The vertical tabs were a 999px stadium on a 48px row. That was a real earlier
instruction -- imitate the YouTube active row -- and it shipped, but measured
against the product it is the only thing shaped that way: the collapse button is
8px, the filter toggles are 8px, and 8px is already the most common radius in
the layout file. They now read var(--vtl-radius,8px), so a consumer has one knob
and the three surfaces cannot drift apart. The 48px Material row height is
untouched. The YouTube rationale stays in the comment as history with an explicit
note not to restore the pill from it, because a superseded rationale that still
reads as current is how a reversed decision gets quietly undone.
The .vtl-cap badge keeps its pill. The complaint was about the ratio of radius to
size -- a 16px chip at 999px is a chip, a 48px row at 999px is a stadium.
The studio opened on nothing and said "Choose an element from the list." It now
resolves a tab in priority order: the URL hash, since an explicit shareable
request should beat a remembered one; then localStorage, so a reload is not a
fresh start; then the first row, so the pane is never empty. This lives in the
studio rather than the layout because VerticalTabsLayout is controlled via
v-model:active and deliberately holds no selection state.
Storage is keyed by pathname so two shells on one origin do not fight over one
key, every access is wrapped because localStorage throws in private mode and an
exception in setup would blank the whole subtree, and the key is only written
after the row is confirmed to exist so a bad key cannot poison the next load.
Verified in the built shell on a settled tree: first load auto-selects with no
hint and stores the key; clicking big-picture moves the selection and updates
storage; a reload restores big-picture; and a deliberately poisoned key falls
back to the first tab and rewrites itself rather than rendering an empty pane.
d4a8184ad7