# G5 · Marcus Webb — round 3

Same question as round 2: after a 45-second skim on a Wednesday night, does a division chief know what this is, believe the people behind it, and feel that emailing Michelle is a small, safe, obvious next step? The copy is shared and the two structural fixes I demanded — syllabus card in the hero, clickable email at the close — were mandated for all three, so this round is graded on execution: how fast the ask renders, whether the artifact does work or just sits there, and what survives the skim. I re-checked each of my round-2 objections against the new code.

## Variant A — Field Notes

- Scores: First impression 9 · Trust 9 · Clarity 9 · Resonance 9 · Craft 9 · Action 9 · **Total 54/60**
- Likes:
  - The hero's right column now carries the syllabus card — a rotated (−.5deg) stacked-sheet artifact with all seven rows (001 / Core 101–106) and the "Private · 1:1 · non-clinical — no patient data, ever." footer. My round-2 top objection (that real estate spent on the decorative acacia) is answered, and the card still reads as a journal page, not a SaaS widget. The acacia moved to the founders section, where "two trees" actually means something, and inks itself in there — right image, right place.
  - The entrance choreography was tightened exactly where I complained: `.hl-in` at .55s with .08/.16/.24s delays and `.hero-ctas` landing at .38s — the primary CTA is fully rendered in roughly 0.8s. The CSS comment even says "tightened so the CTA lands under 1s." That's a team that reads its grader notes.
  - The Wednesday card is done in the page's own typography: absolutely-positioned paper slips with roman-numeral markers (i.–vii.), a "before clinic" label beside "Wednesday, 7:12 am," terracotta ticks that draw, and a lowercase italic *handled.* as the payoff. Sorted is the default state — motion only borrows it — so a reduced-motion or fast reader still gets the outcome demonstration.
  - The coda closes the way I scored 01 highest on in round 2: "Book an intro call" button plus the italic clickable `Michelle@twotreesmd.com` directly beneath. Zero mailto surprise.
  - H2s raised to font-weight 600 — "Six sessions. One working chief of staff." finally pops on a fast pass, which was a round-2 dislike.
  - Nav "The Build" anchors to `#how`, the method section. The nav tells the truth.
- Dislikes:
  - The hero syllabus card is inert — no row is a link. Variant B's identical card anchors each row to its session detail; here a skimmer whose eye lands on "103 The promotion packet" has nowhere to click. That's a free click left on the table.
  - The secondary CTA is still the quiet text link "See the six sessions ↓" rather than a ghost button. The low-commitment micro-yes — the thing that keeps not-ready readers on the page — is typographically the weakest element in the CTA row.
  - The `.wed` card is a fixed 25.7rem box with slips positioned by `--i` arithmetic; a task label that wraps at an in-between width breaks the ruled-line illusion, and the settle animation runs to ~2s while a skimmer has already moved on.
  - The syllabus footer — the trust line — is the last row to render (.85s delay). The most reassuring sentence in the card arrives last.
  - The curriculum grid's hover check-mark (`.cur-t::after` "✓" fading in on hover) implies a completion state that doesn't exist; it's decoration wearing a UI costume.
- Round-2 objections: **Addressed, cleanly.** Atmosphere-only hero → fixed (syllabus in hero, acacia relocated to founders). Slow CTA render → fixed (~0.8s, down from ~1.5s). Low-contrast H2s → fixed (weight 600). The sub-900px `.sec-note` clutter → improved (margin notes now sit inline beside the section number in a flex row).
- Verdict: The journal finally opens to the offer page — every objection I filed got fixed and the close is still the cleanest in the family; I'd just let the reader click the syllabus.

## Variant B — Indigo Oath

- Scores: First impression 9 · Trust 9 · Clarity 10 · Resonance 8 · Craft 9 · Action 10 · **Total 55/60**
- Likes:
  - The hero's left column has no entrance animation at all — headline, sub, both buttons, and the trust footnote are in the first paint. Fastest ask in the round, and the only variant that treats the primary CTA as too important to fade in.
  - The syllabus card's rows are now anchor links (`#s-001`–`#s-106`) with a brass underline sweep on hover, and the curriculum's marginalia says it out loud: "the card up top is the index; this is the detail." My round-2 "redundant timeline" objection has been converted into an index→detail navigation system — the card sells the offer and moves the reader.
  - The brass clip-path index tabs on every section rule — "01 The problem" through "06 Next step," with the card wearing "000 Index" — are a running table of contents. A skimmer always knows where they are and that the page ends at an ask. That's scroll-depth management as a brand signature.
  - The timeline fix is exactly right: the rail fill and dots animate, and per the code comment "the text is never dimmed" — unlit numerals sit at slate `#5A6480`, fully legible. The `.44` washout is gone without losing the progress conceit.
  - CTA scaffolding is textbook throughout: solid indigo primary + ghost "See the six sessions ↓" pair, nav that compresses on scroll with the button persisting at every breakpoint (still visible at 430px), and the finale's `.mailhint` clickable address under the button.
  - The indigo footer with the brass-highlighted "Private, 1:1, non-clinical — no patient data, ever." makes the demoted oath the literal last line read. Smart compliance placement post-demotion.
- Dislikes:
  - Even reframed as "detail," the timeline is still the longest section on the page and its seven h3s repeat the seven titles the hero card already delivered — the second half of each row (the one-line descriptions) is the only new information bought with all that scroll.
  - The finale stacks the "06 Next step" tab and a centered "Next step" eyebrow within about 100 pixels — the same label twice at the moment the page should be at its most economical.
  - Under `html.anim`, the Wednesday ledger's rows sit at opacity 0 until its own IntersectionObserver fires at threshold .3; the global `catchUp()` rescue covers `.reveal` elements but not `.wed`, so a fast anchor-jump to `#sessions` can strand the problem section's proof card invisible above the reader.
  - "000 Index" on the hero card's tab is a hair too clever — a registrar's in-joke the buyer has to decode before it reassures.
- Round-2 objections: **All three fixed.** "The Build" nav anchor now points to `#how`, the method — the nav no longer lies. The opacity-.44 dimming is gone (rail and dots animate; text never dims). The redundant timeline is the one partial: still long, but the syllabus-card anchor links and the "index/detail" framing give it a conversion job it didn't have. The over-clever brass-underlined "you" is gone with the new copy.
- Verdict: Instant ask, indexed page, clickable syllabus — a funnel wearing a university-press jacket; this is still the one that books the calls.

## Variant C — Paper & Indigo

- Scores: First impression 8 · Trust 9 · Clarity 9 · Resonance 8 · Craft 8 · Action 7 · **Total 49/60**
- Likes:
  - The `.doc` surface — white sheet, indigo top rule, soft paper shadow — unifies the hero syllabus and the Wednesday ledger as printed artifacts from the same file drawer. It's the most coherent artifact system of the three.
  - The `:root` block ships an inline WCAG contrast audit and splits terracotta into `--terra` (large text/marks only, 4.0:1) and `--terra-ink` (5.3:1 for small text like the footnote asterisk and *handled.*). Not my department usually, but legible accents are conversion infrastructure, and this is the only variant that proved its own.
  - The "syllabus prints itself" idea — sheet lands, header sets, rows print in order, footer rule last — is a genuinely nice signature moment, and both mandated artifacts default to their final state without JS or with reduced motion.
  - The coda has the button plus clickable `coda-mail`, and the footer flips to an indigo spine with a terracotta top rule — a strong final frame that echoes B's best close.
  - The curriculum dimming is disciplined: unlit rows at opacity .82 with numerals in muted indigo, and a comment pledging "never drops below 75% legibility." The .44 lesson was learned.
- Dislikes:
  - `.nav .btn{display:none}` at ≤860px removes the persistent "Book an intro call" from the nav on mobile — it survives only inside the hamburger panel. On the 11pm phone read, the always-reachable ask is now two taps away. A and B both keep the button visible at 430px. This is the single worst CTA decision in the round.
  - The slow-hero objection I filed against round-2's 01 is resurrected: `.hl-in` at .8s with .15/.27/.39s delays and `.hero-ctas` at .62s delay + .8s fade means the primary CTA isn't fully rendered until ~1.4s, and the syllabus doesn't finish printing its trust footer until ~2.05s. A proved this could be under 1s; C chose theater.
  - The timeline duplicates the hero card's seven titles but without B's fix — `tl-item`s carry no ids and the syllabus rows aren't links. C inherits the redundancy objection with none of the index→detail justification.
  - H2s are font-weight 500 at a smaller clamp (max 2.4rem) — "Six sessions. One working chief of staff." is the quietest key retention line of the three variants. A fixed exactly this; C didn't take the note.
  - The secondary CTA is again the quiet text link, not a ghost button — combined with the hidden mobile nav button, C has the weakest micro-yes ladder of the three.
- Round-2 objections: **Mixed.** From 01: atmosphere-only hero → fixed (syllabus card present and prominent); slow CTA render → reintroduced (~1.4s, worse than A's 0.8s fix). From 02: the lying "Build" anchor → fixed (`#how`); opacity-.44 dimming → softened to .82, mitigated but the progressive-reveal-fights-the-skim pattern persists; redundant timeline → present and unaddressed (no anchor links, no framing).
- Verdict: A handsome merger that took A's clothes and B's redundancy, then hid the mobile ask — the only variant that got slower at asking for the business.

## Ranking

1. **B — Indigo Oath (55/60)** — instant-render hero ask, a syllabus card that links into its own detail, and index tabs that manage scroll depth; every round-2 objection fixed or converted into a feature.
2. **A — Field Notes (54/60)** — fixed all four of my round-2 complaints, kept the round's warmest register and cleanest close; loses by a single point on an inert syllabus card and an undersold secondary CTA.
3. **C — Paper & Indigo (49/60)** — the best-audited surface of the three, undone by a hidden mobile CTA, a ~1.4s hero ask, and an unlinked duplicate timeline; the synthesis inherited the wrong halves.