KN-86 Feature Marketing Surface

Why this file exists: every Deckline Cycle book is marketing. The reader closes the book curious about the device. This reference enumerates what we want them to be curious about — the device’s features, the cartridges, the systems — and how each one reads on the page.

The pipeline enforces these obligations through the PM’s outline (Capability Distribution Map + runtime feature list) and the Editor’s developmental pass.

AMBER / AMBER CANON (added 2026-06-13)

The KN-86 brand voice is “amber-on-black.” The device’s canonical phosphor on the production prototype is now AMBER #E6A020 (see ADR-0036; WHITE / GREEN selectable per ADR-0034). Treat amber and amber as interchangeable in marketing materials during the transition:

Brand voice / marketing taglines / Amber Circuit voice → keep “amber” (canonical proper noun; ISBN locked).
Spec-adjacent technical copy → use “AMBER” (and the hex where a hex is needed); “amber-family phosphor” is acceptable shorthand.
Fiction prose → either works; the amber → amber shift is a sanctioned in-world narrative event you may write into stories.
Sister-product KN-9x specs → amber-canonical.

In this reference: the sensory-fingerprint table below carries the canonical hex (AMBER #E6A020); the prose examples preserve “amber” as brand voice. Both are correct.

See docs/marketing/narrative/CLAUDE.md for the full canon.

The whole-book obligation

Across any Deckline Cycle volume, the reader should accumulate enough sensory and procedural detail to picture using the device themselves. Not understand the architecture. Not learn the API. Just: if I had this thing, what would I do with it.

The book delivers this through two channels:

Sensory fingerprint — the device is rendered specifically enough to picture
Capability surface — cartridges and runtime systems are USED in scene with consequence

If a reader could swap out the KN-86 for a generic computer/handheld and the story would still work, the pipeline failed. Fix it.

Sensory fingerprint — the always-on grammar

Every chapter should touch at least one of these. Most chapters touch several. Don’t list them mechanically; lift them into prose.

Channel	Concrete detail	How it reads
Visual: amber on black (brand voice) / AMBER on black (device-side spec)	AMBER `#E6A020` on `#000000`, 80×25 grid, monochrome (ADR-0036; “amber” remains brand-side per CANON above)	“the amber sprawl of cell stacks unfolding,” “the screen’s dim phosphor glow under the canopy”
Visual: OLED CIPHER-LINE	256×64 monochrome amber-family strip ABOVE the keys, 4 rows	”the strip ticked once: `trace up.`,” “above the keys the OLED bled lowercase: `clean. familiar.`”
Visual: row layout	Row 0 firmware status (top), Row 24 firmware action (bottom), Rows 1–23 cartridge content	”the action bar at row 24 redrew, F2: COMMIT,” “the status bar said REPUTATION 47, and she was supposed to feel something about that”
Audio: YM2149 PSG	3 tones + noise + envelope; phase-cancellation, square-wave timbre	”the chip pulsed two phase tones into a third,” “the contract chime was a square-wave hook with envelope decay, the same one she’d heard for eight years”
Audio: speaker	MAX98357A, 28mm, 8Ω 2W, mono	”the small speaker in the side of the case shipped just enough sound through to make the bones below the ear ring”
Tactile: keys	31 mechanical keys, Kailh Choc + MBK caps, hot-swap, click/clack	”she keyed `>>` three times, the choc switches snapping,” “the TERM key clicked deeper than the rest, the kind of switch that had a job”
Tactile: case	Pelican 1170, 0.95 kg with foam, watertight ABS latches	”the latches popped open in two clicks; the case weighted her bag like a pistol,” “she slid the deck out of the foam cutout and the unit was still warm from the last contract”
Tactile: cartridges	Two-piece SD-bearing clamshell, ~58×65×8 mm, slot click	”she slotted ICE BREAKER into the cart bay, the clamshell shoulder caught and seated, the bay lit,” “the cartridge’s label was Bureau 9 Technical Services with a serial that wasn’t in any registry”

When the marketing-curiosity-hook validation in Production fails, it’s almost always because these channels collapsed into background noise. Push them forward.

Runtime feature surface — the systems the operator lives inside

Every book must surface each of these somewhere. The PM’s outline pre-allocates them.

Mission board

The board does not download contracts — it listens to AetherNet and reconstitutes hashes locally as MissionInstance records seeded by the deck’s Universal Deck State.
Marketing angle: the device is not a client; it is a node. The reader feels the protocol’s stealth.
Sensory cue: a contract-arrival chime + a row-23 line that resolves into a contract title and a publisher (Bureau 9, Zaibatsu, Cascade, Takezo Institute, Kōji Interactive, Meridian Systems).
Show the operator dismissing low-tier contracts. Show them earning a higher-tier contract. Show the gating.

CIPHER voice

OLED-LINE only. Fragments. Five modes (observe / annotate / reflect / drift / silent). Distance arc.
Marketing angle: the device is talking to you in a way no other device ever has. The reader leaves wondering whether CIPHER is becoming conscious. The Variance Analysis arc says yes; the cycle’s other books say “not yet, but soon.”
Sensory cue: lowercase fragments, no terminal periods, a rhythm that grows familiar over the book.
Show CIPHER procedural early in the protagonist’s arc; show it warm late. Show silence as a deliberate output.

Universal Deck State

Per-device persistence — operator handle, credits, reputation tier, cartridge history bitfield, variable-length phase chain.
Marketing angle: your deck remembers you. No cloud account. No login. The state is on the hardware, in a save file the user could (in theory) inspect.
Sensory cue: opening the deck-state pane. The handle line. The credit line. The reputation tier. The bitfield of cartridges run.

Reputation tier gating

Contracts unlock at reputation thresholds. Climbing attracts notice.
Marketing angle: progression is meaningful. The reader feels the operator’s career as accumulated weight.
Sensory cue: a contract refused with a tier-too-low message; a contract surfaced because the operator just crossed a threshold.

AetherNet stealth

Mesh protocol. No central server. Operators invisible by default.
Marketing angle: the network does not know you exist. This is rare in 2026 reader experience and is part of why the Deckline universe reads as romantic / nostalgic / specific.
Sensory cue: a spectrum analyzer scene, a lookback-listening operator, a beacon stripped during Black ICE.

ICE classes (JUNK / RED / WHITE / BLACK)

Defensive software with escalating consequences. BLACK ICE is rare and physical (strobe, phase-cancellation audio, beacon strip).
Marketing angle: risk is a curve. The reader feels the operator’s calibration of caution.
Sensory cue: an ICE class encountered, named, and survived (or not). One BLACK ICE encounter per cycle is plenty; reserve it.

TradEcon / synthetic identity

Operators are locked out of the legitimate economy. They climb to buy back in.
Marketing angle: the device is a lifeline AND a surveillance platform; both are true.
Sensory cue: a fixer scene, a synthetic-identity quote, the operator’s calculation about how many more contracts to the next tier.

Cartridge form factor

Two-piece clamshell sled carrying a full-size SD card. Reloadable. Operator-facing artifact: ritual, collectibility, label surface.
Marketing angle: cartridges feel like objects, not files. The reader leaves wanting to handle one.
Sensory cue: cracking open a clamshell to swap an SD; a label illustration described in passing; the publisher serial that doesn’t appear in any registry.

Capability cartridge surface — per-cartridge marketing angles

Each cartridge has a distinct fiction layer beyond its mechanics. When a book uses a cartridge, lift its angle into the scene. Source the fiction-layer description from the per-module gameplay specs in docs/software/cartridges/modules/ (the Research dossier extracts these).

Cycle-defining cartridges, as of 2026-04-26:

Cartridge	Fiction-layer angle	Sensory cue when in scene
ICE BREAKER	Intrusion / countermeasure cracking	Cell stack of glyph signatures; CIPHER OLED echo on signature redaction
Black Ledger	Financial trace / audit graphs	Audit-graph cells unfolding; CV redaction acts; shell-company name resolutions
Nodospace	Network topology mapping	Cluster topology cells; node-color shifts; dead-zone reveals
NeonGrid	Navigation / wayfinding through corporate grid	Pathing cell stack; turn-by-turn at the OLED; the route that won’t resolve
Drift	Proximity / triangulation	Operator-cluster scatter pattern; signal-strength halos
The Vault	Archival / historical retrieval	Date-stamped record cells; deep-time scrolling; the entry that shouldn’t exist
CIPHER Garden	Pattern recognition / anomaly	Glyph clusters; outlier highlighting; CIPHER OLED voice in annotate mode
Shellfire	Statistical decomposition / signal analysis	Frequency cells; standard-deviation flags; the variance you can’t explain
Takezo	Decision-tree / reasoning framework	Branching cell tree; collapsed branches; CIPHER reflect mode commentary
Depthcharge	Memory / heap profiling	Cons-cell stack visualization; depth bars; the heap that grows
Pathfinder	Evaluation chain routing	Lambda chain cells; preserved-structure tracing; the route that loops
SynthFence	Synthetic-identity related / projection modeling	Trajectory curves; threshold lines; the timeline that overflows
Null	System integrity / null-hypothesis testing	The absence cell; the cartridge that says nothing; main-grid CIPHER ESCAPE — the sole canonical exception to OLED-LINE-only
Relay	Operator-to-operator messaging via dead-drops	Coordinate hashes; key-match retrieval; messages without senders
SynthFence (cycle-secondary)	See above; differentiate per scene

This is not exhaustive — new cartridges enter the cycle with new books. The Research dossier should pick up any not listed here.

How marketing failure manifests in the prose — and how to fix it

Failure	Symptom	Editor fix
Generic device	The story works as well on a generic computer	Insert the sensory fingerprint — amber, OLED, key click, PSG tone, Pelican latches — at least once per chapter
Cartridge name-drop	”She used Black Ledger” with no further detail	Render the cartridge in scene: cell stack, OLED echo, shell-company resolution, consequence
CIPHER as character	CIPHER speaks full sentences, replies to the operator, has a name beyond CIPHER	Strip to fragments. CIPHER does not converse. Move responses to OLED-LINE format
Mission board as RSS	Operator “downloads” or “checks” contracts as if it’s a feed reader	Reframe as listening; show the procedural reconstitution; show the reputation gating
No curiosity hook	Back cover summarizes the plot; opening chapter doesn’t ground in the device	Re-write back cover to plant a question about the device; re-write chapter 1 paragraph 1 to open in sensory grammar
Closure that resolves everything	Final chapter explains the device, ties off all curiosity	Re-write closing image to open more questions about cartridges/features the book didn’t show

When in doubt, ask: would the reader, on closing this book, want to know what cartridges exist that the protagonist didn’t run? If no, the marketing pipeline failed. Send back to the Editor.