Lycato Gestalt redesign audit

Date: 9 August 2026

Authority: Lycato Design.zip, BRAND.md, docs/DESIGN_SYSTEM.md, and gestalt_interface_redesign_agent_guide.md.

1. Product and task summary

Lycato is building a founder operating system around one owned company record. The hosted beta currently provides verified founder access, an isolated company foundation, a public-site fallback, CRM, consented analytics, team invitations, and data export.

The three reviewed surfaces have distinct purposes:

Data export is presented as the normal handback path. Permanent removal is visually and semantically separate, rust-coded, password-confirmed, and explicit about consequence.

2. Assumptions and boundaries

• The authenticated founder workspace remains at the stable /standing route. The local Cockpit is a separate self-hosted product surface.
• The repository has no shipped admin authentication, admin backend, or audited support-action path. The operations console therefore remains under packages/hosted/unshipped/ as a static, read-only visual prototype. (Note added 2026-08-24: this audit records the tree as of 9 August 2026. packages/hosted/unshipped/ — including ops-console/ — was deleted in the 2026-08-23 apps/ move, commit 65ee343. The recommendation in §14.3 to "keep the operations concept under unshipped/" therefore has no tree to keep it in; the prototype is recoverable only from git history.)
• Formation, managed repositories, custom domains, mail, billing, cross-service storage, and active Operator work are not connected. Landing copy names these as planned rather than available.
• Project identifiers remain unchanged.

3. Severity-ranked audit and closure

No open P0 or P1 defect remains in the reviewed implementation.

4. Semantic relationship map

Landing
  product promise → current beta boundary → system model → planned parts → ownership → beta CTA

Founder workspace
  company orientation
    ├─ foundation: company record + founder bundle
    ├─ website: readiness → draft fields ↔ private preview → publish + releases
    ├─ CRM: analytics summary → leads + deletion requests
    ├─ access: invite → pending invites + active members → plan details
    └─ handback: export | separate destructive removal → diagnostics

Operations prototype
  morning queue
    ├─ primary: foundings ordered by attention
    └─ supporting: service rails + workload evidence

Source order, visual order, heading order, and keyboard order follow these maps.

5. Gestalt conflict map and redesign rationale

6. Page-region architecture

• Landing: branded navigation, promise hero, system model, capability sequence, Operator model, ownership boundary, final CTA, footer.
• Founder workspace: persistent orientation rail/top frame, company-foundation hero, then five numbered workspace sections.
• Operations prototype: environment header, one page introduction and boundary note, primary queue, supporting service/workload column, provenance footer.

7. Component and token system

The master type, colour, spacing, shape, and motion roles remain defined in docs/DESIGN_SYSTEM.md. This pass added the perceptual grammar there. Repeated variants are limited to primary, secondary, quiet, disabled, and destructive actions; ready, pending, and attention status; readiness and activity rows; field groups; and dark versus light region roles.

8. Responsive transformations

• Founder rail → compact top frame at 1088px → horizontally scrollable section navigation on narrow phones.
• Two-column task regions → auto-fitting groups → one source-ordered column when content or enlarged text needs it.
• Operations queue/supporting column → stacked queue, rails, and workload; prototype actions become full-width on phones.
• Landing two-column hero, capability grid, integrator, and Operator regions → one-column compositions without hiding Sign in or the primary CTA.

Tested widths: 1440×1100, 900×1100, 390×844, and 320×700. Tested 200% root text size at 1280×900 as well as 320px equivalent 400% reflow. All three pages report zero horizontal page overflow.

9. Accessibility implementation

• One h1 per surface with ordered section headings and native landmarks.
• Native labels for every input, textarea, and select; fieldsets group the site editor.
• Skip links, visible 2px focus rings with 3px offset, logical keyboard traversal, and no hidden focusable content.
• 44px targets for standalone interactive controls; inline prose links use the WCAG inline-target exception.
• Text plus word/shape status meaning; no colour-only critical state.
• role="status", aria-live="polite", and aria-atomic="true" announce hosted action results without moving focus.
• Invalid native fields retain a concise associated explanation until corrected; the relationship clears without removing any pre-existing field hint.
• Native details provides keyboard-operable progressive disclosure and expanded state.
• No ambient animation remains. Reduced motion removes the only loading animation without removing information.

10. State and content-stress behavior

• Readiness differentiates ready from named external dependencies.
• Activity regions distinguish loading text from zero-result sentences such as “No website leads yet.”
• Save, publish, invite, export, deletion, and load errors use the live status region and preserve the current screen.
• The removal flow requires an exact phrase and password, records recovery state, and separates partial account deletion from recoverable failure.
• Long URLs wrap; company/account content reflows; email addresses wrap instead of truncating at enlarged text.
• The operations concept uses “Not measured” rather than a dash and labels every numeric record as sample data.

11. Before-and-after evidence

Local Playwright evidence is stored under output/playwright/:

The before/after sets use the same representative content. Thumbnail review shows a stable dominant region and scan path on every surface; alignment and group-boundary review show no competing major grouping cue.

12. Validation results

• Build: documentation and hosted bundle generated successfully.
• Regression: 124 test files and 592 tests pass.
• Types: all 19 typed workspace packages pass.
• Static checks: changed HTML, CSS, and JavaScript parse and lint without findings.
• Browser console: zero errors on all three reviewed surfaces.
• Automated rendered audit: one h1, no unlabelled fields, no unnamed buttons, no active ambient animations, no undersized standalone targets, and zero horizontal overflow at desktop and mobile.
• Keyboard: skip link is first, focus remains visible, and navigation follows source order.
• Founder behavior: emulator-backed browser testing completes register, second-tab verification, save, immutable publish, public lead/analytics, follow-up, lead deletion, invite/revoke, inventory export, recovery, sign-out/in, and permanent removal with a downloadable receipt.

100-point score

13. Open risks and exceptions

• Human usability validation, a production screen-reader pass, and measurement on physical touch devices remain release activities; the current evidence is code, browser automation, and visual inspection.
• Exact contrast should be rechecked whenever brand colours or opacity tiers change. The current roles use the master palette and documented dark/light tiers.
• The operations console must not move into the shipped graph until separate admin authentication, server-enforced authorization, audited endpoints, live state, and recovery behavior exist.
• Landing pricing is explicitly a planned public price because billing is not connected.

These are P2/P3 validation or product-readiness risks, not unresolved structural or critical accessibility blockers in the reviewed surfaces.

14. Migration and regression plan

1. Keep Lycato Design.zip and BRAND.md as visual and verbal authorities; apply the perceptual grammar in docs/DESIGN_SYSTEM.md to new regions.
2. Preserve the hosted workspace element IDs used by app.js; add tests when an ID or workflow changes.
3. Keep the operations concept under unshipped/ until the backend boundary above is enforced and tested.
4. Run pnpm test, pnpm typecheck, pnpm docs:build, and targeted browser checks after layout or token changes.
5. Recheck 1440, 900, 390, 320, 200% text, keyboard focus, reduced motion, zero/loading/error/success states, and long content before release.
6. Treat new continuous decorative motion, false card affordances, unlabelled roadmap claims, and fixed multi-column minimums as regressions.