How the factory works — the seven stations as a walk-through a stranger can follow, on /factoria

One pass, end to end, kept here because the repositories behind it are private. The record is committed with the site; nothing on this page is generated at request time.

THE ASK

Factoria gets no separate landing page, because this site is the portfolio's landing page. Instead the /factoria page gains a section a stranger can follow, walking the seven stations in order.

For each station: what enters it, what it does, what leaves it. On the verify station, state that a human holds the veto, reusing the operator-veto language already on the page.

Position it between the registry and the origins, as directed. Every string comes from the existing station rows or existing page copy; nothing is invented. The feedback button stays where it is.

ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA

1. The page renders the seven station rows as a numbered 1-7 walk-through, each stating what enters, what it does and what leaves, placed between the registry and origins sections.
2. The walk-through states that the verify station, the one row marked hot, is where a human holds the veto, reusing the veto language already on the page.
3. The sitewide feedback button is unmodified and not duplicated inside the new section.
4. A new source-level test asserts the seven station names render in order inside the section and that the hot station's copy mentions the veto.
5. That test is appended to the package test script, and the test-manifest test enforces it.
6. No employer name, phone, colleague or internal system name, and no model identifier, appears in the new copy; the vocabulary test keeps passing.
7. The build and the full test suite both exit 0.

THE PLAN

• Add a second, additive section rather than rewriting the existing how-it-works block, which a parity test locks to the earlier three-panel design.
• Map over the page's own station array instead of retyping the names, so order cannot drift from the array the parity test already pins.
• Derive enters-from and leaves-to from each station's neighbours; end points read the operator and the apps.
• Gate the veto sentence on the hot flag so it cannot attach to the wrong station.
• Verification mode: solo. No consensus round was executed for this Form.

1. 2026-09-18 — captured, then shaped (acceptance criteria and constraints written)
2. 2026-09-18 — re-shaped once; branch bound, phase moved to build
3. 2026-09-18 — pull request opened, phase moved to verify
4. 2026-09-18 — pull request merged, phase moved to ship, then persist automatically

THE CHANGE

• app/factoria/page.tsx · +50 −0
• package.json · +1 −1
• tests/how-the-factory-works.test.ts · +90 −0

THE GATES

• pnpm install --frozen-lockfile — exit 0
• pnpm build — exit 0 (typecheck, lint and Next.js build clean)
• env -u DATABASE_URL pnpm test — exit 0 (41 test files, including the new one)

how-the-factory-works checks passed (7 stations, veto on verify)
Recorded on the pull request at head 780ea674: install, build and the full suite each exit 0.
No deploy-surface file was touched.

THE VERDICT

Passed. All seven acceptance criteria met on the three gates. The Form's verification mode was solo, so no consensus vote exists for this pass; the verdict is the gate result plus the operator's merge.

THE MERGE

PR #71 — v8.8: add the "how the factory works" station walk-through to /factoria. Merged 2026-09-18 as commit 6ad4159f; 3 files, +141 −1. The Form reached persist automatically on merge.