Focus Mode · Signals lens

Right column
The finding (headline + claim)
Appearance
Palette
Left — the lens as it ships today, Focus off. Right — the same pixels with the proposed rules applied. Card 2 is simulated as hovered; card 3 is the inspector-pointed card; card 4 has its working open. Below — commentary. Not product. Keys: z toggles · 1/2 variant · d appearance
today · focus off
proposed · focus on

Commentary

The rule is the shipped one, applied to a new card. Axis 1: keep the source's marks and the researcher's own; recede the machine's annotations. Axis 2: anything acted through stays live and returns to full presence while engaged. Nothing here invents a third axis — every row below is one of those two applied to a part of the signal card.

Part of the cardTreatmentWhy
Quote text, speaker codeLitThe participant's words and whose they are — axis 1's "source's marks".
Location heading0.4The Signals twin of .bn-group-header, which already takes 0.4 as wayfinding.
Headline + claim (elaboration)0.4 — variant A, proposedThe machine's reading of the quotes: the same object a theme title + description is on the Quotes lens, and those take 0.4. Legible enough to know which finding you are under; not competing with the evidence. Variant B keeps them lit for comparison.
Hero chip (group + score)0.14, returns on hover / focus / while its working is openA number about the quotes, not the quotes. It is a control, so it keeps pointer-events and comes back the moment you reach for it — receded, never disabled.
Metrics (the working)UntouchedOnly visible when the researcher opened it — that is engagement, and engaged chrome is at full presence by axis 2. Opening it also lights the chip.
Tag chips on quotes, intensity dots, timecodes0.14, pointer-events: none at restMachine annotation at rest. Same treatment the Quotes lens gives its badges and timecodes.
"Also read as"0.14A cross-reference to a folded reading — annotation about annotation.
Footer: "Show all N quotes", participant grid0.14, returns on hover / focusThe toggle is the lean-in action — hover the card and it is there. The grid is a count.
Card border, card background, quote boxDissolve: border to 40%, backgrounds transparentThe same formula as blockquote.quote-card. The fused seam survives as a faint line.
Selected card (inspector-pointed)UntouchedGuarded with :not(.bn-selected), exactly as the quote-card dissolve is. Drop the guard and the blue wash silently vanishes.
Dissent hairlineUntouchedA 2px inset rule at border-hover colour — already at the floor, and it says "this voice argues", which is about the evidence, not about the card.
Nav sidebar, heatmap inspector, page titleUntouchedFocus's standing non-goal: not the sidebars. [ / m close them in one key.

What exists today, measured from the CSS

Focus can only be entered on the Quotes lens (the z key is route-gated, the View-menu item is dimmed off Quotes, the moon button is only mounted on QuotesTab). But the class sits on <html> and the store is route-independent, so a reader who enters Focus on Quotes and clicks through to Signals arrives in a half-state: the source banner drops to 0.4 and every timecode to 0.14 through selectors written for quote cards — except the continuation timecodes in a sequence, which the organism holds at 0.6 at equal specificity and which therefore end up brighter than the run's first timecode. Nothing else recedes. That is the state this proposal replaces; the left column deliberately does not draw it because it is not a design.

Not drawn here

The nav column and the heatmap inspector, because they do not change. The pending skeleton (a card awaiting its finding) — it breathes at 0.45–1 already and would sit at 0.4 under variant A; worth one look in the app. Edo and dark are one HUD click each; the transform names no colour, so they should hold without per-palette rules, as the Quotes rules do.