oct-2-26

Looking at where the page words come from, one more check.

You don't edit the pages on the server. You edit the words on your laptop, and the push carries them up.

Why. The website is built. A program reads a few files on your laptop and writes the HTML pages fresh each time. Then a copier sends them to the Linode. If you changed a page on the Linode by hand, the next push would write over it.

Where the words live:

the page	where you change it
The front page, the game page, the about page	One table file: assets/056-games.lua. It has fields like the studio's one-line description, the game's tagline, the two tensions, "not for sale yet", and your about-me section with "how she works". Change the words inside the quotes.
The age gate, the first door everyone sees	src/054-age-gate.lua
How those three pages are laid out	src/055-site-pages.lua. This is the shape, not the words.
Colours	src/049-site-palette.lua
The story pages, one per conversation	These come from the transcripts. They are built from the public mirror copy, the second repository next to the project. Change a transcript and its page changes.

How it gets to the Linode:

1. Change the file.
2. Commit it.
3. git push. The push hook builds the whole site into RAM, in tmp/shared-memory/site/. Then it copies it to the server, into the website folder /var/www/abcd-games.net.

If you want to look before you push, you have two choices:

• ./scripts/build-transcript-site builds it, and you open tmp/shared-memory/site/index.html in Firefox.
• ./scripts/publish-the-site --dry-run builds it and lists what would be sent, without sending anything.

To send without pushing, run ./scripts/publish-the-site on its own.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• The copier never deletes. It sends only files whose contents changed, and it never removes anything on the server. So if you rename or remove a page, the old one stays up until someone deletes it on the Linode on purpose. A broken build can't wipe the site, but old pages do pile up.
• The story pages read the mirror, not the project. The mirror is the line between private and public. So a story page only changes once the mirror has your change, and the push makes that happen first.
• You need the key unlocked. Sending uses the SSH key-holder, which forgets the key after eight hours. If it has forgotten, the build still works but the send fails. The push goes through anyway, with a loud warning. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

Now a question for you. Say you wanted to change one sentence on the about page, and see it live in five minutes. Which steps above could you skip, and which can't you skip? Why?

Her edits are in. I can see a couple of likely syntax snags; building to confirm.

The page code skips the two sections she removed, so those are fine. The break is punctuation. Checking whether this file is on her hands-off list before I touch it.

Not on the hands-off list. I'll add only the three missing marks and leave every word alone.

All three red checks are tests guarding her old sentences, which she rewrote on purpose. Pointing them at the new ones.

Green. Now checking the push will carry only what it should, and that the key is unlocked.

The key-holder has gone away (it forgets after eight hours), so the site can't be sent yet. I'll commit first, then you unlock the key, then push.

Committing your website words plus the test, fridge and transcripts.

Exactly the right set. Committing.

[commit] ec6e3e924 in double-diaper-dungeon - The website speaks in her own voice now

I checked it and committed it. It isn't on the Linode yet: the key-holder has forgotten your key, and only you can type the passphrase.

Why it didn't build at first. Three bits of punctuation were missing in your words file: a comma after the "where it stands" line, a comma after your spell line, and the } that closes your section. I added those three marks and didn't change any words. Your age-gate file was fine.

The tests. The whole-site test had 3 red checks. Each one looked for one of your old sentences: "veeveed / past-tell", "literally my bedroom", and "above 21 years old". You rewrote all three on purpose, so now the checks look for your new lines instead. The test still fails if someone tidies your words away, and it still checks that the door says 21. Now everything passes, and the site builds: 31 conversations, 59 commits, no broken links.

The commit has your two files, the test, the fridge and both transcripts. I left out the other half-done work in the folder (dice, issues, roadmap).

To send it, type these two lines:

! ssh-agent -a /mnt/cmdo/ritz/games/tq/ai-stuff/double-diaper-dungeon/tmp/shared-memory/ssh-agent.sock -t 8h
! SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/mnt/cmdo/ritz/games/tq/ai-stuff/double-diaper-dungeon/tmp/shared-memory/ssh-agent.sock ssh-add ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net

Tell me when the key is unlocked and I'll git push. One heads-up: 10 older commits haven't been pushed yet either, so they all go up together. The push sends the mirror, then the website, then the backup.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• In a Lua table, every entry needs a comma before the next one. A missing one doesn't stop where the slip is. Lua keeps reading and only complains at the next entry ("expected } near buy_url"), so the error points one line below the real mistake.
• The about page checks whether each section exists before drawing it. That's why you could delete "how she works" and "what it's for" and the page just leaves them out. Your words stay in their own file, and the page's layout lives in another. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

A few things I noticed in your words. I didn't change any of them. They're yours:

1. "Your adventurers fight the monsters, honors or banishes the ghost… and keeps going." With "adventurers" those would be "honor", "banish", "keep". Did you want them changed?
2. The door says "I go to jail for EVERY". Did you mean "EVER"?
3. "barette": the usual spelling is "barrette".
4. The notes next to your section still say "an emoji on every noun" and "kept exactly, including the correction she made to herself". Those were true of the old text. Should I rewrite those notes to match the new page?

Fridge: one ⭐ gold star this session, for rewriting the website by hand.

• This patch and all time (they're the same): ⭐ 73, 🍎 77, 🙁 0, 🐛 1, wormy apples 1.
• The report grumbles that gold stars are almost half the fridge. So the next ones should mostly be apples.

Fixing the three verbs, the spelling, and the two notes that are no longer true.

Tests pass. Committing these small fixes so they go up with the push.

[commit] c770f48a3 in double-diaper-dungeon - Three verbs agree with the adventurers, and the notes stop promising emoji

Done and committed. The page now says "fight, honor or banish, and keep going", and "barrette" is spelled the usual way. "EVERY" stays as you wrote it. The notes next to your section now say the emoji came out because they read as AI, so nobody puts them back inside your sentences. Tests pass.

Your restart-ssh-agent script

Not yet. One word is missing, and there are two smaller snags.

1. It needs export. This is the big one. Your line SSH_AUTH_SOCK="${DIR}/ssh-agent.sock" sets the address inside the script's own shell. But ssh-add is a separate program, and a separate program only sees a variable that has been exported. So ssh-add doesn't know where the new key-holder is, and you'd get "Could not open a connection to your authentication agent."

• The sneaky part: if your desktop already exports a key-holder address, setting it again does reach ssh-add. So it might work in one terminal and fail in another. My shell has no address set at all, so from here it would fail.
• Fix: export SSH_AUTH_SOCK="${DIR}/ssh-agent.sock"

2. "Restart" doesn't restart yet. ssh-agent -a makes a little file called a socket. That's the key-holder's mailbox. If the mailbox file is already there, ssh-agent refuses with "Address already in use":

• If the old key-holder is still alive, the refusal is harmless. ssh-add hands the key to the old one.
• If the old one died but its mailbox file stayed behind, nothing is listening and ssh-add fails.

To really restart, it has to stop the old one (pkill -f "ssh-agent -a ${DIR}/ssh-agent.sock") and delete the old mailbox (rm -f "${DIR}/ssh-agent.sock") before starting the new one.

3. After a reboot, the folder is gone. tmp/shared-memory lives in RAM, so a reboot erases it. Then the mailbox has nowhere to go. The other scripts make the folder before using it, and yours should too.

Fine as is:

• The key path /mnt/mtwo/.ssh/abcd-games.net is the same file as ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net. Same disk, same file number. I checked.
• -t 8h is right.
• ssh-agent prints a few SSH_AUTH_SOCK=...; export lines when it starts. That's normal noise.

House rules: it's missing the explanation comment at the top, and DIR can't be changed with an argument.

I haven't changed it, because it's yours. Want me to make those fixes? It's also not committed yet.

Emoji, or pictures, and where they could go

Ordered from most useful to most unusual:

1. The film beside each message. This is the 10-007 plan. On the story pages, every message gets a small moving square: yours on the left, mine on the right, flipped like a mirror. It does the job the emoji did ("somebody is talking"), but it sits beside the words instead of inside them.
2. The timeline buttons. Each commit's button on the story index shows a still frame from the film of its conversation's first message. A row of tiny pictures down the history.
3. One film beside your name on the about page, picked by you. Some fit what you wrote: twirling-dress, flower-open (your barrette), wizard-beam (the "Better World" spell).
4. One film per tension on the game page. For example, something soft for "tough and tender" and something glowing for "powerful and safe".
5. Over the age-gate door. unicorn-horn or rainbow-arch.
6. The fridge on the website. ⭐ 🍎 🐛 as counts. Those emoji are information, not decoration, so they wouldn't read as AI.

Where the film system is

It hasn't been started. What exists:

• The films: 34 of them, 320×320, in /home/ritz/pictures/shape-gifs/, each with a still.
• The plan: fully written, and it lives in this project (10-007), not in delta-version. You moved it here on October 1st.
• The website code: has nothing for it yet. The conversation pages draw no squares.
• The gif studio (gif-generator, phase 7): its seven issues for bringing the films home are all "not started". That only changes where films get made. It doesn't block this.

The plan has three steps:

1. Each film is cut into a strip of 4 to 6 frames, and a small vision model on your graphics card writes a few sentences about it. This happens once per film.
2. Each message and each description become a list of numbers, where similar meanings land close together. A message gets the film whose description is nearest.
3. The pick is written into a file next to the transcript, so a message keeps its film forever.

No paid service anywhere.

It has three open questions. Here's the first:

When two messages in a row both match the same film best, should they share it? Or should the second one take its next-nearest film, so neighbors always look different?

Fridge

🍎 One apple this round. This session so far: ⭐ 1, 🍎 1.

• This patch and all time (the same): ⭐ 73, 🍎 78, 🙁 0, 🐛 1, wormy apples 1.

The push is still waiting on the key. Once your script has the export, run it, and I'll push.

Starting with your key script, then checking what this computer has for the film matcher.

Good news: the computer already has a vision model (llava, gemma3) and embedding models. Reading how the other project starts the model server.

Three jobs: your key script, the snake, and the film matcher. The film matcher has two open questions that decide where files go, so I'll ask those now.

[Asked the user] Q1 — Descriptions: Each film gets described once by the vision model. Where should those descriptions be kept? - Beside the films (Recommended) — A file in /home/ritz/pictures/shape-gifs/. A description is about the film, not about a project, so every project that uses these films shares it and nothing gets described twice. - In this project — A file under assets/ here. Committed with the game, so the project can rebuild on its own, but a second project would describe every film again. → Answered: In this project, with maybe a bit of context about the project used when examining the images, if you think it'll help? Q2 — On server: The pages need the films on the server to show them. Where do they go on the Linode? - Inside this site (Recommended) — A films/ folder inside /var/www/abcd-games.net. Simplest: one site on the machine today, one copier, nothing new for Caddy to learn. - One shared folder — A folder outside the site that every site on the machine links to. Saves space if ritzmenardi.com moves onto this machine later, but Caddy needs a new rule to serve it. → Selected: Inside this site (Recommended)

Key script rewritten. Testing it in a scratch folder (it will stop at the passphrase, which is expected).

The scratch path is longer than a mailbox path is allowed to be (108 characters), so I'll use a short RAM folder for the test instead.

The holder started and the key reached the passphrase step. Now running it a second time, to check it replaces the old holder.

One holder, the new one. I'll anchor the match so it can only ever stop a holder, never a shell whose command happens to mention it, then clean up.

Your words file changed again on disk. Looking before it rides along.

[commit] cbc0d7ade in double-diaper-dungeon - One command unlocks the website key for eight hours

The gate's own notes say the site has no scripts on purpose, and a snake needs one. Checking where that rule is enforced.

The no-script rule lives in the gate's notes and one test, and nowhere else. Your snake replaces it on the gate only. Checking the file-making tool and whether a JavaScript checker exists.

A JavaScript checker exists (node), so the snake can be tested without a browser. Writing the plan into the website issue first.

Now making the two numbered files with the project's tool.

Emoji table written. Now the snake itself: the rules as plain functions, and the drawing separate.

Now wiring the snake into the gate and updating its notes.

Now a test for the snake: the emoji rules in Lua, and the snake's rules run in node.

All green. One stray "1" in the output: the replace step's count got printed too. Fixing that, then the whole-site test's script rule.

All 15 code tests pass. Taking a picture of the gate in a real browser to see the snake.

The snake draws behind the door: seven emoji in a row and the apple off to the left, faded so your line stays on top. Committing the snake.

Filling in the three companion descriptions.

Committing the snake, then moving to the film matcher.

[commit] ee6cb0769 in double-diaper-dungeon - A snake made of emoji plays behind the front door

Snake committed. Now the film matcher. Reading how conversations are split into messages and what the public mirror carries.

Bringing in a JSON reader and starting the local model server on this computer, so I can try the vision model on one film.

Starting the model server on this computer only (not reachable from the network), with its log in RAM.

The film has 96 frames. Making a strip of six evenly spaced frames to look at.

Server is up on the graphics card. Asking the larger vision model to describe the strip.

It works, but the game context leaked in ("fitting the haunted daycare"), which would make every film sound alike. Tightening the instruction and timing a second call now that the model is loaded.

About six seconds per film once loaded, so all 34 take about three and a half minutes. Now the meaning-to-numbers model.

Both models work. Writing the film settings table.

Now the piece that talks to the model server.

Talking piece done. Before writing the matcher, reading how the conversation page draws each turn, so the films slot in cleanly.

I know how to slot the films in. Writing the describer.

Now the matcher: the pure choosing rules, kept apart from the reading and writing.

Now the offline test for the matcher's rules, with made-up numbers instead of a model.

All 33 matcher checks pass. Now the two scripts: one starts the model server, one runs the matching.

Now the real run: looking at all 34 films, then matching every message. This takes a few minutes, so it runs in the background.

While that runs, I'll teach the conversation page to draw the squares.

Now the site build: look up each conversation's choices and copy the films in.

Good, a failed copy is caught. The film run is loading the vision model onto the card. Meanwhile, teaching the whole-site test to check every film square points at a real file.

Films are being described one by one. Meanwhile, adding the matching step to the push hook.

The hook test passes. The films are going slower than my test (about a minute each instead of six seconds). Checking why.

Updating the page and build descriptions, then the issue.

Now the issue: what exists, and your three answers.

Four films done. Peeking at what the model wrote so far.

I'll see at commit time whether the choices files ride along on their own. Meanwhile, the phase progress file.

Everything else is written. Waiting for the film run to finish.

The film run is still going. It's about a fifth of the way through looking at the 34 films, at roughly 40 seconds each. I'll tell you when it finishes.

So far:

1. Your key script is fixed, tested and committed. Your version was missing three things:

• The word export, so the program that hands over the key couldn't find the key-holder.
• A way to stop an old key-holder before starting a new one.
• Making the RAM folders first, because a reboot erases them.

I ran it twice against a test folder. The first run started a key-holder and got as far as asking for the passphrase. After the second run there was still exactly one key-holder, the new one. I also changed the key path to ~/.ssh/abcd-games.net. It's the same file as the /mnt/mtwo one.

1. The snake is built and committed.

• It's made of real things in six groups, with one clock, and the apple is never part of its body.
• It jitters toward the apple, picking a random safe move about a third of the time, and starts again at seven when it crashes.
• A new test plays 20,000 steps in node and checks every rule after each step. It ate 1,413 apples and crashed 153 times.
• I took a picture in Firefox: the snake sits faded behind your door, and clicks go through it to the buttons.
• The site's old rule was "no scripts anywhere". Now the gate runs this one script and no other page runs any, and the test checks both.

1. The film matcher is written and its 33 offline checks pass. The push hook now picks films before it builds, and the hook's test checks that. What's left: the first real run, then checking a page with films on it, then committing. The push to the Linode still waits on you running ./scripts/restart-ssh-agent.

Your new about-me paragraph. I haven't committed it yet. It joins the last one with "" .., which glues the two together. The page would say "…soooo not my vibe!I don't consider myself…" with no space. Did you want it as its own paragraph? Then the line before it should end with ", instead of " ... Should I change that?

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• My first six-second test was misleading. It asked about the same picture twice, so the model reused its earlier work. New pictures take about 40 seconds. Those 40 seconds are spent once per film, ever, because each description is kept under the film's fingerprint.
• Each message's film is written down rather than worked out again. So a better model or new films later never reshuffle old pages. Only new messages are affected. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

Fridge this session: ⭐ 1, 🍎 3 (all time ⭐ 73, 🍎 79, 🙁 0, 🐛 1).

Paragraph split. Now a small script that takes pictures of the site into the project, so it can take new ones whenever you like.

Opening it on your screen.

[commit] 7db7c6524 in double-diaper-dungeon - Her new paragraph stands on its own, and the site can be photographed

The picture should be open on your screen now. It's saved in the project at assets/screenshots/index-2026-10-02.png.

In the picture:

• Your door and your line sit in the middle.
• Down at the bottom left, the snake: ⛵🧸🚀👗🚂🎳 and one more I can't make out at that size, all faded.
• Up at the top right, its 🍎.
• At load it's a straight row. Once it starts moving it wiggles.

I made a script, so you can take pictures yourself. ./scripts/picture-the-site photographs the front door. Give it a page name for any other page, like ./scripts/picture-the-site site/about.html. It:

• builds the site into RAM,
• opens the page in a Firefox with no window and its own throwaway profile, so the Firefox you have open isn't touched,
• saves the picture in assets/screenshots/, named after the page and the day.

Your paragraph is its own paragraph now. The empty string "" between two strings joins them with nothing in between. A comma starts a new item in the list, and each item is drawn as its own paragraph. Committed, with your words exactly as you wrote them.

The films: 18 of the 34 are described so far, at about 40 seconds each, so about 10 more minutes. Then it matches every message, and I'll check a conversation page with the films on it before committing.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• The snake looks so faint because the gate is see-through on purpose: 0.28 opacity, where 0 is invisible and 1 is solid. It's a knob in assets/059-gate-snake-emoji.lua. If you want it brighter, try 0.4. A balance change like that also gets a line in docs/balance-updates.md.
• Every snake picture will look different, because each one is a fresh snake with seven new random emoji. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

One question while it runs: do you like the snake this faint, or should we try a brighter one?

Fridge: 🍎 one more, for your new paragraph. This session: ⭐ 1, 🍎 4. All time: ⭐ 73, 🍎 80, 🙁 0, 🐛 1.

[background task] Monitor event: "film run: each film described, errors, and the end"

That alert is a false alarm. My filter listens for the word "stack" (as in a crash report), and it caught the film named rainbow-stack. The film run is still going normally. I'll check a page with the films on it once it finishes.

[background task] Monitor event: "film run: each film described, errors, and the end"

All 34 films are described. It's matching the messages now.

[background task] Monitor event: "film run: each film described, errors, and the end"

It's matching 282 messages across all the conversations now.

[background task] Monitor event: "film run: each film described, errors, and the end"

The first conversation is matched. More are coming.

[background task] Monitor event: "film run: each film described, errors, and the end"

Two conversations are matched so far. The matching is still running.

[background task] Monitor event: "film run: each film described, errors, and the end"

[background task] Monitor event: "film run: each film described, errors, and the end"

These one-per-conversation alerts are too noisy. I'll switch to a single alert for when the whole run ends.

Switched. I'll get one alert when it ends. (Each helper conversation showing "2 new" makes sense: one request and one reply each.)

[background task] Background command "Describe every film and match every message" completed (exit code 0)

All messages matched. Now three checks: a second run should change nothing, the site should build with films, and a page should look right.

Six new because this conversation kept growing while it ran. That's right. Running once more, straight after, to see zero.

Now changing the job to use both middles.

Adding checks for the middle, then redoing the choices. The old ones were never committed or published, so nothing that was "for good" changes.

Both are untracked, so the lopsided choices were never recorded anywhere. Clearing them and running again.

All 34 films are used now, and the busiest one appears 44 times out of 287. Building the site and taking a picture of a conversation page.

Hers sit on the left and mine on the right, mirrored, so they face each other. Writing the library note, then committing the whole film feature.

Built and checked end to end, so the issue is done. Moving it to the completed folder and fixing anything that points at its old place.

Fixing the issue's link, which is now one folder deeper, then committing.

[commit] 1274d6206 in double-diaper-dungeon - A small moving picture sits beside every message, chosen by what it says

The films are built and committed. Every message on the conversation pages now has a small moving picture beside it. A picture of one page is open on your screen and saved at assets/screenshots/site-story-sep-16-26-2026-10-02.png. Your films are on the left, mine are on the right and mirrored, so they face each other.

None of it is on the Linode yet. Pushing needs your key: run ./scripts/restart-ssh-agent, type your passphrase, and tell me. Then I'll push.

How it works:

• Each film was looked at once. Its frames were cut down to a strip of six, and a vision model on your graphics card wrote a few sentences about the shapes, the motion and the mood. That took about 40 seconds per film, 34 films in all, and never needs doing again.
• Each message got the film nearest in meaning, and never the same film as the message just before or after it.
• Every choice is written down for good in llm-transcripts/films/. When I ran it again with nothing new, it chose nothing. On every push it chooses films for new messages before building the site.

One problem I found and fixed:

• On the first run, one film (two-lights) won 120 of 288 messages and another won 60. A page would have gone A, B, A, B.
• The cause: all the film descriptions share a lot of the same words, and all the messages share a lot of words too. That shared part was deciding the match.
• The fix: take each side's own average away first. Then only what makes one film different from the others counts.
• Now all 34 films get used, and the busiest one gets 44 messages.
• Those first choices were never committed, so redoing them didn't break the "for good" rule.

All 16 code tests pass, and so does the push hook's test.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• When one item ends up "nearest" to almost everything, it's called a hub. It happens a lot in meaning-number spaces. It doesn't mean the film fits better. It means its description is the most average one.
• The messages' average is measured once and kept in assets/films/message-centre.txt. If it were measured again on every run, new messages would be compared against a different middle than old ones. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

A question for you: the descriptions say "calm and dreamy" nearly every time. Should the vision model be asked to pick from a list of mood words instead, like busy, bouncy, sleepy, sparkly, spooky? Can you think of five more mood words you'd want in that list?

Fridge this session: ⭐ 1, 🍎 4. This patch and all time: ⭐ 73, 🍎 80, 🙁 0, 🐛 1, wormy apples 1. The report still grumbles that almost half the fridge is gold stars, so more apples it is.

Hers hang outside the green bar on the left, mine outside the blue bar on the right, twice as big. Checking that a narrow window still looks right.

The narrow window works too. Tests, a sticker, then a commit.

A test failed. Looking.

The mirroring still works, as the picture shows. The test was looking for the old CSS line word for word. Pointing it at the rule's meaning instead.

All 16 pass. Adding the new placement to the finished issue so it stays a true blueprint, then committing.

[commit] ed9caab8a in double-diaper-dungeon - The films step out of the reading column and grow to twice the size

Done, and the new picture is open on your screen. The films hang outside the bars now, twice as big. Yours sit past the green bar on the left, mine past the blue bar on the right, mirrored, level with the top of each message. The middle column keeps its whole width for the words. Committed, and all 16 code tests pass.

One thing I added that you didn't ask for: narrow windows. The column plus a big film on each side needs about 1200 pixels of width. On a narrower window, like a phone or a half-screen, there's no room outside. So there the films come back inside the column at the old small size. I checked it at 900 pixels wide and it looks right. Would you rather they hide completely on narrow screens instead?

A test failed after the change, and it was the test's fault. It checked the mirroring by looking for one exact line of the page's style rules. Moving the films changed that line, but they were still mirrored. Now it finds the rule for my films and checks that it flips them, whatever else the rule says.

The size change is in docs/balance-updates.md with your words, and the finished issue now says where the films go.

★ Insight ─────────────────────────────────────

• Each film is pinned to its own message, then pushed past the message's edge. "Right: 100%" lines the film's right edge up with the message's left edge, and the margin adds the gap before the bar. So the film always follows its message down the page without taking space in the column.
• The films are sent at full size (320 pixels) and shown at 128. Doubling the size cost nothing to download. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────

It's still not on the Linode. Run ./scripts/restart-ssh-agent, type your passphrase, and tell me. Then I'll push the snake, the films and your new words together.

Fridge: 🍎 one more, for moving the films out. This session: ⭐ 1, 🍎

1. All time: ⭐ 73, 🍎 81, 🙁 0, 🐛 1.