Guidance, Never Behavior

"Verbose mode changes what you're told about a control. It never changes what the control does."

The Quiet Default and the Explainer

Bellows opens in Simple mode: the controls, and not much else. Turn on Verbose and every control grows an explanation — its action, its persistence boundary, its credit impact, its playback target, why it's disabled if it is, and what it destroys if it's destructive. That's a lot of words, and hiding them by default is the right call: an operator who knows the tool shouldn't wade through a paragraph to press one button.

The Rule That Makes It Safe

Here is the line that matters: the toggle changes guidance only, never behavior. The Speak button in Verbose mode does exactly what the Speak button in Simple mode does. Verbose is a lens on the machine, not a different machine. This sounds obvious until you notice how many tools break it — a "help mode" that also adds confirmations, or a "beginner mode" that quietly disables the sharp features. The instant help-mode changes behavior, the explanation is lying, because it's describing a machine you only get while reading.

Why This Discipline Pays

When guidance and behavior are welded together, you can trust what Verbose says in Simple mode too — the description is of the real, only machine. You can screenshot the Verbose explanation and hand it to someone running Simple, and it's still true. Separating what a control does from what you're told about it is a small rule with a large payoff in trust.

Code

One action, two amounts of explanation·typescript

// Verbose changes what you are TOLD, never what the button DOES.
function SpeakButton({ verbose }: { verbose: boolean }) {
  const speak = useSpeak();          // identical action in BOTH modes

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={speak}>Speak</button>
      {verbose && (
        <Guidance>
          Persists this profile as your default. A cache hit is free;
          a miss spends credits. Plays on the owned audio output.
        </Guidance>
      )}
    </div>
  );
}

// WRONG: this would make the explanation a lie.
// if (verbose) return <button onClick={confirmThenSpeak}>Speak</button>;

Exercise

Find a piece of software with a 'help mode,' 'beginner mode,' or 'advanced mode.' Determine whether the mode changes what you're told, what the controls do, or both. If it changes behavior, name one way that makes the tool harder to trust once you switch modes.

Hint

The honest version of a mode is a lens: same machine, more or fewer words. The dishonest version is a different machine wearing the same buttons.