Writing style: README, website and FAQ short and plain

[kramsey458]

Kyler, 2026-09-24: "simplicity and elegance is effective and desirable." This is the Timber Together writing pass applied here. The README, the site and the FAQ are rewritten for a player: one idea per sentence, each thing said once, no internals and no history.

What changed

• README: 197 → 121 lines, and the changelog is unchanged. Install, conflicts, multiplayer and how to check it works come first. Then what it does, the replay results, the status (played / tested, not played / not tried yet), limits and uninstall. The <!-- latest --> line is kept.
• New DEVELOPING.md: build and test commands, how a pass works inside, per-tick budgets and the large-colony figures, determinism, saved-state sizes, tuning constants and the test list. All of it moved from the README.
• Site (index, install, troubleshooting, faq): text changed inside the existing components only. Every id, anchor, data-release* attribute and release.js is unchanged (checked by diff).
  • Duplicates cut: install's second pass-line key now links to Troubleshooting's. The FAQ conflict answer had the same sentence twice. Rules the features already state were dropped from always/never.
  • Internals cut: budget numbers, remembered-cost ages and class names in the settings answer, which now links to DEVELOPING.md.
  • Troubleshooting answers are now numbered steps.
• Facts checked against the code:
  • A paused workplace still counts (GameAdapter.JobOf), so "workplace is disabled or in another district" is gone.
  • "Only handles beaver dwellers" (Iron Teeth answer) is gone.
  • The home comparison note keeps the looser-bed-rules caveat that was only in the FAQ, and now links the FAQ's "Is it the best?".
• CLAUDE.md:
  • New section, Writing README and website text. The content rules and the release checklist point at it.
  • Build references now point to DEVELOPING.md.
  • The release.js check uses MixedStorage's current path (docs/assets/release.js; site/assets/ 404s).
• PRODUCT.md: the voice line gains the short-and-plain sentence.

A separate fix (second commit)

details.q summary is a two-column grid. On seven of the eleven troubleshooting symptoms, the summary mixed text and <code>. The log text fell into the 24px arrow column, one character per line, and this is live on main now. Each such summary's content is now wrapped in one <span>, with no CSS change.

Checks

• dotnet run --project OptimizedLocalHousing.Tests -c Release: 40 checks passed. (no game install needed).
• node --check on site.js, seating.js and release.js: OK. release.js is unchanged, and its hash matches MixedStorage's docs/assets/release.js.
• Local links: 93 checked, 0 broken.
• Impeccable detector: 23 findings, the known baseline.
• capsite.py for all four pages at desktop and 390px, light and dark: overflow 0 everywhere. I also checked troubleshooting and the FAQ with every answer open.

Not played. Text and markup only; no mod code changed.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code