Saturday, July 4, 2026

A reference that can't teach the beginner is just a wall of jargon.

A focused Saturday on Sage's reference library — turning a pile of astrology pages into something a newcomer can actually explore, where every unfamiliar term explains itself on hover.

Shipped

• A glossary that teaches inline — added hover cards across all four chart views, so any term you don't know explains itself right where you meet it, instead of sending you off to look it up and lose your place
• Interactive instruments — built explorable tools for the Dasha timeline and the Wheel & Houses, so the concepts you can only really grasp by moving them are things you can now move
• Editorial reference pages — gave the planet pages and the library a real two-column editorial layout with a nav rail, and wrote out meanings for all 27 nakshatras so the reference is complete, not a stub
• Deep-dive resource pages — added deeper resource pages behind a bigger, dynamic chart wheel, so a curious reader can keep pulling a thread as far as they want to go

Notes

The teaching layer is the part I care about. Every specialized field builds a wall of jargon that keeps beginners out, and most reference sites just reproduce the wall in a nicer font. The hover card is a small rebellion against that: you meet a strange word and, instead of being sent away to a search box, it opens right there and lets you keep reading. Filling in all 27 nakshatras instead of the popular handful is the same discipline — a reference with holes teaches people that the hole is where they don't belong. Complete and self-explaining, or it isn't really a reference.