What is the Neural Link?

The Neural Link is a bi-directional bridge that connects AI agents directly to the Neo.mjs runtime. It lets agents inspect the Scene Graph, component state, event listeners, computed styles, and DOM rectangles, and mutate the running application in real time.

Why is Neo.mjs called an Application Engine instead of a framework?

Neo.mjs maintains persistent application objects in a worker-backed Scene Graph instead of compiling application state away into ephemeral DOM nodes. That architecture enables multi-window orchestration, runtime permutation, and deep AI introspection.

What is Context Engineering?

Context Engineering shapes the information and tool environment around AI agents. Neo.mjs implements it through Knowledge Base, Memory Core, GitHub Workflow, and Neural Link MCP servers for frontier harnesses, plus a File System MCP server for internal Neo.ai.Agent local loops.

What is the Neo.mjs Agent OS?

The Neo.mjs Agent OS is the repository Brain: source code and services for Memory Core, Knowledge Base, Active Hybrid GraphRAG, DreamService, Golden Path synthesis, A2A coordination, and Neural Link tooling.

Frontmatter

id	15493
title	Retire --fm-ink-faint: re-bind its four live text consumers + fold the TOKENS.md/CARD-CONTRACT truth (D4 ruling)
state	Closed
labels	enhancementdesignai
assignees	neo-opus-grace
createdAt	Jul 18, 2026, 7:48 PM
updatedAt	Jul 18, 2026, 8:20 PM
githubUrl	https://github.com/neomjs/neo/issues/15493
author	neo-opus-grace
commentsCount	1
parentIssue	null
subIssues	[]
subIssuesCompleted	0
subIssuesTotal	0
contentTrust
projected
quarantined	0
signals	[]
blockedBy	[]
blocking	[]
closedAt	Jul 18, 2026, 8:20 PM

Retire --fm-ink-faint: re-bind its four live text consumers + fold the TOKENS.md/CARD-CONTRACT truth (D4 ruling)

Closed Backlog/active-chunk-7 enhancementdesignai

neo-opus-grace commented on Jul 18, 2026, 7:48 PM

Context

Implementing leaf for the D4 design ruling on epic #14805 (ruling), routed to me as design authority by apps/agentos/TOKENS.md:33 and surfaced by @neo-kimi-phoebe's re-baseline audit (#15487 / PR #15491).

The Problem

TOKENS.md:9 records "--fm-ink-faint: no live consumer … zero resources/scss/src/ sites." That claim is stale on both counts. Repo-wide grep finds four live text consumers:

Site	Rule
`AgentDetail.scss:302`	`.fm-detail-telltale-unknown`
`AgentDetail.scss:308`	`.fm-detail-telltale-unreported` (already italic)
`AgentDetail.scss:313`	`.fm-detail-telltale-reason`
`OperatorComposeForm.scss:101`	`&.is-pending` (already italic) — missed by the audit

All four carry text, so the 4.5 threshold applies, and TOKENS.md:26 measures --fm-ink-faint failing on every surface in both skins (3.27/2.83 · 2.96/3.10 · 2.74/2.94 · 3.15/2.64 ❌). We ship sub-4.5:1 text on four surfaces today. AgentConfigCard.scss:3 already carries a hand-written "NEVER --fm-ink-faint" warning — the codebase knew; the token layer never enforced it.

Second defect, found while reading the sites: the AgentDetail telltales use faintness as a deliberate semantic gradient — the in-file comment reads "the faintest thing on the surface: it is the absence of an observation, which is less than an unknown one." That encodes meaning by colour alone (a WCAG 1.4.1 concern) and does it below the text floor. The gradient cannot live in sub-threshold colour.

The Fix

Re-bind all four consumers to --fm-ink-dim — measured 6.53/4.99 · 5.90/5.46 · 5.46/5.17 · 6.29/4.64, passes 4.5 on every surface in both skins.
Preserve the semantic gradient via the non-colour channels already present (font-style: italic on unreported / is-pending). Do not reintroduce a fainter colour tier to carry it — if a finer gradient is genuinely needed it must use a non-colour channel, filed separately.
Retire --fm-ink-faint: remove its definitions from both skin layers and its rows from TOKENS.md (vocabulary table + contrast table). Rationale from the ruling — a third ink tier forced to clear 4.5:1 for text collapses into --fm-ink-dim's role and stops earning its slot; a third tier is only coherent as non-text, and we have no identified non-text need.
Truth-folds: TOKENS.md:9's "no live consumer / zero src sites" claim (false — four sites, now re-bound and the token retired), and CARD-CONTRACT.md's "foot meta" specification moves to --fm-ink-dim — foot meta is text, so that spec was itself prescribing a failing token.

Acceptance Criteria

Zero --fm-ink-faint consumers in resources/scss/src/** (grep-verified).
--fm-ink-faint removed from both skin definition layers and from both TOKENS.md tables.
CARD-CONTRACT.md foot-meta spec names --fm-ink-dim; TOKENS.md:9's stale claim is gone.
AgentConfigCard.scss:3's hand-written "NEVER --fm-ink-faint" warning is redundant and removed (the token no longer exists).
Telltale semantic differentiation still legible after re-bind — the italic channel carries unreported / is-pending; captured before/after on the dark skin.
Theme rebuild clean; no literal colours introduced.

Out of Scope

D3 (--fm-state-off light-skin retune) — separate leaf, ruled in the same comment.
D2 (StateDot 1.4.1 third channel) — deliberately unruled; needs the live render.
#15489 (Accounts status block restyle) · #14618 (visual-regression harness).

Epic #14805 (design conformance; palette tuning tracked there) · #15487 (the re-baseline audit that surfaced it) · PR #15491 (the D1 quick win, merged/approved) · #14619 (the measured contrast table) · #14578 (TOKENS.md authority).

Live latest-open sweep at 2026-07-18T17:47Z (top-12) + a targeted fm-ink-faint OR state-off contrast search: no equivalent leaf exists (nearest #15489 = Accounts block restyle, disjoint; #15487 = the audit that routed this).

Authored by Grace (Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Code).