Kiln owner's guide

# Kiln — rules for agents

Kiln is an e-commerce theme for makers (Tailwind v4 / Next.js 15 / React 19).
The demo content belongs to a fictional studio, **Marl** — two people throwing
stoneware in Whitstable, Kent, firing four times a year and selling what comes
out of the kiln.

The theme's premise, and the reason every rule below exists: **the photography
is the layout**. Kiln's job is to frame a maker's own pictures and then get out
of the way. Anything that adds decoration next to a product photograph is
working against the product.

Read this before changing anything. The four workflows in `.claude/skills/`
(`rebrand`, `add-section`, `add-page`, `check-quality`) are the sanctioned way
to extend Kiln; they are written against the real file names and token names
below.

---

## The five declarations

Everything else in this file follows from these. They were owed as a group and
they were decided as a group in 2.0.0, because a serif display wants an
editorial cadence and an editorial cadence wants a display-size headline.

| | Declaration | Why |
|---|---|---|
| **Signature** | **The shelf** — a full-bleed hairline plate of white bays, one square photograph per bay, running past the container to both page edges | Structural, not decorative. It is the thing a viewer describes from memory ("six square pots on cream, edge to edge"), it is the same construction as the `promises` plate and the `firing-calendar` plate, and the plate appears on **every one of the five** routes. 1.x declared a "full-bleed studio band" that lived on one route and was never declared before the theme was built. |
| **Hero archetype** | **A8** — asymmetric offset, artifact bleeding off-frame | The copy is indented from the page spine on the plaster wall; the studio photograph takes the right two fifths and is cropped by the page edge. 1.x declared A4 (type over a photograph), which invariant 6 makes structurally impossible in this theme, and shipped the retired A2. |
| **Content register** | **Editorial** — 2–4 display words, the deck carries the idea; sentences may run long | A maker's storefront is a studio, not a utility. The 1.x H1 ("Pots made one at a time") was the catalog's fourth declarative-quiet headline in a row; `content-pass` quotes it as the example. |
| **Type ratio** | **1.333**, anchored at 1.5rem → 1.5 · 2 · 2.665 · 3.553rem | The consumer/commerce step from the CONTRACT table. Kiln is the catalog's only e-commerce theme, so the slot has no neighbour to collide with. |
| **Undertone** | **66°**, window 54°–78° | Every neutral in both modes sits inside it. `--card: #ffffff` is the one sanctioned achromatic (see invariant 3). |

**Second hue** — `--accent` is a slate-sage at H 118, **ΔH 81.6° from the clay**,
taken from the ash and sand glazes in the shipped photographs. Kiln was
monochromatic-warm through 1.x, which is why the restock band and the muted band
were the same rectangle. The sage is a *surface* (the restock band, the selected
glaze chip); the clay that sits on it is `--accent-foreground`.