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Cheatsheet

LAW — locked, CI-gated

principle. teaching retires once taught (decision 0011). A hint that rents a permanent row keeps charging rent forever; the full legend therefore lives in one summoned place, not spread across the surface as permanent chrome.

rule (law).

  • a cheatsheet mode is the on-demand home for the full keyboard legend on a surface: summoned, complete, dismissed. it carries the whole map — the popover’s internal keys, the gestures, the global chords — in one place, at the moment the user asks for it.
  • teaching outside the cheatsheet is contextual and temporary: hover and focus surface the focused object’s hint in the surface’s hint slot, transiently, and state-driven hints retire once taught. nothing is taught that is not under the cursor or the focus.
  • on touch, where there is no hover, the hint slot shows the selected object’s hint for as long as it stays selected.
  • the cheatsheet itself obeys furniture: it exists while summoned and is gone when dismissed; it never becomes a standing panel.

what it replaces. the permanent keycap legend — the type specimen of furniture, a full legend bolted under a popover forever — is the anti-pattern this page exists to retire. the legend’s information did not shrink; its rent did.


Canonical text: §4, flyout manners (cheatsheet mode), in the design language document. Governed by decision 0011.