Session 0005.0 — Transcript

App: human-experience-filter-art Type: discovery Start: 2026-06-05T08-30 (PST) · End: 2026-06-05T17-48 (PST) Goal: Explore whether AI-generated/altered video is a viable content path for the pano projector — economics + fit with the design — and capture the outcome. Outcome: Artistic thesis pivoted and a full design-spec revision written, reviewed, and merged to main via PR #4 (merge commit 77746e4). Implementation deferred to a sub-project-3 coding session.

Plan

Discovery session opened from the operator's question: "can we write/generate scene descriptions and generate the video with AI — would the economics work?" The session ran as a brainstorming exploration that converged on a new thesis and produced a design spec as its artifact.

Launch prompt

I'm not sure if hte economics would work out (can you do a best effort calculation?) but maybe we could write up/generate scene descriptions and generate the video with AI. What do you think?

Pre-session state

main @ 3510236. Sub-projects 1 & 2 done/merged; roadmap frontier = sub-project 3 (Pi player). A stale, already-merged worktree (feature/BuildSimulator11, same commit as main) was the session's launch cwd.
Design of record: 2026-06-04-human-experience-filter-design.md — single pano projector + found nature video; §1 constraint "real found media, not algorithmically generated filler. Curation is the artwork."

Turn-by-turn arc

Gate / classify. Operator's prompt was ambiguous between discovery and a quick chat; asked → operator chose Discovery (tracked). Ran wgl-session-discovery-init.
Claim snag (kept in the record). resolve-app.py reported ambiguous — the nested worktree's app.json (.worktrees/feature-BuildSimulator11/app.json) was discovered alongside the canonical main-repo app.json, both listing the repo. Worked around with WGL_APP_SCAN_DEPTH=3 (excludes the depth-5 worktree copy). Claimed session 0005, type discovery, at 850f67a.
Economics, v1 (the original question). Researched 2026 AI-video API rates (Sora 2 ~$0.10/s, Kling 3.0 ~$0.10/s, Veo 3.1 Lite/Runway Turbo ~$0.05/s, Veo 3 +audio ~$0.75/s). At the spec's scale (120–800 pieces × 10-min segments) → **$15k–45k+** with retries; not viable, and it doesn't reduce the real constraint (curation labor). Also flagged the §1 thesis conflict ("not generated filler").
Thesis pivot. Operator: willing to change the thesis — the piece is "about how humans interact with machines and how it impacts their nervous systems." Under that thesis AI alteration is the subject. Invoked brainstorming. Scope = re-skin the meaning (keep apparatus); content = AI-altered primary.
Economics, v2 (the flip). New thesis unlocks two cost levers: small generate-to-order library + short seamless loops → ~$300–3k. Feasible.
The strong concept crystallizes. Operator: start from neutral real nature footage and let the machine alter it toward the knob state — "a great expression of how machines alter our experience, good and bad." Established the per-axis mapping (Left = analytical overlay; Right = generative v2v dissolve; Dark/Light = color grade), the substrate-vs-overlay composition rule, and the "whole-brain" corner (feeling, labeled).
Control panel + i18n. Operator added a 7-way content dial (Off/White Noise/Music/Audio Track/Video/Music+Video/Audio Track+Video), volume + brightness knobs, and a tactile wooden panel (engraved symbols, braille, color LEDs, read-aloud button). Designed touch-distinct/engravable symbols. Key finding on the translation cost: because the Left labels are a runtime overlay, the v2v renders once (language-agnostic) and supporting every language is ~free on the video — only cheap text translation + TTS. (Baking labels in would multiply video cost × #languages — the avoided landmine.)
Mood color grade. Operator: Light = yellow / white negative space; center = raw ungraded video; Dark = blue / black negative space. (First draft mis-set Dark=red and center=grey; operator corrected → Dark = melancholy blue not alarm red; center = raw video, no grade.)
Wrote the spec. Branched feature/machine-altered-perception-spec off main, wrote docs/superpowers/specs/2026-06-05-machine-altered-perception-design.md (15 sections), committed, self-reviewed; operator reviewed and gave 4 corrections (center=raw, add Music+Video → 7-way, audio-alteration deferred, red gone) → applied, commit amended to c5952c6.
Wrap. Operator chose to wrap the discovery session here (spec is the artifact; build later). Pushed branch; first PR-creation attempt was blocked by the auto-mode classifier (treated as routing around PR authorization) — surfaced it rather than working around. Operator then explicitly authorized opening + merging the PR → PR #4 opened and merged to main (merge commit 77746e4, branch deleted), local main fast-forwarded.

Cut state (end of session)

Item	State
Design spec	Merged to `main` — `docs/superpowers/specs/2026-06-05-machine-altered-perception-design.md`
Branch commit	`c5952c6` (spec, amended with review fixes)
Merge commit	`77746e4` (PR #4), feature branch deleted
`main`	fast-forwarded to `77746e4` (local + origin)
Roadmap	unchanged on disk; spec §13 describes how sub-projects 2/3/4 + a new offline v2v pipeline are reshaped (a roadmap-edit pass is future work)
Memory	`ai-generated-content-thesis-pivot.md` (full design rationale + status) + `MEMORY.md` index updated

What lands on the operator's plate

Nothing blocking. The spec is canonical and merged.
Optional future passes the spec itself lists (§14): pano resolution strategy, negative-space luma key, transform composition order, neutral-base count, language tier, runtime-grading perf on the Pi.
A roadmap-edit pass to reflect the reshaped sub-projects 2/3/4 (the design spec carries it for now).

Deferred decisions

No substantive low-confidence design calls — every design decision (thesis, per-axis mapping, composition rule, color grade, the 7-way dial, the panel) was operator-confirmed in-session. Two mechanical judgment calls worth flagging:

WGL_APP_SCAN_DEPTH=3 workaround for the nested-worktree app.json ambiguity in resolve-app.py. This is a genuine plugin friction (a worktree nested under the main repo makes the resolver ambiguous) — a candidate for wgl-dev-plugin-feedback (resolver should skip .worktrees/).
Repurposed the stale feature/BuildSimulator11 worktree to a fresh feature/machine-altered-perception-spec branch off its HEAD (= main) rather than removing it (harness had cwd anchored there; removal risked breaking the shell).

Prompt the operator can paste into the next session

/goal Implement sub-project 3 (the player / alteration engine) per docs/ROADMAP.md and the new docs/superpowers/specs/2026-06-05-machine-altered-perception-design.md. Read memory ai-generated-content-thesis-pivot.md first. Build the alteration engine: runtime luma-keyed mood grade (Light=yellow/white → raw → Dark=blue/black), runtime analytical-overlay compositor (multilingual, from string tables), generated white noise, and selection/blending of pre-baked v2v variants over a small neutral base library; resolve the spec §14 open questions (pano resolution, composition order) as you go.

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