Operator shared two design mockups (2026-06-04) after PRs #95-#101
landed the Liquid Glass foundation but reported "not seeing very
many changes." Read the mockups; opened umbrella convoy
.convoys/redesign-v2-from-mockups.md with 8 sub-convoys. This PR
ships sub-convoy #1: the gradient finally reads at mockup intensity.
Three changes:
1. Dark theme base shifted from warm-charcoal (#1a0f0a) to deep
cool-navy (#0d0e1a). The prior brown base made ember-orange and
purple-magenta corner pools read as "muddy" against a warm-on-warm
palette. Cool-navy gives those corners somewhere to be vivid.
Glass surfaces (dark) re-baselined from rgba(26,15,10,X) to
rgba(20,22,42,X) so glass-on-dark blends without color shift.
--bg-secondary-dark and --bg-tertiary-dark follow.
2. Body gradient boosted ~50% across the board. Light: 42% amber
bottom-left (was 28%), 30% bottom-right (was 18%), 24% gold top-
right (was 16%). Dark: 55% ember-red bottom-left (was 32%), 36%
bottom-right (was 18%), 26% PURPLE-MAGENTA top-right (was 14%
purple — operator mockup shows magenta as the dark-variant's
cosmic accent, replacing the prior subtle purple).
3. Default theme flipped to dark. lib/theme-context.js's
readThemeFromStorage now defaults to 'dark' instead of 'light' for
first-time visitors (no stored preference). Operator decision from
the umbrella convoy's § 7 — the mockup's dark variant is the
visually-defining read, and the light theme remains fully supported
via the sidebar toggle.
Why these specific values:
- 42% / 55% radial alphas land in the visible-but-not-garish zone.
Earlier 8% (PR #100) and 28% (PR #101) read as imperceptible-then-
faint. AA contrast vs --text-primary measured in the corner
bleeds: 5.2:1 light, 7.8:1 dark — well above 4.5 AA threshold.
- Ember-red (255,75,30) for the dark bottom-left is the operator
mockup's signature corner. Pure ember-orange read too "Halloween"
against deep navy; the red shift toward fire/coal is what makes it
feel like a hearth.
- Purple-magenta (168,85,247) top-right preserves the TCG brand
energy from the mockup. Was vanilla purple (124,58,237) in PR
#100/101 — the mockup is unmistakably toward magenta.
Tests:
- npm run build: green
- npm run lint: clean (1 pre-existing unused-disable warning)
- npm run test:run: 104/104 (no test asserts theme default or
gradient alphas, so the flip is safe)
Acceptance per umbrella convoy: side-by-side comparison against the
two reference mockups now shows recognizably the same corner-ember
treatment in BOTH themes. Next: sub-convoy #2 (sidebar active-pill +
gradient wordmark) lands in a separate PR.
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
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