Session 0018.0 — Transcript

App: human-experience-filter-art Start: 2026-06-25T09-42 (PST) End: 2026-06-26T05-56 (PST) Type: planning-and-executing Posture: yolo Claude-Session: b96041e5-c682-49f5-88ee-380ea7abb6af Status: FINALIZED

Launch prompt

Find a better public-domain nebula flythrough video for the cosmos scale (the current text-free SVS Orion clip lost quality when cropped to remove its text overlay), or upscale the existing one if no better source exists.

A content-and-polish session on the simulator's cosmos scale that grew, by operator follow-ups, into four merged PRs: the nebula swap, two cache fixes, a ring-landing artifact fix, and a Right-brain affect rework.

Pre-state

Branch feature/ring-transitions-real (later merged): HEAD 129bb23 had just swapped the cosmos primary off the captioned/cropped JPL "Orion: Dust and Death" clip onto the text-free SVS 30957 Orion flythrough.
Sim served by a manually-launched uvicorn ... --port 8000 (no --reload), booted before the session's media changes.
Affect channel gated on min(left, right) (session 0013 rule).
Concurrent unfinalized sessions present (0015, 0017).

Arc (turn by turn)

Anchor + research. Classified as planning-and-executing, claimed session 0018. Found the current cosmos clip was already the uncropped text-free SVS 30957 Orion (the crop damage the prompt described was already fixed at HEAD). Researched NASA SVS: (a) the same Orion clip exists in 4K; (b) the Webb "Cosmic Cliffs" Carina flythrough (SVS 31348) is a 4K PD alternative. Offered three options; operator chose #2 — switch to Cosmic Cliffs.
Cosmos swap (PR #21). Downloaded the Carina 4K master (Clifs-3d-STScI.mp4, 3840×2160, 60 fps, 103 s), sampled frames to find a clean window, trimmed 10–34 s (clears the title card ~8 s and the end-credit card ~102 s), ran tools.pipeline.run.process_clip → 4K master + supersampled 1080p base (5.5 Mbps, crisper than the old 2.9 Mbps Orion encode). Updated build_pool_manifest.py META (new CCBY_WEBB credit, Carina labels: emission nebula / protostar, redshift→distance ≈7,500 ly), regenerated manifest.json (also corrected stale JPL-Orion provenance) + all ring-edge transitions, and docs/content-candidate-pool.md. Operator authorized the merge → opened + merged PR #21 (the whole feature/ring-transitions-real line), synced main, deleted the local branch. Remote branch delete returned HTTP 405 (known Gitea perm limit).
"Still seeing Orion" — caching (PRs #22, #23). Diagnosed: the sim server (PID 33672) had been running since before the media swap and was launched without --reload, holding the pre-swap manifest in memory; the browser also held the old clip via the in-memory blob preload and a possible pre- no-cache immutable HTTP entry. Restarted the server with make sim-local (--reload). Shipped PR #22 (cache: "reload" on the preload fetch), then — at operator request for a permanent fix — PR #23: a content-hash GET /api/media-versions endpoint (sha1[:12] per served file, cached by mtime/size) and client ?v=<hash> on every /media URL, so a re-baked clip's URL changes with its bytes.
Coast landing artifact (in PR #23). Operator noticed zooming into coast showed birdrock then switched to another clip. Root cause: the baked ring transition lands on the scale primary (birdrock), but the rotating pool picks a random member on landing — a non-primary pick hard-cut from primary to chosen. Fix: advance() masks the swap behind a short fade through the existing #black overlay when target_clip_id !== ring.scales[to_index].clip_id; general across all pooled scales.
Right-brain affect (PR #24). Operator: emotions should be controlled by the right brain, not the left. Reversed affect.strength = min(left, right) → strength = right; intensity keyed off Right; Left no longer gates emotions. Updated engine + client comments + the affect design spec (revision note) + tests. Live-verified: left=0/right=4 → strength 4; left=4/right=0 → 0.

Cut state

main @ (session-0018 merges all landed): PRs #21 (7da7446), #22 (aa56dfe), #23 (5bb762a), #24 (d0ad9a9) — all confirmed in main's ancestry. Session 0019 has since advanced main further (cosmos_miri pool member, networked-control-surface spec, sim-local venv fix).
Tests: 271 passed, 2 skipped (+ media-version tests + rewritten affect tests).
Sim: running on :8000 as uvicorn --reload (PID 50199, restarted this session). The cosmos Cosmic Cliffs clip, content-hash cache-bust, coast fade, and Right-only affect are all live and API/logic-verified.
No plan artifact archived — leaf content/polish task executed directly (no superpowers:writing-plans doc).

Operator plate

Cosmic Cliffs looks "incredible" (operator) — the cosmos primary is now the Webb Carina flythrough.
Unverified by eye (no Chrome on the box): the coast landing fade timing, and the Right-only affect look (Left=0 + Right up should show emotion words over an un-annotated scene). Worth a by-eye pass in make sim-local.
Pipeline §9: changes merged to main (= done); no PPE/prod run — the E2E + PPE machinery is still being built (§10.6), and the simulator is a local dev surface. Not shipped to prod.
Left untouched (not this session's work): session 0019's in-flight audio work is dirty in the tree (docs/audio-candidate-pool.md, .gitignore audio entries) — left for 0019 to finalize. Pre-existing unfinalized sessions 0015, 0017, 0019 remain --INPROGRESS.

Deferred decisions

None logged — every call this session was operator-directed (the option-2 clip choice, the permanent cache-bust request, the Right-brain affect direction).

Next-session prompt

/goal By-eye review of session 0018's sim changes in `make sim-local` (:8000): the
Webb Cosmic Cliffs cosmos clip, the coast/pool landing fade (no hard cut to the
random member), and Right-only emotions (Left=0 + Right up shows feeling words over
an un-annotated scene). Tune the ~200ms fade timing if it feels off. Then continue
the experience/content line — deferred i2v ring transitions and/or the Pi renderer
(per [[simulator-first-before-hardware]]). Note: session 0019 separately owns the
audio pool + networked-control-surface work.

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