Artifact 001 — Cathedral Probe Art Direction¶

Status: design specification. Not a measurement paper. Not a composed master. Specimen: Codex run7, /tmp/artifact001_run7/, committed stills under Docs/assets/observatory/artifact_001/stills/. Reproduction: ARTIFACT001_OUTPUT=/tmp/artifact001 ./scripts/capture_artifact001.sh Authority: manifest.json from that run. Nothing below invents a count, a Probe View, or a closure claim.

This is the first public artifact built from a real human instrument sequence:

F  reveal Field Structure
H  enter Hermetic presentation
G  acquire one formal Complete SNAPSHOT
Q  Outcome
Q  Contact Events
Q  Transport Effort

The captures are the artwork. The compositor may crop, hold, dissolve, and letter. It may not paint new rings, fake a hit, or grade the plates into a prettier lie.

Established language¶

THE CATHEDRAL PROBE
Same window. Different light.
Same frame. Same transport. Different questions.
Render the path. Inspect the journey.

Pedagogy, not ornament:

Metaphor	Means, exactly
Window	One sealed film plate. One generation. One camera pose after Hermetic.
Light	A Probe View: a presentation mapping of sealed arrays.
Stained glass	The plate, nearest-neighbor, read through different mappings.
Cathedral	Earned by the geometry the transport already drew. Not arches, not nave, not rose-window clipart.

Do not add religious ornamentation. Do not add cyberpunk chrome. Do not imply UAP validation.

Visual inventory (looked at, not imagined)¶

Viewport stills are 1152×648. Sealed plates are 160×90. All Hermetic stills share one camera pose. establish.png is a different pose (Gallery control). snapshot_complete.png and outcome.png are byte-identical (b01ce730…).

File	What it actually shows	Role
`establish.png`	Cartesian gallery. Two bright discs. Pedestal. Field Structure OFF. Probe View unavailable.	Before. Ordinary scene presentation.
`hermetic_field_structure.png`	White field. Green outer ring. Cyan density arrows. Small authored core. Field Structure ON. Probe View unavailable.	Threshold. The room withdraws.
`snapshot_complete.png`	Instrument HUD on the first sealed plate. Probe View already Outcome.	Lock. G has finished.
`outcome.png`	Same pixels as `snapshot_complete.png`.	First question, already on the glass.
`contact_events.png`	Same pose. Concentric contact bands visible through the HUD.	The stained glass.
`transport_effort.png`	Same pose. Uniform coral plate under the HUD.	Third question. Full budget used.

Portable plates (HUD-free, these are the Q artwork):

Plate	Measured fact	Appearance
`outcome_display.png`	Outcomes: `MaxStepsExhausted = 14400 / 14400`	Uniform amber `#E89A30` `(232,154,48)`
`contact_events_display.png`	Contacts: `0=1670`, `1=7165`, `2=3254`, `3+=2311`	Concentric navy / blue / teal / amber rings around a central disk
`transport_effort_display.png`	Effort min/mean/max `1.0 / 1.0 / 1.0`, valid `14400/14400`	Uniform coral (effort = 1.0)

Do not invent structure on the two uniform plates. Uniformity is the measurement: every pixel exhausted its step budget; every pixel used the full effort. Contact Events is the only Q view with spatial structure. That contrast is the lesson.

snapshot_complete.png == outcome.png is not a sequencing error to hide. G seals the plate with Outcome already selected. The compositor changes only the sentence.

Two picture systems¶

Keep them distinct.

Instrument stills (viewport PNGs). HUD, keys, Field Structure overlay. Used for Explore → Freeze (shots 1–3). They prove a person can do this with F, H, G.
Plate stills (portable *_display.png). HUD-free, nearest-neighbor only. Used for Interrogate (shots 4–6). They are the stained glass.

Do not treat the HUD as the cathedral. Do not treat the plates as a game UI.

Upscale law (Observer PNG doctrine): nearest-neighbor only. No bilinear, no bicubic, no AI upscale.

1. Canonical reel — 26.0 seconds¶

Master: 1920×1080, 30 fps, Rec.709, yuv420p, no look-up table, no grain, no bloom, no chromatic aberration.

Duration window is 20–30 s. 26.0 s is the canonical cut. A 22.0 s trim exists by shortening title and end holds (see social, §7). Do not shorten Contact Events.

Dramatic spine¶

Name the instrument.
Show the Cartesian room.
Withdraw the room. Leave authored field geometry.
Lock one Complete SNAPSHOT.
Ask Outcome. The plate is a single amber field.
Ask Contact Events. The same plate becomes the window.
Ask Transport Effort. The same plate is a single coral field.
State the claim boundary and sit down.

2. Exact shot order¶

Times are start-of-shot on the finished master. Transitions are included in the outgoing/incoming holds, not added on top.

#	t in	dur	Source	Picture system	Motion	Transition in
0	0.00	2.40	title card	type on black	none	—
1	2.40	3.20	`establish.png`	instrument	+2% push, 3.20 s	8-frame dissolve from title
2	5.60	3.60	`hermetic_field_structure.png`	instrument	hold, then +1% toward the core after 1.2 s	6-frame dissolve (the room withdraws)
3	9.20	2.40	`snapshot_complete.png`	instrument	hard hold	2-frame cut (G is a lock)
4	11.60	2.80	`outcome_display.png` full-bleed	plate	hard hold	0-frame cut; overlay text only changes from shot 3
5	14.40	4.80	`contact_events_display.png` full-bleed	plate	+4% push, nearest-neighbor	4-frame cut
6	19.20	2.80	`transport_effort_display.png` full-bleed	plate	hard hold	4-frame cut
7	22.00	4.00	end card	type on black	none	10-frame fade to black, then type

Total: 26.00 s / 780 frames.

Shot 3 → 4 is the same sealed generation and, in the viewport pair, the same PNG. The audience must feel “the sentence changed, the observation did not.” Do not crossfade 3 into 4 as if they were different pictures.

Optional one-frame flash at 14.40: the viewport contact_events.png for 3 frames, then the clean plate. This is the only permitted HUD-to-glass splice. If used, steal the 3 frames from the front of shot 5. Do not do this for Outcome or Effort — they have nothing to reveal under the HUD that the plate does not already say.

3. Overlay microcopy¶

One type family. Two sizes.

Key: IBM Plex Mono, 22 px at 1080p, letter-spacing 0.18 em, white 92%.
Line: IBM Plex Sans or Source Serif 4, 28 px, weight 400, white 88%.
Quiet: 16 px mono, white 55%.

Position: lower-left inside a full-width lower-third. Never top-right (that is where the live HUD already lives on instrument stills). Never centered except on title and end cards.

The Hermetic stills and the Gallery floor are near-white. White type cannot sit raw on those pixels. Every picture shot (1–6) carries a 88 px high lower-third: transparent at the top, #07070B at 78–88% at the baseline. Type lives inside that bar, 64 px from the left, 28 px from the bottom. Title and end cards stay type-on-black with no bar.

Fade: 12 frames in, hold, 8 frames out. First overlay on a shot starts 10 frames after picture.

Shot	Overlay (exactly these strings)
0	`THE CATHEDRAL PROBE` / `Same window. Different light.`
1	`Gallery`
2	`F Field Structure` / `H Hermetic` / `Same window.`
3	`G Complete SNAPSHOT` / `14400 / 14400 · generation 1`
4	`Q Outcome` / `Terminal semantic outcome` / `MaxStepsExhausted`
5	`Q Contact Events` / `Same frame. Same transport. Different questions.`
6	`Q Transport Effort` / `Numerical step budget used · not time · not field strength` / `effort = 1.0`
7	see §5

Forbidden on the reel:

Histogram dumps (0=1670…) except the single end-card identity line.
SHA-256 strings.
“Portal,” “wormhole confirmed,” “anomaly,” “UAP.”
Fake scanlines, targeting reticles, glitch, holographic grids.
Latin, gothic blackletter, crosses, rose-window illustrations.
Any number not in run_summary.md / manifest.json.

Legend colors, if a compositor draws a three-swatch key on shot 5 only:

Label	RGB	Meaning
0	`24, 48, 92`	no accepted contact
1	`56, 128, 190`	one
2	`80, 190, 168`	two
3+	`236, 154, 48`	three or more

Do not put the full Outcome legend on shot 4. The plate is one color. One word is enough: MaxStepsExhausted.

4. Transition timing¶

All values at 30 fps.

Junction	Type	Frames	Intent
0 → 1	dissolve	8	Arrive in a room, not a trailer smash.
1 → 2	dissolve	6	Cartesian presentation withdraws. This is the discovery cut.
2 → 3	hard cut	2	Acquisition is a lock, not a mood.
3 → 4	hard cut	0	Same plate. New sentence.
4 → 5	hard cut	4	New question. The glass changes.
5 → 6	hard cut	4	New question. The glass changes again.
6 → 7	fade to black	10	Leave the plate before preaching.

Audio-picture sync: the G lock click lands on the first frame of shot 3. Each Q cut may have a dry 1-frame tick, 8 dB below the G click, no reverb.

Do not use whip pans, light-leaks, or match-dissolves that imply the rings “grow” out of the amber field. They do not grow. They were always in the sealed arrays.

5. Title card and end card¶

Black #07070B. No vignette illustration. No logo lockup larger than 96 px.

Title — 2.40 s¶

                    ARTIFACT 001

               THE CATHEDRAL PROBE

            Same window. Different light.

ARTIFACT 001 is 12 px mono, 0.28 em tracking, 50% white, appears at frame 8. Title fades in over 16 frames, line two 8 frames later. Hold through frame 64, fade 8 frames into shot 1.

End — 4.00 s¶

          Render the path. Inspect the journey.

        One recorded observation. Three illuminations.

     14400 / 14400  ·  generation 1  ·  Hermetic  ·  Field Structure ON

     No optical closure from this bundle alone.
     Contact Events are not a unique-surface census.
     Transport Effort is not time, energy, or field magnitude.
     Color is presentation mapping, not measurement authority.
     No UAP validation.

First couplet: 32 px serif, 88% white. Identity line: 16 px mono, 60%. Boundaries: 13 px mono, 42%, 1.35 line-height. They must be readable. They are not fine print to dodge.

xPRIMEray wordmark, 72 px, 70% opacity, 48 px from bottom center. Use the existing research mark (Docs/assets/xPRIMEray_Logo_Research.png). Do not invent a cathedral glyph.

6. GitHub Pages hero treatment¶

Do not replace the three measured lobby cards (Observer Disagreement 23.8%, Hermetic Closure, Coherence Basin). Those are research findings. Artifact 001 is the first public instrument artifact. It sits above the three-card grid as a full-bleed strip.

Layout¶

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  [contact_events_display.png, nearest-neighbor, full bleed] │
│  left 42% dark gradient #07070B → transparent               │
│                                                             │
│  ARTIFACT 001                                               │
│  THE CATHEDRAL PROBE                                        │
│  Same window. Different light.                              │
│                                                             │
│  14400 / 14400 Complete · generation 1                      │
│                                                             │
│  Hermetic withdraws the Cartesian room. One sealed          │
│  plate. Three questions.                                    │
│                                                             │
│  [ Watch the 26s reel ]   [ Read the sequence ]             │
│                                                             │
│  Color is presentation mapping, not measurement authority.  │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Under the strip, a 3-up caption row — instrument stills, not plates:

Cell	File	Caption
Explore	`establish.png`	Gallery. Field Structure off.
Freeze	`hermetic_field_structure.png`	F + H. The room withdraws.
Interrogate	`outcome.png`	G, then Q. Same generation.

Hook copy (allowed; no new numbers):

Hermetic + Field Structure removes ordinary Cartesian presentation. What remains is authored field geometry and one sealed plate. Outcome is uniformly MaxStepsExhausted. Contact Events draws the concentric journey. Transport Effort is uniformly 1.0. Same frame. Same transport. Different questions.

Drop-in markup: Docs/assets/observatory/artifact_001/hero_fragment.md Drop-in CSS: Docs/assets/observatory/artifact_001/hero.css

Do not ship the strip to Docs/index.md until a composed reel file exists. The preview in preview.html is the approval surface.

Same master codec. Safe-center for 1:1 crop: keep the Contact Events disk inside the central 1080×1080.

#	t in	dur	Source	Overlay
S0	0.00	0.80	title (no “ARTIFACT 001”)	`THE CATHEDRAL PROBE`
S1	0.80	1.60	`establish.png`	none
S2	2.40	2.00	`hermetic_field_structure.png`	`Same window.`
S3	4.40	4.00	`contact_events_display.png` +4% push	`Different light.`
S4	8.40	1.10	end card, first couplet only	`Render the path.`

Cuts: 6-frame dissolve S1→S2, hard elsewhere. No Outcome, no Effort, no HUD-heavy seal shot. The teaser is the withdraw and the glass. Identity and claim boundaries live on the canonical reel and the Pages footnote.

1:1 and 9:16 derivatives are center-crops of this same 16:9 teaser. Do not re-edit.

8. Thumbnail concept¶

1920×1080 and 1280×720. Built from the real stills. Not a generated illustration.

┌──────────────────────────────┬────────────────────┐
│                              │  establish.png     │
│  contact_events_display.png  │  (top 50%)         │
│  nearest-neighbor            │────────────────────│
│  center disk on the          │  hermetic_field_   │
│  left two-thirds             │  structure.png     │
│                              │  (bottom 50%)      │
│  THE CATHEDRAL PROBE         │                    │
│  Same window. Different      │                    │
│  light.                      │                    │
└──────────────────────────────┴────────────────────┘

Rules:

Left panel is the plate, not the HUD screenshot.
Right stack is the threshold: room / no room.
No fake third sun, no extra rings, no glow pass.
Title sits on a 48 px high 70% black bar at the bottom of the left panel, not as a 3D-extruded logo.
Do not put 14400 on the thumbnail. Curiosity first; numbers on the reel.

preview.html § Thumbnail is the approval comp.

9. Music cue map¶

Reference: a dry observatory, not a trailer, not a nave.

No choir. No pipe organ. No vocal. No percussion except the two functional clicks. Prefer unmetered air over a 4/4 pulse. If a pulse exists, it is ≤ 52 BPM and exits before shot 5 so the rings are not marched.

t	Cue	Level	Notes
0.00	almost silence	—
0.40	single high glass partial, fade in 1.6 s	−22 LUFS short	one pitch, no chord
2.40	low room tone (air, not music)	−28	under Gallery
5.60	room tone drops out over 0.4 s	—	the withdraw is also an audio event
6.20	sparse sine, same pitch as 0.40, quieter	−26	field geometry, not melody
9.20	G lock click + held fifth	click −16 peak; fifth −24	first frame of shot 3
11.60	fifth remains; no new note	—	Outcome is a color field, not a swell
14.40	Q tick; add one stacked fifth, very slow	−20	the only harmonic motion in the piece
19.20	Q tick; collapse to one pitch	−24	Effort is a single number
22.00	fade all musical tone in 0.6 s	—
22.80	decaying glass harmonic, 2.4 s	−26	under the couplet, gone before boundaries

Loudness: −16 LUFS integrated for the canonical reel, −14 LUFS for the teaser, true peak ≤ −1.5 dBTP. Do not sidechain the plates to a beat.

Licensed-or-original only. If no cue is ready, ship the reel silent. Silence is legal. A temp epic bed is not.

10. Compositor execution notes¶

Machine recipe: Docs/assets/observatory/artifact_001/compositor_recipe.json.

An automated compositor must do the following, in order.

10.1 Verify sources¶

Hash every file in stills/ against compositor_recipe.json → sources[].sha256. Abort on mismatch. Do not “find a similar PNG.”

Confirm:

sha256(snapshot_complete.png) == sha256(outcome.png)
== b01ce7301599cf85cb97a22ba3301560d32310246d2e6de77060df1c6aee4983

10.2 Prepare rasters¶

Viewport stills: scale to 1920×1080 with nearest-neighbor (they are already 16:9).
Plates: scale 160×90 → 1920×1080 with nearest-neighbor (ffmpeg -sws_flags neighbor).
Do not sharpen. Do not denoise. Do not color-manage into Display P3.

10.3 Overlay plates¶

Render overlays as premultiplied RGBA PNG sequences from the recipe overlays[] (HTML/CSS or SVG → 1920×1080, exact strings). Do not hand-letter in a video editor. Do not let an image model write the type.

10.4 Motion¶

Only shots 1, 2 (after 1.2 s), and 5 may move. Use integer zoom toward the image center. Sample with nearest-neighbor so plate pixels stay square. Uniform plates (4, 6) must not Ken Burns — a zoom on a flat color is a lie that something is there.

10.5 Edit¶

Concatenate per edl[]. Apply the listed transitions. Write a 26.000 s master. If the result is not 780 frames at 30 fps, fail.

10.6 Derivatives¶

From the master, no re-grade:

Output	How
`artifact001_canonical_26s.mp4`	the master
`artifact001_teaser_95s.mp4`	cut per `teaser_edl[]`
`artifact001_teaser_1x1.mp4`	center 1080×1080 of the teaser
`artifact001_teaser_9x16.mp4`	center 1080×1920 of the teaser
`artifact001_thumb_1920.png`	frame layout §8, stills only
`artifact001_thumb_1280.png`	same, scaled

10.7 Sidecar¶

Write artifact001_edit_manifest.json containing: source hashes, EDL, overlay strings, ffmpeg version, output hashes, and the five claim-boundary sentences. A reel without a sidecar is not releasable.

10.8 What the compositor must not do¶

Generate or inpaint pixels on any plate.
Crossfade Outcome into Contact Events.
Animate rings expanding.
Draw field geometry that is not in hermetic_field_structure.png.
Use snapshot_complete.png and outcome.png as if they were different pictures.
Put claimed telemetry on screen that is not in the run7 run_summary.md.
Add a music bed that covers the claim-boundary card.

Claim boundaries (repeat on every public surface)¶

From the specimen manifest.json:

No optical closure is established by this bundle alone.
Contact Events are not a unique-surface census.
Transport Effort is not time, energy, or field magnitude.
HitGeometry cannot be inferred from Contact Events.
Color is presentation mapping, not measurement authority.
No UAP validation is claimed.

This artifact is a qualified visualization. It shows how the public instrument is used. It does not certify a physical wormhole, a UAP, or optical closure.

Approval preview¶

Open Docs/assets/observatory/artifact_001/preview.html in a browser. It comps the title, end, storyboard, Pages hero, social frames, and thumbnail from the real stills.

Do not promote Artifact 001 to the lobby or the Gallery “Signature Exhibits” list until a hashed master reel exists.