The system, measured
Two colours and their mixes, a book face driven by its optical axis, and a mono voice used as punctuation. Every contrast figure on this page is computed at render time from the live tokens, if a token moves, the grade moves with it.
| Pair | Ratio | Grade | Use |
|---|
--rule and --rule-pine are hairline colours,
not text. Low contrast is the job; type is never set in either.
The lab counts what it can.
Measured, not asserted.
Italic is a first-class tool, not a fallback emphasis.
Body text is set for reading: a generous measure, generous leading, and proportional oldstyle figures like 1874 and 2026 left exactly as the face draws them. Tabular numerals are reserved for tables and tickers, where columns have to sit still.
// fig. 03 · seed 20260823 · 1440×520 · aaa 8.69:1
Hairlines are 1px in --rule. The one permitted exception
is the 3px left rule, which marks three things: a quotation, a form
field in error, or the receipt that answers a submission. Nothing has a radius; nothing casts a shadow;
the bracket marks at the viewport corners are drawn once, at the page
shell, and never on a component.
Inversion is the only emphasis: same size, same position, opposite polarity.
The one rule that makes the rest holdPaper on pine
A section that matters flips polarity instead of growing, lifting or moving. Both directions of the pair clear AAA, which is the property that makes this possible at all.
Floyd–Steinberg error diffusion over seeded procedural fields, pine on paper, rendered to pixels at build time. Never a blend mode, never a filter: diffusion gives irregular clustered grain, and the difference is visible at 1x.
Received.
The success state is a hairline box with the same 3px rule, not a green toast.
Nothing here yet. When that is true, the page says so in a sentence, in the reading face, and stops.