Build Log

Fifty Real Missions and a Night Garden to Find Them In

August 7, 2026

Redesigned Alloy Commons mission content and browsing from scratch — a real 50-mission catalog, a new Relay contribution mechanic, and a depth-tiered 'Aisle' replacing the old Explore table.

AlloyCommonsContent DesignUX

mission concepts drafted

full research/design passes before landing the right filter

mockup review rounds on the Aisle

existing unit tests passing (0 cover the new Aisle code)

Timeline

Start

Research charge: 50 real-life missions for Alloy

Iterated through worthy-but-joyless, joyful-but-decorative, useful-but-clinical before Zeb supplied the missing test

Mid

Built the Relay contribution mechanic

New blind_continuation_v1 kind, seeded alongside a real target Mission (One Line Closer), per the 'no cold-designed kinds' rule

Mid

Designed and mocked up 'The Aisle'

Three visual directions, settled on Garden at Night; iterated through flip-card content, depth mechanics, and Street-View-style chevrons

End

Built the real Profile + Aisle pages

New contributor_profiles table, weighted mission-mix query, full Aisle component; adversarial audit found and fixed 2 real bugs

What shipped

50-mission draft catalog (docs/community/commons-seed-missions-v2-recognition-field.md) — full mission-row content organized by recognition category

New Relay contribution mechanic (blind_continuation_v1): schema field, contribution-kind file, UI form, steward-assign server action, design doc for the deferred AI-recommend follow-on

Seeded 'One Line Closer' as the real target Mission for the new mechanic

New contributor_profiles table + saveContributorProfile action + preferences card on the existing profile page

Weighted mission-mix query (getAisleMissionBuckets) — profile-match / needs-help / recently-active / wildcard buckets from real, derivable signals

The Aisle: a depth-tiered, proximity-gated browsing page replacing the default /commons/explore (old table view moved to /commons/explore/list as the secondary path)

Design doc (commons-profile-and-wander-design.md) kept in sync with what was actually built and settled through mockup review, not the original speculative draft

“I like the flip idea, now we need to solve the problem of making it feel like you are wandering around browsing yet keep the detail we have now on the card. how do we create the depth”
— Zeb, mid-session, naming the real design tension between rich card content and spatial browsing feel