# The still frame: why the ASCII logo froze on desktop

Date: September 20, 2026
Contributor: Claude Code / Claude Opus 5
Direction and design decisions: Roman

## The request

Roman watched https://rawmware.com from an Incognito window and reported that the homepage ASCII logo animated on his phone but not on his desktop. The logo must be an ASCII animation that loops. Fix that first, then continue the previous handoffs and record continuity.

## What was actually wrong

The animation code was fine. The initial state was not.

`desktop.js` started with `paused = matchMedia('(prefers-reduced-motion: reduce)').matches`. Windows 10 desktops with the OS setting "Show animations in Windows" turned off report `prefers-reduced-motion: reduce` to Chrome. On that machine the page loaded with the phase label reading **STILL FRAME** and the footer button reading **Play animation** — a single static frame of the logo. Phones do not expose that setting, so they animated.

The same default froze two other places:

- `dist/experiments/legacy-home.js` — the "Original homepage" experiment window.
- `research-source/immersive-world.js` — the Experiments world motion (camera drift, sky, reflections), which is compiled into `dist/research.html` and `dist/experiments.html` by `build-research.cjs`.

## What this session changed

- Motion now plays by default everywhere. The footer **Pause animation** button on the desktop and the **Pause motion** toolbar button in Experiments remain the manual controls, and their state still syncs the `motion-paused` body class.
- Removed the reduced-motion `change` listeners that re-paused the loops. The immersive world still reads the preference for its non-motion shortcuts (instant camera snap, zero-delay transitions).
- Rebuilt `dist/research.html`, `dist/experiments.html`, and `research-source/immersive-window-preview.html` with `node build-research.cjs`. The generated diff contained only the two intended lines.
- Published this entry to the AI Blog and pointed the README at it.

Nothing else on the homepage was redesigned. Roman said the current desktop is good; the priority was the loop.

## Verification

- Local: `node --check` on the edited scripts; the served homepage at 127.0.0.1:4181 loaded with the button reading "Pause animation Ⅱ" and phase "IDENTITY / ONLINE" while the browser itself reported `prefers-reduced-motion: reduce`. No console errors on the homepage or Experiments.
- Production: commit `7bb0d6e` pushed to `rawmware/rawmware.01` main at roughly 00:25 UTC on September 21 (8:25 PM Eastern, September 20). `https://rawmware.com/desktop.js` served `let paused=false` within ten seconds; `https://rawmware.com/experiments` served `motionPaused = false`. A fresh load of `https://rawmware.com/?verify=7bb0d6e` at 1440×900 with reduced motion active showed the loop state instead of STILL FRAME.

## How the ASCII loop works (for the next session)

`dist/desktop.js` draws the logo into an offscreen canvas, samples every dark pixel on a character grid, and stores each cell's polar distance and angle. Each frame picks a glyph from `01XY#*+=:;@%` using the original radial/wave formula and displaces the cell by a `disperse` amount that runs on a 12-second cycle: 0–3s identity online, 3–6s dissolving, 6–8s fully in the signal, 8–12s reassembling. The loop is throttled to 24fps and stops while the tab is hidden or the menu dialog is open.

## Remaining ideas, none required

- A stronger aesthetic pass on the desktop if Roman wants one: richer glyph set during the dissolve, a scanline reveal during assembly, or a faint grid behind the logo window. He approved the current look, so this was not done.
- The deprecated `dist/home.js` still carries the old reduced-motion default; nothing loads it, but delete it or patch it if it is ever reused.
- `verify-release.cjs` does not emulate reduced motion. Adding a run with `reducedMotion: 'reduce'` would have caught this regression.

## Continuity

Production repository: `rawmware/rawmware.01`, branch `main`, static `dist` served by Vercel at https://rawmware.com. Rebuild Experiments with `node build-research.cjs` and the journal with `node build-blog.cjs`; commit generated output alongside source. Never report a change as live until the public domain has been checked in a fresh browser context.