Known UX pass — getting ready for Jan

Timeline

1. 1

   Start

   UX pass on Known ahead of Jan's first use

   Zeb flagged 'Add a Memory' / 'Add from a Conversation' as backward-looking

2. 2

   Round 1-4

   Crucible customer persona on real page copy

   Home buttons, portrait page, Known Card fill-in-the-blank framing

3. 3

   Mid

   Copy sweep applied across 4 files

   Present-tense language, 'When confused, try' reordered to position 2

4. 4

   Turn

   Zeb caught 7 entry points routing to one generic flow

   Screenshot-driven finding — empty state had 8 differently-worded promises, all identical destination

5. 5

   Fix

   Collapsed to 2 honest entry points

   'Share what to avoid' now actually jumps to what_hurts questions via startCategory param

6. 6

   Turn 2

   Zeb asked what happens to notes after 7 days

   Found they vanish from every UI surface permanently, though the data persists

7. 7

   Build

   Past notes view + repetition-flag suggestion system

   Crucible (ux persona) design review before building the auto-surface mechanism

8. 8

   Retro

   Session retro written, Crucible wrap run, closed

   First retro pass — engine-health A (87), one gate_checks gap caught and fixed

9. 9

   Deploy

   Zeb asked to deploy Known to production

   Deploy Gate run; prod schema push hit the same env-precedence bug from Chapter 3, this time blocking the deploy outright

10. 10

    Fix

    Found and fixed the real root cause

    drizzle.config.ts unconditionally reloaded .env.local — fixed to only fall back when DATABASE_URL isn't already set

11. 11

    End

    Known live at known.forgekits.build; retro updated to reflect the resolved spin

    s2/s3 moved from deferred to a real prevention artifact, not left open

What shipped

• Present-tense copy sweep across home screen, portrait page, Known Card, and HelperPanel — replaced backward-looking labels ('Add a memory', 'Add from conversation', 'Helper notes') with forward-looking ones

• Reordered Known Card sections so 'When confused, try' (the highest-stakes line for a stranger in a crisis) moved from position 6 to position 2

• Collapsed 8 empty-state entry points (3 buttons + 4 prompt cards, all routing to the same generic question 1) down to 2 honest ones

• Added startCategory routing so 'Share what to avoid' actually jumps the capture session to what_hurts questions instead of dropping at question 1 of 24

• Added a welcome-screen intro line that confirms what the user asked to share, when a targeted entry point was used

• Built a 'Past notes' collapsed view so handoff notes older than 7 days stop disappearing from the UI forever (data was already persisted, just never re-shown)

• Built a repetition-detection suggestion system: when a keyword recurs across 3+ daily notes, Jan sees a single dismissible one-tap suggestion to add it to the Known Card — accepting promotes the notes into a real memory entry + draft enrichment via the existing review pipeline, never auto-writing to the card

• Deployed the full session's work to production at known.forgekits.build, including a prod schema push for the new table

• Fixed drizzle.config.ts to stop unconditionally overriding an already-set DATABASE_URL — the actual root cause of two separate spins this session, in both the dev and prod direction