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Research across 19 dev-tool repos (head-of-marketing pass) settled the hero strategy: proof-as-hero beats illustration-as-hero for an evidence-driven tool (uv/ruff lead with data charts; bat/fd/vhs lead with real output; the marketing- banner end of the cohort is where trust dies). An evo-style metaphor banner would spend the repo's moat; the animated GIF carried a fake `whittle watch` subcommand and can't be diffed. The winner is the hybrid: a designed SVG card whose every character is genuine product output. - demo/hero.svg: dark card rendering the real `whittle compress demo/build.log` carve (both surviving ERROR lines, the [79 lines omitted] marker, the 4,728 -> 163 / -96% verdict) plus the published bench aggregates, with routing as one clause. Black + green, red only on the kept errors. - demo/make-hero.sh + demo/hero.template.svg + `make hero`: the hero REGENERATES from the real command; the script asserts the corpus claims still exist in bench/README.md so the image can never outlive its evidence. The hero is now the same kind of artifact as everything else in the repo. - Retired demo/hero.gif + tape + feed script (fake-subcommand integrity bug). - README opening per the marketing spec: axe in the title, tagline split into one bold value line + one italic moat line, full value prop in the alt text. - Fixed a real inconsistency the generator surfaced: the See-it block showed `tail -n 6 | whittle compress` producing 118-lines-omitted output it could not produce, with stale token counts. Now the real command, the verbatim 8-line output, and the live verdict (4728->163); compress.gif re-rendered to match. - Em-dash sweep: all 29 removed from the README (founder copy rule). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Founder direction: the hero should be a designed banner, not terminal-oriented. Studied evo's banner directly (light canvas, massive wordmark with the brand mark fused in, one tagline, quiet ecosystem periphery) and built whittle's equivalent in its own grammar: assets/banner.svg, a dark black+green card where the wordmark itself is being whittled (green shavings peel off the final letter), dense context bars flow in on the left, and carved output plus the three model tiers (haiku/sonnet/opus chips) flow out on the right. The name, both surfaces, and the brand story in one glance, no terminal chrome. Hand-authored SVG with real text elements: crisp at any width, diffable, theme-safe (self-carried dark card), no webfonts (system sans stack). The proof-receipt card and its generator are removed (demo/hero.svg, template, make-hero.sh, make target); the See-it block fixes, compress.gif re-render, and em-dash sweep from the previous commit stand. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
anshal21
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What this does
Gives the README an evo-style designed banner hero (
assets/banner.svg) and fixes real inconsistencies in the page.The banner
Studied evo's banner directly (massive wordmark with the brand mark fused in, one tagline, quiet meaningful periphery, generous air) and built whittle's equivalent in its own grammar, black + green:
(The interim terminal proof-card and its generator are removed; this PR's earlier commit also carries their history.)
README truth fixes (from the earlier commit on this branch)
tail -n 6yielding "[118 lines omitted]") with stale token counts. Now: the real command, its verbatim 8-line output, and the live verdict (tokens=4728->163);compress.gifre-rendered and frame-verified to match.🤖 Generated with Claude Code