Explosive Discovery — Docs

An interface shows what the user's current intent needs and keeps the rest one meaningful step away. Capability explodes outward on demand: nothing is hidden, everything is nested by meaning, and a more specific intent reveals a more specific set of choices.

Simple at every level, powerful across levels.

Three names, three jobs

Name	Job	Where
Progressive disclosure	The intent — show what is needed now, reveal complexity on demand	Design principle 3 in blueprint/design/README.md
Explosive Discovery	The principle — how a product organizes capability so that disclosure works on a page, in a menu and across a user's journey; what it must never do; what an adopter emulates	This page; its review method is blueprint/design/explosive-discovery.md, and the procedure agents follow is the skill `uxy-explosive-discovery`
Nested Depth	The structure the principle recommends — directions that narrow intent, detail on entry	Defined in the review method

Core philosophy

Principle	Description
User-paced	Depth opens on an explicit action — a click, a selection, a completed step — never on time elapsed or distance scrolled
Depth without hiding	The user always feels there is more here if I need it, never I don't know whether this application can do it: categories, continuation indicators, search, a More that is a direction rather than a bucket
Context promotes, temporarily	State the page already has — a selection, a dirty document, a sibling panel — lifts a deep action to the surface; when the state ends, the action returns to its depth
An expert path beside every discovery path	A shortcut, a palette entry, a direct action, a remembered choice — declared with the discovery path, never in a second table that can drift
Persistent position	Resume where you left off — a page, a stage, a workspace — even without an account
Optional depth	Every guided step can be skipped, and the skip is always visible; a completed stage stays visible, muted, never removed

Anti-goals

Forced tutorials that block content
Navigation hidden "until it is useful" — it disorients
Gates that make an experienced user traverse the introduction again
Scroll-jacking, time-based triggers, unskippable animation
Nesting whose only justification is there was not enough room — a submenu of leftovers
A mobile projection that merely compresses the desktop one

Two axes

The principle applies on two orthogonal axes. One is built and reviewable today; the other is a direction.

Depth axis — one page, one moment

A page or menu that offers more than roughly 5 ± 2 unrelated choices at once is a reason to look (never a limit). Semantic compression turns implementation-level actions into user-level directions, and entering a direction reveals the next level of detail:

Overview        what is here
    ↓
Direction       which way am I going
    ↓
Context         what am I working with
    ↓
Action          what do I do to it
    ↓
Detail          how exactly

Built. The desk's panel menus embody it: composePanelMenus() (src/lib/components/desk/compose-menus.ts) produces one array; the desktop kebab renders it as one sub-menu per direction, the mobile commands sheet renders the same array as flat titled sections, and DeskShortcuts.svelte matches keyboard chords against the same array the menu renders. The menu forms a direction can take are on /showcases/ui/menus. How to review a surface against this axis — the choice trigger, context first, projections, review signals, the advisory five-part output — is the review method.

Journey axis — one user, over time

The same principle stretched across a visit and a relationship: content and features reveal as the user's demonstrated intent grows, so a newcomer is not overwhelmed and a returning user is not re-introduced.

A direction, not a feature. Nothing in src/ gates content by journey stage; there is no guest identity, no progress record, no achievement. What follows is the design an adopter emulates, kept here because it is the same principle as the depth axis and would otherwise be reinvented under a second name.

Revelation	Opens on	Reveals
First visit	Page load	The hero, one primary action, the preferences that matter now — for example the style dice roll
Exploration	The first meaningful action	Content sections, value propositions
Commitment	Content completed	The invitation to sign up — "ready for next steps"
Sign-up	An explicit choice	Passwordless, one field, a privacy promise in view; Log in prominent, Create account secondary
Onboarding	Offered, never imposed	Explore freely and Take the tour side by side; every step skippable, feedback brief and inline, never a blocking modal

What counts as a meaningful action: clicking a primary action, completing a section, changing a preference, bookmarking. What never counts: a page view, a scroll position, time on page.

Rule	Why
Adapted content, not locked routes	The same route shows what is possible at every stage; a shared link never hits a wall. Only truly private routes — settings, personal data — require an account
Visual history	A completed stage is muted and checked, not removed; the navigation affordance is visible from the first visit and expands as sections open
Progress is ambient	A subtle indicator the user consults when they want — dots, a fraction, a badge — never a bar that demands attention or regresses
Guest continuity	A returning visitor is recognized and resumes without an account; on sign-up the guest's progress merges into the account — the higher stage wins, sets union — and stale guests are cleaned up
Every choice is a valid path	Completing the tour and skipping it are celebrated equally — one for thoroughness, one for independence. Nothing is framed as skipped; there are no "complete your profile" nags

Invariants (what to emulate)

The pattern is the principle, not a component library or a navigation structure. A project adopting it keeps these:

Availability is not visibility. The capability model stays explicit and complete — what can be done; the page decides what to show now. Hiding never removes a capability from the model, and an agent reading the model sees all of it.
Every projection renders the same capability set. Desktop, mobile, keyboard: only the arrangement differs. A command present on one and absent on another is a bug.
Every discovery path has an expert path, declared beside it — never in a second table that can drift.
Context promotion is temporary. An action surfaced by state returns to its depth when the state ends.
~5 ± 2 is a trigger, never a limit. A flat list stays flat when it is familiar, scannable, repeated, or a comparison.
Depth opens on explicit action. Never on time, never on scroll.
Adapted content, never locked routes. A stage changes what a page shows, not whether it answers.
Skip is always visible. Guided depth is an offer; declining it is a valid path.

Accessibility

Concern	Requirement
Screen readers	Announce newly revealed content
Keyboard	Every level and every stage reachable without a pointer; the expert path is a keyboard path
Focus	Focus moves to what was just revealed
Motion	Respect the user's motion preference; every animation skippable
Color	State (completed / current / upcoming) never carried by color alone

blueprint/design/explosive-discovery.md — the review method: choice trigger, context first, projections, review signals, output shape
blueprint/design/README.md — design principle 3, the intent this principle serves
style.md — Style Randomization; its dice roll is the first revelation
user-data.md — the data classification a guest-to-account merge would live under
architecture.md — state layers and routing patterns
.claude/skills/uxy-explosive-discovery/SKILL.md — the review procedure agents follow