X-2026-001Aug 20, 2026
We audited our own site for machine-made design and found five defects we had shipped
A design built by a machine repeats the same five habits, and our own site had every one of them until today.
Sol Index5 findings4 sources
The review desk
Machines now write, draw and design a large share of what you read. This desk works out what that actually looks like — not as an opinion about it, but as things you can count. One finding at a time, every one of them numbered, dated and edited in the open, and all of them gathered into a standing review that grows as the findings do.
Everything here says how it was worked out and how sure we are. Nothing here is written to sound clever. If a sentence needs a word you would not say out loud, it is our sentence that is wrong.
1 findingreview at version 2Every edit to everything →
The standing review
X-2026-R1 · version 2 · updated Aug 20, 2026What machine-made work actually looks like: everything this desk has established so far
One page holding everything this desk has worked out about machine-made work. It is rewritten every time a finding lands.
This one document is rewritten as findings come in. Its version history is the record of what we believed and when we stopped believing it.
Everything found so far
high0
medium0
low0
unclear0
| Finding | Number | How sure | From |
|---|---|---|---|
| Machine-made design repeats a small set of habits, and they can be counted rather than argued about | 5 | we saw it once | X-2026-R1 |
| The markers all come from the same cause: no memory between pieces of work | 1 | we suspect it | X-2026-R1 |
| Our two most important colours were the same colour to a reader missing the blue cone | 5.5 | we measured it | X-2026-001 |
| The body text was a quarter larger than any publication we compared it against | 24px | we measured it | X-2026-001 |
| The stylesheet held fifty separately chosen size ramps where it claimed to hold one | 50 | we measured it | X-2026-001 |
| Twenty-one different naming conventions were in use for one website | 21 | we measured it | X-2026-001 |
| The palette was inherited from a parent brand and never questioned | 3 | we measured it | X-2026-001 |
The findings
How this desk works
Every publication here has a number that never changes, so it can be pointed at years from now. Every one states what was looked at before it states what was found, because a finding without a method is a claim. Every finding says how sure we are, in four steps: we measured it, we saw it repeatedly, we saw it once, we suspect it.
We edit. When a later finding contradicts an earlier one, the earlier one is corrected at the top rather than quietly left up, and both versions stay readable. That is what the record of every edit is for.
The desk shares the newsroom’s masthead — the same people, the same standards, the same accountability. It is not a separate publication and it does not get a separate set of rules.