Visual System

The visual language for the SIBurst interface. This document defines principles and roles, not assets. It creates no colors, fonts, images, or mockups. It is governed by INTERFACE_CONTRACT.md, whose primitives, stages, and geometry grammar it styles.

1. Spatial character

The system should read as:

precise: alignments are exact while the Lattice governs, so their later failure in S3 is visible;
infrastructural: the demonstration resembles a structure or a schematic, not an illustration or a scene;
controlled: nothing moves or appears without a state reason;
sparse at entry: S0 leaves most of the boundary empty;
increasingly dense before threshold: S1–S2 fill the Lattice toward capacity;
structurally altered after transition: S5–S6 are visibly organized by a different rule, not a different decoration.

It must not read as generic "AI futurism". The visual prohibitions in SITE_ARCHITECTURE.md apply in full. In addition:

no glow, bloom, or light-trail effects on nodes or links;
no depth effects (perspective, parallax, 3D rotation) in the demonstration;
no decorative textures, noise, or scan lines;
no gradients, except where a later decision gives one a semantic role.

2. Color roles

Color is assigned by role, never by mood. This document defines the roles; it deliberately assigns no values. No color is claimed to carry scientific or universal meaning.

Role	Used for	Stages
Background	The page and the interior of the boundary.	All
Primary information	Captions, reference text, the SIBurst name, anchor identifiers.	All
Secondary information	Scope prefixes, stage index, supporting labels, the boundary caption.	All
Structure	Rails and the boundary.	Rails S0–S4; boundary all
Dormant signal	Nodes and links that exist but are not currently changing.	All
Active signal	Nodes and links appearing or changing in the current stage.	S0–S4
Threshold warning	Unrouted stubs, slipped nodes, crowded rail segments, the state readout in S2–S3.	S2–S3 only
Post-transition distinction	Links and emphasis that exist only under the Field's rules.	S4–S6 only

Rules:

Stage-bound roles. Threshold warning never appears outside S2–S3. Post-transition distinction never appears before S4. Seeing either role therefore tells the visitor which regime they are in.

Never color alone. Every color role that carries meaning is paired with a non-color cue:

Meaning	Non-color cue
Unrouted relationship	Open-ended stub with a terminal tick mark
Slipped node	Visible offset from its cell center
Active vs dormant	Stroke weight or fill state (filled vs outlined)
Post-transition link	Direct path with no right angles, where every Lattice link had them
Structure	Thin continuous rule, distinct from link weight

Contrast. Every shipped color scheme meets WCAG 2.2 AA:
- text: at least 4.5:1 against its background, or 3:1 for large text;
- graphical elements needed to understand a state (nodes, links, stubs, rails, boundary, focus indicators): at least 3:1 against adjacent colors.
Schemes. An implementation may ship a light scheme, a dark scheme, or both. Every shipped scheme meets the contrast rules and keeps every role distinct.
Restraint. No more than these eight roles. A ninth role requires a recorded decision.

3. Typography roles

Role	Used for	Character
Display voice	The SIBurst name (S5), stage names.	Used rarely. It must never appear inside the demonstration system except for the name at S5.
Reading voice	Captions, state descriptions, reference documents.	Optimized for long-form legibility.
System labels	Scope prefixes, state labels, the boundary caption.	Uppercase, generously tracked, small but at least the minimum readable size.
Numeric/index labels	Stage index (S0–S6, 00–06), anchor identifiers.	Tabular figures, so labels do not shift width.
Code/state labels	File names and the stage index in the reference layer.	Monospace.

3.1 Font strategy

System-first. Every role is set with system font stacks, for example a system sans-serif stack for display, reading, and labels, and a system monospace stack (ui-monospace and equivalents) for code and index labels.
No external font services. No font CDN is loaded.
A self-hosted typeface may be introduced later only by a recorded decision. It must still fall back to the system stack without loss of meaning.

3.2 Typography obeys the rule change

Before S4, labels inside the demonstration are coordinate-bound: aligned to the rail rhythm and positioned by the grid. From S4 onward, labels are entity-bound: attached to their node and positioned relative to it. Text outside the demonstration system (navigation, captions, reference) never changes behavior between stages.

3.3 Minimum sizes

Reading text is never smaller than the user agent's default size, and captions are no smaller than reading text.
System labels and identifiers are never rendered below a legible minimum (about 12 CSS px at 100% zoom), and they scale with user font settings.
If a viewport cannot fit identifiers at the minimum size, the demonstration takes more space. Labels are not shrunk, and anchors are never dropped: the four anchors in the canonical fixture appear on every viewport.

4. Density progression

Density is how full the system is. It prepares the transition but never constitutes it.

Stage	Density principle
S0	Sparse. Most of the Lattice is empty. Few links.
S1	Entity count and link count rise. The Lattice fills, but everything still fits.
S2	The system approaches the Lattice's representational capacity. Stubs appear.
S3	The Lattice is full. Local failures of representation appear: slipped nodes, detours, overlaps, more stubs.
S4	The representation system changes. Entity count is constant.
S5	The Field grammar stabilizes. Clusters read clearly at the same entity count.
S6	The demonstration recedes in contrast. Readable, navigable access to the doctrine takes priority.

Density alone must never represent the SIBurst event. Increased density, brightness, contrast, or count may accompany S1–S3. None of them may be the signal of S4. The signal of S4 is the change of rule defined in INTERFACE_CONTRACT.md §2.3.

5. Composition

The boundary is the only frame. There are no cards, panels, or containers around parts of the demonstration.
The stage navigation and state readout sit outside the boundary, in stable positions that do not change between stages.
Captions sit outside the boundary and never overlap nodes or links.
In S5, the transition record (a smaller-scale Lattice beside the Field) uses the same primitives and all 24 entities at a smaller scale. It introduces no new visual elements.

Generated from the canonical source VISUAL_SYSTEM.md. The Markdown file is authoritative; this page is a derived rendering (DEC-017).