Context Vigilance
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/dev/icons — recurring design-review workbench

Originally a one-off Phase 4 review surface for the dual-surface icon pair on the TOC redesign. Founder picked Pair B 'Frameless glyphs' on 2026-05-17; rather than delete the route, the pattern was kept: a single /dev/* page per project that renders every candidate for a visual-primitive decision side-by-side at multiple sizes, on multiple backgrounds, inside the real composed context (chip-next-to-icon, drift case, missing-file dimmed case). Alternates live one directory deeper at `apps/deck-shell/src/components/icons/alternates/` and remain importable so the design history stays legible. Future icon families, chip variants, badge styles, button states extend this route with additional sections rather than spawning a new /dev/* route per decision.

Path
sitemap/routes/dev-icons.md
Authors
Michael Staton

/dev/icons

Current behavior

GET /dev/icons   → 200, renders:
                     - "Canonical" section: the chosen icon pair at 16/24/32/48px
                       on light, dark, and brand-tinted backgrounds, with a
                       composed-cell strip showing matrix-cell context
                       (no-drift / drift / pending cases)
                     - "Alternates · design history" section: every unchosen
                       candidate, dimmed, with the same swatches but no
                       composed-cell strip
                     - About-this-route footer explaining the pattern

noindex,nofollow meta. Not linked from anywhere — discoverable by typed URL only.

Why the route is kept

The Phase 4 work could have ended with “founder picks B → delete A and C and the review route.” It didn’t, by deliberate choice, because the pattern generalizes:

  • Every future icon family, chip variant, badge style, or button-state set faces the same problem: render candidates in isolation, candidates lie. Render them inside the real composed UI context they’ll live in, and the right pick falls out.
  • The discipline of “preserve unchosen candidates as design history in alternates/ directories, importable but not used in production” keeps the decision context legible to anyone reading the codebase cold.
  • A single project-local /dev/* route that aggregates these reviews is cheaper than a new route per decision and easier for the founder to navigate.

This is project-local discipline today. If the pattern proves useful in a second project (memopop-ai, another dididecks consumer), it graduates to a cross-project skill in lossless-skills. See the question deferred from 2026-05-17.

  • maintain-design-md skill — the sibling pattern for documenting chosen design tokens. DESIGN.md is the contract; /dev/icons is the workbench where it gets decided.
  • theme-system skill — two-tier tokens + three-mode contract; orthogonal to icon choices but relevant to chip palettes.
  • The context-v/sitemap/ discipline — this file is one of those mini-specs. Routes that exist for discipline-reasons (not user-reasons) belong here so they survive future status sweeps without being mistaken for stale.

Open

  • Pattern promotion to skill. Deferred 2026-05-17 — revisit when a second consumer or a second design-decision wave validates the pattern.
  • DESIGN.md for dididecks-ai. Deferred 2026-05-17 — chroma is the only consumer; theming hasn’t been stress-tested. Wait for a second client engagement to surface what actually wants to vary before locking the contract.

Plan of record

[[../../plans/Redesign-TOC-as-Deck-Level-Dual-Surface-Review-Matrix]] §D + Phase 4.