The consultant's review of the shipped set found two defects, both ours, and both fixed
at the source rather than in the output:
1. The banner/thumb crop re-framing detected only the glowing core of the object. Column
brightness measures 2-6 levels above the background on dark glass, so it boxed 8 % of
the frame for an object group spanning 35 %+. The detector is now a background-plane
deviation plus the largest connected components (`plan_banner_crops.py`, detector in
`probe_band_crop.py`), 0 % false-positive on the frame's own negative space, stable
across thresholds. The crop plan is frozen as `banner-plan.json` and consumed by the
renderer; a thin subject is centred at 53.5 % of the banner width with the shortfall
filled by the art's own edge pixels, one row at a time (a single averaged fill left a
visible tonal step, tried and rejected). Measured on the delivered 72: 0 clipped,
silhouette median 47.0 %, centre median 53.5 % (`verify_banner_crops.py`).
2. `art-meta.json` pinned two slugs to the hand-accepted sample frames — the very frames
that carried the HUD readouts — which also kept them out of the crop plan. Pins removed.
Prompt side: 9 frames still printed glyphs at the consultant's bar (>=12 px and >=2
characters). Every offending noun is measured and now asserted against: a literal `marked
at 28` printed "28"; `storefront kiosk` printed "PRINATA"; `voucher card` printed
"Voucher"; `market booths` printed "10MARKET"; `glass button` printed "OC"; `gateway pylon`
printed "GATELY". 50 forbidden words, 0 hits across 72 captions, and all 9 frames
re-rendered clean.
Also: YAML escapes are honoured in the frontmatter reader and straight quotes become
curly ones (the ZH cards shipped a literal backslash), the evidence line is capped at 65
characters, and the light theme gives dark artwork a hairline border plus a soft shadow
(consultant option A) so it reads as a dark display case instead of a black slab.
OCR gate at the consultant's bar: 72/72 frames clean (16 carry sub-threshold single
glyphs, exempt as geometry noise).
Every post now carries one unique local-ComfyUI/Ideogram 4 base frame, composited
into EN + ZH share cards, a banner and list thumbs.
- the shipped prompts_catalog held only 21 distinct metaphors for 72 posts (16
shared one visual), so all 72 were rewritten as unique object+state metaphors
and 10 frames re-rolled after OCR found pseudo-text rendered at legible size
- render_from_art.mjs emits JPEG by default (558 KB PNG -> 84 KB mozjpeg q85);
the ZH 1200x630 card did not exist before this batch
- 288 frontmatter fields migrated; the 144 v1 PNGs are gone
- PostList's thumb helper keys off the base slug (a ZH card is zh-<slug>.jpg while
the thumb is <slug>-800.webp, which 404'd the whole ZH listing)
- [...slug].astro's <picture> regex accepts .jpg
- the repo now carries the art inputs (metaphors.json, captions/<slug>.json,
refreshed prompts_catalog.json) so a frame is reproducible from git alone
Measured before/after with headless Chrome + CDP (not by eye):
- article banner: <picture> WebP q78 with the PNG as fallback, because the PNG
must stay for og:image (social scrapers do not reliably render WebP cards).
70 banners: 6.02 MB -> 2.52 MB (42%). JPEG measured *larger* than PNG here
(q85 = 129%) — the art is flat terminal-style with sharp text edges.
- post page related cards: dropped four 1200x630 PNGs (183 KB) to display
526x276 where the embedded code is illegible; now text-only cards with a
category badge, date and reading time.
- list thumbnails (home + archive): new /og/thumb/<name>-{400,800}.webp served
via srcset/sizes. Rows display at ~398px but were pulling full 1200x630 PNGs.
Homepage thumbnails ~450 KB -> 62 KB; archive (71 rows) ~3.2 MB -> 436 KB.
- desktop banner capped at 720px centred: 67% -> 45% of a 900px viewport,
keeping the art intact instead of cropping it.
Post page totals: images 277 KB -> 38 KB; page height 5758 -> 5065 (desktop)
and 9423 -> 8807 (mobile). Build: 163 pages.
Script: scripts/optimize-images.py; policy: docs/design-guide.md §3; runbook
step added to docs/ops-runbook.md.
hoelee
