Changelog

The system has been building since March 2026, and every major build is below, newest first. Entries carry a version tag from July 2026, when the system became a versioned package; earlier entries come from the project history.

Docs pages measure their own width

22 August 2026

• Content-level breakpoints measure the content column, not the browser window — collapsing the sidebar brings the table of contents back with no resize
• Below 860px of content width the table of contents becomes an "On this page" dropdown under the breadcrumb
• Body text caps at 720px where the contents column is absent, ending a jump in line length at the breakpoint
• The collapsed sidebar renders before first paint, so the layout never flips on load
• Focus outlines stay inside dialog and drawer scroll areas

The glossary becomes a searchable reference

20-22 August 2026

• Every term in the glossary is an expandable row grouped by letter, with live search and a sticky A-Z jump rail
• Every entry follows one pattern: a one-sentence definition, newcomer context, then labelled examples
• Two reusable pieces came out of the work: the expandable contents row and the docs-site A-Z index
• The glossary takes the first cover on the home page shelf

Page transitions join the docs kit

20 August 2026 v4.1.0

• A pageTransitions config flag in the docs kit — the generator bundle a consumer installs to build its own docs site — off by default, with the default output byte-identical to before
• Enabled, the generator emits the transition markup and stylesheet plus a bundled page router with named hooks for site-specific wiring
• Strict validation, a conflicts checklist and a warning when a site already runs its own router make enabling an explicit choice

Two control bars become one: the bar

16 August 2026 v4.0.0

• Sticky bar and toolbar were the same box discovered twice; they are now one Bar, configured by density, width and sticky attributes
• The bar keeps to one row: items that do not fit collapse into an overflow menu, in the order the author set, instead of wrapping
• Every doc and tool page now ends its bar the same way — actions, overflow trigger, close
• The two token families collapse into one, with every old name mapped onto a new one

Fourteen icon names leave the sprite

14 August 2026 v3.0.0

• Fourteen names retire and three arrive, moving the icon sprite from 188 names to 177 — duplicates collapse onto one drawing each, and eleven of the fourteen are renames rather than losses
• The release records six components shipped since the previous release: Site Header, Nav, Footer, Page Header, Toolbar and Avatar
• The long-form text-size classes that were documented but never defined in CSS now work, as aliases onto the short forms
• eye, eye-off and tiktok join the set

The Docs section stops describing a site that no longer exists

14 August 2026

• All 106 markdown sources audited; the Docs section went from 16 pages to 13
• Three obsolete pages removed, with their still-true content merged elsewhere
• The sidebar stopped listing every tool twice
• Setup, folder-structure and markdown docs corrected: wrong ports, deleted scripts, undocumented fields

Six page types, and tools stop being hand-written

13-14 August 2026

• One page-rendering core serves the docs site and brand instances, replacing eight near-duplicate generators
• A single table decides each page's chrome — header, bar, table of contents, pager, feedback, footer — across six declared types
• Seven tools moved from hand-written HTML into generated source pairs, each shedding around 120 lines of duplicated boilerplate
• Every tool must carry a close control, enforced at build time; a browsable showroom of the six types ships under examples/

Components survive page navigation

11 August 2026

• Tabs, accordion and rating went inert after any in-page navigation and only recovered on a hard reload; all three now re-initialise on every page swap
• Every tool page had been missing two to five scripts; all nine now carry the full set
• Two automated checks joined the test run: one proving every shipped script survives a swap, one driving real navigations in a browser
• Published guidance named the wrong navigation event, so listeners written from it never fired — corrected

The docs site starts using its own components

10-11 August 2026

• Page Header and Footer became core components, replacing the hand-rolled footer on all 124 generated pages
• The feedback modal now composes Dialog, gaining proper labelling, focus handling and motion
• Breadcrumbs on 104 generated pages use the Breadcrumb component, fixing separators read aloud and a missing current-page marker
• Every page now reports exactly one banner, one main and one contentinfo landmark

Toolbar ships, and every tool moves onto it

9-10 August 2026

• The tools had solved the control bar three separate times; one component replaced them all, with grouping, labels, dividers and an actions cluster
• One 36px control height across the bar, replacing bars that rendered three unrelated heights side by side
• Bars dropped from 70px to 53px and now line up with page content
• A consistency pass followed: missing focus indicators, pressed states, merged menus and keyboard access across all eight tools
• The Toolbar merged into the Bar a week later, on 16 August

Site Header, Nav, Sticky Bar and Avatar become core components

8-9 August 2026

• Nine classes welded to the docs grid became three portable components; the docs stylesheet lost 539 lines
• The mobile sidebar is a real modal drawer — 130 focusable elements were reachable behind a closed menu, now zero
• A skip link, focus return, scroll lock and 44px touch targets arrived with the rebuild
• Browser test suites proved the rebuild, rather than a read-through of the CSS

Drawer, Book and Page Navigation join the system

3-4 August 2026 v2.2.0 v2.2.1

• Drawer builds on the existing dialog machinery with a placement axis and no new script
• Book covers, contents rows and the prev/next pager promoted out of docs-site CSS into the portable system, with 22 new tokens
• Dropdown menus measure the viewport and place themselves, and the menu semantics were finished: roving focus, typeahead, grouping
• v2.2.1 fixed invisible text on coloured outline buttons and dark-mode toasts losing their type colours

The CMS goes from plan to live admin

2-4 August 2026

• One authoritative plan landed first: measured inventory, architecture, six gated phases and a full decision log
• The importer parses all 95 source pages, runs dry by default and is idempotent per source file
• Import parsers turned the documentation corpus into structured content — unconvertible raw HTML fell from 64 blocks to 2
• The admin deployed on Cloudflare, bound to the production database and media bucket, with 98 pages imported as structured blocks

Eleven channel pages now share one template

3 August 2026

• Ten social and owned-channel pages rebuilt as Regulations, Standards, Formats, Tools — joining the Direct page authored on the template two days earlier
• The split separates what a platform imposes from what By Default chose
• Every page gained a Tools section; where no tool exists yet, the page names the one that should
• Contradictory Instagram crop guidance corrected in five places

The Logo Tool ships

2-3 August 2026

• The Logo Tool exports any By Default lockup at any size and colour, as SVG, PNG or JPG
• Brand guidelines become interface: minimum size is an input floor, clear space bakes the exclusion zone into the file, colour is a choice between approved options
• A validated manifest drives the tool, with named empty states when it does not check out
• A headless harness runs 130 checks across all five lockups

A permanent asset host, and the redirect table cut to one rule

2 August 2026

• assets.bydefault.studio now serves email-signature assets under a contract that bytes at a published path never change
• All 109 historical redirects were deleted rather than migrated — the site had never been public, so no old URL had ever been shared
• The build now fails above the host's redirect-rule limit, so a bad redirect file can never deploy again

The site restructures around the Media System

1 August 2026

• A concept document lands: one vocabulary for mediums, token scoping and the engine/instance split
• The Design System section became Website — 44 URLs moved, grouped by medium so new mediums are an addition, not another rename
• Touchpoints split into Social and Channels, plus a new Direct page for decks, proposals and RFPs
• The generator now keys its rules on a page's layer rather than a section name, so a rename cannot silently break a gate

The platform moves to Cloudflare, and auth comes out

31 July to 1 August 2026

• Both domains transferred with no downtime — one was 26 hours from expiry with auto-renew off
• The docs site ported to a Cloudflare Worker, with both server-side forms verified end to end
• The login gate had lost its backend and was redirecting 109 of 114 pages to a dead sign-in screen; it came out in one change, with the login and account layouts kept as unwired designs
• Site output switched to an explicit allowlist, so a forgotten file returns 404 instead of leaking

The system becomes a versioned package

12-30 July 2026 v1.0.1 → v2.1.1

• Releases ship through a public artefact repo, tag-synced by CI and consumed as a version-pinned dependency
• Nine releases in the first fortnight, v1.0.2 through v2.0.0: the icon sprite, a machine-readable DESIGN.md, the docs kit and the standalone styleguide all join the package
• Component JS and the bd-* media modules (audio, video, cursor) followed in v2.0.1 and v2.1.0
• v2.0.0 made blocks gap-only — the first breaking change consumers had to migrate for
• Every built artefact carries a version stamp, and the release history was backfilled into a changelog

BrandOS becomes a product, and the studio site moves out

2-6 July 2026

• The agency site moved to its own repository on 2 July, with its own generator and deploy
• BrandOS repositioned from an internal system into a brand-agnostic engine running brand instances, with By Default as instance one and the live demo
• Touchpoint guidelines arrive as a first-class section: eleven per-channel pages from one template
• A settings model appears — an admin manifest plus a designer-facing theme file, with generated config that is never hand-edited

The agency site is built here, and pushes the system hard

April to May 2026

• The By Default agency site was designed and built inside this repo: home, work feed, case studies, products, contact
• Page transitions, scroll animation, carousels, fluid type and the sidebar patterns were all proven here first
• The transition layer was rebuilt end to end in May: transforms confined to a stage element, with a wrapper inside every container so a failed swap cannot strand a page
• The whole site later moved out, taking the lessons and leaving the system

One markdown source starts generating the whole site

April 2026

• The project reorganised around a single markdown source: docs became cms/, tools consolidated, HTML generated
• Sidebar navigation rebuilt, with tools given direct links and clean URLs
• The generator grew author wiring, opt-out flags and full-site regeneration
• The design system took its first full refresh: palette, typography, logo reorganisation and drop cap support

Logins arrive, and the site wears its first client brand

28-30 March 2026

• A login gate arrived: Netlify Identity, per-page access control and role-based docs
• Client themes introduced the multi-brand architecture — access control and client index generation per brand
• The site restructured into section subfolders with a standalone auth page

The Brand Book lands, and the site gets a URL

21-27 March 2026

• The Brand Book section landed alongside the design system foundations
• The first tools shipped: CPM Calculator, Display Ad Preview and the SVG cleaner
• Netlify deployment configured, and tables, mobile type and docs styling took their first passes

The system starts life as a project template

20 March 2026

• The repo began as By Default's project template, filled in as By Default BrandOS
• The docs site became the root hub, with assets consolidated under one folder
• Brand fonts set: Inclusive Sans for body, RecifeText for headings