D011: Colour direction: "Stone" (tonal, no hue)

Context: Needed an accent/colour system. Saif explicitly rejected the generic AI-default palette (saturated blue/purple/green/orange/neon) as a template tell.

Options considered (shown as a visual light+dark mockup board, not hex lists):

• Ink & Bone, pure monochrome, warm bone + near-black.
• Oxblood, one deep desaturated wine-red signature hue.
• Espresso, warm brown → caramel on dark.
• Stone, tonal warm greige, no chromatic hue. ← chosen.

Decision: Stone. Warm greige paper, charcoal ink; accent is deep charcoal (light) / warm stone (dark). No chromatic colour.

Tokens:

        Light      Dark
bg      #EDEAE4    #14130F
surface #F7F5F1    #1C1A16
ink     #201E1B    #EAE6DE
muted   #6D6961    #8F897E
line    #DAD5CC    #262320
accent  #2B2825    #B9B2A4

Why: Gallery-like and calm; forces type, whitespace, and motion to carry the drama, the craft signal of North Star - Site as Proof and D003 - Visual Restraint and One WebGL Moment. Hueless = the least "templated" answer possible. Applied in Design System.

Trade-offs: no colour "pop" for attention-grabbing; mitigated by contrast + motion. Escape hatch: if a signature hue is ever needed, add one restrained tone (e.g. oxblood #6E2A2A) very sparingly. Resolves Open Questions #1.

Revision (Phase 0): light --muted moved #726D65 → #6D6961, the original measured 4.28:1 on --bg, just under the AA 4.5:1 bar; #6D6961 hits 4.55:1 and is visually identical. See Phase 0 - Foundation.