easy.

palette

cotton rag & darkroom

Both themes are warm-neutral, built around the sand accent the public site already owns (#e8d5b5: the category links and focus rings on adrian. and liam.). On the light ground the accent deepens to bronze so it can carry buttons; on the dark ground the sand is used straight, which ties the console to the public gallery exactly.

the upload flow

things are simply ready

Drop the files and walk away from the machinery. While a photo is analyzing, its fields shimmer like the public site's hero skeleton. When it's done, the title, caption, and EXIF are just there: marked only by a small sand dot meaning "suggested; edit anything." No robot badges, no cost talk, no purple. Each photo gets a full-width review row, image beside its words, because upload is a reading job: checking captions and EXIF wants width, not a grid of small cards. One primary action per row.

Regenerate suggestions, re-extract EXIF, and delete all live behind the ⋮ menu: present, never prominent. The camera line is a one-line summary; the full EXIF fields open from it on request. Editing a field clears its dot: it is yours now. Approve text clears the rest when the draft is already right. Alt text is reviewed here too, since screen-reader visitors hear it. Publishing leaves the dots alone.

the gallery manager

curation, at a glance

Rows read like a contact sheet: image first, state second, everything else on request. Published is a quiet green; a draft is sand. Featured is a star you tap, not a form you fill. A sand dot after a title means its words are still an unreviewed draft, and a Needs review filter gathers those rows. (The star takes the accent color, bronze on light, so it keeps 3:1 contrast on the cotton ground.)

dashboard & analytics

state at a glance, numbers in plain type

The dashboard opens on the work itself: a strip of four plain counts (published, drafts, views, visitors) and a contact sheet of the latest photos, drafts marked with a quiet pill. Its one primary action is Upload photos. Analytics keeps its depth but its controls step back: date range and whose activity are two quiet segmented groups, with the chosen segment raised rather than filled, so nothing on the page competes with a primary button. Numbers are the body sans with tabular figures; mono stays reserved for EXIF. Loading placeholders shimmer. The explanation of each metric sits in a closed disclosure at the foot of the page.

one system

buttons, standardized

Three button voices across every console page, and no others. Serif lowercase for page titles only. Mono for EXIF only. Everything interactive focuses with a sand ring.

• The photograph is the loudest thing on every screen.Chrome stays paper-quiet; thumbnails and heroes carry the color.
• The AI is honest, and quiet.This site is openly built with AI, and its text is drafted by AI; nobody is asked to pretend otherwise. What stays out of the way is the machinery: no robot badges, no cost talk. Drafted fields carry the sand dot until you edit them or approve them. Publishing is not approval, so a published photo with unreviewed words still says so, quietly, to visitors.
• A photo's web address is approved by a person.Every published photo has its own page. Until the photographer approves an address, the page lives at the photo's number. The editor's Web address field starts from the title, marked with the sand dot, and can be typed over; Approve address uses what it says, and also approves the title. An address another photo already uses is refused, not renumbered. An approved address stays fixed when the title changes; typing a new one (or Use the title) and Change address moves it, and the old address keeps working.
• One primary action per view.Publish. Everything else steps back into quiet or ⋮.
• Skeletons, never spinners.Same shimmer the public hero uses: the console and the site are one family.
• Draft and Published; the verb is Unpublish.A photo visitors cannot see is a draft, whether it was never published or taken down. Unpublish is the action that returns it to draft.
• The console follows your system.Cotton rag or darkroom comes from the operating system's light or dark setting. The header toggle overrides it; toggling back to match the system resumes following it.

change log

what changed, and why

• 2026-10-15: the web address can be typed.It was shown but could only be changed through the title. The field is now editable; it still starts from the title, and a taken address is refused with a message rather than quietly numbered.
• 2026-10-15: approved web addresses.The gallery manager's editor gained a Web address field with Approve address and Update address to match title. Addresses were made from the first AI-drafted title and were never public; a photo page now uses one only after a person approves it, and earlier links redirect to it.
• 2026-09-28: review means review.Saving unchanged text or publishing no longer clears a draft's mark; only an edit or Approve text does. Upload shows alt text for review, the gallery manager marks unreviewed rows and can filter them, the lightbox note reads "Description drafted by AI, not yet reviewed," and the settings card is called Writing style.
• 2026-09-28: "the intelligence is invisible" replaced by "the AI is honest, and quiet."The old rule asked for no AI in visitor copy, which a site built openly with AI cannot honestly keep, and it let publishing count as approval. The site now has two co-equal goals, an AI showcase and a photographers' showcase (decision record 0004): drafted text stays marked until a person edits or approves it. The console catches up in the next change.
• 2026-09-28: every console page opens with its title in the serif.Gallery, upload, and settings joined dashboard and analytics; on upload the suggested-dot legend sits beside the title, as in the mock above.
• 2026-09-28: dashboard and analytics layout pass.Emoji launcher cards replaced by counts and a contact sheet of recent photos; page titles set in the serif; analytics numbers moved out of mono; filled filter tabs became quiet segmented controls; loading text became skeletons.
• 2026-09-28: upload cards became review rows.Small cards read badly after an upload on desktop; full-width rows give captions and camera data room. The ⋮ menu and sand dot from the original brief were restored at the same time, after a redesign had briefly put Regenerate and Delete in plain view.
• 2026-09-28: the console follows the operating system theme.It had defaulted to darkroom, which this page never specified.
• 2026-09-28: Draft and Unpublish settled as the vocabulary.Matches the common convention across publishing tools; one name for the state, one verb for the action.
• 2026-09-28: dashboard and analytics brought into the palette.The last of the original blue accent and off-palette greens and reds retired; the chart draws from the theme.
• 2026-08-01: featured star and suggested dot use the accent color.Sand on cotton fails the 3:1 contrast rule for non-text marks; the accent is bronze on light and sand on dark.
• 2026-07-10: light accent darkened from #8a6f47 to #7d6540.For 4.5:1 text contrast on the light grounds.