# Design Diagnosis

## The actual problem

The recent Field studies improved semantic color and icon meaning, but they still treated the visible map as the product. That forces organizations, projects, people, agents, sources, artifacts, boundaries, chat, and actions to compete in the same frame.

The result is not merely visual clutter. It is an absence of **foreground and background**. When everything is available at once, the interface cannot communicate what matters now.

## What the attached dashboard gets right

The dashboard has power because it makes several strong choices:

1. **One dominant center.** The main chat occupies the visual and functional center.
2. **Two legible modes.** Chat and Field are distinct rather than composited continuously.
3. **One persistent context.** The active Realm/context appears quietly in the top bar.
4. **One primary action color.** Sky blue carries selection and action; gold and mint are rare signals.
5. **Widgets arrive inside the conversation.** Governance, approval, Compute, and connection details appear only when requested or relevant.
6. **Consequences have rhythm.** Request, proposed action, approval, execution, and receipt form an understandable sequence.
7. **The Ally is obvious without dominating the whole surface.** Ki is the conversational center, not another node among many.
8. **The screen is mostly quiet.** Large areas of darkness make the active content feel intentional.

## What should not be inherited unchanged

- The dashboard's Field view still uses a conventional diagram grammar and generic shapes.
- Its legacy vocabulary does not match the current canonical taxonomy.
- The suggestion grid gives unrelated capabilities equal weight.
- Some system mechanics are exposed as product categories rather than emerging through intent.
- The main chat is clear, but it does not yet support a sufficiently rich Element lifecycle or persistent collaborative work.

## Where the previous design passes went wrong

- They made the Field carry navigation, identity, collaboration, project management, source handling, and conversation simultaneously.
- They used multiple colors to distinguish every entity, weakening the hierarchy.
- They interpreted organic as irregular silhouette instead of ordered natural geometry.
- They elevated collaborators even when the user primarily cared about the work.
- They represented taxonomy as visible objects rather than rules governing behavior.
- They made close-up work resemble a separate dashboard instead of a continuation of the same conversation.

## Product-level reframing

The Field should answer:

> What exists, how is it related, where am I, and where could I go?

The primary workspace should answer:

> What am I trying to accomplish now, what does this Realm know and enable, what needs my attention, and what happens next?

The broader spatial overview is therefore an **Atlas orientation presentation within the Field**, not the universal task surface. Canonically, the Field is the complete environment and remains present through Studio.

## The missing design pattern

Kiduna needs a stable pattern that connects conversation to structured work:

1. The user expresses an intention in the main conversation.
2. Ki and the active Realm identify relevant Elements, Wisdom, Actors, Connections, and constraints.
3. The system brings forward one appropriate instrument: a schedule, source set, draft, decision, map, proposal, or other structured Element.
4. The user can preview, expand, pin, compare, edit, or move the Element into the conversation.
5. Consequential changes become explicit Action proposals.
6. Required approval or governance occurs in context.
7. Execution produces progress and a durable Record or receipt.
8. The instrument recedes; the conversation and Realm retain the result.

This is the bridge between a clean chat interface and a complete operating environment.

## Design objective

Create a Studio where intelligence is ambient, structure appears at the moment it becomes useful, and the interface never makes the user manage the machinery simply because the machinery exists.
