The whole site, reconceived.

Sixteen sidebar categories become one strip that reads like the business: Sell · Make · Ship · Money, with Catalog and Company standing quietly behind them and Home answering “what needs me?”. Below: three working shells around the same reorganised site, with real-feeling pages. Everything is mock and safe to click.

Three shells to feel out

concept A

Horizontal drill-down

Adam’s original sketch, literal: areas across the top, pages appear beneath, and the whole thing collapses to a slim bar once you land. Maximum space while working; browsing is a mode you re-enter.

Open A → concept B

Place-strip

The refinement: the nav is always collapsed and always one hover from anywhere. One bar shows where you are — Ship › Workbench — and every segment is also a menu of its siblings. Orientation and navigation are the same control.

Open B → concept C

Rail + palette

The far end of minimal: a 56px rail of area marks, a breadcrumb for orientation, and the palette as the primary way to move. Closest to Linear/Stripe ergonomics; most demanding of habit change.

Open C →

Worth trying in each: switch areas and come back — every area holds your place (leave Ship on the workbench, visit Money, return: you’re still on the workbench). Press Ctrl K and type an order number. Click an order row, then follow the “Connected” chips across areas. In B, try Alt 1–6, and narrow the window to see areas eclipse into dots.

The new map — every current page has a home

Home

  • Your queues, across your permissions
  • Exceptions & at-risk
  • Tasks ← CRM
  • Pending actions · agent inbox ← Email Agent
  • Dashboard (empty since forever)

Sell

  • Overview · Pipeline · Leads · Opportunities
  • Accounts ← Accounts (addresses, contacts fold in)
  • Orders · Quotes ← Accounts / CRM
  • Samples · Re-engagement
  • Marketing ← 4 sidebar entries become tabs
  • Tickets ← General

Make

  • Queue · Production · Schedule · Exceptions
  • Artwork ← its own category
  • QC · Materials
  • Purchasing ← whole category; buying feeds making
  • Reports

Ship

  • Workbench · Fulfillment · Shipping
  • Print queue
  • Inventory ← Products; stock truth lives with its counters
  • Picking (retired, still in today’s nav)

Money

  • Workbench · Customer invoices
  • Vendor invoices (+ review, duplicates, bulk)
  • Reconciliation + ledger

Catalog

  • Products categories & options become lenses
  • Pricing · Content · Channels
  • Website ← Website category

Company

  • People ← HR + scheduling
  • Users & access permissions become abilities
  • Agents ← Email Agent setup
  • Settings 26 flat entries → organized by area, also opened in-context

Principles this sandbox is testing

  1. Content owns the viewport. Navigation is a thin frame; the permanent 240px sidebar tax ends.
  2. Navigation is where-you-are, made clickable. The path is the menu; anywhere is two clicks.
  3. Areas hold your place. Switching desks doesn’t shuffle your papers — return and everything is as you left it.
  4. The palette is a first-class citizen. Ctrl K reaches any page or record; the visible nav is the discoverable fallback.
  5. Five page archetypes. Queue, list, living page, overview, settings — depth is predictable everywhere.
  6. One relations grammar. The entity chip (kind · id · state · fact) is how records point at each other, in every direction.
  7. One settings doctrine. Every module opens its own settings in place; the global Settings area shows the same pages.
  8. Permissions shape the frame. A person sees the areas they work; the strip degrades gracefully to their world.