I moved the story out of the editor frame

Every route used to sit inside an editor-style frame. That made the homepage feel like a file in a project tree, and it gave the shell more attention than the experiment. I removed the global Explorer, editor tabs, breadcrumbs and bottom status strip, then gave the site one shared navigation for Story, Lab, Source and Build Log.

I kept the ten chapter Origin Story in its own place and left its full text intact. The homepage now introduces the author and points to the Lab; the Source page keeps its own file selector; the Build Log holds implementation decisions and evidence. That separation lets a reader move from the idea to the actual mechanism without making the interface pretend to be an IDE.

The background should never look like activity

I added a quiet Canvas with red right-angle paths and scattered pixels. At first I placed most of it near the edges. On a wide screen, that left the story floating inside too much empty black, so I later let the paths cover the viewport and taught the Canvas to clear a small margin around real text lines.

I kept the effect deliberately separate from REPRO's execution state. It does not create logs, results or status changes. It does not follow the pointer. The frame rate is capped, a hidden tab pauses drawing, and the reduced-motion setting leaves a static background. The author's motion toggle only controls this decoration.

What I checked

Chromium checked the redesigned story at 1024, 1280, 1440 and 390 pixels, including the mobile menu's Escape, outside-click and selected-link close behavior at the 760-pixel boundary. The ten chapters, their anchors, the signature, the story-to-log link and the Lab route remained available without horizontal overflow. The Lab still reports missing services truthfully.

The Canvas changed in real frames, then stopped when I turned its switch off. It also stayed static under reduced motion, and an independent browser tab check confirmed that a hidden page paused and resumed when visible again. Those results verify the background behavior only; they say nothing about a live AI experiment.

I kept the visual language quiet around the story and made sure the Canvas never reports execution. That boundary shaped both the simpler shell and the background's strict limits.

Follow the change

I rebuilt the shared frame and story layout in commit 39f6cf0. The full Origin Story remains in content/story.md; this note is about how I presented it.