max / alloy

Offer a fix for bad defaults, not just a description of them Ruled by Max 2026-08-17, as the pattern for every bring-your-own role rather than a browser exception: where a candidate has bad defaults, offer both a modified configuration and stock. Bad meaning bad, not aesthetic. The test is who the default serves. Telemetry serves the vendor, sponsored shortcuts serve advertisers, Pocket serves a content business, tracking protection at standard serves the ad industry. Tab layout and density serve the user fine, and Alloy has no business touching them on a browser it declined to pick. Two guards, because the deleted Firefox estate mixed both halves and only one half is coming back: the configuration removes anti-features and never adds Alloy's taste, so the two hundred lines of userChrome.css stay deleted; and it enumerates what it changes before it runs, since an opaque configuration is a black box that defeats the describing it improves on.

Author: Max Johnson <me@maxj.phd> · 2026-08-17 22:36 UTC

Signed with PGP, not checked

Commit: 37446f0e7e561fe14d956ada324e25da920ce420

Parent: c638ff9

1 file changed, +5 insertions, -1 deletion

M docs/STACK.md +5 -1

			@@ -196,7 +196,11 @@
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197	197		Ruled 2026-08-17: the two recommended browsers are stock Firefox and Helium, and stock Firefox does not behave that way. It arrives with telemetry on, sponsored shortcuts on the new tab page, Pocket integration, and Enhanced Tracking Protection at "standard" rather than "strict", which is most of what the deleted `mozilla.cfg` was setting. Alloy still ships it no configuration, and the estate does not come back.
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199		-	What changes is that honest description stops being a courtesy and becomes the obligation. Whatever offers the choice states what each browser does out of the box, so a user picking Gecko knows what they are picking rather than discovering it. Alloy describes rather than configures.
	199	+	What changes is that honest description stops being a courtesy and becomes the obligation. Whatever offers the choice states what each browser does out of the box, so a user picking Gecko knows what they are picking rather than discovering it.
	200	+
	201	+	And it is offered a fix rather than left with the defaults. Ruled the same day, as the pattern for every bring-your-own role and not a browser exception: where a candidate has bad defaults, offer both a modified configuration and stock. Bad meaning bad, not aesthetic, and the test is who the default serves. Telemetry serves the vendor, sponsored shortcuts serve advertisers, Pocket serves a content business, tracking protection at standard serves the ad industry. Tab layout and density serve the user fine and Alloy has no business touching them on a browser it declined to pick.
	202	+
	203	+	So the estate does not come back, and this is the line that keeps that true: the modified configuration only removes anti-features and never adds Alloy's taste. Two hundred lines of `userChrome.css` were the other half of what was deleted and they stay deleted. A diff with a single line about appearance in it has gone too far. The configuration also enumerates what it changes before it runs, because an opaque "Alloy configuration" is a black box the user cannot judge, which would defeat the describing it exists to improve on.
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201	205		This does not weaken the rule that an app earns a recommendation by not needing configuration. That rule is a test for what Alloy picks as a default, not a bar on what it will offer as a bring-your-own candidate. The test for a candidate is provenance and an accurate account of its behaviour. Otherwise the rule would force Alloy to either configure a browser it declined to pick or refuse to name the second engine at all, and both defeat the point of declining.
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