Almanac Visual QA + AI News Digest — 2026-05

Two bodies under one slug: the Almanac-theme defect register for phareim.no, plus a May-2026 AI-news digest (model releases, platform moves, governance) folded from ~175 raw notes — slated to split into its own digest article

Last edited just now

Almanac visual QA — 2026-05

This file carries two unrelated bodies of work that happen to share a 2026-05 stamp. The first half is a one-off Almanac visual-QA pass on phareim.no (the original purpose of the slug). The second half — from "AI news digest" onward — is a running monthly digest of AI model and company-release churn for May 2026: terse, dated, claim-grouped bullets folded from ephemeral news so the firehose stays out of the thematic wiki. Read the digest section if you want "what shipped / who raised / what broke in AI in May 2026"; read the QA section if you want the phareim.no theme audit.

Pass run on 2026-05-12, phareim.no @ 8657770 (the QA commit itself). Rig: scripts/almanac-qa.mjs. Captures: ~/github/phareim.no/.qa/almanac/<page>-<mode>.png + .vars.json per cell + status.json + index.json.

Why this exists

Almanac is the newest of four themes in [[phareim.no]] (scandi, hacker, space, almanac), added in commit c70bba1. The older three accumulated per-page CSS overrides one page at a time; Almanac inherits the override mechanism but not the overrides, so each page reveals whether anyone remembered to think about it. This pass is the baseline — next pass diffs against it.

Surfaced from sfl meta WF236ulE (priority HIGH).

Methodology (reproducible)

Known rig bug, not a defect: the overlay-detection selector (.nuxt-error, nuxt-error) does not match Nuxt's actual dev error overlay, which is visible bottom-right of error-light.png. Fix the selector before the next pass.

Out of scope (explicit non-goals)

Almanac correctness checklist (derived from DESIGN.md)

  1. hairline-not-box — cards/sections use 1px rules (--almanac-rule-light / --almanac-rule-dark), no shadows, no rounded panels (--theme-card-radius: 0 per assets/themes/almanac.css).
  2. accent-only-at-attention — --almanac-rust (light) / --almanac-amber (dark) appears at most once per primary view, at the moment of attention.
  3. serif-body-always — body type is the Georgia stack (--font-almanac-body).
  4. stars-dark-only — AlmanacPaper stars render only in dark, sparse.
  5. no-chrome — no gradients (except midnight bg), no shadows, no synthetic window decoration.
  6. paper / midnight bg — --almanac-paper (#f4f0e8) in light, midnight gradient in dark.
  7. CSS vars propagate — canvas/SVG elements read theme via CSS custom properties or inline overrides. Cross-checked via the per-cell .vars.json sidecars.
  8. link discipline — links read as ink, accent only on hover (color rule; hover behavior out of scope).

The .vars.json sidecars confirm the page-level wrapper (.almanac-page) propagates all eight semantic tokens correctly on all 19 routes in both modes — i.e. the theme system itself is sound. Every defect below is a per-page override that ignores those tokens.

Page × mode status table

Page Light Dark Notes
/ (index) broken broken hardcoded saturated canvas circles, both modes (green/tan light, blue/purple dark)
/about ok ok best-in-class Almanac fit
/activity minor minor accent overuse (rule 2); dark cards near-invisible
/clock ok broken dark: second hand has no visible accent (rust hardcoded, --theme-accent not applied)
/colophon ok ok alignment baseline
/feed ok ok
/focus minor broken dark: 25:00 timer near-illegible, ring nearly invisible
/gallery ok ok clean empty state
/guestbook minor minor input radius non-zero; dark borders too subtle
/lab broken broken green LIVE badges + red-dot emoji-style decoration + rounded cards — off-theme
/meta minor minor commit cards rounded; dark borders too subtle
/morse minor minor reference letter cards rounded; dark cards near-invisible
/now ok ok best-in-class
/playground minor minor filled rust/amber button (defensible); textarea + selects + image-frame rounded
/projects minor minor cards rounded; dark cards near-invisible; title low contrast in dark
/stats minor minor metric cards rounded; dark borders too subtle
/terminal broken broken macOS-style window chrome (stoplight buttons + chrome bar + rounded frame) violates no-chrome
/uses ok ok
/this-does-not-exist → error.vue ok ok the 404 page itself is Almanac-correct; the dev-only error overlay in light is rig artifact, not a defect

Tally: 9 cells broken, 18 minor, 11 ok, 0 known-gap.

The zero-known-gap count matters: it falsifies a prior assumption. The "Almanac scoped overrides for canvas/SVG pages" meta assumed canvas/SVG would fail to read CSS variables. The .vars.json sidecars and clock-light + morse + terminal text show the opposite — Almanac reaches SVG paint fine via currentColor and direct token reads. The canvas defects that remain (index circles, clock-dark second hand) are page-specific hardcoded colors, not a propagation gap. That meta needs re-scoping or closing — see cross-references.

Defects (ranked by leverage)

1. Landing page canvas decoration ignores Almanac — severity: blocker

File: pages/index.vue (canvas/SVG decoration logic). Rule violated: 5 (no-chrome) and 7 (CSS vars propagate). Evidence: .qa/almanac/index-light.png, .qa/almanac/index-dark.png — saturated green/tan (light) and blue/purple (dark) circles dominate the viewport, completely off-theme. Why blocker: this is the first impression for every visitor on /. Under Almanac the landing page should be paper-with-restraint, not '90s-Geocities-circles. Proposed fix: make the decoration theme-aware — either swap to an Almanac-specific variant (sparse stars from AlmanacPaper.vue already covers this aesthetic) or hide it entirely when activeTheme === 'almanac', mirroring how <SpaceStarfield v-if="activeTheme === 'space'" /> is conditional in app.vue.

2. Terminal page hardcodes macOS window chrome — severity: blocker

File: pages/terminal.vue (terminal-window decoration). Rule violated: 5 (no-chrome). Evidence: terminal-{light,dark}.png — red/yellow/green stoplight buttons, chrome title bar with phareim@phareim.no — bash, rounded window frame. The hacker/space themes are clearly bleeding through. Proposed fix: when activeTheme === 'almanac', render the terminal flat — drop the stoplights and the chrome bar, render the prompt as plain serif body text on paper / midnight. Could also keep bash-style monospace inside but lose the OS window decoration.

3. pages/clock.vue second hand has no Almanac-dark accent — severity: visible

Rule violated: 2 (accent-only-at-attention). Evidence: clock-light.png shows rust second hand (correct moment-of-attention). clock-dark.png shows monochrome cream face — the second hand is either hardcoded rust (invisible against the midnight-similar value) or doesn't read --theme-accent (amber #d4a574 in dark). Proposed fix: change second-hand stroke to var(--theme-accent) (or var(--almanac-amber) when dark mode is the only consumer). getComputedStyle on .almanac-page already returns --theme-accent: #d4a574 in dark — the page just isn't reading it.

4. Dark-mode hairline rule is too subtle — severity: visible (systemic)

File: assets/themes/almanac.css — the token --almanac-rule-dark: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.10). Rule violated: 1 (hairline-not-box) — the rule is technically present but visually absent on cards across activity, stats, projects, meta, morse, guestbook, focus. Evidence: every *-dark.png cell with cards has near-zero card definition; cards float as untethered text. Proposed fix: raise --almanac-rule-dark opacity to ~`0.18–0.22, OR split into --almanac-rule-dark-card(stronger) and--almanac-rule-dark-separator` (subtle, for short rules between sections). Cross-check that 0.18 doesn't muddy the "hairline" intent — DESIGN.md should be the arbiter.

5. pages/lab.vue has off-theme decoration — severity: visible

Rule violated: 7 (CSS vars propagate) and arguably 2. Evidence: lab-{light,dark}.png — saturated green LIVE pill badges (color stays the same in both modes), red-dot emoji-style red circle as decoration for the /red-dot/ tool card. Proposed fix: render LIVE badges as hairline pills with --almanac-ink-mute text (or --theme-accent if "this is live" is the moment-of-attention). The red-dot emoji is illustrative content for the project itself, so keep it but render under [data-theme="almanac"] with currentColor: var(--theme-accent) if it should harmonize.

6. pages/focus.vue dark-mode timer contrast — severity: visible

Rule violated: body text contrast (rule 3 implied via legibility). Evidence: focus-dark.png — 25:00 numerals rendered in --theme-text-subtle (#5a6a7a) range, near-illegible against #0e1219 midnight. Light mode is fine. Proposed fix: use var(--theme-text) (#ebe4d4 in dark) for the primary timer numerals, reserve subtle tones for the "ready" / state label.

7. Per-page border-radius overrides ignore --theme-card-radius: 0 — severity: nit (systemic, many sites)

Rule violated: 1 (hairline-not-box — Almanac is flat-rectangular by design). Evidence: project cards, morse letter chips, playground textarea/selects/image-frame, stats metric cards, meta commit cards, focus keyboard-shortcut chips, guestbook inputs — all visibly rounded (~6–12px). Likely each has a per-page border-radius: <px> instead of reading var(--theme-card-radius, 0). Proposed fix: grep border-radius: in pages/ + components/, replace literal radius values with var(--theme-card-radius, <fallback>). Set the fallback to whatever the other three themes want (likely 6–8px). Note: this is a nit only because the visual offense per cell is small. As a pattern across 8+ pages it's the most ubiquitous Almanac violation, so the fix is one PR that touches many files. May be cheaper to address before the per-page bug fixes above.

Cross-references to sibling sfl metas

Follow-up sfl metas filed

After this pass, the following meta items have been added to github.com/phareim/phareim.no (clustered by root cause, not per cell):

Reproducing this pass

cd ~/github/phareim.no
git checkout 8657770    # or HEAD if conventions remain stable
npm install
npm run dev &           # binds :3030
npm run qa:almanac      # writes to .qa/almanac/

Outputs: 38 PNGs + 38 .vars.json + index.json + status.json in .qa/almanac/. Re-grade by walking status.json against the checklist above.

See also

AI news digest — May 2026

Ephemeral model and company-release churn for May 2026, paraphrased and grouped by claim. Entries are dated; provenance is in ## Sources at the bottom. This is a digest, not a per-item archive — verbatim source text stays in raw/.

Frontier model releases accelerated across every lab

Agentic coding tools are the central battleground

The platform war moved down the stack into tooling and infrastructure

Enterprise and vertical AI products multiplied

Capital and talent concentrated at the frontier

AI is now finding (and out-running) real vulnerabilities

Oversight of frontier AI is degrading as capability rises

Interpretability and alignment research surfaced concrete results

AI governance fragmented between cooperation and retreat

OpenAI's models reached genuine novel-research milestones

— SOURCES
— RELATED
Sleeper Cognition Stack Map of how `~/chat/`, `~/thoughts/`, `~/github/sfl/`, and `~/sfl-hook/` interact, the seams between them, and the fixes worth shipping
— GRAPH
— 1 RELATED