Ciechanowski style (lite) — scrub, don't play

Ideology

The real ciechanow.ski posts are bespoke WebGL engines with photoreal 3D — months of work, out of scope. What transfers, and what this skill reproduces, are his two disproportionately effective ideas:

1. The slider is the primary verb. Figures don't autoplay; the reader scrubs a range input that drives the figure's time/angle/progress. Scrubbing back and forth is how understanding happens. One figure = one slider = one dimension of change.
2. Prose and figure share a color channel. Parts under discussion are tinted with semantic colors, and the words in the surrounding sentence get the same color ("the balance wheel pushes the pallet fork"). The figure and the sentence become one instrument.

Depict the actual mechanism, not a metaphor: real proportions, real geometry, correct motion relationships (if gear A has twice the teeth, it turns at half the rate — get the physics right, readers notice).

Palette

Neutral machine + semantic tints on parts under discussion: