# The design lab and the directions

> The 27 directions under /d: the explorations, the three site concepts, the production mirror, and how the gallery presents them.

URL: https://www.prototemplate.com/docs/directions

The design lab holds twenty-seven directions for the General Translation website. Each one is a built page that runs live.

* **23 explorations**: single-page directions, each a different answer to the same brief.
* **3 site concepts** on the Toolchain foundation: Dossier, Orbit and Signal, each a home page plus an enterprise page.
* **The production mirror** at `/d/production`: the site that shipped at generaltranslation.com, rebuilt page for page, with the dashboard's sign-in and onboarding states (`/d/production/signin`, `/onboarding`, `/consent`, `/device` and `/cli`; `?state=<id>` opens any state).

`src/lib/directions.ts` is the registry: the slug, the name, the concept and the tone of each. The gallery, the presenter, `/directions/<slug>`, the sitemap and the sidebar's Sites and Explorations rows all read it.

## Self-contained by design [#self-contained-by-design]

Each direction lives under `src/app/d/<slug>` with its own type, colors and stylesheets. The shell's rules do not reach it, and the type lint skips the files its allow list names. A direction can be read, changed or deleted without touching another.

`src/app/d/toolchain` is the single source the three site concepts fork. A fork imports Toolchain's sections and re-skins them by rescoping its root class, and it never edits Toolchain's files. [ARCHITECTURE.md](https://www.prototemplate.com/handbook/architecture) explains the rule.

## How the hub presents them [#how-the-hub-presents-them]

* `/` reads the directions as one article, shows one live exhibit at a time, or lays them out as a grid of captures.
* `/directions/<slug>` presents one direction on the shell: the prototype in a frame, its captures in both themes, and what it was for.
* `/compare` runs two directions side by side in scroll-synced frames.
* `/present` is the full-screen walkthrough with the first 16 prototypes live.
* `/archive/<slug>` keeps a retired direction as a full-page capture with the commit that last held its code.

## Keeping the mirror in step [#keeping-the-mirror-in-step]

`/d/production` follows generaltranslation.com. After a gt-cloud pull request changes a page, the change is ported here: one root class per page, the gt-cloud stylesheets as rescoped copies, and every copy recorded in `scripts/lint/copies.json`, which `pnpm lint:copies` checks.

## Search engines [#search-engines]

The directions reassemble GT's marketing copy, prices and legal text into design studies, so every `/d/` page is `noindex, follow`. One layout, `src/app/d/layout.tsx`, sets it for the whole folder. The mirror's pages name their generaltranslation.com page as the canonical, since the live page is the original. The `/directions/<slug>` pages hold original writing and captures, and they are indexed. [The SEO system](https://www.prototemplate.com/docs/seo) gives the reasons.

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The index of every page on this site, for agents: https://www.prototemplate.com/llms.txt