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zeekayandHanzo Dev 8278d182bb A resting edge is an affordance; a focus ring is a position
Controls came off the neutral ladder and stopped shouting. --border-control
was --neutral-500: a 1px #737373 box around every field, four times heavier
than the hairline beside it, which is what made a form read as a debug
overlay rather than a surface. It is now rgb(255 255 255 / .15) — the
reference's own --input-border — and --border-focus (.22) and --input follow
it onto the alpha ladder, so the whole control surface is one quiet system.
--border-selected (.30) names the rung that was missing: the CHOSEN thing.

The 3:1 gate that forced the grey is gone from --border-control and kept on
--ring, which is the only boundary that earns it. A resting edge is an
affordance you can hunt for; a focus ring is a position you navigate by. On
the alpha ladder --ring still clears the floor (3.67:1 dark, 3.85:1 light)
BECAUSE it composites — on a lifted surface the ring lifts with it, which a
fixed grey cannot do.

Then the part that was actually missing: light. You cannot cast a shadow onto
black, so elevation here is an edge, an inset top HIGHLIGHT and a wide dark
drop, composed at the use site. The highlight is the piece that turns a
coloured rectangle into a surface. --bloom is where "alive" comes from in a
brand with no hue, --sheen-edge dissolves a top hairline before it reaches
either corner, and --ease-emphasis lands a panel decided rather than drifting.

Surfaces were not surfaces. --surface-card composited to #101010 on a #0a0a0a
page — six levels above it — so three cards read as one flat field with rules
across it; --surface-overlay was the page at 95% of the page, so nothing
floated. Recut from #262626 they land on 14/18/1f, and a panel is a panel.

Every state now moves. --secondary-hover resolved to its own resting value,
--primary-hover dropped 16% and read as the button going disabled under the
cursor, an unfilled button's hover stepped its edge .15 -> .16 and a hovered
field did the same — states nobody could see, which is dead code with a
stylesheet around it. --destructive was #666666, indistinguishable from a
disabled control; it is --state-error now, because "delete everything" and
"you cannot click this" must not be the same colour, and the invalid-field
state was already spending that token.

Verified by looking: the kit rendered in Chromium at 390/768/1280 in both
themes, no overflow, tap targets and field sizes hold, and :focus-visible
confirmed from a real Tab rather than a programmatic focus().

Co-authored-by: Hanzo Dev <[email protected]>
2026-08-04 10:32:25 -07:00
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