Product specification — Plant Laboratory v1

Goal

A functioning botanical breeding sandbox with beautiful illustrated 2D assets. This is the first slice of a larger idle plant collection/greenhouse game, not a generic admin UI. Initial interface language English.

Personas and core flow

Visitor opens responsive browser app at / and sees a lovely large plant rendered as SVG.
They choose species, edit diploid alleles, watch the plant change immediately, select a growth stage and set the cosmetic visual seed.
They select two parent plants and request breeding through the API; resulting child genotype and traceable parent IDs are saved by the server.
They browse a 100-plant visual gallery with filter by species, pigment, pattern and rarity, open details, inspect ancestry and export JSON/SVG/PNG.
At end of MVP, single demo player has local-account-free sandbox persistence; no login. Build ownership into schema for later authenticated accounts. Avoid exposing a destructive global reset in production.

Pages/screens

/lab: hero live SVG preview (large), genome editor (editable locus/allele pairs), controls for stage, visualSeed, mutation flags, responsive inspector with phenotype and derived rarity.
/breed: two parent pickers (from persisted sample plants), compatibility indicator, breeding button, outcome card, parent links, historic breed events.
/gallery: responsive 2–5 column cards, virtualize or paginate when >100, species/trait/rarity filters, details sheet, download actions.
/about: clear description of educational fictional game genetics, not a scientifically accurate botany simulator.
/ redirects to /lab.

Visual design

Mood: calm botanical cabinet of curiosities; credible handmade illustration rather than glossy tech dashboard. Canvas warm ivory, forest green controls, restrained terra-cotta, rare colors as accents. Dark mode optional, not prerequisite. Leaves and flowers must have deliberate illustrated shapes (veins, subtle layered shading); avoid simple emoji or generic circles.

Design tokens suggested:

Background #F6F3E8; surface #FFFCF4; ink #20392D; muted #6A7C70.
Primary #32684A; secondary #B76F52; borders #D8DED2.
Rarity accents: Common #78977B, Uncommon #4F9D91, Rare #5489C6, Epic #9366C3, Legendary #CB9C39, Mythic #C76D87.
Use consistent typography (system serif for botanical headings, sans for controls); avoid remote font dependencies.

Core UX acceptance

Clear keyboard-focus indication, semantic controls, labels, WCAG AA targets where feasible.
Mobile 360px width does not overflow. Desktop 1440px has split inspector/gallery composition.
SVG shapes readable at 64px card and at 500px inspector.
Select altered allele → phenotype and illustration change without page refresh, for traits with visible manifestations.
Controls show genotype and phenotype separately.
Show why crossing is blocked if species incompatible.
Show generated probabilities only if accurate to implemented model; do not imply independent rarity dice rolls.
Reduced-motion users do not get excessive animations. No external runtime artwork APIs.

Explicitly out of scope for this handoff

Accounts/auth, inventory purchase/harvest economy, greenhouse automation/timers, social trading, realtime multiplayer, paywalls, AI-generated graphics, crop disease. Add later in separate plan after Laboratory MVP.

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