`:over` was specified in animation-model.md, refused in two places, and
produced by nothing: `check-unimplemented!` threw on read and `channel/problems`
reported it. It reads now. This is the part of the model the rotoscoping half
depends on — generate motion, correct it by hand, turn the knob, keep the
correction — and it was the last thing in the design that had never been tried.
The shape that made it small: A LAYER'S VALUES ARE A CHANNEL.
{:id :nudge :support [88 98] :op :offset
:values {:animated? true :interp :linear :keys {88 [2 0], 96 [0 0]}}}
So the three commands the lane model asks for over a selected range — a
constant adjustment, a ramp, a return motion — are one mechanism and not three:
framed values say the same thing on every frame they cover, keyed values move,
and neither needs a new way to say what a value is over time. A layer reads
through `value-at` and `cursor` like any channel, which is also what stopped
blending from becoming two implementations: `over-at` is shared, and the
specification and the playback path differ only in how they READ a layer —
recursively through `value-at`, or through a reading head of its own. One level
deep; a layer's values may not carry layers, which the stack already orders.
That was the risk worth spiking for. A cursor that drifts produces the wrong
pose rather than an error, and a stack means several reading heads per channel
where there was one. The agreement test that holds the cursor to the
specification in forward, backward and random frame order now covers stacked
channels too — including a layer whose head is asked for nothing across the long
stretches outside its support and then asked again, which is where drift would
hide.
`:support` is half-open and explicit. Outside it the base evaluates exactly as
it did before, which is the whole difference between a bounded correction and
inserting boundary keys: the latter alters the neighbouring segments, and the
lane model says so.
A LAYER HAS NO TIME SPACE OF ITS OWN, and this is the design question the doc
left open. Its support and its values' keys are in the frames the base channel's
keys are in — the node's. A correction on a lane is therefore in lane frames and
reaches across the drawings exposed beneath it; one on a single occurrence is in
that occurrence's frames and travels with it when the exposure moves. Ownership
had already answered it, so there is no field to disagree with, and both halves
are under test at lane level.
Two things cost nothing, which is worth recording. A channel is ONE LEAF, so a
correction persists inside it with no codec change at all. And `node/problems`
already reports every channel's problems, so a malformed layer surfaces at the
document level and in the sequence commands' post-check without plumbing.
What is still missing is a command that MAKES one, and with it the question of
how a view offers a constant, a ramp and a return over a selected range. The
evaluator no longer has an opinion about that, which was the point.
`offset` adds component-wise and never writes into a dense value, which is a
view onto the block itself; a shape mismatch throws rather than being dropped,
since a correction that silently does not take is the failure this design exists
to prevent. `replace` can supply a value over an absent base and `offset`
cannot, as animation-model.md required.
408 tests, 5,655 assertions.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A lane's drawings were going to be one instance whose source was a KEYED
channel: frame 0 says `:drawing-a`, frame 4 says `:drawing-b`, and the cels of
a row are that channel's keys. Two things followed from it, and both were
wrong.
The first is that playback meant whichever shape the channel happened to have.
A framed source played its symbol; a keyed source froze the selected frame.
So `node/placed-at` read animation out of storage, and adding an ordinary key
to a still turned it into an animation — the last-key bug, which was not a bug
in the code so much as the rule working as written. But WHICH drawing is used
and HOW time runs inside it are independent questions, and all four combinations
are ordinary: hold one drawing, play one animation, cut between held drawings,
cut between playing ones.
So an occurrence names one symbol in `:source {:symbol ...}` and says how its
source time advances in `:playback {:in :speed :end}` — `source = in + speed *
f`, a hold being speed 0, with `:stop`, `:hold` or `:loop` at the end named
rather than guessed. `node/placed-frame` samples it forwards, which works for
holds too, and `node/source-time` is the separate, invertible edit map, nil
where inversion is meaningless. The two were one function before, and a hold
had to lie about one of them.
The second is that a keyed source only looked necessary because an occurrence
was assumed to need a ROW. It does not. A lane is a group with `:layout
:sequence`, its occurrences are ordinary instances in the same flat node map,
and `timeline/rows` draws them as cel blocks on the lane's own row: twelve
exposures, one row, each cel still separately selectable and addressable. The
vertical growth that justified the keyed source is a presentation question, and
it is answered in the view.
`arthur.domain.sequence` holds the first commands over that shape — add lane,
append drawing, extend hold — each one history step, each refusing rather than
half-applying. Extending a hold leaves the lane's keys at their authored times,
because you are adjusting drawings underneath timed motion; a correction owned
by an occurrence travels with it. Ownership does that work, so no key needs a
flag saying what it follows. Ripple past the symbol's end is refused with the
frame count it would need, and `:extent :grow-symbol` is the caller saying yes.
`clip/blank` no longer carries `:subjects {} :features {} :groups {}`. Empty
maps write no leaf, so a blank document could not survive its own round trip —
`leaf/leaves` promises exactness and was the only honest side of that.
Documents are schema 3. A version 2 document is not read; nothing here converts
one. `docs/lane-model.md` is the design, and says which of its parts are built.
392 tests, 5,525 assertions, and `test/browser/sequence.mjs` drives the editor
through create, hold, explicit overflow and undo.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every node now has the same time map into its parent, local = rate·(parent
− at), with its span and keys in its own frames: what instances had, made the
rule. A shape without a time map reads as it always did, so no data changes.
The per-kind branches, the span-start term and the rate refusal are gone;
node/time-of, then-time and invert-time compose it like the matrix.
clip/move-node puts a node into another symbol without changing the picture
or the timing — its matrix becomes a :pinv, its time a new :at and :rate, and
its channels, keys and span are untouched — and clip/group makes a new symbol
around side-by-side nodes. Generated parts, split stencils, cycles and
looping instances are refused with the reason. Nested sounds use the same
map.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A shape's :span stays in its parent's frames, but an instance's or a sound's
is now in its own: dropping a symbol at frame 97 gives it span 0 … length and
:at 97, so moving it along its parent is one write to :at. :time :in is gone
(it was the span's start written twice); node/placed-span maps an own-time
span out to the parent for playback, the mixer and the timeline rows, and
node/problems reports a stale :in.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Everything that holds nodes is a symbol (domain/timeline -> domain/symbol,
:timelines -> :symbols) and a node that places one is :kind :instance. The
reserved :main root is gone: which symbol is on screen is editor state
([:ui :open]), every domain function that needs a symbol is told which, and
a document opens on the longest symbol nothing else places.
Saved projects move to schema 2 through migration 0007, which rewrites leaf
paths, instance kinds and the feature :symbol key; the client refuses a
schema it does not read.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Step 9. The tier split was the work; Django was the easy half.
Tier 1 — the authored scene — is the document, and it is addressed as
independently versioned leaves rather than saved whole, so one vertex drag
cannot clobber a collaborator's keying. `domain/leaf` is the document as
path -> value; `domain/wire` puts it on the wire as transit, because JSON
has neither integer map keys nor keywords and a save would quietly turn
`{0 v}` into `{"0" v}`.
Tier 2 — the dense channel blocks — is content-addressed by a hash over
every input, with the detector version inside every key through the
analysis the block descriptor names. `flow/address`'s `block-knobs` is the
invalidation table, and `address-test` does not trust it: it re-freezes the
take once per knob and asserts the biconditional, that a block's bytes
changed if and only if its key changed. That found `brow-pos` not depending
on `contour-avg` — the brow ring is smoothed, the raise is not.
Tier 3 — frames and audio — is served by the hash of its bytes out of the
same store. A manifest now names frames and carries a URL for each, so the
frame layout stopped being a shared secret between a shell script and a
ClojureScript namespace, and the `?v=` cache-buster went with it: a blob's
name is the hash of its contents, so a stale copy is not a thing that can
happen. The synthetic take's `audio.wav` moved to `static/arthur/` — an
asset the project owns, not an extraction that churns.
The server verifies rather than trusting a name it was handed: it
recomputes every key from the descriptor stored beside it, refuses an
analysis that declares no detector version, and refuses a document naming
blocks it does not hold. It hashes the descriptor TEXT, because JS prints
an integral double as `1` and Python as `1.0`, and a scheme where both ends
re-render the numbers disagrees on the first parameter that happens to be
whole.
Two loose ends from step 8 closed on the way. `pack` no longer takes a
`(track, frame)` predicate whose call sites each re-derived a feature from
an index — every track names the feature it follows, which deleted five
hand-maintained mappings. And `:dev-http` is gone: Django serves the page,
shadow-cljs only builds into the staticfiles tree.
227 CLJS tests, 31 Django tests, green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Step 8's data model, ahead of its controls. Nothing here is a UI.
domain/params holds every knob's definition once — default, applicable area,
value constraints and the areas a change would force to regenerate. flow/take's
literal knob map becomes a view of it, so the take's defaults and the future
parameter panel cannot drift apart.
domain/feature adds subjects, features and groups as document data the renderer
never reads. A feature ID is stable for the whole clip, across occlusion: a run
of visible frames is not a new identity. An eye pair is an explicit group of one
or two eyes of the same subject, so a profile view with one identified eye needs
no invented partner. Settings resolve area -> subject -> group -> feature, and
dropping an eye from a pair materialises its effective values first so playback
does not jump. scene/problems now validates all of it.
Presence becomes per-feature rather than per-subject. freeze's :absent predicate
takes a track as well as a frame, so one occluded eye can be absent while its
partner still has a value; a full-face miss still marks everything absent. A
manifest may annotate known gaps as one-based inclusive intervals, which ingest
expands into observation tracks before measurement. An unobserved eye then gets
no vote in the iris pairing and cannot steer the shared gaze — gaze falls back to
whichever eye is visible. Temporal filters still see a sample on every frame,
held from the last observed one, because the numbers are a rectangular buffer;
the state mask, not the buffer, is what says the frame has no value.
js/app.js gets the same occlusion lesson: leading nulls from a face that starts
occluded used to throw away the whole take, and the neutral frame could be chosen
from a held duplicate pose.
Parameter editing, scoped regeneration and a feature-level detector remain. Until
one exists, footage without annotations falls back to the full-face mask rather
than claiming occlusions it cannot see.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01B87NVmiU36qQmN9gmFYnJ9
Steps 2 and 3 land together because the model revisions in the middle changed
code from both, and splitting them now would invent intermediate states that
never built.
domain/channel value-at across framed/keyed/dense, plus a cursor
domain/node decomposed transform, composition order, time maps
domain/scene topological order, z paths, eval-frame and resolver
clock audio-clocked frame derivation, outside app-db
db/events/subs re-frame arrives; the playhead is document state
ui/player the rAF loop; reads, blits, dispatches (almost) nothing
ui/shell transport
133 tests, 1158 assertions. The scene plays at 30fps against audio, scrubs, and
runs at 1/4x through 4x; verified by driving a real browser over CDP rather than
by assertion.
Two evaluators, on purpose. `eval-frame` is the specification -- allocating,
order-free, obviously correct. `resolver` is what playback uses: cached topo
order and z paths, a cursor per channel, a preallocated point buffer per node.
Both run the same walk, parameterised only by how a channel is read and where
points are written, because two independent implementations of frame evaluation
would drift and the drift would read as a rendering bug rather than as two
functions disagreeing. scene-test asserts they agree frame for frame in forward,
backward and random order.
Deviations and decisions, each with a reason:
- raster/fill-poly! is now a thin wrapper over fill-poly-buf!, which takes a flat
preallocated buffer. ONE scanline fill serves the analysis stages, which speak
{:x :y}, and frame evaluation, which hands over a buffer it owns. The parity
suite still passes pixel-for-pixel, which is what makes the rewrite safe.
- The state mask carries ABSENCE ONLY. An earlier draft gave it a hidden bit too,
per architecture.md's "hidden flag + palette index", and that bit was a dense
[:vis] wearing a different hat -- two mechanisms for one question, which is how
a part ends up hidden by one and shown by the other.
- The palette is a parameter of evaluation, not a global. A node names a TONE;
which ramp that tone is read in belongs to the timeline it sits in.
- :over layers and a symbol :rate THROW rather than being ignored. Neither is
built and nothing can produce one, so this can only fire on data that has run
ahead of the code. A silently dropped override is a hand correction the user
made once, watched fail, and has no reason to trust again.
Three findings the model produced rather than received:
- Presence propagates asymmetrically. An absent transform drops the subtree; an
absent [:geom :pts] drops only that node, because an absent mouth outline has
nothing to draw but the head it hangs off has not moved. That asymmetry is the
reason presence is tracked per channel and not per node.
- Z paths need lexicographic compare, not `compare`, which orders vectors by
count first -- so a cel three levels under "a1" would jump in front of a bare
"a2" and the layer order would mostly work.
- A node stencilled by something that drew nothing is dropped, not drawn
unclipped: an iris floating over the cheek is worse than a missing iris.
docs/ revised alongside, and those revisions are the load-bearing part:
- A scene, a timeline and a symbol are one type. The doc had two structures with
the same fields and never said so. Two axes of nesting are now separated --
parent/child within a timeline is flat with parent pointers, instance nesting
is by reference -- which is why "nestable" and "flat" only sounded
contradictory.
- Palettes are named, live on the project, and are ENABLED on a timeline as a
channel. Absent inherits; present travels with the timeline, so a symbol
authored against :night stays night wherever it is placed. The output index
space is the concatenation of the named ramps, which keeps one buffer and one
flat table and incidentally stops two nodes in different palettes colliding on
a stencil.
- Stabilisation is a channel, not a mode: {s, theta, tx, ty} IS [:xform :*], so
the normalise on/off/per-plate toggle is which of the three channel shapes the
:head node carries. Always measure and always store factored -- smoothing and
velocity-minimum key selection both need the split to exist in storage.
- There is no camera node and none is needed. Placement is a node transform, the
stage clips what hangs off it, and project dimensions are independent of the
footage. `makeXform` is therefore not to be ported: it bakes a cropping
decision into every stored vertex.
- Export is removed. The .take writer was for an Animator Pro render script; the
target is encoding video in the browser, and step 9 now says not to port the
old one.
demo/swarm is 120 shapes on six orbits, entirely dense blocks behind store
handles -- the shape freeze produces at step 5, and the first thing to exercise
that path under load. It plays at 30fps, and bench-test keeps a deliberately
loose floor under it because a performance regression here does not announce
itself: the picture stays correct and merely arrives late.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01PDfHGdV39zu6rvgbBTfDaT
Scaffolds frontend/ (shadow-cljs, reagent 1.2.0, re-frame 1.4.3) and ports
everything below the data model, with the JS kept as a numeric oracle.
domain/landmarks index tables, verbatim
domain/ring subsample, offset, simplicity
domain/geom similarity fit, procrustes, moving average
domain/raster indexed scanline fill, stencil, disc, rect
domain/palette the ramp, and the no-sampled-RGB rule
58 tests, 166 assertions. Parity with js/ on the identical 72-frame synthetic
track: fit-similarity, procrustes-mean, fit-residual, moving-average,
smooth-transforms, offset-ring and subsample-slots to 1e-9; the raster
pixel-for-pixel over the whole buffer.
Three deviations from the JS, each for a reason:
- synth.cljs jitters from a SEEDED generator, not Math.random. Parity is only
checkable if both sides can be handed the same track, and a failing assertion
has to be reproducible. `:rand-fn` takes the generator over, so oracle.mjs
stubs js/Math.random and js/ itself stays untouched.
- raster/->rgba replaces toImageData. ImageData is a DOM type and domain/ may
not touch the DOM; returning plain bytes also lets the
no-intermediate-colours assertion run in node. ui/canvas wraps it later.
- offset-ring lives in domain/ring, not domain/geom, per architecture.md: it is
an operation on an ordered traversal, not on a transform.
Step 1's "done" also names the swapped-iris vote, but pairIrises is in
pipeline.js and belongs to step 7. The precondition is asserted instead --
`:swap-iris` really does move both blocks -- so the vote will have a track that
disagrees with it when it arrives.
One finding, recorded in full in the test that measures it: smooth-transforms
buys nothing on the synthetic track. Against jitter-free ground truth, radius 1
helps by 17% on one noise realisation and hurts by 0.5% on another, so its
benefit is within noise; from radius 2 up the cost is unambiguous, and by radius
5 the filter is below the true motion's own high-frequency energy, i.e.
smoothing away performance. The test pins the shape of the knob rather than a
preferred value. This may say more about the synth's jitter being unrealistically
small (+/-0.001 normalised) than about the knob; step 6 settles it on real
footage.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
