The comic sheet was capped at 1240px with empty margins beside it, the
Director's cut wire was a 320px box, and a short page ended half way down
the window. Now the stage takes the full width (16px gutters kept), the
wire is clamp(320px, 25vw, 460px) wide and runs the main area's whole
visible height, sticky, its list scrolling inside, and the rows grow to
fill the visible height.
Row heights come from a pure function next to storyLayoutSpans
(storyRowHeights): the visible height is shared evenly between the page's
rows for the active column count (6 over a 1000px sheet, 2 over 600px; one
column keeps its natural heights), never under 270px (a longer page keeps
270px rows and scrolls as before) and never over a cap: 540px (twice the
drawn size: past it a one-row page is mostly background and the text, which
stops growing at 1.45x, looks lost), and the height at which a row's
narrowest panel would get a scene stage under 280 units wide (the mission's
exclamation mark ran off the panel below that, which is where a span-2 panel
turns into a portrait). What a capped row cannot take goes to the rows that
can, mostly the final panel's full-width row; its scene keeps a stage wide
enough (440 units) to stand beside its words. When the final panel's
in-flow words make its row taller, the other rows give that height up, so
the page still ends at the bottom. A capped page leaves blank paper, never a
band of background: the sheet reaches the visible bottom.
The values are plain px written from JS (each panel's --story-panel-min,
the page's grid-template-rows and --story-row-h, which also feeds
grid-auto-rows, so there is one 270 default), and --story-panel-min is
registered as a <length>: _storySizePanel and _storyFitCaption read it with
parseFloat, which a raw calc() would have turned into NaN. The comic text
scales with --story-k (the shortest row over 270, at most 1.45), set on the
page; the you/notice balloons sit below the caption by the same factor.
It is recomputed by the existing ResizeObserver, which now also watches the
main area (window, drawer padding, a bar added later) and the sheet's width
(the Director's cut toggle), once per delivery, and on every render. It
reads boxes that its writes cannot change, and the main area keeps its
scrollbar gutter, so it never oscillates; panels still resize through
_storySizePanel, whose draws the frame loop rations. Main's bottom padding
is 16px.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Director's cut rebuilt the whole wire with replaceChildren on every
refresh (every 4 s poll and SSE burst of a running turn), so it never
followed new events and a rebuild could throw the reader's place, focus
and hover away.
Rows are now keyed by event id and headings by the row they head (a panel
that changes kind or number as the turn grows keeps its heading node).
Unchanged nodes are reused, a changed row is patched in place (a running
tag flips to its result on the same node), new rows are inserted in
order with a short transform and opacity entrance, and a new turn
replaces the list. _storyEventRow still builds every row.
While the wire follows, it glides to the newest row with a critically
damped spring on animation frames: a burst of updates moves the target
and the glide keeps its speed, so there is no stop and restart. Measured
against the browser's own smooth scrollTo on a growing transcript, the
spring moved a median 8 px a frame over ~25 frames with no stalls, while
scrollTo snapped at ~41 px a frame over ~10 frames and its read of the
new scrollHeight forced a layout inside the update (a 57 ms long task).
Scrolling up by hand (wheel, touch, scroll keys, the scrollbar) stops
following and shows a pill that counts the rows that came in since;
clicking it, or scrolling back to the bottom, follows again. The glide
only moves down and is never read as the reader scrolling up. A running
newest turn, and the Director's cut turned on during one, open at the
bottom, following; a finished turn opens at the top. Under
prefers-reduced-motion there is no entrance and the list jumps.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
With the Director's cut as the default reading level, the story line the
test lengthens is not shown, so its panel never grew and the check
failed. The test now picks the Advanced level first, where that line is
the caption.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The bar's two-button group becomes three, in reading order: Simple (new,
for a reader who has never seen a terminal), Advanced (the story view as
it was) and Director's cut (the wire and the tool captions, unchanged).
The Director's cut is the default, as the owner asked; the reader's own
pick is kept per device under codeman:story-level, and only a click
stores it, so opening Story Mode never writes the default back and
changing the default stays a one-line change. _storySetDirector(on)
stays as a shim (on: Director's cut, off: Advanced) beside the new
_storySetLevel(level); st.director stays a boolean for the wire and the
scenes, which see director false at Simple.
At Simple each panel shows caption.simple in the letter font, a size up
(calc(20px * var(--story-k, 1))). Claude's balloons are hidden (its
narration is often technical; the art carries the panel) while your own
prompt balloon stays. The final panel shows the plain summary instead of
Claude's last message, and its chips are the time, the files changed and
"Read Claude's message", which opens a new drawer view with Claude's
last words as it wrote them. Balloons are hidden with the hidden
attribute, so Save image (which skips hidden boxes) prints what the
screen shows. On a phone the three buttons and Save image share one row.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Story Mode gets a third reading level for someone who has never seen a
terminal (a parent, a manager). Every panel now carries caption.simple:
one short sentence in everyday words, with no file name, command, tool
name, flag or jargon. The sentences are templates only, so nothing from
the transcript (a path, a commit message, a branch) can reach them, and
they are written from the same facts as the story caption: a failed
check never reads as a pass, a failure you asked for says so, and a
check that fails after one passed is a failure again.
The final panel's simple caption is a plain summary: how the turn ended
and roughly how long it took, how many files changed, whether the checks
pass, whether the work is saved (only claimed "not saved" where saving
is in play: you asked for it, or the turn used git), and what the reader
must not miss (a problem left, a note, a question for them).
test/story-plain-words.ts is the guard: the corpus test runs it over
every panel of every page of the eleven sessions, and the unit tests
cover the honest endings (failed check, catch, note, question, stopped,
not done, to be continued, done for now) and the guard itself. The
corpus expectations only gain "simple" lines.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Flagged by four readers across rounds 10 to 12: after a push, "but a
check after that fails" never said that Claude repaired what the check
found (the new remote pointed at a branch with no commits) and checked
again. When Claude's next command runs that same check again after a
change (`git -C remote.git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/main && git -C
remote.git log …`) and passes, the caption adds "; Claude fixes it, and
the check passes next." A check re-run with no change before it, or one
that fails again, claims nothing.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 12: after a helper reported back, Claude's `git log`,
`git show --stat` and a diff of the README example against real output
read "Claude looks around the project". In a turn a report started, a
look that names no file now reads "Claude checks the work that came
back."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From a reader who has never written code:
- "a save your prompt here did not ask for" on a save that was step 3 of
the plan you approved ("Verify and commit"): a commit step in an
approved plan asks for the save. When Claude says a project rule asks
for its commits (read on its whole message), the line says "…; your
project's rules do".
- "a check after that fails" read as a failed test where it was `git
describe` finding no tags: "the version-tag lookup after that fails
(there are no tags yet)".
- The dry run you asked for never showed: the terminal card took the
last command's edge-case errors. A dry run in the panel is now what the
card shows, its "a -> b" lines, under "Claude does the dry run you
asked for: it shows what would happen, changing nothing."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From the fact-checker's last items:
- A helper's report quoted in a notice joined its first sentence to one
from paragraphs later with nothing between: where text was left out,
the balloon now says "…" (found in the report itself, so two
sentences that follow each other are never marked).
- "The first run fails on purpose, as you asked" for a run that never
loaded a test (a collection error) now reads "At first the tests don't
even load, as you asked; the second run passes.", as a test panel
already says it.
- A list intro without a count ("What failed and how I fixed it:") brings
its items while they fit in 360 characters, not 260.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From both round-11 readers: `git --git-dir=origin.git log -1 master;
git status -sb | head -1` after a push read "Claude looks around the
project", so a reader could not tell the save was verified. A look made
only of git lookups (log, status, show, ls-remote, …, piped to head or
tail) after a save in the same turn now reads "Claude checks what it
saved."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 11: a long caption ("Claude writes pyproject.toml
and changes test_csvstat.py; the tests pass, then Claude starts a git
repository and saves the work on a new branch …") covered the test
board, the POW and the code card's file name on a two-column panel.
A caption that reaches past the band above the art now makes its panel
taller by the difference (re-fitted on resize and on the Director's cut
toggle). Every scene keeps the panel's usual height as its stage and
stands at the bottom, the background filling the space above, the way
the final panel already did; Claude's balloon is placed against the
moved head. The browser test forces a long caption and checks the panel
grew and the caption ends above the art.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From the fact-checker:
- A script created and then edited in the same panel showed "+95 -3":
a file created in the span counts what it ends with, never lines
removed from its own draft (+92), on the badge, the panel and the page.
- "Claude writes 4 files" for files an earlier panel wrote and this one
rewrote with here-documents: writing a file the turn already touched is
changing it.
- "Claude says: Compacted": a local command's output is the CLI's own,
a note, not Claude's words.
- "The CHANGELOG helper is still running" was dropped under "Mission
complete!": key sentences were read only in endings over 160
characters; a short ending is read too, and that one is a note.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From an engineering manager skimming titles and captions:
- "but a check after that fails" under "Mission complete!" where the
prompt said that step may fail now adds ", as you said it might".
- Saves no prompt of the turn asked for (a project rule, or Claude's own
idea) were indistinguishable from requested ones: the turn's first such
save carries a small line, "a save your prompt here did not ask for".
"save its log with tee" no longer counts as asking to save the work.
- The first save on a branch Claude created says which: "saves the work
on a new branch (feat/csvstat)".
- "Claude changes 3 files" hid an edit to your CLAUDE.md: a panel that
wrote some files and patched others says both ("Claude writes
README.md and .gitignore and changes CLAUDE.md."); a file created and
then edited in the same panel is written.
- A turn with a problem left and work still out read "Done for now";
the catch now wins the title.
- A helper's report that is only a path reads "reports back with the
file it wrote: README.md."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From the fact-checker:
- "+37" sat on mathx.py's card, which has 11 of those lines; with
several files the badge now counts the card in front (the Director's
cut keeps every file's count).
- A second opinion asked in the middle of a step's calls read "after
asking"; it now reads "along the way, asks a stronger AI model…".
- "Two places where I didn't follow your wording exactly" under
"Mission complete!": not following your words is a note ("Done, with a
note"), and the sentence counts as a word on what you asked.
- A test run that patched a file written a panel before said "Claude
writes" it: whole files are written, patched ones changed ("Claude
writes pyproject.toml and changes test_csvstat.py; …").
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From the person who asked and a fact-checker, reading fresh pages:
- "as planned" for failing first runs the prompt asked for ("it should
fail because mode is missing", "run them to watch them fail"): those
read "The first run fails on purpose, as you asked".
- A repository Claude started was told only on a save panel; the first
save inside a loop or a test run says it too ("Claude starts a git
repository and saves the work in 4 commits along the way.").
- `git push && git describe --tags; echo "exit=$?"` exits 0, so a
failure after the push went unsaid; what it printed after the push
(`fatal:`, `exit=128`) now counts. The commit subject stays on that
caption too.
- Tool-call counts no longer include second opinions.
- "a layout check" is "a formatting check"; "Turn over" (a game word)
is "Not done".
- "the last check finds nothing" told nothing: it now says what came
back empty ("the last one finds a git setting that is not set, which is
no error").
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 10: the chip "1 commit, copied to remote.git" was cut
off at the final panel's edge (on four of the eleven sessions), and so
would any ending longer than the panel's fixed 270 px. The final panel's
words now sit in flow, so its row grows (and a phone's 430 px is a
minimum). Its scene keeps the usual size, the panel's minimum height as
its stage, standing at the bottom with the background filling the rest;
otherwise a taller panel scaled Claude up with it. On a phone the words
end above Claude.
The browser test fills the final balloon with a long ending and checks
every chip, the balloon and the title lie inside the panel, at desktop
and phone width; it fails on the old layout.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From the person who asked for the work, reading fresh pages:
- "The result was 4 passed, 1 failed" under "Mission complete!" read as
a failing end. A test count is no failed step, and Claude's second
sentence is kept when it is the outcome ("All 5 tests now pass, and the
change is committed.").
- "Two places where I didn't follow your wording:" showed one. A list
intro that announces how many brings that many lines.
- "…would fix it for up to 10 files. Want me to add that?" never said
what "it" was. An offer that points back brings the start of its
paragraph ("Suffix swap: the two files with the same time would trade
their _1 suffix. …").
- "Decisions you may want to change" is something for you, like an offer.
- A second opinion whose call failed read as given; it now reads "after
trying to ask … (no answer came)".
- "but a step after that fails" after a push sounded as if the push
broke: when everything after it only looks (git log, status), it is "a
check after that fails".
- Tests run in a fresh clone read "The tests pass in a fresh copy made
from remote.git."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From a recall sample of clean finishes: "the box hasn't answered yet" is
something not done, and "One thing worth flagging: …" is a heads-up.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
A sample of the 308 real pages titled "Done, with a note" read as open
work in about nine of ten. The rest were history ("Before, that early
idle could end a wait…", "used to") or "still open" as a verb ("JSON
files still open the live log viewer, as intended"). Neither counts as
something not done any more, and a history sentence is no open problem
either.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
`git init -q --bare ../origin.git` (flags before --bare) counted as Claude
starting the project's repository. And a last step that printed a usage
message or an error (`error: unknown option`, `grep: x: No such file`)
read as "the last check finds nothing"; it now fails, as it did.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 9: a background job's page showed only Claude Code's
line 'Agent "Helper B: write extra pytest tests" finished', so what the
helper said about its own work vanished, here that it had never run its
tests against the real wordcount.py.
The notice balloon now carries the helper's report like Claude's last
words (its first sentence and the key sentences from the rest):
'"Helper B: write extra pytest tests" reports: I wrote the file:
tests/test_extra.py It has 18 test cases … I haven't run it against the
real wordcount.py.' A report that is only a path is its file name, and
absolute paths keep their last two parts, so a long path does not push
the sentence that matters out of a phone's balloon.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
A sweep of 1,314 real transcripts (3,863 pages) titled 330 of them
"Done, with a catch"; a sample showed about half were history or
negations: "I found and fixed a model bug", "Bug fixed: …", "found no
broken links", "Not a problem", "the caveat is gone", "was never
broken", plus names ("bug-fixing", "cron-broken-network",
"#limitations", "the memory warning").
A problem sentence now counts only while it is open: not described as
fixed, gone or the past cause (unless it says "not fixed"), not a
negation, and a bare "warning" no longer counts. "Left out" and "left
open" are open work (a note), unless Claude chose it ("left out on
purpose", "rather than guessed"). 244 pages keep the catch; samples
read as real open problems in about four of five.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Since second opinions ride on the next panel, an advisor call sorted to
the front of a helper panel tripped the old rule that kept advisor
panels apart, so "advisor, helper A, helper B" drew two helper panels,
and the first counted the advisor as a helper ("Claude calls in 2
helpers" for one helper). The rule has no job left and is gone; a
riding second opinion is never counted as a helper. One recorded page
changes: "Claude sends 1 helper off to work in the background."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 9: "Claude tries a command, and it fails" made up a
problem. The command printed what Claude was after, then exited 1 only
because its last step (`git config user.name`) found nothing set.
A command whose LAST step is a lookup that answers "no" with exit code
1 (grep, `git config`, `test`, `which`), after printing something,
now reads "Claude checks a few things; the last check finds nothing.",
and does not make the turn "Nothing Claude tried worked". A real
failure (another exit code, nothing printed, or the lookup not last)
still fails.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 9: "You stop Claude here, during its step 3." said
where Claude was, not what that meant. The stop now carries the step's
own words, "during its step 3 (new tests under test/)", and when Claude
kept a to-do list, what was still open on it: "Not done yet: Write the
new tests; Update the README and 1 more."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 9 (a newcomer to the project):
- One or two files are named, not counted: "Claude writes .gitignore and
saves the work", "Claude changes rename_by_date.sh.", "Claude writes
the new files mathx.py and test_mathx.py." Three or more are counted.
- The first save in a folder Claude turned into a repository says so:
"Claude starts a git repository and saves the work: …". A `git init
--bare` (the push target) does not count, nor a folder that already
had commits.
- A push to a repository in a folder on this computer (`To ./origin.git`)
is a copy, not an upload: "then copies it to origin.git, a folder on
this computer", and the final chip reads "copied to origin.git".
- A tool lookup for plan mode reads "Claude gets ready to plan."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 9: "Claude asks a stronger AI model for a second
opinion" stood as a whole panel on almost every page, and the reader
never learns what it said (the answer is encrypted). An advisor call now
rides on the panel of the step after it (or the last one, when nothing
follows), counted in `secondOpinion`: a small line under the caption,
"after asking a stronger AI model for a second opinion" ("then asks…"
when it came last), and "· after 1 second opinion" in the Director's
cut. Pages lose a panel of noise and keep room for the work.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 9:
- "another check" was too vague to act on. A check other than the tests
is named by its tool: a layout check (a formatter), a style check (a
linter), a type check, the build. "Fix and test, 2 rounds: a test fails
and Claude fixes it, then a layout check fails and Claude fixes that;
everything passes."
- A failure the prompt asked for reads "The first run fails on purpose,
as you asked; the second passes." ("The tests don't even load, as you
asked."); one Claude planned itself keeps "Test first: … as planned".
- A test run sent to the background that reported in a later turn reads
"Claude starts the tests in the background; later they pass.", not as
if they passed in that turn.
- The test board says "1 test" and, when nothing loaded, "1 error".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two fresh cold readers (the person who asked for the work, a newcomer to
the project) found the round-8 balloons still cut exactly where Claude
turns from describing to asking, offering or warning: "Want me to add
that?", "I can fix the number format whenever you want", the
http.server instruction, the fix that followed a reported bug.
Key sentences are now picked by kind, one of each, at most three, and
shown in the order Claude wrote them: a problem left (with the fix right
after it, when there is one, so it never reads as open), a question or
offer, how to use what was built, something not done or checked yet, a
step that failed, a word on what you asked for, a corrected warning. A
list intro is judged on its own words and brings its first items; a
pointer ("described below") is skipped; a short offer brings what
"that" was.
The final panel reads "Done, with a catch" for a problem left, "Done,
with a note" for something pending, and "Done, with a question" when
the next move is yours (`openNote` is now 'catch' | 'note'; `asks`).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 8: you asked to see a dry run, Claude's balloon said
"Here's the dry run you asked for", and the page showed nothing of it.
A run panel's terminal card now prints, dimmer under the commands, the
first lines its last command printed (the last ones when it failed:
that is where an error is).
The card is drawn on the canvas, so it goes into a saved image someone
may share: a line that looks like a secret (token, password, api key,
credential, inside identifiers too) is left out, addresses and long
token-like strings are masked, and Claude Code's own markers ("(Bash
completed with no output)", tool-error tags) are dropped.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 8: "STOPPED" with the balloon "Step 3: new tests under
test/." read like progress, and nothing said what the stop left. The
final panel now names the step Claude last announced and the commits made
before the stop: "You stop Claude here, during its step 3. Saved before
the stop: 2 commits."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 8: "Mission complete!" with confetti and cheering
helpers sat over balloons saying the page will not work as opened, a
helper's tests have not run, or a problem is left. The final panel is now
calm (no confetti, a neutral robot) whenever work was still out at the
turn's end, nothing worked, or Claude's last words name an open problem
(`page.openNote`: a key point about something wrong, not done, not
checked or not fixed); the last of these reads "Done, with a catch".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two agents read only the comic of the eleven recorded sessions (one who
has never written code, one engineering manager skimming), wrote down
what they believed, then compared with the transcripts. Both were misled
in the same places, and the cause was the same: the final panel kept
Claude's first sentence or two, and what a reader must not lose sat
further into its last message.
- Claude's last words now keep key sentences from anywhere in its final
message (read in full, past the label's clip): an open problem or a
quirk, something not yet done, checked or confirmed, work still out,
what you asked for or expected, a correction of an earlier warning
(with the sentence it refers to). A bare "I didn't" counts only when
nothing stronger is there; table rows, list intros and questions never.
"I built the pomodoro timer. Opening the page: it won't work if you
double-click index.html…"; "…That note makes the current behaviour
clear, but it doesn't fix it."; "As you expected, git describe --tags
then failed because the repo has no tags."
- A turn that ended with helpers or a background command still out says
so: "Done for now", and "Claude's part is done in 36 seconds. Its 2
helpers finished later and reported back." (`finishedLater`).
- A failure you asked for, or that Claude said it expected, reads as the
plan: "Test first: the first run fails as planned, the second
passes.", "The tests don't even load, as planned." A loop that failed
once on a test and once on another check says both, and the commits
made inside a loop are part of its story; the final panel counts the
turn's commits ("5 commits, uploaded").
- One or two files read are named ("Claude checks README.md." in a
turn a report started); a tool lookup reads "Claude gets the tools it
needs ready." again (it was overwritten) without its query; the
advisor is "a stronger AI model", and one that answered with an error
"gets no answer"; a commit message loses its `feat:` prefix in the
plain caption.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Round 6's two sessions join the corpus (sanitized like the others, and
checked to draw the same pages as the originals): tests that do not load,
a fix-fail-fix-pass loop, a commit then a push in its own command, a push
with a failing step after it, an append; two helpers and a command in the
background whose reports come back as turns of their own.
Replaying them showed two captions to fix:
- A test command that ran in the background and reported back read "The
tests pass.", as if they ran during that turn: "The tests run in the
background and pass." (events keep `background`).
- A python script that rewrote README.md drew as "Claude works in the
terminal." beside a separate change panel. A plain command that writes
project files (a script fed by a here-document, or one Claude Code says
changed files) is an edit: "Claude changes 3 files."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 7 (PR review):
- With no hook path (normal after a server restart), the transcript was
looked up by conversation id only; it now also tries the Codeman id and
a recovered session's `restored-<fragment>` transcript, as
last-response does, and keeps what it found briefly (a lookup reads
every project folder; a miss is kept only 4 s).
- A session Story Mode cannot draw is not polled, and a page with nothing
drawn yet is polled like a finished one (every 15 s), not every 4 s.
- Helper steps: one request per helper is drawn, the newest; a failed
refetch never writes over steps already shown.
- The Director's cut toggle, a skin change and the fonts arriving redraw
within the frame budget, not every panel in one task.
- A bare name under an `ls` header finds its folder in one pass over the
lines; a search per link over the text before it was quadratic (about
1.5 s for 700 links on agent output).
- A page of many questions still keeps to 12 panels: questions fold last.
- Opening Story Mode while it is open never starts a second runtime; the
status announcer carries data-i18n-skip; the turn key in the ETag is
clipped.
- The crafted-input timing test runs at sizes where the old code took 6
to 29 s and the new one under 10 ms, with a 1.5 s bound.
- Docs: `older`, `origin` (`scheduled`), which route answers a 500;
mobile.css's stale comment; an orphaned doc comment.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 7 (PR review):
- A helper's drawer froze while the helper worked: a background helper
writes only to its own transcript, so the parent page answered 304 and
the refresh returned before anything refreshed the drawer. An unchanged
page now still refreshes an open drawer's working helpers (ETag'd).
- A helper messaged twice read as superseded ("The trail stops here…"):
its one-page run took its ending from the first turn. It takes the last.
- More than 60 turns in a small file listed the newest 60 with no hint;
`older` is now set whenever the list leaves turns out.
- One /story request that never settled wedged the view, even across a
reopen. Requests carry a token and a 30 s timeout, and opening resets
the request state, with what was announced and shown.
- The background canvases (megabytes each at 2x) are released when Story
Mode closes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 7 (security):
- Eviction past the per-transcript caps dropped entries one shift() at
a time after the whole tail was parsed: quadratic and never yielding
(a 2 s event-loop stall on a 70 MB long turn, 51 s from 300k entries).
It is one splice, done at every 1 MB yield, so the peak stays near the
caps; and a window that saw a turn start which was then trimmed away no
longer widens to a bigger tail that would be trimmed the same.
- A FIFO or a device in place of a transcript or a helper's .meta.json
(stat said size 0, then open() waited for a writer) pinned a libuv
worker per request; four of them hang every fs, dns and crypto call on
the server. Files are now opened non-blocking, checked with the
handle's own stat (a regular file only) and read through that handle.
- The cache held 6 transcripts for everyone, so a seventh open view made
every poll a full re-read, and a 304 was decided only after reading. An
unchanged file is now a 304 from a stat alone, and the cache holds up
to 24 transcripts within 30 million characters.
- Story Mode is the first route to send a transcript's content to the
browser, so the hook-reported path is used only when it really lies
(symlinks resolved) in a Claude projects folder: the session's
relocated CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR (now also used for the lookup by id) or the
server's. Anything else falls back to the lookup by conversation id.
Tests move their transcripts into the (temp) projects folder and cover a
path outside it, a symlink out of it, a FIFO transcript, a FIFO meta file
and a 100,000-entry tail.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every string Story Mode matches is agent-written (and an agent can be
prompt-injected), and one regex call blocks the single-threaded server.
Timing each helper at its own input cap with crafted shapes found five
that were quadratic or worse:
- A lazy `<tag>[\s\S]*?</tag>` rescans to the end for every opener that
never closes: system reminders, teammate messages and task-notification
fields took 1.5 to 29 s on 0.5 to 1 MB of prompt text. They are found
with indexOf now (withoutBlocks, blocks, blockText1).
- The commit message regex backtracked over many `git commit` tokens
(290 ms at 4,000 characters, growing x8.7 per doubling) and ran on the
whole command. It is a bounded line-by-line scan with the same rules.
- The "This command modified …" note was searched with a lazy match per
repeat of the phrase (7 s on 1 MB of output). It is one anchored try
at its last occurrence, where Claude Code appends it.
- firstSentence and planFromText now read only the start they need.
The worst shape is now under 10 ms at 1 MB. A test times five of them at
sizes where the old code took a second or more.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Accessibility (review6-c):
- A panel is named "Panel 2 of 7" and its caption is read once, as its
content (it was the name and the content both).
- Balloons say who speaks, visually hidden ("Claude says: ", "You say: ",
"Claude asks: ", "Notice: "); Save image leaves those words out.
- The overlay is named "Story Mode: <session>", the drawer by its kind and
title ("Diff 2 files"), the final panel's chips by what they open, and
the wire's panel labels are headings.
- While a file preview opened from a panel is up, the overlay is not
aria-modal (the preview sits beside it), and is again once focus returns.
- The focus ring on a click region gets a light band under its dashes; on
the loop's magenta halftone it vanished.
From review6-b:
- "Mission complete!" no longer shows while a helper or a background
command is still out ("To be continued…").
- A background command's drawer says "Started in the background…", then
"Finished in the background, exit code 0…", instead of the launch note
meant for Claude ("do not poll that file").
- `sed -n '5,25p' README.md` is a printed file, offered in the drawer.
- A report turn no longer counts the helper it answers as one it started.
- A helper's `cd /work/x && ls` keeps its folder as ".".
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 6:
- An open drawer was not tied to its turn: when the newest turn moved on,
a helper drawer went blank and a report drawer silently became the next
turn's prompt. The drawer now remembers its turn; when the newest turn
moves on, the page holds that turn (the picker lists the new one, and
the status line says so) until the drawer closes, then follows the
newest again. Picking a turn yourself wins.
- Previous on the second turn (or Next onto the last) disabled the
focused button and dropped focus to the page body. Focus moves to the
turn picker first.
- The drawer covered the right half of the bar at desktop widths; it now
starts under the bar there too. Where it covers the whole page (a
narrow window, a phone) the page behind it is inert, so Tab no longer
walks the panels it hides.
- A live loop shows the runs that finished, and the one still going as an
open circle (`roundsOk` carries `null` for it).
- The diff of a command that also printed something (`cat >> NOTES.md
<<EOF ... cat calc_stats.py`) shows what it printed, with "Open
calc_stats.py".
- "Red as expected: collection error." stays on its check, not the save
after it. Parked on an older turn, a new turn is announced. A new panel
is sized as it is inserted (no empty first frame). The turn picker is
44 px on touch screens, and the diff drawer no longer says "Live diff"
beside its LIVE tag.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 6:
- An open drawer rebuilt its body on every refresh, unchanged or not (11
rebuilds in 25 s, 7 identical), so a focused button inside it fell to
the page body and a text selection was cleared. A refresh that changes
nothing now keeps the nodes; a real change rebuilds and gives focus back
to the control that does the same thing. Helper steps are filled after
that decision, so a skipped rebuild costs no request and a helper still
working still refreshes its steps.
- When a fix folded into a loop under an open drawer, Escape left focus on
the body: the opener (`diff@fix:1`) was gone. Its replacement is found by
view and panel position (`diff@loop:1`).
- Panels are matched by identity (kind and first event), not position: a
fold into a montage near the start of a long live turn shifted every
later index and rebuilt all eleven panels with their entrances. Only the
montage is new now.
- An edit with no lines (a script, or a command Claude Code says changed
the file) says so: "What changed is not in the transcript: a script or
another program wrote this file."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 6: commit, then push as a second command (the most
common way to ship) drew as "Claude saves the work in 2 commits and
uploads it." for one commit, and the commit's message was dropped. A
command's `commits` was only recorded above one, and the save panel then
counted every save command as one. It is now recorded whenever a command
commits and is the only thing counted: "Claude saves the work and uploads
it: "feat: add mode()"." A push of earlier commits reads "Claude uploads
the work."
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
From review round 5: Claude rewrote textstats.py, the change the user
asked for, through `python3 - <<EOF ... open(p, "w").write(s)`, and
the page listed only the two files the same command wrote with `cat >`.
A script fed to python or node by a here-document is now read for the
files it opens for writing (`open(target, 'w'|'a'|...)`, `Path(...)
.write_text`, `writeFileSync`), with the target a string literal or a
name bound to one (`p = "textstats.py"`); anything computed is left
out, never guessed, and scratch targets are skipped. They are edits
without lines, like the files Claude Code says a command modified,
since what the script changed is not in the command.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- The compact panel's click region opens what was packed up, with the
compaction's token counts, not an empty output.
- Parked on an older turn, the poll asks for that turn, the picker learns
of a third turn ("Turn 1 of 3"), the reader stays on turn 1 and nothing
is announced.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
- The final panel's chips were rebuilt on every redraw, so the chip that
opened a drawer was gone by the time it closed and focus fell to the
page body. Unchanged chips are now kept, and a trigger replaced anyway
hands focus to the control that opens the same thing.
- API reference: `older`, background Bash calls (`running`), `subject`,
append hunks (`atEnd`), `files` resolved against the command's folder,
test counts read before the output is cut, `roundsOk`, the `note`
speaker and `noneWorked`.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Codeman maintainer