looks awful (to provide a genuinely felt counter view)

I just realized this is one more thing destroyed by LLM after em-dashes.

Reminds me of Notion and old Basecamp.

This is a very easy sell for me because everything these days is doing the infuriating gray text on gray background.

trapper keeper-ism

I love it! I've been using my own styling for my various projects that I call "Soft NeoBrutalism" that's more colourful and lower contrast since I find most neobrutalist styles to be too stark. Sample here: https://frost-e.com/design-system/

Since mine is just a hacky vibe-coded single css file, I might switch to yours with a custom colour scheme.

nice web design !

looks great!