Four pillars

Summary

The app shell exposes exactly four nav items, in fixed order: Inbox · Tax · Expense · Portfolio — with Dashboard as the home surface above them.

Why it matters

The number four is load-bearing. It maps to the four mental buckets a salaried filer already uses ("my documents", "what I owe in tax", "what I spent", "what I own") and refuses the temptation to grow a fifth pillar every time a new noun appears. Family is a workspace context, not a pillar. Ask CA is a stream, not a pillar. The AI assistant is a capability inside the engine, not a pillar. Holding the line at four is what keeps the IA legible to a user who has never spoken to a CA.

Implications

• Nav order is fixed: Inbox · Tax · Expense · Portfolio. No re-ordering by tier, by usage, or by experiment.
• Every pillar page must carry at least one meaningful chart that answers a specific user question (trend, allocation, comparison, what-if).
• Inbox is the only writer; the other three are review surfaces.
• New features get assigned to an existing pillar — never a new tab.
• Family workspace appears via the avatar workspace picker, not as a fifth nav item.
• Ask CA entry lives inside the Tax pillar, not as a floating pill.

Related

• dashboard-pillar · inbox-pillar · tax-pillar · expense-pillar · portfolio-pillar — per-pillar invariants (concepts)
• pillar-dashboard · pillar-inbox · pillar-tax · pillar-expense · pillar-portfolio — per-pillar canonical values (entities)
• family-workspace — workspace context, not a fifth pillar
• ask-ca-stream — entry lives inside Tax
• 2026-05-30-foundational-four-pillar-product-structure — the structural pin
• 2026-05-30-charts-mandatory-pillars — chart-per-pillar mandate
• 2026-06-01-v1-inbox-tax-only — V1 scope cut within the four

Sources

• .context/wiki/concepts/* § "The four pillars"
• .context/wiki/concepts/* § "What Chitragupt is"
• .context/wiki/concepts/* § "Hard constraints (V1)" — chart-per-pillar row