Solution design for a no-origin public target at
benstull.art/human-experience-simulator (apex redirects): static frontend on
Pages, ~2GB served media on R2 behind static.benstull.art, dynamic logic baked
to JSON / moved client-side. Records the deliberate flotilla/PPE process
exception for a static art target.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ascending the altitude dial and landing on the higher-altitude clip jumped ~3
seconds. A baked morph `transitions/{h}__{l}.mp4` spans src@0 (frac 0) ->
dst@~LOOP_TAIL_S (frac 1) and is scrubbed bidirectionally, but the steady loop
element always seeked LOOP_TAIL_S (3.0s) on landing. Descending lands on dst at
its tail (matches the seek — the s0026 loop-from-tail fix); ascending lands on
src at the morph's HEAD (src@0), so seeking the tail was a 3s jump.
Make the loop landing frame direction-aware: pure `HEFScrub.loopLandFrame(dir,
loopTailS)` returns 0 when ascending, loopTailS otherwise. `loadLoop` takes a
`landFrame`, stores it as `dataset.loopStart`, and the timeupdate/ended wrap
handlers honor it (the base clips are already seamless crossfade-loops, so a
reverse landing wraps [0,dur] cleanly). The settle path lands explicitly on the
direction's frame so a fast ascent never jumps even if the heading clip wasn't
preloaded in time. App-side only — no 154-morph LFS re-bake.
Verify: node unit (loopLandFrame) + a new reverse-landing e2e asserting the loop
anchors at the head (loopStart "0"), and the existing forward "loops from tail"
e2e still green (12/12 altitude-lock).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every rotating-pool clip shipped with right-brain `affect` (auto-generated per
scale by _affect_for_clip) but only 13 carried LEFT-brain factual `LABELS`. The
other 28 rendered with no detected.*/measure.* labels at any Left knob level.
Authors static tiered labels (general → specific → scientific → +fact) for all
28 — 5 cosmos, 4 orbit, 8 sky, 5 coast, 2 reef, 4 abyss — in build_pool_manifest.py
following the existing static_label pattern, plus their es/fr/ja translations in
tools/i18n/catalogs (binomials/measurements kept verbatim; units localized per
each catalog's convention). Rebuilds the manifest and merges all four languages.
Result: 41/41 clips now have left+right annotations with full en/es/fr/ja parity.
Labels are static (footage not eyeballed); the abyss/reef creature clips could
later be upgraded to tracked labels via author mode.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The post-load autoStart() flipped Video on and lifted audio to 3/10 with no
user gesture. Browser autoplay policy blocks an audio play() made outside a
gesture (muted video survives, sound does not), so auto-start showed video but
stayed silent. Boot SILENT instead and wait for the operator to turn Video on —
that click IS the gesture, and its handler couples audio to 3/10 and starts the
soundtrack in-gesture, so sound reliably comes up with video.
Updates the pytest e2e + Playwright e2e specs to assert boot-silent + the
video-on-couples-audio wiring instead of the old auto-start wiring.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Root cause: the steady-state loop (#vid-loop) restarts only via a narrow
timeupdate window (last 0.08s -> seek to LOOP_TAIL_S), with native loop off.
Headless Chromium reliably lands a final timeupdate in that window, but under
real-browser decode/GPU load a timeupdate can skip past it; the clip then fires
'ended' and freezes on its last frame ('videos aren't looping'). There was no
recovery path. Add an 'ended' listener that seeks back to the tail and resumes,
guaranteeing the loop regardless of the timeupdate race. No change to normal
playback. Proven by a Playwright regression test that forces the ended state.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Localizes simulator UI controls + Left/Right annotations with a live
language dropdown. English default, session-only. 41 clips × 4 langs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
41 clips, 753 string-variants per language, structure-validated (key-sets
and tier-counts identical to en). Escalation semantics preserved.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Design for a language dropdown localizing the simulator UI controls and
the Left/Right brain annotations. This pass: en/es/fr/ja (Hebrew + Chinese
deferred — no RTL work in scope). English default, session-only (no
persistence), English fallback on missing keys. Annotations extend the
existing per-clip strings dict (no schema change); ~2,260 strings authored
via a one-shot idempotent translate_manifest tool.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Expanded-pools sky-scale work plus two experience tweaks:
- New `sky` altitude (airplane-window / low-flight layer) between orbit and
coast; RING_ORDER cosmos·orbit·sky·coast·reef·abyss. New clip pools across
all scales, re-baked the full adjacent-pair morph set (all-intra, LFS), and
removed the now-stale cosmos↔abyss transitions the old ring order produced.
- Auto-start: once the preload finishes the experience turns Video on and
raises the audio dial to 3/10 with no user gesture (app.js autoStart()).
- Dropped reef_hawaiian (text overlay — violates the text-free pool rule);
reef pool 7→6, manifest transitions 586→558.
Tests: rewrote tests/test_e2e_audio.py for the dial UI + auto-start; updated
the manifest morph-count assertions and the altitude-scrub target for the new
ring order. 302 pytest + 11 Playwright e2e + 9 node unit all green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator: slow click/auto transitions 2x and make them the same speed between any two
altitudes (2 away should take twice as long as 1). autoScrub duration is now
PROPORTIONAL to distance (PER_ALTITUDE_MS=1200, ~2x the old fixed 600ms total): a
label-click or wheel jump of N altitudes takes N*1200ms, so per-step speed is constant.
Manual drag is unaffected (operator drives its speed). E2E asserts a 2-step jump is
~2x a 1-step.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator: audio turned off sometimes after landing on a new altitude. Root cause:
fadeVolume started a setInterval ramp that was never cancelled. When restAudio faded
the idle element to 0 and — within FADE_MS — that same element became the newly-landed
ACTIVE scale (assignElements reuses an element per soundtrack url), the stale fade-to-0
kept running and dragged the now-active element back to silence. Fix: cancelFade()
supersedes any in-flight fade when a new fade starts (fadeVolume) or a direct volume
is set (ensurePlaying). E2E proves a new fade supersedes a stale one (fails without
the fix).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator request. Replaces the Audio checkbox with a 0-10 range slider that sets the
master soundtrack gain (audioVol = level/10), scaling both the per-scale rest volume
and the two-track scrub crossfade. Level 0 = silent. Turning Video on for the first
time now raises audio to 3/10 (was: full on) so the experience opens gently; raising
the slider from 0 unlocks playback in-gesture (Safari). E2E: dial is range 0-10
default 0, and first video-on lifts it to 3/10.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator eyeball: a jolt/pause when the morph ends and the next altitude's loop
loads. Root cause: swapping vid.src to the base + seeking to the tail reloaded the
ON-SCREEN element (decode + seek stall). Now a dedicated #vid-loop element carries
the steady-state base loop; during a scrub it is PRELOADED to the clip we're heading
toward, seeked to the tail and paused on that exact frame. The paint shader reads the
active source (busy ? morph : loop), so landing is an instant source swap — no reload,
no seek. E2E asserts the loop element is armed + playing from ~3s after landing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator eyeball feedback: the red snapper clip opened with a black 'Northern Red
Snapper / fishwatch.gov' title card. Re-trimmed reef_snapper/base.mp4 to drop the
first 3.0s (the card; footage is clean from 3.0s), 23s->20s, and re-baked the 7
reef_snapper morph pairs (+ reverses) all-intra from the clean base. Verified the
snapper-dominant morph frames are text-free.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Operator eyeball feedback: landing on an altitude jump-cut the loop back to frame 0.
Each morph reproduces the destination clip's first 3s (pipeline trim=0:3) and ends on
dst@~3s, so the steady-state loop now starts at LOOP_TAIL_S=3.0 and loops within
[3.0, duration] — the morph's last frame hands straight off to the loop, and the
morph-covered intro never re-shows at rest (removes the overlapping 'altitude video
that is part of the morph'). E2E asserts a landed clip loops from ~3s, not 0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 7. Every frame now a keyframe (verified 93/93 I-frames on a sample),
so the scrub interaction seeks to arbitrary frames smoothly. Total transitions
173M -> 504M; largest clip ~5.8M (well under the 25MB LFS/proxy ceiling).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 7. Extracts transition_cmd/reverse_cmd argv builders and adds the
ALL_INTRA flag set (-g 1 -keyint_min 1 -sc_threshold 0) so every baked frame is a
keyframe — smooth arbitrary-frame seeking for the scrub interaction. Unit-tested.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 5. Replaces the .rev-asserting zoom-out test with a turn-back test
(same forward morph seeked backward, audio recedes, re-locks the start clip); adds
a detent-crossing commit+lock test via a new window.__hefState diagnostic seam.
Full tier (6 tests) green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 4. onWheel + jumpToScale now animate pos via autoScrub() (drives the
same setPos scrub path, ~600ms, lands exactly on the integer + locks). Removes the
now-dead advance()/playTransition()/FAST_BLEND_RATE (the server /api/ring/advance
round-trip is no longer used by the client). Post-landing morph warm-up folded into
setPos's settle branch.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 3. A continuous float pos is the knob: setPos() seeks the segment's
morph currentTime by frac (throttled one seek/rAF), crossfades audio, sweeps the
needle live, and commits+locks+re-rolls on each integer crossing. Drag live-scrubs
(no more commit-on-release); release holds the blend (no auto-complete). Client-side
pool pick replaces the server round-trip for drag.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 2. Adds <audio id=aud-b>; blendAudio(lo,frac) mixes the two
adjacent scale soundtracks by knob fraction (element reuse across crossings so
only the genuinely-new scale reloads); restAudio settles a single scale at rest.
Diagnostic readout now reports whichever element is audible.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per plan Task 1. position->segment, frac->currentTime, audio gains, and
integer-crossing detection; 9 node --test cases green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Plan for the approved design at
docs/superpowers/specs/2026-06-27-scrub-driven-altitude-transitions-design.md.
Two phases: (1) scrub interaction against current morphs, (2) all-intra re-bake.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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