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+# Phase 2: Vault Core and Rendering - Context
+
+**Gathered:** 2026-02-28
+**Status:** Ready for planning
+
+<domain>
+## Phase Boundary
+
+Markdown parsing pipeline and full content display. Users can read a markdown document with all standard constructs rendered correctly and content is scrollable. This phase delivers the vault engine (loading files from vault_path), pulldown-cmark based markdown-to-styled-lines conversion, ratatui rendering, scrolling, status bar, and error handling for missing files. Navigation between documents and link following are Phase 3.
+
+</domain>
+
+<decisions>
+## Implementation Decisions
+
+### Color palette & text styling
+- Classic CGA 16-color palette for accent elements (headers, code, links, emphasis markers)
+- Body text uses terminal default foreground/background — respects user's TERM color scheme
+- CGA accent colors only override for specific elements, not body text
+- Heading levels (H1-H6) distinguished by both color AND decorators (e.g. H1 = bright cyan + ══ underline, H2 = bright yellow, H3 = green, etc.)
+- Bold uses terminal bold attribute, italic uses terminal italic attribute, inline code uses terminal styling — modern terminals support these natively
+- No need to fall back to color-only for bold/italic since SSH users have modern terminal emulators
+
+### Screen layout & chrome
+- No content borders — content goes edge-to-edge, maximizing reading space
+- Single status bar at the bottom only (vim-style)
+- Status bar content: current filename on the left, keyboard hints (q:Quit j/k:Scroll) on the right
+- Status bar style: reverse video (inverted colors) — classic terminal status bar look
+- No top bar, no title bar, no breadcrumb bar (breadcrumb comes in Phase 3)
+
+### Code blocks & tables
+- Fenced code blocks get syntax highlighting using CGA palette colors (cyan keywords, green strings, etc.)
+- Code blocks framed with indent + colored background + rounded-corner box-drawing borders (╭─╮│╰─╯)
+- GFM tables rendered with full box-drawing grid (┌┬┐├┼┤└┴┘) — classic DOS table look
+- Table header row styled with bold + CGA accent color (e.g. bright cyan or yellow)
+
+### Scrolling
+- j/k and arrow keys scroll one line at a time
+- PgUp/PgDn scroll a full page height
+- No splash screen on startup — go straight to content
+
+### Claude's Discretion
+- Exact CGA color assignments per heading level (H1-H6)
+- Exact decorator style per heading level (═══ vs ─── vs none)
+- Syntax highlighting color mapping (which CGA color for keywords, strings, comments, etc.)
+- Blockquote visual style
+- Horizontal rule style
+- Image placeholder styling
+- List bullet/number styling
+- Scroll boundary behavior (stop or bounce)
+
+</decisions>
+
+<specifics>
+## Specific Ideas
+
+- index.md renders as a regular page — no special landing treatment in Phase 2 (ANSI art splash is Phase 4)
+- Missing index.md shows a retro BBS-style error screen with box-drawing border, "No index.md found" message, vault path shown, and hint to create one
+- No startup splash or loading indicator — fast and no-nonsense
+
+</specifics>
+
+<deferred>
+## Deferred Ideas
+
+None — discussion stayed within phase scope
+
+</deferred>
+
+---
+
+*Phase: 02-vault-core-and-rendering*
+*Context gathered: 2026-02-28*