---
id: M009
title: "Homepage & First Impression"
status: complete
completed_at: 2026-03-31T05:52:09.844Z
key_decisions:
  - BEM naming under .home- and .about- prefixes for homepage and about page styles
  - Popular topics pills link to /search?q={topic}&scope=topics rather than dedicated topic pages
  - Optional API-driven sections (popular topics, featured technique) silently hide on error — graceful degradation pattern
  - CSS counter-based numbered steps for about page pipeline description
  - Fetch 6 recent techniques to ensure 4 remain after featured deduplication
key_files:
  - frontend/src/pages/Home.tsx
  - frontend/src/pages/About.tsx
  - frontend/src/App.css
  - frontend/src/App.tsx
  - frontend/src/components/AppFooter.tsx
  - frontend/src/api/public-client.ts
  - backend/routers/techniques.py
lessons_learned:
  - When adding optional data-driven homepage sections, always implement graceful degradation (hide on error) rather than showing error UI — non-critical enrichment should never degrade the core page experience.
  - Plan for 1.5x the fetch limit when deduplication is involved — fetching exactly N items and then removing duplicates can leave you short.
---

# M009: Homepage & First Impression

**Transformed the homepage from a bare search box into a proper landing page with hero tagline, value proposition, how-it-works guide, popular topics, featured technique spotlight, enriched recently-added grid, and a new About page.**

## What Happened

M009 addressed the homepage's failure to communicate what Chrysopedia is. Before this milestone, a first-time visitor saw a search bar and nothing else — no explanation, no context, no invitation to explore.

Three slices delivered the full first-impression experience:

**S01 — Homepage Hero & Value Proposition** added the tagline "Production Knowledge, Distilled", a value proposition paragraph explaining the site's purpose, a 3-column how-it-works grid (Creators Share Techniques → AI Extracts Key Moments → You Find Answers Fast) with cyan accent numbered circles, a "Start Exploring" CTA linking to /topics, and a Popular Topics section that fetches the top 8 sub-topics by technique count and renders them as clickable pill links. The section gracefully hides on API error.

**S02 — About Page** created /about with three sections: what Chrysopedia is (including the name's origin), how content is extracted (five-step pipeline breakdown with CSS counter-based numbering), and who maintains it (links to xpltd GitHub org and repo). Route registered in App.tsx, footer link added in AppFooter.tsx.

**S03 — Featured Content & Content Teasers** added a `sort` query parameter (random/recent) to the list_techniques backend endpoint, then built a featured technique spotlight (random selection, full summary, creator link, topic badges, key moment count, accent border) and converted the recently-added section into a 2-column CSS grid with 150-character summaries and deduplication against the featured technique. Fetch limit increased to 6 to ensure 4 cards remain after filtering.

All work stayed within existing patterns — BEM CSS under .home-* and .about-* prefixes, CSS custom properties from D017, graceful degradation for optional API-driven sections. No new dependencies added. TypeScript and Vite builds pass cleanly across all slices.

## Success Criteria Results

- **Homepage hero with tagline, value prop, how-it-works, CTA, popular topics** — ✅ Met. S01 delivers all elements. Build passes (46 modules, 0 errors). Source confirms h1 tagline, value-prop paragraph, 3-step grid, CTA link to /topics, popularTopics fetch/render.
- **About page at /about with what/how/who sections** — ✅ Met. S02 delivers About.tsx with three content sections. Route in App.tsx. Build passes (47 modules).
- **Footer link to About page** — ✅ Met. S02 added About link in AppFooter.tsx via react-router-dom Link.
- **Featured technique spotlight on homepage** — ✅ Met. S03 delivers random technique fetch with full summary, creator link, topic badges, accent border. Graceful degradation on failure.
- **Enriched recently-added grid** — ✅ Met. S03 converted to 2-column CSS grid with 150-char summaries, deduplication, responsive collapse at 640px.
- **Backend sort=random param** — ✅ Met. S03 added sort query param to list_techniques endpoint following creators.py pattern.

## Definition of Done Results

- **All slices complete** — ✅ S01, S02, S03 all marked complete with summaries.
- **All slice summaries exist** — ✅ S01-SUMMARY.md, S02-SUMMARY.md, S03-SUMMARY.md all present.
- **Cross-slice integration** — ✅ S03 consumed S01's homepage layout and CSS custom properties. BEM naming consistent (.home-hero from S01, .home-featured from S03). S02 independent — no integration concerns.
- **Code changes verified** — ✅ 8 files changed, 571 insertions across backend/routers/techniques.py, frontend/src/App.css, App.tsx, About.tsx, Home.tsx, AppFooter.tsx, public-client.ts.

## Requirement Outcomes

No requirement status transitions in M009. This milestone is additive UX polish — it improves the first-impression experience but doesn't own any requirements from the register. R005 (Search-First Web UI) and R015 (30-Second Retrieval Target) are tangentially related but were already validated/scoped by earlier milestones.

## Deviations

Minor: T02 in S01 removed an unused TopicCategory type import (TS6133 cleanup). S03 increased recent fetch limit from 5 to 6 for deduplication headroom and added a .home-featured__label element not in the original plan. No functional deviations.

## Follow-ups

Popular topics section fetches the full topics list and filters client-side — would benefit from a dedicated top-N API endpoint if topic count grows significantly.
