Card jobs and the one-accent rule

Change: openspec/changes/the-shell-has-one-visual-language, tasks 3.1–3.3.

What changed

• Three card jobs. render.rs paints cards through paint_card with a CardJob:

  • Group: the theme’s flat card tint, at radius 24 (CARD_RADIUS_GROUP).
  • Control: the same card at radius 16 (CARD_RADIUS_CONTROL), with a 5% text-colour tint on top and a 1 px top line in the text colour at 10%.
  • Chosen: the accent at 18% plus a 2 px accent rim. It is drawn as a pill when it marks a segment.

• Where Chosen is used:

  • On the Vision page, the chosen text-size step is a pill around its label. The other steps have no card, and the Text size card is a Group.
  • High contrast is Chosen when on and Control when off.
  • On the theme grid, the current theme has a 2 px Chosen rim.

• Where Control is used: the Settings rows (generic, Volume, Key backlight), the Reboot and Power off cards, the Shade’s Keyboard toggle, the drawer search pill and the dock.

• One accent. The following now use the foreground colour:

  • links: Done, Vision ›, Themes ›, the chooser’s ‹ Settings and Close, and the Shade’s Settings › (which gained its chevron);
  • the drawer’s Help;
  • values (“100%”, “On”/“Off”);
  • notification and preview source names (now Medium weight).

  The grab handles use the text colour at 50%. The accent remains only on:

  • the current choice;
  • “Dismiss all”, the Shade’s one primary action;
  • slider fills and thumbs, which are exempt because they mark the current value rather than act as links.

• Not converted: the Wi‑Fi pages, the Help page buttons and the theme carousel keep their existing card and accent use.

Host evidence (2026-10-17)

• cargo test --offline --manifest-path nix/rust-shell-client/Cargo.toml --tests:
  • All targets passed (lib: 571 passed, 2 ignored).
  • This includes the new render::tests::the_accent_marks_only_the_current_choice_on_settings_vision_and_the_shade. That test renders each surface at 568x1232 and 1232x568, puts pixels within 30 of the theme accent into 8 px cells, joins cells within two cells of each other, and counts the groups.
  • Results: Settings 0 (no audio device; brightness is read-only, so it has no slider), Vision 1 (the chosen step) and the Shade 1 (Dismiss all).
• Pixel-identity baselines. The docs/evidence/shell-responsive/ settings-*, drawer-* and home-* frames were regenerated deliberately with render_responsive_evidence. The differences are the link colour, the handle colour, the Control rims and the dock’s Control treatment.
• Renders. The frames come from render_accessibility_scale_evidence.
  • Dark: the default and largest catppuccin generations from docs/evidence/coherent-shell/accessibility-scale/README.md (5c64a4c1de62429c468041bc, 0fc1fc47cd7b409f46f67425).
  • Light: two catppuccin-latte generations, prepared the same way from the pinned omarchy themes/catppuccin-latte source with theme_vision.save before each theme_activate.prepare:
    • default-latte: c3f3ed1da29e4794867c6407;
    • largest-latte: 3d3427bb1dcfe70d59c085c3.
  • The example reads the step from the first - segment of the name, so the latte generations were named <step>-latte. Each sheet is scaled to 50%.

The grey area under the Vision page and the Shade is the example’s backdrop, not the shell.

Limits

• The theme grid’s Chosen rim is not in the host renders; it is in the board capture.
• The board captures below are native frames; the operator’s judgement on glass (5.2) is a separate evidence class and is still open.

Board evidence (2026-10-17)

• Build. kernelMainlineDrmShellLandscapeHdmiBootFiles was built at 2d80b1e2 and deployed live with switch-to-configuration test. The active system was /nix/store/wsjjmyhq7p069g62fqi8bf7ypmbix0z3-nixos-system-nixos-26.11.20260919.20b1ddd.
• Capture. HDMI was unplugged, so DSI-1 was the only output, at 1232x568 landscape and the 100% step, with the retro-82 theme.
• Navigation. Each surface was opened with k230-shell-rust --surface. The Vision and Themes links were reached with injected uinput taps (/tmp/bp.py), not a finger. The frames are native grim captures.

• Not covered here. The operator has not yet looked at the panel (task 5.2). These captures don’t show “Dismiss all”, because the board had no notifications.