balaur

Balaur design system

Balaur’s design language is Basm (Romanian for fairy tale): a pixel-art, 16-bit design rooted in Romanian fairy tales and the balaur — woven, tactile, storybook, hand-built.

This folder is the source of truth for identity, UI, theme, illustration, website, terminal, and copy choices.

Files

• identity.md — brand & voice source of truth: essence, character, the heads/personas, voice, messaging, positioning. Who Balaur is and how it speaks.
• basm.md — visual system: brand essence, color, typography, layout, motifs, web/component recipes. How Balaur looks.
• tokens.css — canonical design tokens (color, type, layout). The one place hexes live; the terminal theme and website both mirror this.
• crest.png — the hero emblem: ornate three-headed guardian + teal data-orb on a folk border. Website hero, large surfaces, app icon.
• logo.png — the compact mark: gold single-head medallion. Top bar, social/org avatar, favicon source. (Final marks; colors from tokens.css.)
• pi-terminal.md — rules for the balaur Pi terminal surface: RPG avatars, working avatar, footer/header, thinking display.
• avatars.md — ASCII sprite/nameplate catalog and evolution rules.

Source-of-truth rule: if two docs disagree, the one that owns that layer wins — identity.md for voice/story, basm.md + tokens.css for anything visual.

Product tone

• Wise companion first; local-first, private, FOSS underneath.
• Wise Balaur, not mascot clown.
• Old-school fantasy RPG, but restrained and useful.
• Handmade/pixel/woven, not glossy AI gradientware.
• Clear technical truth over lore.

Copy guardrails

Use mythic language sparingly. Prefer:

• “I shall weigh the matter.”
• “Let me trace the old paths.”

• “local-first

  private

  yours

  FOSS”

• “Markdown files”, “your box”, “local model”, “personal data”

Avoid cliché dragon-hoard/chest/vault-protection copy in product UI. Balaur can be a guardian-dragon without every line becoming treasure imagery.

Implementation hooks

• Pi terminal branding: ../pi/extensions/balaur-brand.ts
• Pi theme tokens: ../pi/themes/balaur.json
• Web assets: ../web/

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