Novus · icon lab · hidden

Feature icons

Clean line icons for key features — three takes each. Proper icon craft first (Geist/Lucide-grade), with the brand showing up only subtly: sharp corners (no round caps), square nodes over circles, and angular geometry — the blocks / terminal / code personality. Shown large, plus at real product size in a faux header. Hover an icon to replay its reveal.

Novus · onboarding intro · redesign

Sizing the intro around the animations

Even at 64px the step animations felt cramped in the original icon slots — so here the layout is rethought to treat them as content, not icons. Two directions to compare: a stacked flow (closest to the current screen) and a 3-column feature grid (max presence).

Novus · sitemap loading · in context

Loading state for the sitemap

Swapping the plain pulsing "Loading diagram…" text for an on-brand loader — monochrome, Style-1 rules, no pink, subtle. It's loading a product-map diagram, so the animation leans into "assembling a map." Three takes.

Novus · responsive tiers · prototype

Condensed · Regular · Expanded

This is the Size axis. Same mark, same density, same color — composition is constant; only box scale + optical line weight grade per size, so the mark holds presence when tiny and stays refined when large. Condensed (small/inline), Regular (cards/onboarding), Expanded (hero/loading) are context recipes. (Density — how tight vs airy — is the separate knob you adjust in the Builder.)

Novus · grow from condensed · prototype

Build up from the small one

Condensed = the onboarding blkSq glyph, locked (the one you like). Regular = same mark, scaled + connectors opened a touch. The three Expanded columns compare how hero size should behave: scale-only (chunky blow-up), spread (airy, nodes pushed apart), elaborate (spread + extra waypoints/leaves so it fills the frame).

Novus · loading system · prototype

Loading states by type

One system, different settings per loading type. Full-page = the brand moment: the product map assembles, large & calm. Section = contained, subtle, snappier so a populated page doesn't jump. Data load = a skeleton whose rows populate with the Style-2 block-fill (mass filling in, not a spinner). Full-page & section share the Style-1 primitives (only scale + timing change); data-load borrows Style-2 because the semantics are literally "content arriving."

Novus · Style 1 rules linter · prototype

Do the rules hold?

A checker that lints any Style-1 SVG. Rules split two ways: Laws are the hard identity — break one and the mark is off-brand (pink chip = blocked). Guidelines are craft/taste — a miss is an amber warning, not a stop. The linter enforces the grammar; it can't judge everything, so some things stay human review.

canonical marks · archived alternates · gallery · loaders — real results, no rubber-stamping

each fixture breaks ONE Law on purpose; the linter should flag it — and only it

these pass every Law but trip a guideline (composition / motion). Amber = worth a look, not a hard stop

samples a vocabulary of motifs (fan · chain · hierarchy · merge · grid · radial) + a random rot/flip, built on the condensed scale — varied but on-theme, passing Laws by construction

Novus · Style 1 builder · make a new one safely

Builder

Pick a motif and adjust it within the rules. The preview animates live and the linter checks it in real time — Laws must pass to export, guidelines are advice. You can explore freely; you can't make an off-brand mark here. Constrained generation, not a blank canvas.

Novus · Cortex chat · typography exploration

Mono vs. sans in the chat

The production Cortex chat renders everything in monospace today — prose, headings, tables, the works. Mono is 100% on-brand (it's the Novus system voice), but at answer length it taxes readability. This testbed flips the whole chat surface between three treatments so we can feel the tradeoff. Only the chat area changes font; the product sidebar stays constant so the variable is isolated.

Novus · Style 1 · new placement

Onboarding stepper

The top progress bar (Connect → Scan → Install) rebuilt in the blocks-and-lines language: a box at each step, a line between them. Advancing draws the line to the next step and pops its box — literal cause→effect, the same rule the narrative glyphs use, but now tied to real progress instead of a loop. Below auto-cycles Connect→Scan→Install so you can read the motion.

Novus · in-context spike

The marks, in place

The four surfaces where a mark is already locked, mocked at the size and in the chrome they actually ship in. Flip Today ↔ Novus to compare against what the product renders right now. Copy is lifted from the live app, not invented. These are the lab's marks in mocked Novus chrome — the right thing for judging whether they belong in the slot, not a substitute for reviewing the real build.