Expense pillar redesigned · cashflow-first replaces burn-only

Decision

Redesign the Expense pillar around cashflow framing (Income / Expense / Invested / Saving + deficit-month markers) and collapse the 4 state-per-file variants of expense-unlocked into a single data-driven page.

Why

The previous Expense Review answered "what did I spend?" but missed the question that matters: "did I live within my income, and which months drew from balance?" Side-by-side audit of a real-data analysis (/Users/rsf/git/personal/documents/docs/ritesh/finance/expense-analysis.html) showed cashflow framing (Income / Expense / Invested / Saving + deficit-month markers) is materially more useful than burn-only. The original design also fragmented "unlocked" state into 4 separate wireframes (healthy / over-budget / subscription-creep / anomaly) which AI assistance kept drifting.

Impact

• Single data-driven expense-review.html replaces the 4 state-per-file variants + Past AY page. Status banner (healthy / deficit / creep) switches off data.
• Deleted: expense-unlocked-healthy.html, expense-unlocked-over.html, expense-unlocked-creep.html, expense-unlocked-anomaly.html, expense-past-ay.html, expense-budget-modal.html.
• New layout: KPI strip (Income / Expense / Invested / Saving) → cashflow stacked bars + deficit triangles → where-money-went donut → largest single outflows → narrative action items + methodology + per-account coverage. Removed from the main page: top-merchants table, recurring-subs panel, categorise-misc sticky aside, auto-sweep CTA, pause-subs CTA. Categorisation now lives on /expense/transactions (which still carries the teaching loop).
• AY pills retained as outer frame; new range pills (1M / 3M / 1Y / Full AY / Custom) added as inner zoom. (Later refined by 2026-06-11-ay-selector-tax-only which drops AY pills from Expense entirely.)
• expense.html (locked teaser) and expense-empty.html rebuilt to mirror the new layout (blurred KPI strip + blurred cashflow chart / dashed-border placeholders); locked-page pricing brought current (Self ₹249 / AI Self ₹499 / Pro Family ₹799) per .context/wiki/entities/* 2026-05-31 reset.
• .context/wiki/entities/* Expense chart spec rewritten (cashflow + donut + outflows; budget concept dropped). .context/wiki/surfaces/* collapsed the 4 unlocked rows into one and notes the divergence from mobile. Routes index chip list trimmed.
• Mobile Expense wireframes propagated same day — .context/designs/mobile/app/expense/ follows the same shape (KPI 2×2 grid, compressed cashflow chart, single-column outflows / action items / methodology / coverage). Same 6 mobile files deleted, same internal hrefs redirected, mobile chrome data-chrome-routes attribute and .context/designs/mobile/index.html chip list both updated.
• Affects pillar-expense, copy-strings, tier-self, tier-ai-self, tier-pro-family.

Status

Active (wireframe-only · code-side migration falls under V3 Expense polish per .context/features/index.md).

Sources

• .context/wiki/decisions/* § "2026-06-11 — Expense pillar redesigned · cashflow-first replaces burn-only"