# Text Wrapping Rules

## Objective

Decide how text breaks, truncates, and hyphenates so nothing overflows or loses meaning.

A per-content-type set of wrapping, breaking, and truncation rules applied across the app's components.

## Before You Begin

This feature is being added to an application that already exists and already
works. Do not scaffold a new project, and do not assume a blank slate.

Inspect the codebase first and establish:

- The existing application structure and where code of this kind already lives.
- The framework and version in use.
- The existing design system — colours, spacing, typography, and component conventions.
- Existing UI components you can reuse instead of writing new ones.
- The existing database structure, if this feature needs to persist anything.
- The existing authentication and authorization system, if this feature is user-scoped.
- Dependencies already installed, so you don't add a library that duplicates one.
- The existing test setup and conventions.

Only start writing code once you understand the above. If the application
already implements part of this feature, extend it rather than replacing it.

## Implementation Instructions

1. Classify the text the app renders into a few kinds — prose, identifiers, machine strings, user-supplied names, numbers — and define one wrapping rule for each kind rather than patching overflow component by component.
2. Give long unbroken strings such as URLs, API keys, record IDs, file paths, and email addresses a break rule that lets them wrap at sensible boundaries instead of pushing their container wider than the viewport.
3. Decide per surface whether text truncates or wraps, and make truncation reversible: anything cut off must be recoverable in full through a tooltip, a details view, or an expand control.
4. Do not fix overflow by hiding it. Setting a container to clip its contents removes the symptom and leaves the user with a name, an error, or a total that silently ends mid-word.
5. Text Measure Guardrails owns how wide a line of prose may be; this entry owns what happens when a string does not fit the width it has been given. Keep the two separate so a change to one does not require a change to the other.

## UI and UX Requirements

Match the application's existing design system exactly. Reuse its components,
spacing, and typography. This feature should look like it was always there.

## Responsive Requirements

Works on mobile, tablet, and desktop. Touch targets are large enough to hit on a
phone, and nothing overflows horizontally at 320px.

## Accessibility Requirements

- Fully keyboard navigable.
- Correct semantic elements and ARIA roles.
- Visible focus states.
- Meets WCAG AA contrast.
- Dynamic changes are announced to screen readers.
- Respects prefers-reduced-motion.

## Edge Cases

- URLs, identifiers, hashes, and code fragments must never be hyphenated or broken at an arbitrary character, because a broken key is one the user cannot copy or verify. Break them at punctuation boundaries or let them scroll within their own container.
- Hyphenation and word-breaking rules differ by writing system, and languages that do not use spaces between words break on entirely different boundaries. Drive the rule from the content's language rather than the interface language.
- A button whose label wraps to two lines must still look like a button: the height grows, the icon stays aligned with the first line, and the hit area covers both lines. A label that wraps to a single character on the second line needs a shorter label, not a narrower rule.
- When truncation hides meaning — a document title, an error message, a customer name that differs only in its last word — the full value must be reachable without navigating away. Truncation is a display convenience, never a data decision.
- Middle truncation suits filenames and paths, where the end carries the extension and the distinguishing folder; end truncation suits sentences. Choose per content type rather than applying one everywhere.
- Screen readers must receive the complete string, not the visually truncated one, so an ellipsis is never read as the end of a name.
- Multi-line clamping must survive a font change or a resize. A clamp measured once at load will show three and a half lines after the layout reflows.

## Testing

Exercise the feature end to end in the running application. Cover every edge case
above, then run the existing test suite and confirm nothing regressed.

## Acceptance Criteria

- [ ] Every kind of text in the app has a defined wrapping rule, applied through shared styles rather than per-component patches.
- [ ] No long identifier, URL, or path forces its container wider than the viewport.
- [ ] Truncated values are recoverable in full through a tooltip, expansion, or detail view.
- [ ] Hyphenation and breaking follow the language of the content rather than the interface.
- [ ] Wrapped button and control labels stay legible and keep their full hit area.
- [ ] Screen readers announce the complete string for every truncated element.
- [ ] No container hides overflow without an alternative route to the hidden content.
- [ ] The feature matches the existing design system.
- [ ] No existing functionality is broken.

## Adaptation Rules

- Match the existing design system. Do not introduce a new colour palette,
  spacing scale, or component library.
- Reuse existing components and utilities wherever they fit.
- Follow the naming, file layout, and code style already present.
- Do not upgrade, replace, or remove existing dependencies to make this
  feature fit. Adapt the feature to the app, not the app to the feature.
- Do not break existing functionality. If a change is genuinely required in
  existing code, make the smallest one that works and say so.
- If something in these instructions conflicts with how the application is
  built, follow the application and explain the deviation.

## Final Verification

Before you report the work as done:

1. Re-read the acceptance criteria above and check each one against what you
   actually built.
2. Run the application and exercise the feature end to end.
3. Run the existing test suite and confirm you have broken nothing.
4. Check the feature on mobile, tablet, and desktop widths.
5. Check keyboard navigation and focus handling.
6. Summarize what changed: files added, files modified, and anything you
   deliberately did differently because of how this application is built.

If any acceptance criterion is unmet, fix it before reporting completion.