Notable changes to Cavendish Cards — both the deck (cards added or reworded) and the site (features and fixes at cavendish.app). Newest first; dates are when a change shipped. The site deploys continuously, so there are no version numbers — for the full detail, see the commit history.
Each dated entry is split into Deck (changes to the cards themselves) and Site (changes to the web version). An entry only includes the sections that changed.
2026-07-21
Deck
- Added two cards from the SLODF ARLES crosswalk (Dark, 2026), where a workplace-inclusion framework's design responses named needs the deck hadn't yet voiced — both chosen to serve everyday all-ages use, not just work: one thing at a time (What helps) for task sequencing, reframing the switching cost of a piled-up queue as monotropic focus rather than slowness; and say it straight (What helps) for plain, direct communication, holding the double empathy problem (Milton, 2012) in its Notes as lineage rather than as a label. (For Helen's batch review:
say it straightis the first card to name the need Double Empathy explains — it patterns to 30 Communication Bandwidth and keeps 28 Double Empathy as a behind-lens; whether a direct-communication card should finally turn Double Empathy into a nameable Pattern is flagged as an open question in the Pattern crosswalk. Distinctness to watch in playtest: one thing at a time vs let me finish / fewer choices / pulled every way.) - Added three cards for playtesting, drawn from the Livable worlds checklist crosswalk where the deck had gaps: fewer choices (What helps) for decision overload, keep it the same (What helps) for a need for sameness — reframing the labeled "insistence on sameness" as a support need — and running on empty (Weather) for everyday depletion, from spoon theory.
Site
- Added a workplace example spread — A new job, first weeks (an adult, at work) — showing the deck read as a design brief across a workday, and featuring the two new cards. Reinforces adult self-use and the all-ages reframe.
- The ARLES page now situates the deck against the System-Level Organisational Design Framework (SLODF): SLODF reads across four organisational domains but has no Lived Experience layer, and the deck's Weather realm is precisely the layer it lacks. Facilitator-layer framing only — no jargon on the cards.
- The ARLES page also adds a companion section on the Ecosystemic Model of Distress (EMD; Gray-Hammond): distress read as a current through nested ecosystems, versus ARLES as a ladder. Reframes a spread as feedback — the bodymind reporting an unsustainable ecosystem — not a symptom list. No new cards: EMD's person layer is already covered by Weather, and its distinctive content is the Systems/power layer the deck deliberately doesn't card.
- Added a Livable worlds checklist page — a companion environmental audit that pairs with the deck, adapted from Stimpunks' Livable Worlds Checklist (after Rose & Lupton, 2026) and dedicated to the public domain under CC0. Eleven areas, from regulation to sustainability, run on the room, the routine, the kit, or the system — never on the person — with no score and no pass mark, plus a section-by-section crosswalk to the cards that voice each need.
- Deep-linked pages now orient newcomers: every guide page carries a sticky top bar with an Open the deck button and the Menu, plus a Cavendish Cards home link and a one-line description in the header — so landing on a page like the guidebook or the checklist makes clear what the site is and how to reach the playable deck.
2026-07-20
Deck
- Kind words reframe: no longer framed as a gift. A Kind word is given to someone, or claimed for yourself — never earned. The card back now reads a kind word / you don't have to earn it (was a gift / given, not earned), the faces read given or claimed, and the guidebook and starter deck match. Self-use is first-class alongside giving.
Site
- Card backs can now be opened in the lightbox — on the table, a face-down card gets the same enlarge button, showing just the back image (no card name or notes) so it can be seen larger without turning the card up. A visual-accessibility fix that keeps the turn-up-to-share gesture intact.
- Offline cache now updates on art-only and guidebook-only changes: the service worker versions by page and card-face content, not just filenames — so returning visitors always get the current deck.
2026-07-19
Deck
- Added let me unmask (What helps) — permission, and a safe space, to drop the mask for anyone who masks to get by. It names the need to stop performing, not the act of masking itself. Lineage: masking / camouflaging; freedom of embodiment (Nick Walker).
- All-ages reframe: the whole deck now speaks to people of any age, not just children — child becomes person throughout, and adult becomes facilitator where it means the support role (age-neutral wording elsewhere). Self-use and peer-use are first-class: the deck is as much for an Autistic adult naming their own conditions as for a child. The child-safety commitments stay, and children are still named explicitly.
- Mapped the deck to the Stimpunks Pattern Library: each card can carry an optional Pattern field, and the guidebook now shows the pattern(s) each card instantiates, linking the published ones. Facilitator-layer only — patterns never appear on the card itself, the starter deck, or the web card view.
- Added big step (Weather) — threshold anxiety: the dread at the edge of a change, like a doorway, a first day, or graduating. The moves for crossing it live in Lily pads and What helps.
- Plain-language pass across the whole deck: every card's guidebook entry rewritten to about a grade-6 reading level (down from ~7.8), one idea per sentence, following ASAN's plain-language guidance. The metaphors, counter-deficit reframes, and lineage all stay — the sentences just got shorter and plainer.
- Added no words right now (situational mutism) and too seen (exposure anxiety) to Weather, and no spotlight to What helps — naming the voice going quiet and the discomfort of being seen, with lineage credited to Donna Williams.
- Added the kind word you don't have to talk, affirming that not speaking is not the same as not knowing (presume competence).
- Added tender (Weather) — the wound of rejection sensitivity, the "emotional sunburn," with lineage credited.
Site
- Added an ARLES & the cards page — how the deck fits the Stimpunks Design Method (Attention → Relational → Lived Experience → Environment → Systems), with the design-method poster. Markdown pages can now include images.
- The site reflects the all-ages reframe (see Deck), and gained an example spread of an adult using the deck for themselves — no facilitator. The behind-the-scenes "adult layer" is now the "facilitator layer" across the guidebook and implementation pages.
- Added an Example spreads page — worked gameplay examples that read a spread as a design brief for the environment, not a report on a person.
- The guidebook now links community vocabulary in each card's lineage to the Stimpunks glossary (monotropism, interoception, exposure anxiety, and more); the in-the-moment card view stays plain.
- Copy for a journal now includes the date and an optional note field (kept only in the copy, never saved).
2026-07-18
Site
- Added a favicon and app icons — the card-fan mark — across the site.
- Added Open Graph and Twitter Card metadata and a social share image, so shared links show a proper preview.
- The site is now an offline-capable Progressive Web App: it keeps working with no connection after the first visit, and can be installed to a home screen or dock.
- Added a light/dark toggle and automatic dark mode using the Solarized dark palette. It follows your device setting, and the toggle remembers your choice on your own device.
- Self-hosted the Atkinson Hyperlegible typeface, removing the third-party font request.
- Added a Privacy & security page and a strict set of security response headers, including a Content Security Policy.
- Added a sitemap, robots.txt, and structured data, plus web-app metadata, for better discoverability and installation.
- Added this changelog, kept in the repository and published as a page on the site.
- Reworked the I need a bodymind break button into a calming full-screen break: a modal (with the deck paused behind it) holding the definition of bodymind, an affirmation invitation, a self-hosted looping ocean-waves recording by Adriel Jeremiah Wool, and a collapsible list of ways to affirm your bodymind.
- Fixed the Copy for a journal button failing silently in privacy-hardened Firefox browsers (such as Zen); it now uses a reliable fallback and shows a "Copied!" confirmation.
2026-07-17
Site
- Fixed a card-identity bug: cards are now keyed by realm and slug, so each realm's "your own" card no longer collides with another's in selection, card backs, and faces.
2026-07-16
Deck
- Added the monotropism weather cards — in the zone, meerkat, round and round, and pulled every way — with their lineage credited.
- Added can't tell (interoception) and need more (sensory seeking) to Weather, plus happy flappy (happy stimming).
- Added let me stim, let me finish, and let me come and go, along with more niche-construction cards, regrouping What helps into twelve sense signposts.
- Reframed Love Locutions as self-affirmation (shown as Kind words in the app), moved parallel existence into What helps, and kept penguin pebbling as a guidebook note rather than a card.
- Named the "not an AAC board" boundary, with an inclusion test in the card template, the README, and the guidebook.
- Curated the Weather order into a gentle range with no good/bad split, renamed families to realms, and made lily pads a browsable realm.
Site
- Added native Why, Origin, and Facilitator pages, a generated Implementation guidebook, and a site-wide collapsed menu.
- Added lightbox zoom and a collapsible "what this card means" to card previews, and grouped the deck by realm with per-realm info.
- Made laid cards toggle back off the table, kept an added-state on tiles, and added a sticky jump-to-table button.
- Added the build a niche and map your rhythm play modes (seven ways to play), the Why Sheet, and a consent guardrail in the implementation guidebook.
2026-07-15
Deck
- Added guidebook Notes to every card — the entry that says what each card means and how to hold it.
- Added reflection questions: per-realm pools plus per-card overrides, with the Reflection field documented in the card template.
Site
- Added the playable web deck and its Netlify build, and linked it from the README.
- Ran four playtest rounds: intro and guidebook pages, a bodymind-break, an interaction-first guided order, sense grouping, a reflection summary, and per-realm draw-your-own.
- Added the guidebook assembler, the print-and-play PDF builder, and the playtest placeholder generator.
- Added the call for art, linked from the README and the site.
2026-07-14
Deck
- Initial deck — 49 cards scaffolded across six families.
- Added the interaction realm — the Autistic community's color communication badges — with finished card faces.
- Stated the deck is not a screening tool, refusing the pathology, deficit, and behaviorism framings.
Site
- Added print-scale SVG card templates for every family plus the blank, and the two card backs.
- Rebuilt the facilitator sheet (larger type, six-color rainbow, sharing models) and wrote the project README.