The Simpler Verdict

One affordance in two files. Forty lines of SVG over three path constants — DISC, SHERD_BROKEN, GRAVESTONE — encoded a grade in fill and opacity so a visitor could scan a find's condition without reading the word; forty more opened on hover and keyboard focus alike to say what the mark meant, wiring aria-describedby only while the bubble was open and honouring Escape, a real styled popup rather than a native title. Eight days after the mark was first drawn, the simplification decided the word was enough and left the definitions simply visible. The mark wore away to exactly the word it had stood in for, and the reveal had nothing left to reveal.

“Decay is encoded by fill + opacity + stroke-width ONLY — no blur filter (the redesign dropped the feathered edge).”ConditionGlyph.vue, header

remainsthe mark, forty lines of itthe bubble, keyboard-reachable to the endthe geometry it rendered, before it was stripped out

The Midden's two instruments for showing depth, removed in one commit. Two hundred and fifty-seven lines of margin made the gauge: bands grown by flexGrow set to that season's find count, an IntersectionObserver that held the last active season rather than blank the highlight through a prose gap, and a hand- lettered "you're here" — server-rendered anchors first, the observer only enhancement. The legend was 121 lines and worked the other way round: a row per season, newest at the surface, each bar sized by the finds it held, the open one in terracotta because it was still accruing, and scrupulous enough to draw rows for the empty seasons too, at zero width. Both were taken out whole when the pages decided they would rather be read than measured. The seasons survive and still date every find; only the sight of them is gone.

“each segment sized proportionally to how much is actually deposited in that season (an informationally-honest section, not decorative equal-height bands).”StratigraphySidebar.vue, header

remainsthe gauge, scroll-sync and honest proportions intactthe season bars, empty rows and all

The Journal's throwaway bench for marking an externally-authored session: three variants behind ?variant=A|B|C, a floating pill switcher you cycled with the arrow keys, and NOTES.md posing the question. Variant B's border and ribbon were folded in; the bench was deleted with its own "Verdict: TBD" line still unfilled, ten minutes later.

“THROWAWAY — prototype-only. ... Delete this whole `prototype/` folder once a variant is picked and folded in.”PrototypeSwitcher.vue, header

remainsthe whole bench, switcher and variantsthe notes, verdict line never filled in