Disclosure

An app that is not in the stores yet has one public surface, its website. For Disclosure that surface carries a strange premise, civilian training for first contact. It has to hold a visitor long enough to leave an email for launch. A plain waiting-list page would not do it. The site had to feel like part of the product.

In September 2026 I rebuilt the site as a leaked government file. It opens on an eye that moves as the page scrolls, under the line "This file was not meant for you." Every page after it keeps the fiction: a banner marking at the top, numbered dossier tabs for navigation, section headings that declassify as they arrive, torn-paper exhibits with witness sketches, and a routing slip for a footer. Because the tone never winks, a visitor takes the quiz seriously enough to finish it.

The signature move is the classification. Ten short scenarios, each with four responses, assign one of four roles: Sentinel, Diplomat, Scholar or Survivor. A fifth, First Contact, stays sealed. The answers also draw an iris print that no one else carries, and it lands on a First Contact Card. The card has its own page that shows its iris when the link is shared, and the email that sends it is how a visitor holds a place for launch.

A premise like this invites made-up claims, so the site keeps a public record instead. The Disclosure Ledger lists 59 official events since 1947, from hearings and laws to reports and releases, each checked against its source: 48 verified and 11 partly verified, with five claims that do not hold up set out apart. Nine case files are each labelled explained, disputed or unexplained. The rebuild also removed invented percentages and fake counters from the old site.

Three field tools work today, before the app exists. The sky identifier takes a time, a place and a direction, checks real satellite and planet positions, catches Starlink trains, and hands off to a sighting report builder that routes a report to the right body. A Drake equation calculator rounds them out. The archive holds 73 intel files in six categories and a 106-term glossary, each file opening with a direct answer, which gives the brand depth and gives search engines 118 pages to find.

The app is in development for iOS and Android, and the site says so. It names the five features the app launches with, from the classification to crew drills, and which of them are free. The site itself is built toward WCAG 2.2 AA, with a motion pause on every page, an optional clock on the drill and a published accessibility statement. Every page was checked on screens from 320 to 2,560 pixels wide.

The pattern fits any product that has to earn attention before it can be bought: an app in development, a course before it opens, a venue before opening day. Give the visitor something to do on the first page, make the result theirs to keep, and ask for the email at the moment it is worth something to them.