PEZZYWINKS WEBSITE — RULE / OPERATING-CONSTRAINT CHANGES
Status at handoff: 2026-09-13

1. OWNER CONTROL / ONE CONTROLLED ACTION AT A TIME
- Winks is Owner. Explain what is proposed, why, what will change, expected result, and what Winks should report before live changes.
- Keep troubleshooting and deployment to one controlled action at a time whenever possible.

2. FRESH-START / PRESERVE-FIRST RULE (September 11)
- Stop trying to repair the missing rollback folder or the old locker mechanism in place.
- Preserve current Hostinger material first. COPY before move/delete.
- Do not delete Hostinger content until the local backup has been verified.
- Existing PEZBase archive/download source already on E: stays where it is; do not duplicate/move it into the Hostinger backup just to recreate the locker.

3. HOSTINGER MANAGED-DIRECTORY RULE
- Do not delete, move, rename, or clean up .hbuilds, hbuilds, or the entire nodejs directory. Hostinger manages these areas.
- Do not blindly overwrite public_html/.htaccess or nodejs/server.js; inspect current state first.
- Do not use Hostinger “Use previous files” to recover historical V17; it reuses the current stored source.
- CDN remains OFF while recovery/restoration is being stabilized.

4. DEV SOURCE-LOCATION CORRECTION (September 12)
- Recovery/build work is on the DEV machine. Source root is local E:\, not HP/E:, not a UNC/network path.

5. HARD E:\ EXCLUSIONS SET BY WINKS (September 12)
Do not search, scan, read, move, rename, or modify:
- Videos
- Pictures
- Downloads
- Documents
- anything Chat* / CHAT*
- anything MOMO*
- Tropez
Implementation was later tightened conservatively to Tropez* so similarly named Tropez folders were also pruned.

6. ADDITIONAL SAFETY EXCLUSIONS USED BY THE VERIFIER
- PEZBase_Downloads
- PEZBase Builds
These were excluded by the recovery verifier as protected areas. They were not needed to locate V17.

7. READ-ONLY SEARCH RULE
- Finder/verifier tools must not move, rename, delete, restore, or edit E:\ content.
- Generated dependency trees (.next, node_modules, .git, .cache) are skipped unless specifically needed.

8. V17 FIDELITY RULE (September 13)
- The recovered V17 is Next.js 14.2.32 / React 18.2.0.
- Do not upgrade Next.js merely to silence the deprecation/security warning while performing faithful V17 recovery. Framework upgrades are a separate later task.
- Node installed on DEV for validation: v22.22.3; npm 10.9.8.

9. HOSTINGER ZIP-PORTABILITY RULE
- Deployment ZIPs intended for Hostinger/Linux must use standard forward-slash internal entry paths.
- The Windows-backslash V17 ZIP was retained as a locally validated predecessor but superseded for Hostinger by the HOSTINGER_SAFE repack.

10. MAINTENANCE ROUTING RULE (September 13)
- Do not return to the old [[...slug]] maintenance hard-stop catch-all.
- Current under-construction strategy: / is the splash; known public routes redirect to /; no catch-all.
- Do not add/change public_html/.htaccess merely to implement the splash.
- Design goal is to avoid interfering with a separately served physical PEZ locker path. Locker access itself remains UNVERIFIED at this handoff.

11. CURRENT DESIGN DIRECTION
- The live under-construction page functions, but Winks rejected the visual design (“That looks like shit”).
- Next splash must use actual PezzyWinks visual language: cream background, real red/orange/blue branding/logo, recovered PEZ dispenser artwork, no generic SaaS card/purple pill, minimal dead space.
- Do not change routing while redesigning the visual splash unless Winks explicitly orders it.