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VE-001 — How ICN Works / Closure Loop

Truth label

repo-grounded public explainer for the closure-loop model. A rendering of the live `ClosureLoop.astro` component is implemented / current UI. Per-surface depictions inside the loop (e.g. action-card runtime) inherit their own labels.

Source anchors

Audience

Public website visitor. First-conversation reader. Organizer hearing about ICN for the first time. Grant reviewer who needs the institutional thesis in one screen.

Core question

"What is ICN actually doing?"

One-sentence message

ICN turns the work of an institution — identity, standing, authority, governance, policy, accounting, execution, receipts/provenance, and the member experience — into one closed loop, and every round closes back into the next.

Must show

  • All nine stations, in order, named with their public labels from the concept map.
  • Each station's one-line gloss from the concept map (when room allows).
  • The icon from the canonical symbol family for each station.
  • The closure — a visible mark that the loop returns to standing for the next round. The current Astro component uses a dashed "the loop closes" card.
  • The convergence at station 09 (member experience) — where the substrate becomes a thing a person can see, use, and live in.
  • Loop ordering: 01 identity → 02 standing → 03 authority → 04 governance → 05 policy → 06 accounting → 07 execution → 08 receipts/provenance → 09 member experience → return to 02 standing.

Must avoid

  • Any "transaction" or "payment" framing for station 06 (accounting). It is governed social accounting, not commercial finance.
  • Any token / wallet / coin imagery at any station.
  • Depicting the loop as a hierarchy or a ladder; it is a closure, not a stack.
  • Implying that the loop is fully automated; the loop describes the system grammar, not a single shipped runtime.
  • Auto-rotating / auto-animating renderings; reduced-motion users must see the same loop static.
  • Centralizing the federation imagery — no single sovereign center, even visually.
  • Any specific institution-package vocabulary (NYCN, Summit) on the generic surface.

Canonical copy

These are the exact strings that may appear on the asset. They come from `ClosureLoop.astro` and `concept-map.md`. Do not paraphrase.

# Label Note
01 Identity Cryptographic identity held by the member — not a platform account.
02 Standing Provable participation inside a scope. The institution can verify it directly.
03 Authority Derived from scope rules and the decisions members have made under them.
04 Governance Proposals, deliberation, and decisions the institution will honor.
05 Policy Shared rules produced by decisions, shaping what can happen next.
06 Accounting Obligations, treasury, patronage, mutual-credit positions — governed social accounting.
07 Execution Where accepted decisions translate into real operational effect.
08 Receipts & Provenance The chain from authority to outcome — durable, auditable institutional memory.
09 Member Experience Where all of the above becomes something a person can see, use, and live in.

Closing copy:

The loop closes. Every round of standing starts the next. Identity does not begin at 01 again — it is reinforced by the provenance that station 08 produces and the member experience at 09.

Visual grammar

  • Extends the canonical ClosureLoop.astro. Any new variant — homepage hero, doc front-matter figure, deck slide, social card — derives from that component, not a parallel implementation.
  • Mobile-first vertical flow with ↓ connectors between stations; desktop two-column stagger with the last station spanning both columns (already implemented).
  • Each station: number pill, icon, label, one-line note (full variant) or label only (compact variant).
  • Token-grounded: every color, spacing value, and border-radius from website/src/styles/global.css.
  • Station 09 (member experience) styled as convergence: amber accent gradient against the otherwise teal-accented stations.

Accessibility requirements

  • aria-label on the figure describing the model, not the chrome: "ICN's nine-station institutional closure loop".
  • Each station readable as text alone — icon + number + label + note.
  • Icons aria-hidden="true" because they sit next to visible text labels.
  • Grayscale-safe: verified that station 09's convergence treatment remains distinguishable without color.
  • WCAG 2.2 AA contrast on every label and note, both themes.
  • Reduced-motion: no auto-animation. Hover state is the only transition, and it does not gate meaning.
  • Renders usefully at narrow viewport (≤ 360 px wide).

Review checklist

Run VISUAL_REVIEW_CHECKLIST.md end-to-end before any new variant of this asset ships. Per-brief notes:

  • §1 source grounding — verify the nine stations against concept-map.md and the live component.
  • §3 vocabulary — station 06 is the vocabulary trap; check the gloss for payment / balance / currency drift.
  • §5 substrate honesty — the loop as a model is honest; specific capabilities embedded in a variant (action-card runtime, federation, etc.) carry their own labels per bible §3.
  • §8 visual grammar — verify the new variant extends ClosureLoop.astro rather than re-implementing it.

Status

gate-open. Brief gate (bible §10) satisfied. Source-asset variants beyond the existing ClosureLoop.astro may be built when needed.

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