Destructive actions coloured red at rest
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Rule · bucket: judgment · severity: note · detector: none · since: v0.1.0
Section: Things to avoid
Group: States and interaction

Forbidden:
  A red "Delete" sitting in a list of rows

Instead:
  At rest a destructive action is **tertiary** — less prominent, further from the primary, or disclosed. Red makes it *more* prominent, which is backwards: the goal is friction, not attention.

Red belongs on the **confirming** button inside the confirmation step — `--color-text-error` and the `--color-fill-error` / `--color-stroke-error-strong` set — where the user has already chosen and needs to feel the weight of it.

**But not at every confirmation.** The reference grades the friction, and so should you:

| Friction | When | Treatment |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Light | A less serious action | Ask for confirmation. The confirming button stays **brand-coloured, not red** |
| Moderate | Genuinely destructive, recoverable with effort | Red confirming button, red accent on the dialog |
| Heavy | Irreversible — deleting an account, purging data | Red, **plus a checkbox that must be ticked** before the action can fire |

Reaching for red at every confirmation spends it, and a red button on "delete this draft" leaves nothing louder for "delete your account". Whichever level you pick, prefer making the action **undoable** over making it frightening (`04-principles.md`, Tiebreaker 3) — friction protects nobody who has already clicked.