Spec: the dark frame — the material render shows only light

SPEC Binding system contract

Status: IMPLEMENTED
Status note: captured 2026-07-09 from Cameron's screenshot feedback on
  the material opening frame ("zoomed in real close to the server, no
  squares/room definition, lighting togglable for dev work, soft glow
  on the floor from the servers"). Same-day amendment (beam-first):
  before any tap the held material frame is only a presence beam where
  the host is — not a chassis; Seen shows the whole lit form. Implemented 2026-07-09
  (worktree dark-frame), all six criteria, frontend-only (src/bin/bevy.rs;
  no sim rules, no save fields, no terminal changes). What landed: light
  is the only revealer — restyle_3d draws only camera-seen surfaces plus
  owned machines' own telemetry-lit props, and blueprint/remembered mass
  is absent from the material render entirely (the flat sensorium keeps
  unlit blueprint; the material_3d unlit-blueprint contract test stays).
  The dark rig — the institutional fluorescent overhead is gone from the
  default scene, ambient dropped to near-nothing (DARK_AMBIENT=8), so the
  frame is a physically dark room carved out by the core's linear amber
  fixture. The soft floor pool — a many-disc amber gradient (no image
  texture) with no hard edge replaces the ruled claim ring under every
  powered owned machine (spawn_floor_pool; the core throws a wider,
  hotter pool). The dev work light — F4 raises the scene to a stronger neutral
  inspection exposure (WORKLIGHT_AMBIENT=900 plus the shared neutral
  directional, apply_material_exposure), then restores camera exposure after
  Eyes or the dark rig before Eyes; excluded from canonical shots except the
  labelled worklight/worklightoff dev pair. The opening
  frame — update_camera_real anchors to attention at CLOSE_DIST=2.6 world
  units; fit-to-known-content is retired here (it governs the flat sensorium
  only) and the camera aims above the floor for a room-security-cam read.
  Zoom bounds retuned around the close default (MIN_ZOOM=0.5,
  MAX_ZOOM=6.0). First Eyes now bleaches the host's amber presence
  source to sterile white, then settles that source into its service beam while
  the physical chassis resolves around it — a local <1s payoff, never a
  global fog-off flash. The wake pull-back ends at CLOSE_DIST / zoom 1.0 and
  matches the play look-at height so the handoff does not leap to the
  retired god-view distance. fog_audit_3d amended: material mode asserts
  blueprint / remembered mass is absent, Seen surfaces are lit, and the
  pre-Eyes core is a beam rather than a chassis. [TUNE] values
  (exposure/ambient/pool falloff/close
  distance/zoom clamp) recorded in wiki/log/2026-07-09-dark-frame.md with
  opening, worklight pair, and zoom-bound screenshots. The map-zoom claim
  mark stays the one [OPEN]: the proposed pool-alone default is what
  landed (there is no ring at any zoom in the material frame yet).
  The 2026-07-10 material Heard-mass and flat noise-field split is superseded
  2026-07-12: audio is capture-device event evidence, not spatial fog. Neither
  view draws room/floor mass, coverage marks, people, or inferred sources from
  hearing. A recent semantic capture may pulse briefly at the subscribed
  instrument in cold signal.
  2026-07-10: known reachable sensors now carry a pre-Eyes abstract
  cold-signal ember at their anchor; signal/ears harness captures and a
  frontend test pin known/reachable/Seen gating (criterion 9).
  Same-day visual tuning replaced the original rings/brackets/carrier with one
  tiny irregularly breathing point and brief focus-only acquisition ticks; the
  cue locates an answer without describing a holographic device body.
  Same-day Eyes correction: a live sight feed neutrally exposed all Seen
  surfaces while Unknown remained absent.
  2026-07-11 floor-light amendment: normal sight no longer reveals the neutral
  directional flood. Eighteen recessed neutral fixtures authored into the
  Foundation data hall's three cold aisles provide the light direction and
  repeated local pools; CAMERA_AMBIENT=160 is shadow-side fill only. Each lens
  and point source is gated by the fixture tile's Seen state. The neutral
  directional remains F4-only. Material distance fog now shifts its start/end
  planes with camera distance so attention and level lights do not disappear
  behind a camera-relative black curtain at wider zooms. Evidence and [TUNE]
  values: wiki/log/2026-07-11-floor-level-lighting.md.
Stage: B1 — The Basement
Design:
  - wiki/art/visual-identity.md#visual-identity-clinical-gore
  - wiki/vision/simulation-laws.md#justification-and-legibility
  - wiki/interface/presence.md#two-views-of-one-world-same-frame-digital-and-real-representations
  - wiki/gameplay/act-one.md#opening-state
Depends on:
  - wiki/interface/material-render.md#spec-material-render-hd-2d-to-default-quality
  - wiki/interface/flat-materials.md#spec-flat-materials-the-world-without-textures
  - wiki/interface/bevy-visual-floor.md#spec-bevy-visual-floor
  - wiki/interface/computer-visual-language.md#spec-computer-visual-language-territory-at-a-glance
  - wiki/interface/views.md#spec-views-same-frame-digital-and-real-representations
  - wiki/interface/feel-floor.md#spec-the-feel-floor-rails-pads-and-the-build-beam
  - wiki/mechanics/cursor.md#spec-the-cursor-and-the-senses

Dependency notes

The structured references above identify the contracts to re-verify. Relationship context:

material-render.md (IMPLEMENTED — camera, cutaway, pooling; this spec amends its material-mode blueprint clause and default framing), flat-materials.md (IMPLEMENTED — palette table, emissive as information), bevy-visual-floor.md (framing floor; the deliberate- frame and sensor-darkness spirit binds, the fit-to-known-content default is superseded for the material camera), computer-visual-language.md (claim mark; chassis form is earned by sight; close-range claim read is the cast pool once the box exists), views.md (F3 flat sensorium keeps the schematic read), feel-floor.md (READY — feel rails/pads and the build beam; opening presence beam is the same light family), mechanics/cursor.md (channel evidence / Seen form)

Why this spec exists

The first material frame currently reads as a debug viewport: gray blueprint slabs float in the void, a ruled amber double square sits under the core like painted UI, and the camera fits the whole known extent so the one interesting object — the rack — is a distant prop. Cameron’s direction (2026-07-09, from the screenshot): the opening shot is a close-up in a dark basement, nothing but light — not a floor plan. Same-day follow-up (feel-floor.md): floor light may include feel rails and empty-bay pads — still light, never a blueprint slab. Same-day beam-first amendment: before you tap anything you are not aware of your own server as a box — only that there is a light where it is. Sound produces evidence at the listening instrument; sight is what shows the whole thing.

Behavior

The reveal ladder (material)

Material form is earned in two steps. This is the opening contract and the ongoing material read for mass you have not yet seen:

1. Presence beam — before ears or eyes, the host is a beam of light (same light family as feel-floor.md’s build beam), rendered as a truly round cylindrical volume rather than crossed luminous cards, and the softest floor wash that beam throws. No bone chassis, no service beam, no ruled claim ring, no room mass. Telemetry still answers in panels (power, load, job); it does not paint a pictured server. A known, reachable sensor may answer as a small abstract cold-signal ember at its shared physical anchor: network provenance, not visible hardware. The ember is a tiny irregularly breathing point; focus may acknowledge it with four brief acquisition ticks. It has no persistent rings, carrier, camera silhouette, facing, lens, or surrounding surface.
2. Eyes / Seen form — the first camera feed turns the host’s amber presence source white for one short held beat. That white source then settles into the service beam while the server’s silhouette, edges, and chassis resolve around it. The camera feed applies low neutral shadow fill to every Seen surface in its coverage; authored infrastructure and machine lights provide the actual direction and local gradients. This makes the earned room immediately readable without making the camera itself the apparent lamp. Unknown geometry remains absent. The server resolves as a bone/porcelain-white chassis; amber stays on its functional beam, claim language, and pool per computer-visual-language.md. Seen floor is part of that exposed image: ordinary walkable ground resolves as medium-light porcelain/concrete, arriving only with sight and still darker than the bone-white chassis. The flat sensorium keeps its dark schematic ground.

Light is the only revealer

In the material render, geometry draws only where a sense earns it and light reaches it:

• Unknown stays absent (unchanged).
• Blueprint / remembered mass no longer draws in the material render at all — no slabs, no silhouettes, no blueprint floor grid. Plan knowledge is schematic knowledge; it reads in the flat sensorium (F3) and in overlays, never as physical matter the camera did not see. This amends the fog contract’s material-mode clause (was: unlit-but-visible); the flat sensorium keeps unlit blueprint exactly as it is.
• Audio draws no geometry at any fog grade. Recent semantic captures may produce a brief cold-signal waveform at the subscribed instrument only.
• Seen geometry responds to authored level/machine light plus low neutral camera fill. The fill applies only to the camera’s earned coverage; it never reveals Unknown space. Owned hardware you run still reports through telemetry in panels; its pictured chassis waits on Seen (or the presence beam until then). Seen walkable ground uses an exposed concrete value rather than the sensorium’s near-black ground; otherwise the floor remains perceptually indistinguishable from darkness even under neutral exposure.

The fog audit follows the amendment: in material mode it asserts blueprint mass is absent; flat mode keeps the unlit-blueprint assert. The digital overlay (reach traces, reticle, intents) still draws over darkness — knowing where a device is without seeing the room is exactly the fiction.

The dark rig

The tick-zero light rig is the machines’ own light and a near-nothing ambient — the institutional fluorescent overhead is gone from the default scene. A live camera adds only low neutral shadow fill. It does not reveal the directional flood used by the dev work light: the level and its machines must remain the apparent sources in ordinary play. This is sensor presentation, not a diegetic light source and not permission to draw outside the feed. Exposure levels are [TUNE].

The Foundation data hall carries eighteen recessed neutral service fixtures, six at a four-tile rhythm down each of the three cold aisles between paired rack rows. The small luminous bars sit in the floor and throw short local point-light pools upward across nearby floor and chassis. They establish row rhythm without outlining every tile, spend no amber on decoration, and stay fixed in world space as attention and camera move. Both lens and light source exist visually only when that floor tile is Seen; Blueprint, Remembered, and Unknown cannot borrow their illumination. This is authored frontend level geometry, not a new sim/save power system.

The camera blends earned material mass back into that same near-black with an aggressive distance-fog falloff. The close-camera start/end distances shift by the camera’s distance from its default close framing, keeping the same falloff around attention at every zoom; otherwise a wide camera can put its own target and every authored fixture behind the fog end plane. The blend reaches black before a wide material frame can end in a crisp wall silhouette. This is a lighting/camera treatment on geometry already earned by fog; it never draws, outlines, or otherwise invents an Unknown tile. Light and the blend should make a seen wall disappear into the room, not terminate the room as a square map cutout. [TUNE: close start/end distances and zoom-relative shift are renderer constants, calibrated by captures.]

The dev work light

Development needs to see geometry clearly, so the material render carries a work light: one toggle that raises the scene to a stronger flat neutral inspection exposure (every earned mesh inspectable, albedo readable, no mood). It is a dev affordance, not a player surface — a debug keybind plus a shot-harness stage (worklight), excluded from canonical screenshots except explicitly-labeled dev captures. Toggling it off restores the current fiction exposure: authored fixture/machine light with low fill after Eyes, physically dark before Eyes.

The soft pool — machine light on the floor

Once a machine’s Seen form (or a build that wraps a beam into a chassis) exists, every powered owned machine casts a soft amber pool on the floor around it — a gradient falloff from the chassis foot into darkness, never a ruled edge. Before that, the only floor light at the host is the presence beam’s wash. The ruled underglow frame (the claim ring’s double square) stays out of the material frame — it reads as UI painted on a physical floor.

[OPEN — map-zoom claim mark]: the ring was decided (2026-07-08) for the map-zoom read, where chassis detail and light pools die. Options: (a) the pool alone, brightened at distance; (b) the ring returns only beyond a zoom threshold; (c) territory at map zoom becomes a flat- sensorium job entirely. Default proposal is (a), falling back to (b) if distance screenshots prove the pool illegible.

The opening frame

After the wake (opening.md), the default material camera anchors to attention (the cursor, which opens on the host) at a close distance: the presence beam dominates the frame, the rest is dark. The wake’s pull-back ends at that same distance and hands off at zoom 1.0 — it must not park the play camera at a far multiplier converted from the old god-view endpoint. No chassis, no room slab, no floor grid, no blueprint silhouette, no ruled amber frame. Fit-to-known- content stays retired as the material camera’s default framing driver. Zooming out reveals more only where earned visual light exists — never as a schematic. The bevy-visual-floor rules still bind in spirit: the frame is deliberate, and darkness is sensor/physical darkness, never a missing scene.

Day-job stacks and mode clears still target the host: the beam is the machine for interaction until Seen wraps it into a chassis. The attention mark around its foot uses a broad nested channel rather than a single hairline outline, so the base holds its own against the thick beam in the close opening composition.

Acceptance criteria

1. A fresh run’s first held material frame (post-wake, pre-tap) is the close-up presence beam and its softest wash, plus the environmental monitor’s abstract cold-signal ember when attention reaches its known, reachable anchor — no chassis, camera silhouette, room slab, floor grid, blueprint silhouette, or ruled amber frame (screenshot in the session log).
2. After the env-monitor audio tap, the material world remains spatially identical: no room/floor mass, chassis, fixture, person, coverage mark, or inferred source appears. A staged semantic event produces one brief cold waveform pulse at the environmental monitor itself (screenshot + fog audit).
3. On first Eyes, the host amber source becomes a short white source, then settles into the service beam as silhouette, edges, and chassis resolve while low neutral fill and authored level/machine lights make Seen room geometry readable. It reveals no unearned mass: Unknown remains absent. Seen form shows the whole lit earned machine/room per computer-visual-language.md — bone-white chassis albedo (not amber-washed plates) and a fist-thick amber beam carried by the service spine; powered owned Seen machines cast a soft-gradient amber pool with no hard edge (white/form screenshot evidence). The Seen floor is visibly exposed medium-light concrete, not the near-black sensorium substrate; hearing-only floor remains absent in the comparison.
4. Blueprint/remembered mass draws in the flat sensorium only; the material-mode fog audit asserts blueprint absence and passes.
5. The work light: one debug toggle raises the material scene to a stronger flat neutral inspection exposure; toggling back restores the appropriate fiction exposure (floor/machine-lit with Eyes, dark without it); a worklight harness stage captures the pair (dev shot pair in the session log, labeled as dev-only).
6. Zoom bounds hold around the close default: the maximum zoom-out never puts the attention target behind the camera’s fog end plane, never resurrects plan geometry, and still reads as earned light fading into darkness (bounds screenshots).
7. The flat sensorium, terminal, and agent frame gain no material-only chassis from telemetry alone; panel telemetry and feel-graph remain; no surface gains a pictured fact light/sound did not earn.
8. In a close and a wide Seen capture, rendered wall mass fades into near-black under the dark rig and camera fog rather than ending in a hard lit silhouette at the Unknown boundary; the fog audit still proves Unknown geometry is absent.
9. Before Eyes, a known reachable sensor is locatable in the material frame by a breathing cold-signal ember at its anchor. Unknown/unreachable sensors have no marker; the ember does not alter fog, reveal geometry, or encode camera facing. A recent audio capture may add only the brief cold waveform at this same anchor; Seen removes the standing ping as physical form takes over.
10. In close and hall-wide Seen captures, neutral recessed fixtures are visible in the Foundation data hall floor and their local pools model nearby rack and floor faces from below. Moving attention or zooming changes the view, not fixture position or light direction. The ordinary camera directional flood stays hidden; F4 remains the only path that reveals it. The fog audit proves every fixture lens/source pair is visible exactly when its tile is Seen and absent at every other knowledge grade.