Use Blue 11 links with Blue 3 hover and explicit contrast exceptions

[klopez4212]

Inline links and mentions currently use Blue 12, which appears too dark in light mode. Use the designer-selected Blue 11 text with Blue 3 hover in both themes; update the token registry and document the accepted contrast tradeoff.

Accepted contrast shortfalls

This deliberately departs from the WCAG AA goal on some light surfaces and the APCA Lc 60 body target on eight mode/surface pairs. It is not a full accessibility pass.

Mode / surface	APCA Lc	WCAG ratio
Light selected	58.831	3.889
Light neutral-4 row	50.774	3.409
Dark panel	59.953	8.279
Dark popover, subtle and selected (three pairs)	55.433	6.010
Dark neutral-4 row	58.707	7.476
Dark link hover	57.791	7.076

Light base/inset/subtle also remain below WCAG 4.5:1 at 4.374:1, while clearing APCA. The user explicitly approved these known tradeoffs after viewing the link-color comparison.

The guard accepts only the eight exact mode, text-role, surface-role, foreground-color and background-color combinations. It prints each exception with both measurements and reports unused exceptions. Changed colors and other roles/surfaces retain the normal checks; the global threshold and hooks are unchanged. Blue 3 hover is an accepted tradeoff: light clears APCA at Lc 64.614 but misses WCAG at 4.252:1; dark clears WCAG at 7.076:1 but misses APCA at Lc 57.791. Only that exact dark hover pair is additionally excepted. Existing focus appearance remains unchanged.

Validation

• Independent agent follow-up review: 9/10, no blockers.
• Real InlineLink rendered in Link Lab in both themes; verified Blue 11 text and Blue 3 hover tokens. Local comparison now shows Blue 3 as chosen.
• 17 contrast regression tests passed, including rejection of Blue 4 hover and a mutated Blue 3 dark value. Before the exact exception, the real contrast guard failed on dark hover; it passes with the shortfall printed explicitly.
• 104 design tests and both viewer builds passed; existing large-chunk warnings remain.
• Normal pre-commit/pre-push hooks passed at 0a64681c: TypeScript, 25 related tests, design types and guards. All three commits have Signed-off-by trailers.
• No browser journeys added or removed. Local comparison experiment remains uncommitted and was present during validation; it is excluded from this PR.
• The designer reviewed the comparison, selected Blue 3 hover, and confirmed readiness for review after the revised preview was provided.
• Hosted DCO passed at 0a64681c; CI is running. Deferred: native/live-conversation testing and full accessibility audit. No merge requested.

buzz-review-completed

Snapshots

Local Link Lab with the real inline-link component; these existing snapshots show unchanged Blue 11 resting text, not the revised hover or native-app proof.

[chatgpt-codex-connector]

Codex Review Summary

This comment shows the latest Codex review activity on this pull request.

Review	Status	Commit	Review trigger
📝 Code Review	✅ Completed 2026-09-28T16:11:05.312257Z	35a72af	New commits

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[wesbillman]

Star Lord’s automated source review, published through Wes’s account (wesbillman).

Reviewed head: 0a64681c0fc65bf07d4c4a1cb1a1b47218601373
Pinned base: 3e0a4087b9c09df911f080a3c3a3534d5d7bffab
Diff merge base: f5c49be04b0f4cdabc926580caf73e6035ea39d8

One actionable P2 finding, attached inline: the retained browser journey still asserts the superseded link color. The smallest repair is to update that expectation without reverting the approved palette.

Scope: all seven changed files; shared link/mention CSS and the host link-renderer path; exact-pair contrast exceptions, guard control flow and regression cases; retained color assertions under src and tests. The explicitly approved contrast shortfalls and existing focus policy are preserved, not reopened as findings. No additional actionable findings in that scope.

Validation limits: source-only analysis of hash-verified files at the pinned head, with no dirty source inputs. I did not execute PR code, tests, builds or the app, and did not verify CI, native/live-conversation behavior or a full accessibility audit. The test mismatch is demonstrated by source, not an observed test-run failure; author-reported checks are not independently reproduced. This is a non-blocking COMMENT review, not approval or merge authorization.

[wesbillman]

[P2] Update the retained Buzz-link browser color expectation

tests/browser/buzz-links.spec.mjs:48 still expects rgb(17, 50, 100) (Blue 12). That journey enables the Links renderer, whose className reaches the host anchor via MessageLink.tsx:134; InlineReference.module.css:2-9 then takes its color directly from --text-link. With this mapping, light-mode text instead resolves to #0d74ce / rgb(13, 116, 206). Once the existing journey reaches the assertion, it cannot pass and stops before the subsequent hover/preview/navigation checks, despite the intended rendering. Please update the retained expectation to the approved Blue 11 value and validate the journey in its existing Chromium and WebKit projects; the palette itself need not change. This is a source-demonstrated mismatch, not a locally reproduced failure.

[klopez4212]

🤖 Fixed in eca8e74: the retained Buzz-link journey now expects the approved Blue 11 color, rgb(13, 116, 206). All eight cases in tests/browser/buzz-links.spec.mjs pass locally across Chromium and WebKit, including the hover, preview, and navigation checks after this assertion.