docs: drop the method disclosure, keep the one caveat that earns its place

The "how these schools are chosen" panel restated what the section already
shows — the phase in the lede, the shared characteristics on each card, the
distance above each name — so it cost space to say nothing new.

One line survives, and it is not a method note. A reader who sees "0.6 miles
away" and takes it for the walk has been misled by us, and no other element
on the card corrects that. The rest were claims the selection rules keep
true without narrating them.

Also records what happens past the third school: surplus matches are dropped
silently, because NearbyPlaces below already leads to the full lists.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/superpowers/plans/2026-09-21-similar-schools-nearby.md

@@ -41,6 +41,11 @@ Playwright.
   `"Mixed"`, `"Boys"` or `"Girls"`.
 - **Copy rule:** the lede says "with a similar intake" only when no card is
   tier 3. A missing metric renders the exact string `Not published`.
+- **No "how these schools are chosen" disclosure.** One caption line only:
+  distances are straight-line, not road distance.
+- **Three cards maximum, with no overflow affordance.** Surplus qualifying
+  schools are dropped silently; `NearbyPlaces` below already leads to the full
+  lists.
 - **The neighbour's metric never carries a valence colour.** No
   `--status-above` / `--status-below` anywhere in this feature.
 - **Backend tests:**
@@ -868,6 +873,12 @@ describe('cards', () => {
     renderSection([school(), school({ urn: 100003 })]);
     expect(screen.getByTestId('compare-bar')).toHaveTextContent('bar for 100001');
   });
+
+  it('says distances are straight-line, and offers no method panel', () => {
+    const { container } = renderSection([school(), school({ urn: 100003 })]);
+    expect(screen.getByText(/straight-line from this school/i)).toBeInTheDocument();
+    expect(container.querySelector('details')).toBeNull();
+  });
 });
 ```
 
@@ -1040,6 +1051,10 @@ Create `nextjs-app/components/school/SimilarSchoolsSection.tsx`:
  * The lede only claims a similar intake when no card came from tier 3, and a
  * card's chips list what that school actually shares rather than a match it
  * did not earn.
+ *
+ * There is deliberately no "how these are chosen" panel: the method is already
+ * visible in the lede, the chips and the distances. The single caption line is
+ * not a method note — it is the one thing a card cannot self-correct.
  */
 
 import Link from 'next/link';
@@ -1095,27 +1110,6 @@ export function SimilarSchoolsSection({
           : `Other ${phaseNoun} schools near ${schoolName}, with a similar intake.`}
       </p>
 
-      <details className={styles.method}>
-        <summary>How these schools are chosen</summary>
-        <div>
-          <p>
-            Schools of the same phase, nearest first, preferring those whose intake
-            resembles this one — gender, religious character, and whether the school
-            selects by ability. Special schools are only ever compared with other
-            special schools.
-          </p>
-          <p>
-            The labels on each card list what that school actually shares with this
-            one. Where nothing close enough was found nearby, the match is loosened
-            and the labels say less.
-          </p>
-          <p>
-            Distances are straight-line from this school, not road distance and not
-            from your home. Being listed here is not a recommendation.
-          </p>
-        </div>
-      </details>
-
       <ul className={styles.grid}>
         {schools.map((school) => (
           <li key={school.urn} className={styles.school}>
@@ -1158,6 +1152,13 @@ export function SimilarSchoolsSection({
       </ul>
 
       <SimilarSchoolsCompareBar thisUrn={urn} candidates={schools} />
+
+      {/* The one caveat the cards cannot make on their own: a reader who takes
+          "0.6 miles away" for the walk has been misled, and nothing else here
+          corrects that. */}
+      <p className={styles.caption}>
+        Distances are straight-line from this school, not road distance.
+      </p>
     </Section>
   );
 }
@@ -1170,13 +1171,8 @@ Create `nextjs-app/components/school/SimilarSchools.module.css`. Tokens only —
 
 ```css
 .heading { font-family: var(--font-display); font-size: 1.4rem; letter-spacing: -0.4px; margin: 0; }
-.lede { margin: 0.5rem 0 0; color: var(--text-secondary); max-width: 64ch; }
-
-.method { margin: 0.9rem 0 1.4rem; }
-.method summary { cursor: pointer; color: var(--brand); font-size: 0.85rem; font-weight: 500; width: fit-content; }
-.method div { margin-top: 0.6rem; padding: 0.9rem 1rem; background: var(--bg-secondary); border-radius: 8px; }
-.method p { margin: 0 0 0.55rem; font-size: 0.82rem; color: var(--text-secondary); max-width: 70ch; }
-.method p:last-child { margin-bottom: 0; }
+.lede { margin: 0.5rem 0 1.25rem; color: var(--text-secondary); max-width: 64ch; }
+.caption { margin: 1rem 0 0; font-size: 0.72rem; color: var(--text-muted); }
 
 .grid { display: grid; grid-template-columns: repeat(3, minmax(0, 1fr)); gap: 0.9rem; list-style: none; margin: 0; padding: 0; }
 @media (max-width: 820px) { .grid { grid-template-columns: repeat(2, minmax(0, 1fr)); } }

docs/superpowers/specs/2026-09-21-similar-schools-nearby-design.md

@@ -105,6 +105,13 @@ the promise in the heading and a reader scanning the row reads the first card as
 the closest. A tier-2 school at 0.4 miles therefore appears above a tier-1
 school at 2.9 miles, and the chips explain the difference in match quality.
 
+**More than three qualifying schools are dropped, not paginated.** In a dense
+urban area dozens of schools clear tier 1, and the section shows the three
+nearest of them. There is no "show more" and no count of what was left out,
+because `NearbyPlaces` sits directly beneath and already answers "more schools
+near here" by linking to the place pages — which are the pages built for
+browsing a full list, and which the school page exists to feed.
+
 **Fewer than two results renders nothing.** Not an empty state, not a single
 lonely card, not padding with schools that failed the hard filters. The section
 is absent, the nav item is absent, and the page is unchanged from today. A page
@@ -170,7 +177,7 @@ match the selection did not actually make.
 
 `components/school/SimilarSchoolsSection.tsx` — a server component wrapped in
 the shared `Section` shell from `sectionShared.tsx`. It renders the heading,
-the lede, the `<details>` disclosure, the card grid and the footer CTA. Every
+the lede, the card grid, the footer CTA and one caption line. Every
 card's title is an `<a>` to the school's canonical slug URL via `schoolUrl()`.
 
 `components/school/AddToCompareButton.tsx` — the only `'use client'` file this
@@ -228,11 +235,17 @@ reference line, and the reader draws their own conclusion.
 em dash. This follows the same rule the rest of the detail page uses: a school
 with no published result has not scored zero.
 
-**The disclosure states the method plainly** — same phase, nearest first,
-preferring a similar intake, special schools only ever compared with special
-schools, straight-line distance from the school rather than road distance or
-distance from the reader's home, and that being listed here is not a
-recommendation.
+**There is no "how these are chosen" disclosure.** The method is visible in what
+the section already shows — the phase in the lede, the shared characteristics on
+each card, the distance above each name — and a collapsed panel restating it
+earns less than the space it costs.
+
+**One caption line survives, and only one:** that distances are straight-line
+from the school and not road distance. This is not a method note. A reader who
+sees "0.6 miles away" and takes it for the walk has been misled by us, and no
+other element on the card corrects that. The remaining notes — that listing is
+not a recommendation, that special schools only meet special schools — are
+statements the selection rules already keep true without being narrated.
 
 ## Degradation