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The right panel

The right panel is a permanent column on the right side of every layer. Two states:

  • Agenda (nothing selected) — a layer-specific punch list of what needs your attention and what's blocking progress.
  • Detail (something selected) — a per-element panel for the entity, screen, zone, or chip you clicked.

Below 1280px, the panel collapses into a slide-over Sheet so smaller windows still get full functionality.

Why it earns its slot

Design work has two rhythms:

  • Scan — which entity is missing a description, which screen has no shell, which zone is empty.
  • Drill — editing an entity's attributes, naming a zone, picking a template.

The panel handles both. Same column, two modes. Click an element to flip to detail; close detail (or click empty space) to return to agenda. The column never disappears, so the punch list is always one click away.

The shared four-zone frame

The agenda renders the same four zones across all four layers + Spec. Body content adapts; labels don't.

Zone Label What it shows
1 (header) Layer name, last-edited timestamp
2 From <upstream layer> Upstream drift indicator. Renders only when upstream was edited more recently than this layer. Vision skips this zone.
3 Needs attention Specific, named, clickable validator findings. Capped at five with Show all to expand.
4 Next One short line on readiness for the next layer.

Zones group by spacing alone — no dividers, no boxed sections.

Zone 2 — upstream drift

Drift fires when the layer one step ahead was edited more recently than the current layer. Vision feeds Ontology. Ontology feeds Architecture. Architecture feeds Screens. Edit Ontology, return to Architecture → Architecture's right panel surfaces a From Ontology zone reading "Ontology changed since you last edited Architecture" with a Review changes link.

Drift is calm by design. No counts, no badges, no forced cascade. Directional nudge, not a blocker. Goes away when you edit the current layer again — Denote treats your next edit as acknowledgement.

Zone 3 — needs attention

Layer validators each return a list of findings. Examples:

  • Vision — unresolved goals, empty constraints, open questions.
  • Ontology — entities without descriptions, personas not referenced by any task, tasks referencing entities that don't exist, visual cues with weak triggers.
  • Architecture — orphan screens, unknown parent references, screens without a template + variant, drill-out variants missing their linked detail screen.
  • Screens — screens without a composition, zones with no content references, screens not assigned to a shell.

Each finding has a stable id, a human-readable message, an optional click target, and a severity. Clickable rows select the element and flip the panel to its detail. Vision items scroll the sidebar instead.

Cap is five; Show all expands. Validators that produce more than five are signaling the layer is still in early shape.

Zone 4 — next

One short line per layer:

  • Not ready: "Some entities still need descriptions." "Add screens in Architecture first."
  • Ready: "Screens is ready. Generate the spec to hand off."

The text comes from the same validator that powers zone 3. No buttons here — handoff itself happens via the top-bar mode toggle.

Detail mode

Selecting anything on the canvas flips the panel to a per-type detail panel:

  • Entity card in Ontology → entity detail.
  • Screen node in Architecture → screen detail (template + variant editor).
  • Zone in Screens → zone detail.
  • Chip inside a zone → chip detail.
  • ... and so on for personas, tasks, mental models, visual cues, shells, overlays.

Selection is remembered per-layer. If you have an entity selected in Ontology, switch to Architecture, then come back to Ontology — the same entity is still selected. Closing the detail panel clears the memory for that layer, so coming back lands on the agenda.

Responsive collapse

Docks as a column above 1280px. Below 1280px the column hides and a PanelRight icon appears in the top bar that opens the panel as a slide-over Sheet. Content is identical; only the container differs.

The Spec layer is different

The Spec layer's right panel renders a write-status surface, not an agenda. Per-file presence, the in-order skill checklist, the project skill generator. Spec is the handoff artifact, not a layer with its own validators.

What it's not

  • Not a dashboard. No counts, metrics, or charts.
  • Not a notification feed. The activity hub in the top bar handles that.
  • Not a status surface for skills. The skill status chip below the terminal handles that.
  • Not an action surface for handoff. The mode chip in the top bar handles that.

The agenda is opinionated about progress; everything else lives elsewhere.

Where to next