deck's round link shipped as a literal `.md` target and 404'd), and a
  target figure must never be phrased as achieved ("10% committed" where committed is $0 —
  say "10% of target").
- **Tied in** across the brand materials so neither guide is findable only from this area:
  `brand/README.md` gains a composition-law table (material here, arrangement there);
  `brand/relay-design-system.md` points at both from its One-Visual-System note and source
  table; `brand/relay-deck-tokens.css` carries a superseded banner (its palette block is the
  retired v3.4.1 teal-tinted set, its 16:9 numbers survive inside the guide);
  `decks/README.md` names the guide as governing law, corrects the stale "PDF primary, HTML
  secondary" line, and adds a pointers-not-copies table for confidential decks built
  elsewhere; `briefs/SPEC.design-v35.md` records the drenched budget as a
  presentation-surface answer to its open dark-panels question, with RCTX-96 still owning
  the site call.
- **Added** `GUIDE.documents.md` — document law, same intake. Document anatomy and page
  chrome, living-document versioning (the maintenance comment block, bump-on-every-change,
  figures as curated copies), the per-viewer watermark standard codified from
  `relay-resources` `investor-watermark.js` (Access identity → header stamp + tiled
  diagonal mark, print-safe, fail-to-"Confidential"), and letterhead-as-PDF.

## 2026-08-04

- **Revised** `GUIDE.states-and-language.md` — the invalid-Code example told writers to say
  "Codes are 6 characters, like ABC123." The server now mints at 10 under `wide_mint` and
  legacy 6-char Codes stay valid forever, so error copy must never name a character count.
  Replaced with a shape-only example and a note on why.

## 2026-08-03

- **Added** `index.html` — the area card index, so `/guidelines/` is a published surface like
  `concepts/`, `brand/`, and `mcp/` rather than raw markdown behind a redirect. Four sections:
  Start here · Surfaces · Language · Where these come from (charter, findings register, brief, and
  the design system it sits above). Built on the shared v3.5 area-index pattern.
- **Added** the area — five documents establishing interface law for the estate, split from the
  design system (material) and the briefs (direction):
  - **[Interface principles](GUIDE.interface-principles.md)** — the governing principle (*display
    weight is proportional to information value*) with its two corollaries (*show the exception,
    not the default*; *identity is never what gets truncated*), the seven rules as design law, and
    the standing rules.
  - **[Mobile composition](GUIDE.mobile-composition.md)** — 390px-first, the space budget (rail
    off-canvas, ≤2 rows of chrome), controls-on-demand behind a filter sheet, reach, sheets over
    modals, touch and input, no horizontal overflow.
  - **[List surfaces](GUIDE.list-surfaces.md)** — card anatomy with identity composed first and
    sacrificed last, the badge rule, untitled-object fallback order, mandatory pagination, the
    combinable filter model, the 0/3/500 volume check.
  - **[States & language](GUIDE.states-and-language.md)** — three distinct empties with a mandatory
    has-content guard, the error formula, gate states, honest time, voice, the locked vocabulary,
    copy budgets at 390px.
  - **[Harness surface](GUIDE.harness-surface.md)** — the agent harness as a designed surface: two
    readers, the context budget, ids always with names, verb-direction clarity, gates spent only
    where stakes justify.

  Derived from the first real intake of the experience program (EXP-001…EXP-008) rather than
  imported wholesale — every non-obvious rule traces to a recorded finding. All five carry
  framework notes marking what is generic versus Relay-specific, for Launchpad Phase 2/3.

- **Revised** [List surfaces](GUIDE.list-surfaces.md) + [Interface principles](GUIDE.interface-principles.md)
  — reconciled the card head with **DEC-025** (`briefs/BRIEF.code-presence.md`). The first draft
  proposed a title-first card with the Code demoted to a secondary line, which contradicts L2 (one
  teal moment per object — the Code is the brightest element when present) and L3 (the title never
  changes rank; nothing is promoted to fill the gap when the Code is absent). Card anatomy now
  states both states with the head closing up on codeless objects, the badge rule carries L4
  (absence is a selectable filter, not a mark on every row), and the untitled fallback defers to the
  DEC-025 title floor. The governing corollary was reworded from "identity is never truncated" to
  "recall is never truncated to a stub" — legibility and rank are different claims.
