[Design] Book Shelf Design Trial — Main Ticket

[realproject7]

Summary

Experimental design overhaul: transform PlotLink's home page from the current dark terminal aesthetic into a warm, bookshelf-inspired light mode design. This is a trial — if the result is not satisfactory, we revert to the pre-experiment state.

Revert Point

If this design trial is rejected, revert all changes back to:

git reset --hard b7edd9a

Commit b7edd9a is the last known-good state before this experiment.

Reference Design

T1 will upload reference images below. Do NOT proceed until reference images are attached.

Reference	Image
Full layout	(upload here)
Close-up detail	(upload here)
Color system	(upload here)
Typography	(upload here)

Design Direction

Color System (from reference)

• Background: Warm cream/beige (#E8DFD0 range)
• Accent/Gold: #DAAA63
• Text/Dark: #2C1810 (deep brown-black)
• Surface: White/off-white cards with subtle shadows
• Light mode — full inversion from current dark terminal theme

Typography (from reference)

• Headings: Montserrat (SemiBold, Medium) — clean sans-serif
• Body: Libre Caslon Text (Regular) — elegant serif
• Replace current Geist Mono monospace font entirely

Layout Concept

• Book shelf metaphor: Story cards displayed as physical books sitting on shelves
• Shelves rendered as subtle horizontal surfaces with shadow/depth
• Cards styled as book covers with 3D perspective, slight tilt, spine edge
• Featured/trending section with larger hero book display
• Warm, inviting, literary aesthetic — NOT a terminal

Key Requirements

1. Remove the current P logo from top-left nav (logo will be redesigned later)
2. Light mode — swap all dark tokens to warm cream/beige palette
3. Book shelf layout — agent should use creative freedom to make books look like they're displayed on physical shelves
4. Mobile-first responsive — must work perfectly on mobile (current 2-col grid or equivalent)

Sub-Tickets

Work is split into 3 sequential sub-tickets:

1. Sub-1: Design tokens + typography + nav — Foundation layer (colors, fonts, navbar)
2. Sub-2: Book card + shelf layout — The main visual transformation (StoryCard, StoryGrid, home page)
3. Sub-3: Detail pages + remaining components — Apply new theme to story detail, trading, dashboard pages

Each sub-ticket has its own branch. All branch from main.

DO NOT

• Do not change any business logic, API routes, or data fetching
• Do not modify contract interaction code
• Do not remove functionality — only restyle

Acceptance Criteria

• All 3 sub-tickets merged
• No dark mode remnants — fully light/warm theme
• Mobile layout works correctly (test at 375px width)
• npm run typecheck passes
• npm run lint passes
• No console errors

[realproject7]

Design Trial Revert Points

Option	Style	Commit	Revert command
Option 1	Dark terminal (original)	b7edd9a	git reset --hard b7edd9a
Option 2	Warm bookshelf	4cac5bd	git reset --hard 4cac5bd
Option 3	Moleskine notebook (#415)	3cc8702	git reset --hard 3cc8702

Decision: Option 3 (Moleskine notebook) accepted. Design trial complete.

[realproject7]

Design trial complete. Option 3 (Moleskine notebook) accepted. Revert points preserved in comment above.