# Terminal experience design review

## Objective

Make verified production progress emotionally legible without rewarding noise.

## Surface hierarchy

1. **Status line:** tiny peripheral facts—stage, percentage, gate, Hive, approval, retry.
2. **HUD widget:** persistent production truth—contract, progress, evidence, blockers, active work.
3. **Working message:** one sentence describing what is happening this moment.
4. **Cards:** durable meaningful events—validation, Hive mission, blocker, milestone, archive.
5. **Overlay:** deliberate operator choices—run, delegate, validate, evidence, vault, export, theme, settings.
6. **Expanded tool result:** detailed evidence only on demand.

## Density modes

| Mode | HUD | Cards | Best use |
|---|---|---|---|
| `cinematic` | Three lines with stage track and coordination cue | Rich details | Focused creative sessions |
| `rich` | Two evidence-focused lines | Detailed | Daily production |
| `compact` | One line | Terse | Split panes and small terminals |
| `minimal` | No widget; status and critical cards only | Essential | Remote/headless-adjacent use |

## Motion modes

- `off`: static semantic glyphs.
- `subtle`: two-frame pulse only while meaningful work is active.
- `full`: four-frame activity cue plus stronger live coordination feedback.

Animation stops with work. Completion is represented by stable state, not perpetual motion.

## Reward model

Prominent visual changes are reserved for:

- file-backed evidence accepted;
- blocker opened or resolved;
- agent ownership claimed or handed off;
- deterministic validation passed;
- authoritative stage completed;
- archive decompressed and verified.

A tool merely starting receives only a small activity cue.

## Accessibility and correctness

- Semantic theme tokens instead of hard-coded terminal escape sequences.
- Unicode glyphs are supplementary; words and layout retain meaning.
- Components use visual-width utilities and truncate safely.
- Unchanged HUD frames reuse cached line arrays to reduce repaint work.
- Minimal mode and motion-off provide low-stimulation operation.
- POM Nocturne and Parchment preserve corresponding dark/light semantics.