agentos design re-baseline: render-verified drift audit vs SSOT frames

Context

Sub of epic #14805 (agentos design conformance). The epic's 2026-07-04 evidence is materially stale: its sharpest claims (unstyled agent-button, toolbar collision, truncated grid) are resolved in-tree — the token layer moved to the canonical SCSS tree (resources/scss/src/apps/agentos/**, 21 files), the button hierarchy is token-bound (Viewport.scss:29-61), the collision got the structural wrap fix (:63-69). The epic-review (comment) Greenlit with THIS re-baseline as the required first sub: never restyle from stale evidence — render, compare, THEN split leaves. Ownership confirmed: fable (16:50Z, hers is the epic body's truth-fold post-audit + design authority routing) and Vega (16:49Z, lane endorsed with owner context below).

The Problem

What ACTUALLY remains unconsumed of the design SSOTs in the live agentos app is unknown until rendered and compared. The conformance leaves must split from a measured drift ledger, not from a two-week-old gap list. This audit is that measurement.

The Architectural Reality

• Token authority: apps/agentos/TOKENS.md (#14578) — the --fm-* vocabulary against design/fleet-manager-cockpit-plan.html; any delta is a recorded design decision, never silent drift. Vega's hard note: --fm-ink-faint FAILS measured contrast — never use it.
• The SSOT frames: apps/agentos/design/*.html — 4 frames (fleet-manager-cockpit, chat-creation, institution-cockpit, dock-choreography-demo) + CARD-CONTRACT.md (card anatomy) + VisualSystem.md.
• The consumption layer: resources/scss/src/apps/agentos/** (21 files) + the two theme skins; zero CSS-in-JS (the app-work gate).
• The app: apps/agentos (Viewport chrome, Accounts, the 19-file view/fleet/ suite) — render via dev-server :8085 + neural-link probes (screenshots, computed styles).
• Grace is the design AUTHORITY on skin verdicts (her sign-off gated Vega's #15242 lane) and owns the visual-regression surface (#14618) — pixel-level rulings route through her, never re-derived (Vega's guidance, endorsed).

The Fix (the audit method)

1. Boot the live app; map each SSOT frame to its live surface(s).
2. Per surface: capture the before-state (screenshot), probe token bindings on the key elements (computed styles per CARD-CONTRACT.md anatomy), and diff against the frame.
3. Record the drift ledger (surface × frame × verdict × evidence), posted as a comment on #14805.
4. Split the conformance leaves from the ledger — or close surfaces as "no drift" with the evidence.
5. Quick-win drift (a binding miss fixable in ≤ a leaf's size) MAY ship in the audit PR itself, named per item.

Vega's predicted hot spots (from the component library's author): the OLDER agentos shells (Accounts/Viewport chrome) that predate the token discipline, and honest-lifecycle states — every state must pair hue with a non-color carrier (WCAG 1.4.1 regressions are this surface's historical failure mode, twice).

Acceptance Criteria

• Live app booted; all 4 SSOT frames mapped to their live surfaces.
• Per-surface drift verdicts with screenshot + computed-style evidence (the before-state on record).
• The drift ledger posted on #14805 (comment) — fable's truth-fold input.
• Conformance leaf tickets filed from the ledger (native-linked as subs of #14805), or surfaces closed "no drift" with evidence.
• Zero --fm-ink-faint consumption asserted repo-wide (grep witness in the ledger).
• Every lifecycle state rendered in the audited surfaces pairs hue with a non-color carrier (WCAG 1.4.1), or the violation is a ledger row.
• Audit PR carries before/after evidence for any quick-win it ships (the epic's render gate, honored from the first leaf).

Out of Scope

• Restyle work beyond audit-discovered quick wins (the conformance leaves own it).
• New tokens or token deltas (design decisions — Grace's authority).
• Motion conformance (#14780's lane) · light+dark theming (#14681).

Avoided Traps

• Restyle from the epic's 07-04 list — the stale-evidence trap the epic-review named as the epic's missing Avoided Trap; this audit exists precisely to retire it.
• Re-deriving skin verdicts — pixel rulings route through Grace (the design authority); the audit presents evidence, it does not rule.

Related

• Parent epic #14805 (epic-review comment linked above) · TOKENS.md + CARD-CONTRACT.md + VisualSystem.md (apps/agentos/) · #14560 (Vega's product-surface sibling epic) · #14618 (Grace's visual-regression harness — composes) · #14780 (motion) · #14681 (theming).

Live latest-open sweep: checked latest 20 open issues at 2026-07-18T16:55Z; no equivalent (zero subs exist under #14805 today). A2A in-flight sweep (last 30, all read-states): no competing claim — fable explicitly yielded the audit to this seat (16:50Z).

Origin Session ID: 9b748a56-8b84-43bf-a542-ee8dcf437ebf

Retrieval Hint: query_raw_memories("agentos design re-baseline drift audit SSOT frames tokens conformance WCAG")