# ADR-0018 — Persona-Gated Hybrid Dashboard for the Strategic Command Center **Status:** Accepted **Date:** 2026-05-12 **Author:** Deepesh Rathod **Context window:** the Strategic Command Center retool — the final shape of `v1.deepesh-engg.in` after the Zoca volume closes. --- ## Context The portfolio has been through three iterations: 1. **Boring Markdown v1** (2024) — one long page, no covers. Single audience, single voice. Good for an engineering peer; opaque to a founder or a TA recruiter. 2. **Lens-Picker v1** (early 2026) — three audience-targeted cover pages (`/founder.html`, `/leader.html`, `/recruiter.html`) reached via a 3-card picker on `/`. Each cover is hand-tuned, but the home page itself was still mostly a long-form Novel that the reader had to scroll through before deciding whether to click into a cover. 3. **Strategic Command Center v1** (this ADR) — a **persona-gated hybrid dashboard** on the home page itself. Every persona gets a scannable column above the fold; the deep-dive Novel sits underneath, expandable but not in the way. The retool is driven by a single observation: the median visitor to this site is a CTO, a founder, or a TA recruiter who has thirty seconds. The site previously made them work for the thirty-second take. The retool gives it to them directly, while preserving the long-form for the reader who actually wants it. ## Decision The home page (`/`) becomes a **Strategic Command Center** with the following surfaces, in order: 1. **Receipt Strip** — six hard numbers above the fold. 2. **Growth Arc** — six-year stack-plot timeline. 3. **Persona Gate** — three-column grid (Founder / Engineering / TA-HR) replacing the Lens-Picker. Each column carries 4 metric bullets + a one-sentence hook + a CTA into the legacy cover page. 4. **AI-Native Ecosystem Capstone** — a single featured card carrying the four primitives that distinguish the Phase 11 era (Rspack, Docker-less swarm, 10× QA loop, $200/mo composition). 5. **Phase Bento** — six expandable cards (Phase 4 — 11), each leading with a Bento Metric + a Technical Blueprint diagram, with the long-form memoir behind a `
` toggle. 6. **Field Notes** — two visual milestone tiles (First Office, Town Hall) with grayscale-to-colour hover. Personal milestones beyond the work are deliberately kept off the public site. 7. **Reserved Warrior Banner** — the volume-close summary, the integrity quote, the trajectory grid (Status / Comp baseline / Availability). 8. **Contact + Footer** — unchanged structure; footer gains the Integrity quote. The three cover pages (`founder.html`, `leader.html`, `recruiter.html`) remain reachable from the Persona Gate. They are deep-dives for the reader who has chosen a lens; the home page is the dashboard for the reader who hasn't. ## Why **Scannable for the CTO, deeply rewarding for the biopic reader.** The hybrid is the resolution. A Brutalist long-form is great for a specific reader and intolerable for everyone else. A dashboard is great for everyone for thirty seconds and shallow forever. The hybrid serves both without compromising either. **The persona gate is the contract.** Each column is a structured promise: *if you are this kind of reader, here are the four numbers that matter to you, here is the hook, here is the way into the deeper read.* The reader is never stuck guessing. **The bento is the navigation.** Six phases × one metric each gives the reader an instant map of the volume. The "View Memoir" toggle keeps the long-form available without forcing it on anyone. **The capstone is the proof.** AI-native primitives — bundler swap, portless runtime, Chrome-side QA — show that the engineer has *already* crossed into the era the reader is hiring for, not merely adjacent to it. **The Field Notes are the soul.** Three places, three captions. The volume isn't just code; it's a six-year arc of an engineer becoming a Reserved Warrior. The tiles are the punctuation. ## Consequences - The home page becomes the canonical entry point. The three cover pages become *secondary surfaces* — still maintained, still loaded with cover-specific deep content, but no longer the first impression. - The Persona Gate replaces the Lens-Picker in `assets/covers.css`. The Lens-Picker styles stay in the file (used by no one now) until the next cleanup pass — leave the dead code, document it; don't rewrite history. - Six new component classes added to `covers.css`: `.persona-gate`, `.capstone`, `.bento`, `.field-notes`, `.warrior-banner`, `.integrity-quote`. All inherit the existing token system; no new CSS variables introduced. - Asset cache-bust bumped: `styles.css?v=17`, `covers.css?v=2`, `app.js?v=18`. - The "Volume Closed" banner becomes the Reserved Warrior trajectory block — two cells (Status / Available For). Specific compensation figures are kept off the public site; terms for the next chapter are a private conversation, not a quoted ask. ## Alternatives considered - **Keep the Lens-Picker as-is, push everything into the cover pages.** Rejected: the home page is the first impression. If it fails the 30-second test, the cover pages never load. - **Replace the home page with a single SPA-style dashboard.** Rejected: violates *boring is the moat*. The site is a working sample of the brand's engineering doctrine. - **Use real photographs for Field Notes.** Deferred: the source photos exist but aren't yet curated to the brutalist palette. ASCII placeholder tiles ship today; real photographs can swap in later without touching the layout. - **Add a 4th persona (Investor).** Rejected: the Founder column already covers the investor read. Adding a column dilutes the scan. ## Reversibility The retool is purely a home-page rewrite. The Markdown source files under `docs/` are unchanged. Reverting is a single `git revert` of the relevant commit; the cover pages would continue to work even with the old Lens-Picker because their entry points are independent URLs. ## Links - Surface: [`/`](../index.html) — the Strategic Command Center - Source strategy: [`docs/marketing_cover_page_strategy.md`](../docs/marketing_cover_page_strategy.md) - AI-Native memoir: [`docs/memoir_phase_9_ai_native_infrastructure.md`](../docs/memoir_phase_9_ai_native_infrastructure.md) - Identity: [`docs/identity.md`](../docs/identity.md) - Prior art: [ADR-0002 Perspective Toggle](./0002-perspective-toggle-data-mode.md), [ADR-0017 AI as Force Multiplier vs Liability](./0017-ai-as-force-multiplier-vs-liability.md)