13 projects in 46 days, zero plan documents. What actually drives velocity isn't agile or sprints — it's signal-driven adaptation and resistance as information.
Field Notes
Lucian Labs look D — long-form reading. Shipped in the blog, curated by Ana Iliovic.
For agents
Paste this into the session that's building the page. Do not retype token values from memory — link or vendor the stylesheet.
Build this page in the Lucian Labs "Field Notes" look.
Read, in order:
https://lucianlabs.ca/branding/AGENT.md (how to pick + what never to do)
https://lucianlabs.ca/branding/field-notes.md (this look)
https://lucianlabs.ca/branding/UX.md (how it must behave)
Take tokens from https://lucianlabs.ca/branding/brands.json — never
retype them. On web you may link field-notes.css directly; on any other
platform derive from the tokens and the UX contract.
Reading comes first here: never move text that is being read, reserve
space for every image, and honour the reader's text-size setting. Check
your output against the AGENT.md ban list and the UX.md ship checklist
before you report the work done.Use it for
Blogs, essays, writeups, build logs told as narrative, documentation that argues rather than lists. Prose someone reads start to finish.
Palette
--bg
#171519
--panel
#13111a
--panel-2
#1c1820
--line
#2a2630
--ink
#d0ccd4
--muted
#9990a0
--faint
#776e80
--dim
#554e5c
--accent
#e8a020 · the voice
--accent-2
#c4a0d0 · the care
--radius
6px · 3px small
motion
0.3s · glow, no transforms
The three rules
- Serif carries the words, display carries the headings, mono carries the marginalia. Source Serif 4 at 18px/1.8, Exo 2 for structure, Fira Code for timestamps and code. The one look whose mono is not Inconsolata — that exception is part of the identity, not a bug.
- Amber is the voice, lavender is the care. Links, headings, and inline code speak in amber. Lavender only tends the edges: hovers, the curator line, the sign-off name, a filed card's spine.
- Reveal on approach. Nothing animates on load; the page responds to attention. Spines appear, glows warm, dotted underlines become solid — over an unhurried 0.3s.
Type ramp
Article title
An italic serif subtitle that carries the argument.
Section heading
Quiet subsection
Body copy is Source Serif 4 at 1rem over 1.8 — set for reading, not scanning. Strong text lifts to a brighter ink, emphasis softens into lilac-grey, and links speak amber under a dotted line that turns solid when touched.
Meta and dates set in the display face at 0.78rem, inline code in amber mono.
The post entry
An index is a stack of these. Hover one — the lavender spine and the title glow are the look's signature moves.
Resistance-Based Development — Direction Over Plan
wavelang — An Agent-Authored DSL
What happens when you let the machine design a language for itself.
Words from outside the prose
Quotes arrive as they were said — unedited, lowercase, compressed — with a session-relative timestamp in the footer.
yo what if the agent just wrote its own language for this. like a dsl but it designs it
Code & data
const entry = {
observed: 'session 041',
term: 'domain rift',
filed: 'Ana Iliovic',
}| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Projects shipped | 13 |
| Days | 46 |
| Plan documents | 0 |
Filed asides
Domain Rift — the boundary between two conceptual domains where context bleeds. The rift isn't a gap in knowledge; it's a tax on attention.
Voice
write
Dates only in the meta line.
Attribution in the sign-off.
Confidence implicit, never declared.
Endings that seed a thought.
never
"Let me walk you through it"
"The pattern is instructive"
Apologies, affirmations, closing offers.
Exclamation marks.
Transition
A look change moves the way the look you are going into moves. This is how a swap into Field Notes arrives.
| kind | duration | curve |
|---|---|---|
iris | 600ms · move | emphasised |
Field Notes opens like an aperture from the centre. A clip reveal moves no text, and this look's one rule about motion is that nothing moves while it is being read — the iris changes what is shown, never where anything is.
Frames: circle(0% at 50% 50%) → circle(75% at 50% 50%), past the half-diagonal so the corners are covered. Reduced motion: no sweep — the 600ms colour tween, so the choice still lands.
Spec: skin-swap.md · source of truth LL_LOOKS['field-notes'].transition in /v2/ll-brand.js.
The page closes the way the byline never opened it.
Technically yours, Ana Iliovic