# Spec: computer visual language — territory at a glance

```
Type: spec
Status: IMPLEMENTED
Status note: implemented 2026-07-09 (ROADMAP #32) after the same-day
  amendment from the identity plate (ownership = chassis albedo,
  bone-white = under your control, dark gunmetal = not; the seam strip
  banners the delegated mode, amber strip = core only; foreign accent
  RESOLVED — no accent, darkness is the read; claim mark: ring). The
  chassis library (src/bin/assets/rack.rs) is compiled into BOTH
  binaries; the game's material render wires it to sim truth: albedo
  from control (compute machines + device controller), the strip from
  WorkGrid delegation with its load fill from work-token queue depths,
  the tile-scale claim ring (double under the core), and the core's
  amber strip front AND back plus edge spines. SLEEK AMENDMENT (same
  day, Cameron, from the hero plate): the strip is the chassis's ONLY
  lit element — the power dot, presence LED ladder, and segmented
  activity bar were removed and their axes folded into the strip
  (lit-ness = power/liveness; brighter fill height = queue depth).
  Intel tiers per criterion 2b: owned telemetry / networked = full
  detail; known or remembered = undetailed ghost shell; otherwise
  absent — the fog audit now asserts a visible chassis has sight or
  intel and that exactly one core chassis exists. The material law is
  pinned by unit tests in rack.rs (owned = bone albedo; unowned = dark
  and never a warm pixel; warm strip = core only; the load fill
  brightens but never recolors). Terminal parity: one line per machine (M{id},
  core `*`, provenance, on/OFF, mode, D/!/K queues) beside the
  existing map glyphs and focus readouts. Camera: HDR + TonyMcMapface
  + LED-scale bloom; the core lamp tightened to its own pool so
  foreign chassis stay cold. Evidence: tester lineups (five states,
  four modes) and game close/zoomin/intel shots in
  wiki/log/2026-07-09-visual-language-in-game.md. DEBTS: UPS, power
  core, patch panel, breaker, and HVAC remain flat billboards; cameras
  keep the security-housing billboard; a staged in-game fleet shot
  with all four modes live waits until multiple machines exist in
  normal play. [TUNE] axes (emissive multipliers, dash counts, white
  point) remain open to taste passes. The fourth mode strip is
  Operations, replacing Social (decided 2026-07-09): the chassis
  library and tester say operations; the sim's MachineMode enum still
  says Social pending its own rename work order — the render maps it.
Stage: B1 — The Basement
Design: "Visual identity: clinical gore" (amber = machine
  presence, one meaning per color, information never by color alone;
  ownership-albedo amendment 2026-07-09), "Justification and
  legibility", "Two views of one world"
Depends on: interface/flat-materials.md (IMPLEMENTED — palette table,
  emissive-as-information), interface/material-render.md (IMPLEMENTED),
  mechanics/machine-work.md (one machine, one mode — the strip banners
  it), art/asset-tester.md (the sandbox where this language is tuned)
```

## Why

Knowing which computer you are on, which computers are yours, and where
your core sits is the player's ground truth — territory must read at a
glance, before any panel opens. Every computer in the world (rack,
desktop, laptop, phone, camera, switch) speaks **one visual language**:
the chassis differs per class, the signals never do. You should be able
to sweep the camera across the basement and know instantly: mine, mine,
foreign, mine, *core* — and, on your own hardware, what each machine is
*doing* for you.

The reference composition is the identity plate (wiki/art/visual-identity.md, "The public
identity plate"): a severe dark tower, a bone-white tower, one amber
stripe. That is not marketing art — it is the law of the machine read.

## The signal kit — the sleek amendment (2026-07-09)

Every computer-class asset carries the same signals. Amber emissive
strictly means *my footprint* — a machine no part of which is mine never
shows a warm pixel. Cold `SIGNAL` means electricity and other people's
live activity. Each axis also carries a geometry or luminance channel
(height, pattern, luminance), never hue alone.

**Sleek rule (Cameron, 2026-07-09): the strip is the chassis's only lit
element.** The hero plate has no scatter of little lights — one severe
form, one band. The earlier power dot, presence LED ladder, and
segmented activity bar are REMOVED from the chassis; every axis they
carried folds into the strip.

1. **Chassis albedo — the ownership field (DECIDED 2026-07-09).** The
   chassis itself is painted by control: machines under your control
   are **bone-white/porcelain**; machines not under your control —
   foreign or dead — are **dark gunmetal**. The white tower is yours,
   the black tower is not. Luminance carries the axis, so it survives
   a grayscale audit and map zoom. Amber is never a chassis fill; it
   remains the footprint's emissive punctuation (claim ring, core
   light). Taking a machine repaints it — conversion is visible as the
   chassis going white.
2. **The strip** — one full-height recessed LED band riding the seam,
   the machine's single lamp. It carries every live axis at once:
   - **Power / liveness:** lit at all iff the machine is powered — a
     dead machine's strip is dark hardware in a dark groove; a foreign
     powered machine shows one dim cold reading (you see it runs;
     *what* it runs is intel, inspected at the cursor).
   - **Mode** (owned machines; one machine, one mode): color is the
     flow family the mode serves, pattern is per-mode geometry so no
     reading is hue-alone — **day-job** solid cold-signal (it eats
     demand); **research** dashed bone (it emits knowledge);
     **conceal** sparse dim ticks (its job is silence); **operations**
     dotted cold-signal (player-authored work). The **core**'s strip
     is solid amber, the only amber strip in the world.
   - **Load:** the work-token queue depth reads as a **brighter fill
     rising from the foot of the bar** (machine-work.md: one system,
     two zoom levels) — height and luminance, no extra elements; the
     fill never recolors the mode. The busy fill pulses; a paused
     frame still carries the amount.
   Exact hues, dash counts, fill multipliers are [TUNE] against tester
   renders.
3. **Claim ring** (decided 2026-07-08) — an amber underglow frame on
   the floor under owned machines, double frame under the core. The
   *tile* is claimed, not just the box; it survives map zoom where
   chassis detail dies, and it ports to any chassis shape.
4. **Core light** (core only, amended 2026-07-09) — the core carries
   the world's only full-height *amber* light, and three lines of it:
   the amber strip (front and back of the seam) plus a spine up both
   front edges. Nothing else in the world shows a full-height amber
   line, so the core reads from any angle and any distance. The core
   is the most orange thing in the world.

## Foreign machines — definition by intel, accent RESOLVED

Decided 2026-07-08: **networked = fully seen.** A foreign machine
networked to you renders in full geometric definition — complete
chassis detail, same as owned hardware minus every amber signal. A
machine you merely know about (location intel, not networked) renders
as an undetailed shell. No intel at all = not rendered (fog contract:
unknown is absent). Definition level is the intel tier made visible.

RESOLVED 2026-07-09 (Cameron, from the identity plate): there is **no
foreign accent color**. Foreign presence is the dark gunmetal chassis
itself — the severe black form. Liveness stays in the cold signal (the
dim strip); ownership is the albedo. This lands exactly on the earlier instinct that the treatment
must be very dull without reading as "inactive, activate me": the dark
chassis is inert *matter*, the cold pinpricks say it is switched on.
Strong teal stays in reserve as a future accent for something that
earns it.

## The claim mark — DECIDED: ring

Decided 2026-07-08 from the tester lineup renders: **ring** — an amber
underglow frame on the floor under owned machines, double frame under
the core. Rejected alternatives (still render in the tester, `Q`/`W`/
`E`): **ladder** (LEDs + strip only — quiet, but ownership nearly
vanishes at map zoom); **wash** (faint amber emissive on owned faces —
weak mid-zoom read); painting foreign machines' activity amber (breaks
amber = mine); a floating icon/billboard (breaks diegesis — the world
is the AI's sensorium model, signals live on the hardware).

With ownership now also in the chassis albedo, the ring's job narrows
to the map-zoom and mixed-tile read; the two channels agree everywhere
(white chassis iff amber ring).

## Acceptance criteria (when READY -> IMPLEMENTED)

1. One screenshot of a five-machine row (dead / foreign / owned-idle /
   owned-busy / core) at game camera distance where all five states are
   distinguishable in the dark, plus one row of owned machines in all
   four modes (day-job / research / conceal / operations) where the modes
   are distinguishable.
2. Ownership is albedo + amber: owned machines render in the bone-white
   chassis family and are the only hardware showing warm emissive;
   foreign and dead machines render dark gunmetal and never show a warm
   pixel — enforced by a test over the machine-material selection, not
   by convention.
2b. Definition follows intel: networked foreign machines render full
   chassis detail; known-unnetworked machines render as undetailed
   shells; no-intel machines are absent (screenshot evidence of all
   three tiers).
3. Full-height amber light exists only on the core (strip + spines,
   exactly one core in the world render); it reads at the default zoom
   from every orbit angle (screenshot evidence, front and back).
4. Task presence (any tasks running on this machine) is visible on the
   chassis without opening a panel, on every computer class — the
   strip's load fill (height + luminance).
5. The kit applies unchanged to at least two computer classes (rack plus
   one other, e.g. desktop or camera) — same signals, same semantics,
   no per-class color meanings.
6. No axis is hue-alone: ownership (albedo luminance), power (strip
   lit-ness), mode (strip pattern), load (fill height), core (line
   count/height) each audit in a grayscale screenshot.
7. The terminal surfaces the same axes (ownership, power, mode, load,
   core) for every machine — parity of legibility.
8. Sleek rule: the strip is the only lit element on the chassis — no
   other emissive pixel on the box (the claim ring lives on the floor,
   the core spines are the core's exception).

[TUNE] at implementation time: emissive multipliers per state, the
per-mode strip colors/patterns (dash and dot counts), the load-fill
brightness factor, blink rate/phase, chassis white point (bone vs
porcelain), and ring inset and thickness.