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Gravity experimental

Wayfinding Field

orient the visitor in a navigation bar by surfacing where they are and what is adjacent

frame bodies 0 relationships 0

Running the actual recipe live via applyRecipe() — not a mock.

"Wayfinding Field" — orient the visitor in a navigation bar by surfacing where they are and what is adjacent. It has a attract layer (draw matter into a focus / well), a tether layer (bind matter to an anchor), and a cohesion layer (flocking — pull toward neighbours). The active render stack is field-lines, heatmap.

Applied signals-only (render: []) over the nav: the simulation and feedback run, no canvas is drawn, and the only output is CSS custom properties on the links. The current route is a gravity well; conserved attention brightens the destinations nearest it while the rest recede; cohesion writes --field-coherence so adjacency surfaces. The declared render layers (field-lines, heatmap) are the visual vocabulary when the field is drawn — e.g. a field-line traced wordmark → current destination.

Runtime tokens
attract tether cohesion
Concepts
wayfinding orientation
Metrics
attention coherence priority
Diagnostics
topology field-lines inspector
Conditions
in-view focused
Render
field-lines · heatmap
Reduced motion
the current destination holds aria-current with a static underline; link weights stop travelling
Without motion
links keep reading order and a labelled current state; adjacency reads as a visible grouping

Copy this recipe

<field-root></field-root>
  <div data-body="attract" data-strength="1.1" data-range="300" data-feedback></div>
  <div data-body="tether" data-strength="0.6" data-range="240"></div>
  <div data-body="cohesion" data-strength="0.5" data-range="260" data-feedback></div>

See also