[stupart]

Tyler: "the main input box especially needs help — go px by px improving the mac app."

Every value below is read off workspace-lab.html — the running prototype he compares against — and cited to its selector. I had been porting numbers out of §3's prose without opening the lab, which is how these drifted.

	lab	was	now
card padding	.cbox{padding:6px}	14 / 8	6
card background	.cbox{background:var(--surface)}	raised	surface
card edge	--shFloat's 0.5 px ring	none	0.5 hairline
inner field box	none	radius-8 box	removed
text	#ta{font:var(--read)/22px} → 15/22	12.5 / 16	15 / 22
field padding	#ta{padding:8px 10px 4px}	6 / 8	8 · 10 · 4
max lines	§3 "1 to 8 lines"	6	8
bar	.cbar{gap:4;height:34;padding-left:2}	gap 8, no height	4 / 34 / 2
stack gap	.cbar sits directly under #ta	8	0
mic	.mic{width:30;background:var(--fill)}	28, hover	30, fill
send	.send{width:30;background:var(--accent)}	28, brand cyan	30, ink
caption	.cap{font:500 12px}	10.5	12
destination	.dest{gap:5;font-size:12;color:var(--text3);margin-left:8}	absent	added
bar order	+ · mic · cap · dest · sp · recite · send	recite before the spacer	fixed

The inner box was the main offender. The field had its own rounded background inside the composer's — a card within a card, which §3 forbids ("No other cards") and the lab doesn't have. That plus the stack gap is where the dead height came from.

One colour call, flagged

.send in the lab is --accent — near-black ink, not the brand cyan the app used. I've matched the lab, because that's the reference you're comparing against, and because cyan at full strength is meant to say one thing only: your microphone is open. It reverts in one line if you'd rather keep cyan.

I deliberately did not touch the mic's voice-state colours. Palette.swift says that language "moves as its own change, to be seen and reacted to" — so only the mic's resting background changed (hover → fill, which is what --fill resolves to).

ConchPalette.accent is the legacy orange, so the send uses new ink / onInk entries mapped to ConchColor.accent / onAccent rather than repurposing it.

Guards

Nothing pinned a single composer value before this — which is exactly how it drifted from the lab. Every number above is now guarded and cited to its CSS selector.

mutation	result
the card goes back to 14/8 padding	1 fail
the mic shrinks to the icon-button size	1 fail
send goes back to brand cyan	1 fail
the 0.5 hairline ring is dropped	1 fail
the field drops back to 16 pt lines	1 fail
the destination chip is removed	1 fail
recite drifts back before the spacer	1 fail
the stack gap comes back	1 fail
the chip loses its 8 of indent	1 fail

Gate

bun test 2302/0 exit 0 · tsc --noEmit exit 0 · Mac xcodebuild BUILD SUCCEEDED · iOS xcodebuild BUILD SUCCEEDED — and photographed on the real window at each step, with the camera fixed by #296 so the frames are the light appearance you actually see.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01SfEX6bfwCGXtThk1JRNmsE