This round keeps the left-shell iteration and folds in Khoa's three notes, each grounded in
the current staging build (walked staging.marngi.com — the boxless /chats lane, the
/pre-answers swipe stack, and the 20/40-min session model): (1) the answers now flow
boxless in the page like GPT/staging, so booking & connect cards can drop straight into the lane;
(2) a pre-answers swipe stack — matched experts each draft a take, you swipe through and pick one;
(3) the Bookings page becomes real confirmed bookings, not a marketing page. Same warm system.
Added from staging (Khoa). "Find the right person to ask" — search + category chips + a grid of expert cards (Ask · ★ · tags · From $200). Browsing lives here; the ask flow still goes to the swipe stack.
Open →Added from staging. The full expert page: verified name + ★5.0 (120 reviews), 1:1 Video Consultation ($200), Ask Chris / Book session, About me, and "can answer questions on the following".
Open →Rebuilt to match the real page (Khoa). Who's-joining form + a summary card (duration/date/time/format/payment/Join call/Confirmed/total + expert-payout breakdown) + session-thread link back to the chat + cancellation policy.
Open →The staging-faithful "One question, many minds" ask hero now lives in the main pane; the evolved sidebar carries search/discover, your recent brain conversations, and Book/Connect/Dashboard — the ChatGPT-style shell.
Open →Khoa's note #2, grounded in staging's /pre-answers. After you ask, a few matched brains each draft their perspective as a stacked deck you swipe through (pills + arrows), each with Ready/Drafting state and a "keep talking to →". This is now the screen the home ask lands on. Interactive — swipe it.
Rebuilt to match staging (Khoa). Was a vertical list — now the real /pre-answers swipe stack: your question, a row of expert pills, and a deck of cards you swipe (each a Strong-match tag + specialty + the drafted take + "Continue with X"). Interactive — swipe it.
Open →Khoa's note #1, grounded in staging's /chats. r2a — Khoa feedback: the boxless answer flow is kept, but Book/Connect no longer sit between the last answer and the composer (they blocked "keep chatting"). They move to a persistent right rail, with one subtle contextual "book" nudge only where the brain defers to a human.
A stranger arriving from a shared link sees the same sidebar shell, but it adapts — Explore/discover + a "Create your own brain" CTA + Sign in, not an empty conversations list. Main pane still foregrounds talk / book / connect / sign up.
Open →"Add to Claude / Add to ChatGPT" → a permission modal (the trust moment) → connected. Honest that a fully-silent install isn't possible; consent stays.
Open →Khoa's note #3. Real confirmed bookings — Upcoming / Past, each with expert, date/time, 20/40-min duration, amount paid, status (Join call / Confirmed / Completed), reschedule, receipt & session notes. Closer to staging's real account.
Open →The Connect-side booking flow (unchanged): when someone books through a connected brain inside Claude, availability surfaces in the host, they pick a slot, then a handoff brings them to Marnji to confirm-and-pay (Stripe). Reachable from Book buttons.
Open →A dedicated surface to get an expert's brain out there — copy link, social share, a QR, and an embed snippet for their own site.
Open →Solid, ongoing materials workflow (add/remove sources + re-index), what the brain confidently knows vs defers on, and the three reach doors (Public / Book / Connect).
Open →1 · Un-boxed the answer lane. I walked staging's /chats/… view: the response isn't in a box, it flows down the page. I matched that — the answers page is now a boxless lane (sticky expert header → conversation in the page → composer), which is what lets us reuse the whole lane to drop booking & connect cards inline between messages, exactly as you wanted.
2 · Added the pre-answers swipe stack. Grounded in staging's /pre-answers/…: matched experts each draft a perspective, presented as a stacked deck you swipe through (expert pills + arrows, Ready/Drafting states), then pick one to keep talking. The home ask now lands here.
3 · Real bookings page. The old Bookings destination was a marketing page; it's now your confirmed sessions — upcoming/past, expert, time, 20/40-min duration, amount paid, Join call / reschedule / receipt / notes — closer to staging's real account. The sidebar "Bookings" now lands here.
Kept from the left-shell iteration: the sidebar shell everywhere (grounded in staging's thin left icon rail, evolved wide + labelled).
Left sidebar shell, everywhere (Khoa's call). R2's top-nav is replaced by a left sidebar on every surface — the convention every AI app now uses (ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini), and a natural fit for a chat-centric product. I grounded it in staging's existing thin left icon rail (toggle · new-chat · discover · help) and evolved it into a wide, labelled sidebar: New question · Search & discover · Recent conversations (brains you've talked to) · Your brains · Book / Connect / Dashboard · profile at the foot.
Context-aware, not two shells. The public brain page (a logged-out stranger from a shared link) keeps the same shell visually, but the content adapts — Explore + "Create your own brain" + Sign in instead of a personal conversations list. One consistent shell, content that knows who's looking.
The missing bridge is in. A new matched-results → expert screen sits between "ask a question" and the answers page: your question → a few best-fit brains (each Talk / Book / Connect) → pick one → talk. "One question, many minds" is preserved and finally has its results moment.
Everything else from R2 is kept — just re-shelled. Talk/Book/Connect on the answers page, the add-to-app click-once + one-tap consent modal, the booking-via-host handoff (initiate in the host → complete & pay on Marnji), the share surface, and the owner dashboard/data-management are all intact inside the new shell. Same warm system (ink #181614, Fraunces + Figtree, cream/terracotta, arch avatars, pill buttons); no end-user MCP jargon.
No end-user jargon. Users never see "MCP" — they see "add to Claude / your apps." The mechanism is invisible; the outcome leads. No Spotify/royalty language anywhere.
Two honest constraints made visible (per your realism note): (1) connecting can't be fully silent — the one-tap consent modal is the trust moment, and tapping "Add" deep-links into the host's own connector flow; (2) booking through an external app initiates in the host but completes and pays on Marnji (Stripe), so money + details stay secure.
Marnji · Iter 2.1 — boxless lane + pre-answers swipe stack + real bookings (Khoa's notes) · design-only, for build by Ben · Sana · 2026-07-24 · iterates on the R2 set, grounded in the current staging.marngi.com build (/chats, /pre-answers, session model).