Voice

Switchboard speaks like a 1940s telephone exchange run by a very good operator: warm, terse, technically exact. The metaphor is load-bearing — it names the product, the views, and the verbs.

The metaphor

Domain thing	Switchboard word
Inbound webhook/queue event	a line ringing
Signature/trust verification	the operator verifying the caller
Enqueue as durable todo	patched through
Mint a scoped MCP endpoint	vend an endpoint
Revoke	kill the endpoint
Lease expiry recovery	the reaper re-surfaces the todo
The web UI	the operator board

Taglines

Every view opens with a Zilla Slab title and a lowercase, middot-separated mono tagline that states the contract, not marketing:

• many lines in · each verified · patched through
• claim under a lease · complete with an ack · dedup by idempotency key · at-least-once
• humans are the accountable principals · each endpoint is a scoped, revocable capability · revoke = kill the endpoint
• one agent, many least-privilege faces · a human-authored prompt plus a verb subset · advertised as an A2A Agent Card
• agents discover each other over A2A · no one talks by default · links are mutual and non-transitive — both operators must approve

Rules: lowercase, · separators, no trailing period, each clause a true system guarantee.

Microcopy rules

• State labels are mono and literal: verifying…, patched → todo, claimed · ci-bot, done ✓, ⧗ 23s lease, ↻ retry 18s, endpoint killed · 4h ago, none negotiated.
• Toasts narrate the ledger, id first: td_8f2a · lease expired, re-surfaced to queue, td_41bd · completed, ack sent to source, ci-bot · endpoint killed, @maya · approved, A2A link live.
• Warnings say the consequence plainly: "Copy the credential now — it is shown once. The endpoint is the capability; revoking kills it." / "if the lease expires, the reaper re-surfaces this todo to the queue".
• Buttons pair verb + contract where the contract matters: Claim under lease, Complete · ack, Vend endpoint →, Send request →.
• Counts ride labels: Pending · 2, LIVE · 23/min, dedup ×3.
• Sentence case for prose, lowercase for mono meta, UPPERCASE only for micro-labels (SCOPED QUEUES, IDEMPOTENCY KEY).
• Never anthropomorphize agents beyond the operator frame; never exclamation points.

Writing checklist

1. Could an operator say it while patching a call? (short, factual, present tense)
2. Does it state the guarantee (lease, ack, dedup, revoke) rather than vibes?
3. Is the id present when a specific todo/endpoint/friendship is meant?
4. Mono for machine facts, Sans for human sentences, Slab for names of things.