Public readiness copy, CTA, and image pass

[ryanbaumann]

Motivation

• Make the repository README and site copy suitable for an external audience by giving a clear, catchy repo pitch and quick-start guidance.
• Surface solution architecture, forward-deployed incubation, and product-growth leadership alongside developer-experience engineering without overstating claims.
• Improve site header actions and thumbnails so visitors can discover the live demos and contact quickly, and ensure images are honest, checked-in assets when external sources are not available.

Description

• Refresh the root README to a more public-facing pitch, quick-start table, architecture summary, security posture, and contribution guidance (README.md).
• Update site positioning and copy in portfolio/content/site.json and the About page to emphasize solution architecture, forward-deployed incubation, and product growth while keeping claims tied to shipped artifacts (portfolio/content/pages/about.md).
• Add persistent header CTAs and lightweight styling by wiring See demos / Get in touch into the HTML layout and CSS (portfolio/build.mjs, portfolio/style.css).
• Use checked-in preview images and wire the portfolio app card thumbnail by updating apps.json and several work entries, and document the pass in CHANGELOG.md and LEARNINGS.md (multiple portfolio/content/work/*.md, CHANGELOG.md, LEARNINGS.md).

Testing

• Ran the portfolio build with cd portfolio && node build.mjs, which completed and validated metadata for all pages. (passed)
• Built and staged all apps with npm run build (root scripts/build-local.mjs), which completed successfully. (passed)
• Ran the end-to-end smoke checks with npm run smoke, which executed the gateway smoke suite and reported 17 passed, 0 failed. (passed)
• Attempted an automated Playwright screenshot to refresh the hero preview but the environment lacked Playwright browser binaries so the screenshot step failed; the image pass used existing checked-in previews instead and a learning was recorded. (limited)

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Codex Task