What we've shipped.

Changed

• Replaced the three prior openings (Digital Designer, Product Designer, Technical Project Lead) with two contract roles — Contract Designer/PM and Contract Developer — each with its own role page and application form.
• Dropped the mission-driven / advocacy / nonprofit framing from the careers copy.
• Added 301 redirects (all host variants) from the six removed career URLs to /careers/.

Added

• A public /changelog/ page that lists these entries newest-first, so shipped changes are visible on the site.

Fixed

• Text contrast: darkened the muted-ink token so eyebrows, feature-row numbers/taglines, cap-meta, and review citations meet WCAG AA (3.78:1 → ~5:1 on cream); dimmed review-org buttons now clear the 3:1 large-text bar too.
• Heading order: homepage feature-row project names are now h2 (the hero h1 previously jumped straight to h3).
• Mobile zoom: removed maximum-scale=1 from the viewport meta so visitors can pinch-zoom.

Changed

• The homepage count-up preloader now only plays on a visitor's first visit (30-day cookie). Return visits skip the overlay before it paints and show the hero immediately, so the LCP element no longer waits ~5.5s behind the intro — a large repeat-visit performance win. First-visit intro, reduced-motion, and safety-timeout behavior are unchanged.

Relevant guides now point readers to Loopdash web development, copywriting, and branding services.

The About page gains a scroll-pinned "Intelligent ___" word reel over a filtered, heavily-compressed nature backdrop, plus a rewritten Purpose statement that reveals word-by-word on scroll. The studio identity is renamed to Applied Intelligence Studio across home, about, careers, and selected-work (service pages keep "embedded web team"). Also: the homepage proof stat becomes "17 organizations" (was "12 case studies"), the service-page projects grid balances orphan last rows so they fill the width, the Cloudinary OG image drops the logo for a heading on a solid color field, the projects page loses redundant hero/index labels, and form inputs get a faint translucent-white fill.

The About scroll reel's backdrop (about-reel-bg.jpg) was referenced from CSS but sat at the src/img/ top level, which Eleventy does not pass through (only specific src/img/* subfolders are copied), so it 404'd in real builds. Moved it into the passthrough'd src/img/raw/ and updated the CSS path. Added a test/css-assets.test.mjs test that fails on any unresolved url() reference in the built CSS, closing the gap the HTML-only link test left open.

Added

• Per-word staggered entrance on the homepage and projects heroes (gated behind the preloader, with a <noscript> fallback and safety timeout so text can never stay hidden).
• Word-by-word reveal on the studio statement, with a highlighted your Slack term (help-circle marker + hover/focus tooltip explaining the embed/augment model).
• Auto-cycling homepage testimonials (pauses on hover/focus).
• About page hero image; rebuilt editorial testimonials index page.
• Richer JSON-LD: Organization (founding date, slogan, knowsAbout, contactPoint) and Article dateModified — on top of existing Organization/WebSite/Article/FAQPage/Service/Breadcrumb coverage.

Changed

• Accent color to #035fd0; lighter #3986e6 on dark sections; white text on accent-filled button hovers.
• Mobile nav: gaussian-blur overlay, larger/airier items, Support link replaced with a "Work with us" CTA.
• Related-services blocks as editorial top-rule rows; apply forms left-aligned with paired name/email and the intro removed; role-stat pills softened.
• Blog card brand marks render white (Action Network keeps its colors); single post covers use a subtle neutral background.
• About page compressed; footer uses a Stripe "Billing" link.

Fixed

• Mobile nav: header backdrop-filter was trapping the navbar z-index, hiding the logo + close button under the open overlay.
• Statement/hero reveals use a scroll-position trigger instead of a fragile IntersectionObserver threshold (can't get stuck hidden or fire early).
• FAQ answer body aligned flush with the question (was indented on open).

Removed

• The /about-2 comparison page; Forge Health from the testimonial rotation.

Social/preview images are now clean text cards in the site palette — the page heading as large type (steps down for longer headings) with the logo as a small brand mark, no stock computer.png. Conversion pages (home, services, contact, work-with-us) render as blue background / cream text; content pages render as cream background / charcoal text. The image is computed once in head.njk and shared by the OpenGraph tags and the Article schema.