# V6 Insights

## User Feedback To Apply

The user is responding to the V5 gallery at the root published site and named these specific directions:

- Likes `018-quiet-rail-to-loud` for information architecture and interactions, but not for visual design.
- Likes `023-smart-resize` for both visual design and interactions.
- Expected to like `030-two-row-top-bar`, but does not.
- Somewhat likes the visual style of `035-three-layer-depth`, but not the interactions.
- Likes the Sites widget interaction from `036-corner-widget-control-center`.

V6 is therefore not another broad metaphor round. It is a focused refinement round with 40 new designs.

## What To Keep

### Quiet Rail IA

Keep the quiet-to-loud reveal, one secondary surface, restrained idle state, and one-door discipline from `018`. The useful pattern is: a small persistent orientation surface that expands into a single reliable workspace.

Do not copy the monochrome dark rail. V6 should explore warmer, cleaner, editorial, material, bento, premium, corporate, paper, mono, and spacious skins.

### Smart Resize

Keep focus-as-layout from `023`: iframe and secondary surface can coexist, and the active surface gains weight. Keep the ratio gauge, detents, and fullscreen escape. Improve discoverability with a teaching pulse, labeled seam, or static state diagram.

### Sites Widget

Keep the Sites widget interaction from `036`: compact status plus canonical door into saved sites, new starts, and blueprint discovery. Prefer one Sites widget over four permanent corner widgets. The widget should show saved identity and consequence, not become another generic dashboard button.

### Three-Layer Depth Visuals

Borrow the polish from `035`: quantified elevation, blur, tint, scale, and surface hierarchy. Do not make depth the navigation model. Depth should clarify hierarchy, not ask users to understand a z-stack.

## What To Avoid

### Persistent Two-Row Top Bars

Do not use `030` as a direct model. Stable identity plus contextual actions is a valid problem, but V6 should solve it through:

- rail plus one pane,
- smart resize,
- a compact Sites widget,
- a single capsule,
- a contextual inspector,
- or another one-surface model.

Avoid two always-visible horizontal rows of chrome.

### Same Visual Language Everywhere

V3/V5 drifted toward the same few fonts, blues, dark glass, and pale cards. V6 workers must use assigned TypeUI style skills to create varied but professional visual systems.

### More Product Surface

Do not add accounts, deployment, AI assistants, plugin marketplaces, collab, terminal-first flows, or new database tooling. V6 is about existing Playground goals made more discoverable.

## Required Product Coverage Still Applies

Every design must preserve:

- Refresh, URL/path, playground name, save state, saved playgrounds, Site Manager/tools, settings.
- Start routes: Vanilla WordPress, WordPress PR, Gutenberg PR/branch, From GitHub, Blueprint URL, Import `.zip`.
- Featured blueprints plus full gallery with search and category filters.
- Saved playgrounds and active saved identity.
- Settings, Files, Blueprint editor, Database, Logs.
- WP Admin, Homepage, Export to GitHub PR, Download `.zip`.
- Loading, active session, launcher/gallery open, save/resume, destructive Apply & Reset confirmation, route inputs, toast/final state.
- Desktop 1440x900 and mobile 390x844 with the same product logic.

## Critic Bar

The critic should reward designs that:

- Use quiet rail IA without copying its skin.
- Make smart resize discoverable and useful.
- Make the Sites widget a canonical saved-site/launch door.
- Use depth for polish rather than navigation complexity.
- Avoid persistent two-row top bars.
- Are visually differentiated through real style-system choices.
- Preserve all Playground features without making a broad console/dashboard.