Site Identity and Onboarding Clarity Report

Status

Current implementation report for IARPG-OPS-2 2.0.10-wip. The repository changes and deterministic local validation are complete. The release remains work in progress because externally reachable production-host, unrestricted navigated browser, native Firefox, native assistive-technology speech-output, field-performance, and host-owned search/crawler evidence remain outside this implementation round.

Purpose

Document the deep product-identity, first-visit, navigation, and task-routing improvement round applied after users reported that iarpg.com did not clearly explain what it was or how to use it. The round makes the relationship among the fictional game concept, example missions, browser-local workbenches, IARPG-OPS-2 standards, international atlas, research archive, machine records, and future persistent-game ambition explicit.

Scope

This round covers the homepage, a new canonical /start guide, shared navigation and publication chrome, the Answer Center, search and discovery records, tool-page orientation, the mission library, the proposed-player-loop guide, the research archive, structured data, responsive and forced-color styling, current-state memory, durable documentation, release metadata, and deterministic validation.

It does not claim that the persistent worldwide multiplayer or VR game is available, that the reference /play gateway is a production game client, that every source-derived report is independently fact-checked, that external search systems have indexed the new pages, or that native browser and assistive-technology promotion gates have passed.

Executive Summary

The previous homepage accurately described advanced package tooling but led with verbs such as verify, merge, replay, resolve, and publish. Those terms are meaningful to implementers already familiar with IARPG-OPS-2, yet they did not answer the first questions a new visitor brings: What is IARPG? Is this a game or documentation? Can I play it now? Who is the site for? What should I click first? How do the many tools relate?

The 2.0.10-wip interface now answers those questions before presenting specialist workflows. The homepage identifies IARPG as both a fictional international intelligence role-playing game concept and the open system used to design, test, document, and research it. It exposes a visible current-versus-future boundary: the site contains game doctrine, six complete mission examples, browser-local tools, standards, schemas, an international atlas, and a research archive; it does not claim a live persistent MMO, native VR client, production account system, matchmaking service, live economy, or production AI-character service.

A new /start page provides the full deep dive. It explains five distinct site layers, maps audiences to entry points, offers a ten-minute first-visit route, documents every browser-local tool's input and output, provides a task finder, defines core vocabulary, and repeats privacy, safety, release, and international-fairness boundaries. The page includes visible content and matching HowTo structured data rather than relying on machine-only onboarding.

The centered sticky menu remains the sole sticky surface, but its labels now match user intent: Start Here, Game, Missions, Create, Standards, and Research. The global publication bar now tells every visitor that the site is a game concept plus an open design system and that the persistent MMO is not live. Tool pages now include compact orientation strips explaining what the page is for, what to load first, what to inspect, and what to do next.

Evidence Reviewed

Repository evidence reviewed during this round included:

• The 2.0.9-wip homepage, which prioritized advanced Operation Package review actions before explaining product identity.
• The shared utility bar, masthead, centered menu, overflow menu, publication bar, command palette, evidence strip, partner area, and footer in app/layout.php.
• Existing game-concept pages, especially /operations, /how-to-play, /world, /roles, /authorities, and /missions.
• Existing creator and reviewer workbenches, especially /build, /package, /simulate, /evidence-lab, /compare, /integrity, /merge, /replay, /evidence-diff, /batch, /debrief, /migrate, and /publish.
• Existing standards, developer, glossary, FAQ, editorial, international, research, UAI, search, sitemap, feed, and machine-discovery surfaces.
• Current hot-memory records defining IARPG as a fictional international operations design system and distinguishing the reference implementation from a shipped worldwide MMO.
• Existing accessibility, browser-fixture, staging-host, production-edge, and delivery validation reports, whose boundaries remain in force.
• International fairness constraints requiring equal evidence burdens, explicit uncertainty, rights and oversight review, affected-community context, source diversity, endonym awareness, and no national or cultural moral typecasting.

Findings

Identity ambiguity on the prior homepage

• The first H1 described package-review actions rather than the game premise or the relationship among game, publication, tools, and research.
• The first eight action tiles assumed familiarity with integrity, merge, replay, custody difference, batch conformance, and publication preview.
• The strongest plain-language explanation existed lower on the homepage and in the FAQ, after the most technical content.
• The future persistent-game ambition and the current browser-local reference implementation were both present, but a visitor could still conflate them because the boundary was not the dominant first-screen message.
• Existing /get-started and /how-to-play pages served different purposes but were not prominent in primary navigation. /get-started explained the standards workflow, while /how-to-play explained the proposed player loop; neither acted as a complete map of the website.

New canonical start guide

The new /start page now answers the complete first-visit problem:

1. Plain definition. It defines IARPG as Intelligence Agent Role Playing Game and describes the current site as a combination of game concept, design standard, examples, local tools, and research.
2. Current-versus-future truth. It visibly separates available publication features from unshipped persistent multiplayer, native VR, account, economy, matchmaking, and production AI services.
3. Audience routing. It gives separate entry points to new visitors, mission explorers, designers, reviewers, researchers, and implementers.
4. Five site layers. It distinguishes game concept, mission examples, browser-local laboratory, standards and schemas, and research and governance.
5. Ten-minute tour. It walks a visitor from Operations to a complete mission, Roles, Create, Simulate, and supporting standards or research.
6. Toolchain map. It states the input and output of every major local tool and distinguishes the player loop from the publication lifecycle.
7. Task finder. It maps plain-language questions to the correct route.
8. Vocabulary. It defines operation, authority, customer, intelligence requirement, Mission Brief, Evidence Packet, Operation Package, conformance level, and UAI memory.
9. Boundary summary. It repeats browser-local privacy, fictional-safety, WIP, and external-evidence limitations.

The former /get-started route now permanently redirects to /start, preserving compatibility without maintaining two competing onboarding pages.

Homepage restructuring

The homepage now leads with a direct product statement: IARPG is a fictional intelligence role-playing game concept and the open system for designing it. The first screen includes:

• The expanded acronym.
• A concise description of the proposed player experience.
• An explicit statement that the current site is not a launched persistent worldwide MMO.
• Direct actions for the Start Here guide and a complete mission.
• Search across all content types.
• Counts for missions, standards, reports, and local-tool access.
• A current-release panel listing what is available now and what remains a future ambition.

Technical content remains available but is ordered after identity, audience paths, site layers, the first-visit tour, and a complete mission. The full design-and-review lifecycle is explicitly labeled as a publication toolchain rather than the player's moment-to-moment game loop.

Navigation and global orientation

The centered .menu-strip remains the only sticky surface. Its primary labels now describe visitor intent:

• Start Here — product identity, current state, site layers, tour, toolchain, and task routing.
• Game — the fictional player and operations model.
• Missions — complete operation examples.
• Create — the guided Mission Workbench.
• Standards — normative IARPG-OPS-2 records.
• Research — canonical reports and source lineage.

Search remains a dedicated control rather than consuming another primary-navigation label. The overflow menu is expanded into understandable groups for learning and exploration, creation and testing, assurance and publication, and governance.

The global publication bar now gives every page a concise orientation statement: IARPG is a fictional intelligence role-playing game concept and an open design system; the current site provides six mission examples, browser-local tools, standards, and research; the persistent MMO is not live. The footer repeats the same boundary and includes prominent links for first-time visitors.

Page-specific usage guidance

A reusable renderpageorientation() component now explains page purpose in a compact, accessible three-step pattern. It was added to:

• Mission Example Library: pick one mission, read it, then simulate or remix it.
• Mission Workbench: load a starting point, work through stages, validate and export.
• Operation Package Workspace: load a fixture or local package, inspect components, continue through connected tools.
• Operations Simulator: choose and load a mission, make role-informed decisions, inspect and export the event log.
• How to Play: learn the proposed player loop, then inspect a concrete mission.
• Research Archive: search or filter, inspect status and lineage, follow the smallest relevant section.

The How to Play page now explicitly states that it is a conceptual guide to the proposed player experience, not a live-game tutorial. The mission library now explains a recommended read order and states that its examples are not a live multiplayer queue.

Answer and discovery improvements

The public FAQ now contains thirty-one visible answers. Five new answers directly address the clarity problem:

• What exactly is this website?
• Who should use iarpg.com?
• Where should a first-time visitor start?
• How do the site's tools fit together?
• What is the difference between the player loop and the publication toolchain?

The same answers are generated into the machine-readable answer catalog, with canonical evidence routes pointing to the Start Here guide and relevant tool pages. Search now indexes /start and /how-to-play as first-class page records. Sitemap generation adds both routes and removes the compatibility-only /get-started alias. The well-known discovery record exposes start, how-to-play, missions, and create routes. llms.txt now begins with the canonical start guide and repeats the five-layer/current-versus-future model.

Accessibility and responsive behavior

The new content uses semantic sections, one page-level H1, ordered steps, accessible table captions and headers, visible focus behavior inherited from the site system, and plain-language link labels. The orientation component is not sticky and does not add a competing navigation surface.

New grids collapse from five or three columns to two and then one column. Tool tables retain horizontal overflow at narrow widths rather than truncating content. Forced-colors mode preserves borders and actionable controls. Print removes non-content search and call-to-action chrome while retaining the explanatory text.

International and safety boundaries

The clarity work does not simplify IARPG into national hero-versus-villain framing. Homepage, Start Here, FAQ, global navigation, and research guidance continue to describe a multipolar fictional system governed by equal evidence standards, rights and oversight review, uncertainty, affected-community context, source diversity, endonym awareness, and correction history.

The site continues to distinguish fictional game design from practical real-world wrongdoing instructions. It also preserves the rule that generated language may express claims but does not own authoritative mission truth, rewards, access, warrants, or completion.

Decisions or Recommendations

• Keep /start as the canonical first-time visitor route and preserve /get-started only as a redirect.
• Keep the current primary-navigation labels unless direct user testing demonstrates a clearer replacement. Do not restore advanced assurance tools to the first navigation tier.
• Keep one dominant current-versus-future statement above the fold. Do not imply that the reference workbenches, /play gateway, or schemas constitute a launched MMO.
• Keep the player loop and publication toolchain separately named on every page that shows either lifecycle.
• Keep tool orientation concise: purpose, first input, three usage steps, and next route. Long explanations belong in /start rather than being duplicated on every workbench.
• Keep canonical HTML as the primary public explanation. FAQ, JSON, feed, search, sitemap, UAI mirrors, and llms.txt should route back to visible pages rather than becoming independent product narratives.
• Conduct moderated first-click and five-second comprehension testing with at least three audience groups: unfamiliar players, game-system designers, and technical implementers. Ask each participant to state what the site is, what is available now, and where they would begin.
• The best next implementation action is to add non-destructive, browser-local guided tours inside Create, Package, and Simulate that can be dismissed, restarted, and used without blocking keyboard or screen-reader workflows.

Risks and Limitations

• A single site still serves several audiences. Even with better routing, the volume of standards, tools, reports, source files, validation evidence, and machine records can overwhelm visitors who ignore the Start Here path.
• The words “game concept,” “design system,” “reference implementation,” “standard,” and “research archive” are all accurate but represent different layers. Future copy changes can reintroduce ambiguity if they collapse those layers.
• The site describes a substantial future game ambition. Marketing pages must continue to distinguish aspiration from current availability.
• The ten-minute tour is a content route, not a measured completion-time guarantee. Actual reading time varies by user and assistive technology.
• Structured HowTo data improves machine clarity but does not guarantee search presentation, answer inclusion, or generative citation.
• The new page orientation strips were structurally validated locally; native screen-reader speech output and unrestricted navigated-browser behavior remain unverified.
• Source-derived reports retain their individual truth boundaries. A clearer research route does not make every report current or independently verified.
• The release remains WIP. This round does not close the external production host, native Firefox, native assistive-technology, field-performance, or live search/crawler gates.

Validation Performed

This round validates the final repository and packaged deployment rather than only the edited source fragments. The intended completion suite includes:

• PHP lint for every PHP entry point and application file.
• JavaScript syntax checks for every script bundle.
• JSON and XML parsing across all machine records and discovery files.
• Memory validation for required hot files, report placement, backlinks, pointer records, paths, anchors, checksums, UAI mirrors, and common secret patterns.
• Discoverability validation for canonical URLs, unique titles and descriptions, one page-level H1, parseable structured data, FAQ parity, sitemap routes, answer catalog, feed, OpenSearch, crawler policy, versioned assets, and the final sticky-menu rule.
• Structural accessibility validation across sitemap routes, including landmarks, labels, headings, form controls, tables, dialogs, ARIA references, and duplicate IDs.
• Browser-fixture validation for menu containment, keyboard behavior, themes, blocked storage, synchronization, reduced motion, reduced transparency, forced colors, print, responsive widths, zoom, offline behavior, and round-trip fixtures.
• Delivery-budget validation for representative HTML, compressed CSS and JavaScript, preferred images, third-party dependencies, blocking scripts, and local response-time regression.
• Flat-archive inspection, nested-archive rejection, ZIP integrity, source-to-extracted byte comparison, and external SHA-256 verification.

Promotion-sensitive evidence that requires a public production-matched host, unrestricted native browser navigation, assistive-technology speech output, field traffic, or host-owned search accounts remains not tested rather than being converted into a passing claim.

Memory References

• Current context
• Current progress
• Active decisions
• UI shell
• Search
• Publication
• Accessibility
• Test plan
• Pointer ledger

Related Durable Documents

• [UI/UX, SEO, AEO, and GEO Improvement Report](ui-ux-seo-aeo-geo-improvement-report.md#executive-summary)
• [Staging Host and Runtime Validation Report](staging-host-and-runtime-validation-report.md#executive-summary)
• [Production-Edge Security and Accessibility Validation Report](production-edge-security-and-accessibility-validation-report.md#executive-summary)
• [UAI Memory Organization Report](uai-memory-organization-report.md#executive-summary)
• Split-Memory Architecture
• [International institutional fairness, rights, and evidence audit](equal-standards-across-unequal-records-international-institutional-fairness-rights-and-evidence-audit.md#mandatory-analytical-distinctions-and-rights-safeguards)
• Long-Term Memory Index

Supersession Status

Current for IARPG-OPS-2 2.0.10-wip. A later report may supersede this implementation state only by naming stable ID ltm-report-site-identity-and-onboarding-clarity, preserving this report as release history, updating all linked hot-memory summaries and pointer records, and documenting the evidence for the replacement onboarding model.