when nav lives next to a working surface — sidebar, crumbs, and tabs.
A breadcrumb is a file path, not a wayfinder. Mono caps, slashed separators, the current node carries the red dot. Never link the current node — there's nowhere to go.
Tabs are a register, not a slider. The active tab carries a 2px red underbar. Counts beside labels are tabular-nums and live. Never a pill-tab control with a moving white background.
When the operator already knows the destination, navigation collapses to ⌘K. The action-search-bar is a registry component, not a primitive — installed with npx shadcn add, bridged to the contract so it tracks data-theme and data-mode like everything else on this page. Click Search… to open it.