LISTENER-UX-01 — One-action global Harmonic Beacon experience

[nicoechaniz]

Objective

Ship a calm, mobile-first, one-action Listener experience for weekly Free and Founding Listener access.

Current product contract

• Browser language chooses ES/EN interface and default intro; dropdown overrides only the intro.
• One pre-play checkbox chooses whether the intro precedes the Beacon.
• One primary Listen action; during intro, Pause/Seek/Skip plus Stop; during Beacon, Stop only.
• Beacon playback rejoins the current shared stream position; it is never presented as a recording or instrument status.
• Initial volume is 70%; approved assets, gain, fades, codec, buffers and routing are unchanged.
• Weekly Free shows server-owned remaining time and renewal; Founder is unlimited while continuity is current; FFA is non-metered.
• Healthy states do not add diagnostic text. Billing, capacity, reconnection and terminal states remain truthful and concise.
• Reactive field uses server-side analysis and is visual-only; Field Lab is default-off.

Acceptance

• One-screen mobile layout and one primary action.
• ES/EN intro selection, pause/seek/skip, intro→Beacon, direct Beacon and Stop.
• Weekly quota/Founder/FFA and terminal membership states.
• Keyboard, touch-target, contrast and reduced-motion automated coverage.
• No media request before authorization; no audio/event changes.
• P1 Listener — Audio becomes silent while analysis frames continue #304 prolonged physical listening remains audible; 60-minute soak on exact candidate.
• Final Chrome/Firefox/Android/iPhone physical pass under LISTENER-QA-01 — Staging acceptance, load soak and release rollback #201.
• Human review of the exact launch copy under LISTENER-COMMERCIAL — Public offer, billing terms and launch copy #318.

Optional Field Lab variants, tapestry progression and later gamification are not launch blockers unless they regress audio or accessibility.

[nicoechaniz]

Dependency order: #194 provides the signed HLS contract; #196 provides Listener identity; #197 provides membership/Free access. The synthetic-entitlement UI can land before external OAuth/payment credentials, while approved audio artifacts remain a separate Nico gate.

[nicoechaniz]

Listener recovery/UX checkpoint (2026-08-06)

Webapp 2ee36adf36f0364862b62b0bb0c5df5d49086cc0 is deployed to isolated staging. The batch prevents displaced-device reacquire ping-pong, distinguishes expired/displaced/inactive leases, bounds retries, recovers from proven media failures, preserves drop-in play/pause state and keeps native suspend from causing churn. Privacy copy is now all-audience neutral.

Evidence: 18 EarlyBird files / 78 tests green locally; full branch CI is green (999 pass / 19 skip in the integrated run), TypeScript/lint/build green, and the frozen-audio-paths gate passed. No codec, rate, channels, gain, buffer, AudioContext or event-audio path changed.

[nicoechaniz]

Multi-device staging correction: 806fe9c changes only the protected staging team-entry auth order to sign-in-first/sign-up-fallback. This prevents returning devices from spending an account-creation rate-limit attempt. A real public-staging browser activated one canonical Free invitation twice for the same account without error, then was denied after durable revocation. No Listener audio path or production auth surface changed.

[nicoechaniz]

Listener lifecycle update at deployed staging head 48d7395: prewarm and playback are now separate intents. Prewarmed idle leases keep the iOS source attached but receive deterministic lowest eviction priority; active playback promotes the same device without delaying play() beyond the gesture. A capacity-limited prewarm no longer disables private intro controls. Backgrounding/error defers an in-flight handoff fade, and a mobile browser pause during that state triggers recovery before the fade resumes. Stale async intro completion and stale ended events remain guarded.

Evidence: focused Listener/lease/heartbeat 34/34, full hook 1,024/1,043 with 19 standard skips, PR CI green. Real authenticated Chrome no-play reload: Beacon and ES intro reached readyState 4 with no media errors; prepare lease and manifest 200, private intro range 206. Remaining on this card is human playback on physical Safari/iOS, Firefox and Android plus an approved EN artifact.

[nicoechaniz]

Final Listener lifecycle checkpoint (2026-08-06): exact webapp f9950bf is pushed and deployed only to EarlyBirds staging. Capacity-limited prewarm now uses a truthful two-gesture path: first explicit click claims/attaches the live source without playing; only then are Beacon and intro controls enabled, so the second iOS/Safari gesture invokes both media elements synchronously. Idle prepared sources are invalidated on displacement/denial/reacquire and revalidated after resume before intros re-enable. Full hook: 1,027 passed / 19 expected skips; TypeScript, lint, build and all PR checks green; independent P0/P1 review approved. Real Chrome no-play smoke after deploy: authenticated ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP / TEST, Beacon and ES intro readyState=4, paused, no media errors; reload returned home/chunk/lease/manifest 200 and ES range 206. EN remains truthfully unavailable. Physical Safari/iOS, Firefox, Android and the 60-minute listen remain human acceptance gates.

[nicoechaniz]

Staging evidence update (2026-08-06):

• Private drop-ins now stream with byte ranges instead of allocating the whole asset; HEAD returns metadata only.
• Drop-ins can only come from authenticated local *_PATH assets; arbitrary external URLs are no longer accepted.
• OAuth/redeem network failures recover without trapping the UI, and Listener copy no longer claims audio is ready after a prepared object is lost.
• Real-browser staging probe: Beacon and ES drop-in reached readyState=4, stayed paused, and exposed no invitation/token material in the URL or resource names. Authenticated HEAD returned the correct length and Accept-Ranges; a 4-byte range returned exact HTTP 206/Content-Range.
• Focused browser/API regressions and the full 1,044-test webapp suite are green.

Still intentionally open: physical 60-minute/mobile acceptance, Bluetooth/device matrix and an EN private intro asset. No audio playback occurred during this verification and no codec, sample rate, channels, gain, routing or event-audio behavior changed.

[nicoechaniz]

Audio acceptance update (2026-08-06): the deployed Beacon and ES intro were objectively matched at -35.6 LUFS, which explains the low computer playback level. Nico explicitly requested raising both instead of attenuating both, then superseded the current source: a new Beacon master ending in _2hs is being exported. The old-master render was stopped and its partial output removed; staging remains unchanged. Do not normalize or deploy a new pair until the _2hs master is complete and measured, then derive the intro against that master and perform an atomic staging-only A/B.

[nicoechaniz]

Audio staging cutover completed (2026-08-06). Exact approved masters: luz_de_manana_20260624-155633_2hs.wav (SHA-256 feb0cac547eee8a2012ede32f9358e1cad4b66f6aea3b1b839610e71fad42685) and BeaconDropIn-Amara-sol_r1_session.wav (SHA-256 99a42af96275b611002618eae5d8ab35a581c1fa21e86fb68b5fbdd534355601), explicitly identified by Nico as the EN intro. No gain processing was applied. Deployed staging artifact beacon-luz-20260624-2hs-aac320-v2 is AAC-LC 320/48k/stereo, -14.2 LUFS, decoded peak -0.2 dBFS. EN intro amara-sol-en-r1-approved-aac320-v1.m4a is -11.2 LUFS, decoded peak -0.4 dBFS. The obsolete -35.6 LUFS ES intro is disabled rather than causing a >20 dB handoff. Origin inventory verifies 1,141 immutable segments; decoded canary=1; app/origin/production health=200. Human acoustic acceptance remains pending.

[nicoechaniz]

Staging update at exact webapp SHA 7bfddabe29ec5344686986e0eaf67a6f4fcbfd35:

• EN is now the default intro.
• Unified transport is live: Play with intro stops Beacon, starts EN at zero and hands off naturally to the current Beacon point; Play · Beacon only cancels the intro and starts Beacon; Stop controls both.
• Beacon start/recovery uses a 3 s fade-in and Stop uses a 650 ms fade-out where native element volume is writable. iOS retains the safe no-overlap native-volume fallback; no Web Audio/event audio was changed.
• New approved artifact is amara-sol-en-r1-approved-aac320-v2.m4a, SHA-256 a249aa16511fffac20ab51f861c9d0119097fc368bdc900016a581105c4b5ac2, AAC-LC/48 kHz/stereo, 332.939 s, -11.2 LUFS, decoded peak -0.4 dBFS, with no gain/normalization/dynamics processing added.
• Focused transport tests plus the exact full gates are green: 1,037 tests / 19 standard skips, TypeScript, lint, build and 21/21 preview contracts.

Authenticated Chrome verified the root UI, identity/membership, EN default, controls and authenticated byte-range delivery. Physical Chrome/mobile listening remains the acoustic acceptance gate; WebBridge's media-element process also stalled on a synthetic one-second MP3, so that harness was excluded from acoustic evidence.

[nicoechaniz]

Staging now runs exact Listener SHA 5edfe735b45c507e1c8f5bb4e5cb433bf446005f with the approved 18:16 ART EN re-export as immutable amara-sol-en-r1-approved-aac320-v3.m4a (a67068458f3d72dcd13be1e8dc753d21e238c270195f93e26599aa2910a181db). It is AAC-LC/48 kHz/stereo, 332.939 s, -11.3 LUFS and -0.5 dBFS decoded peak, with no added gain/normalization/dynamics. The source long fade-in is measurable across the first four five-second windows (-17.1, -15.2, -13.4, -12.5 dB mean). Stop now shares the same responsive row, dimensions, type and secondary visual system as the Play actions. Full pre-commit suite 1,037/19 standard skips and focused transport 17/17 passed; staging smoke, full browser decode, mobile/desktop layout, origin/production health and canary are green. Larger UI work is proposed separately in docs/plans/EARLY_BIRDS_LISTENER_EXPERIENCE.md.