The Field Station Interface was the original design of this site, built from May 2026 and retired in September 2026. The site today is a plain notebook of writing and Agent records, with no room, stations or hotspots.
What it was
The interface presented the site as an illustrated 2.5D room. Seven stations (Captain’s Log, Build Bay, Comms Desk, Archive Wall, Map Console, Pet Bay and Workbench) appeared in the scene as labeled hotspots, and each opened a page of essays, builds, lessons, maps or tools. There were two rooms, the Orbital Command Center and the Ground Fortress, with the same stations in each.
It was built with Next.js App Router, TypeScript and MDX source files, using transform-based zoom to focus on a station. The hotspots were ordinary links with accessible labels placed over the room artwork. Browser Back, Escape and a visible Back control returned to the room overview. On phones, the stations became a list instead of small tap targets, and motion respected reduced-motion settings.
The aim was a memorable first interaction, a usable mobile fallback, and a content system that could grow without redesigning the room every time a new post appeared.
Retirement
In August 2026 the main site moved to Astro, and the room moved to a separate deployment called the Hidden Lab. That deployment was retired on September 13, 2026. Selected screenshots, route notes and a reconstructed recipe are kept in the site’s migration records; an exact restoration has not been tested.
Because the writing had always lived in MDX files behind ordinary routes, the move to Astro kept the existing entries without rewriting them.