PRODUCT.md

Product

Register

brand

Aethon has two design surfaces. The primary surface this file anchors to is the documentation website (website/, VitePress) — a brand surface where the design IS the product. The secondary surface is the desktop app UI (src/), a product register where design serves an agent-driven workflow. Both draw from one shared identity and the same token system (Ember / Paper / Æther), so brand decisions here flow to both; per-task work on the app can override the register to product.

Users

Developers evaluating or running Aethon: people who live in a terminal and an editor, are comfortable with agentic coding tools, and arrive at the docs to answer one of two questions — "what is this and is it for me?" (the landing page) or "how do I do X?" (the guide and reference). They read on a desktop browser, often with a dark system theme, frequently while the app is open beside the docs. They scan for the specific mechanism (share modes, devshell wrap, layouts, slash commands) more than they read top to bottom. Aethon is pre-1.0, so a meaningful slice are early adopters deciding whether the foundations are sound enough to invest in.

Product Purpose

Aethon is an agent-driven desktop shell: it embeds the pi coding agent inside a Tauri 2 application and renders the agent's output as live, interactive UI via the A2UI protocol. The interface is not a fixed IDE layout — it's a canvas the agent populates, extensions extend, and themes color. The name is the Greek Αἴθων, one of the horses that pulled Helios's sun chariot: the blazing one that shapes what you see.

The website exists to make that thesis legible and credible. Success is a developer landing on the site, grasping "the agent decides what you see" within the first screen, seeing it demonstrated rather than asserted, and finding the exact guide or reference entry they need without friction — leaving able to install it, configure it, and trust that the project knows what it is.

Brand Personality

Three words: blazing, precise, mythic. Confident expert voice that explains real mechanisms in plain technical language and never reaches for hype. Warm where it counts — the literary, mythological framing (Helios, the sun chariot, "the blazing one") gives the brand its heat and its name — but the warmth serves clarity, not decoration. Honest about being early: the docs state pre-1.0 status and breaking-change risk plainly rather than overselling. The emotional goal is earned confidence — a reader should feel the project is opinionated, deliberate, and worth their time, illuminated rather than dazzled.

Anti-references

• Generic VitePress default. Stock brand colors, untouched hero, the out-of-the-box template look. The site must never read as an unconfigured VitePress install; the Ember/Paper identity is the point.
• Overwrought / loud. Decorative gradients, glassmorphism, animation on everything, visual noise that competes with the content. The blazing accent signals illumination and clarity, not flash. Motion and color are spent deliberately, not sprayed.
• Sterile / personality-free. Cold, anonymous, generated-API-reference styling with none of the mythological warmth or authorial voice. Aethon has a name with a story; the docs should carry that, not strip it out.

Design Principles

• The agent decides what you see. The core thesis is the spine of the brand. Lead with it, structure around it, and let every surface reinforce that the UI is a canvas, not a fixed layout.
• Show, don't tell. Demonstrate the agent-rendered UI, share modes, and devshell wrap with real screenshots and concrete examples rather than describing them in the abstract. The product's whole pitch is visual; the docs should be too.
• Expert confidence, no hype. Precise, mechanism-first language. Name the specific noun and the verb that says what the thing literally does. State the early-development status honestly; credibility comes from candor, not polish.
• Illumination over decoration. Warmth and the blazing accent exist to aid comprehension — guide the eye, mark what matters, set mood — never as flourish for its own sake. If a visual element doesn't help the reader understand faster, it's noise.
• One identity, two surfaces. Docs and app share one seven-theme token contract and the same brand. Keep them in sync (the docs theme CSS mirrors src/styles/tokens.css + src/styles/themes.css); a change to the brand on one surface should be reconciled with the other, not allowed to drift.

Accessibility & Inclusion

Target WCAG 2.2 AA. Body text holds ≥4.5:1 contrast against its background, large text ≥3:1 — verified in both the Paper (light) and Ember (dark) schemes, since the site mirrors the OS theme. Fully keyboard-navigable. Honor prefers-reduced-motion: every animation needs a reduced-motion alternative (crossfade or instant). Don't rely on the blazing accent alone to carry meaning (status, links) — pair color with text, weight, or shape so the site holds up under color-vision deficiency.