fix(openworlds): cold-open waiting state is clearly alive, not frozen (Addresses #385)

[100yenadmin]

Addresses #385 (P0/CRITICAL). Do NOT close on merge — verify on next build's newbie playtest.

Root cause

The cold-open (first-beat) waiting state renders through DmNarratingBeat (viewer/openworlds/screen-table.jsx). It did have animation — pulsing dots, a shimmer label, and a live elapsed counter — but every one of those aliveness cues was either decorative-and-aria-hidden (dots, shimmer) or aria-hidden (the elapsed counter), and the visible headline never changed.

The §8.2 newbie harness "sees" the screen via Playwright ariaSnapshot / ariaText (screen-reader semantics) plus a single static PNG screenshot (qa/playwright/palette_server.js). To that surface — and to a real screen-reader user, and to anyone glancing at a still frame — the entire affordance collapsed to two unchanging strings: "The Dungeon Master is narrating" + "Setting the opening scene — the first beat of a session can take a few minutes." Nothing in the accessibility tree ever changed, so it read as a frozen/crashed app. The newbie waited ~11s, saw nothing move, and gave up (satisfaction 4/10, gave_up:true).

So #336's animation and #348's adaptive recovery window were wired to the cold-open (pending.firstBeat threads through from armPending in app.jsx), but the proof-of-life was invisible on the surfaces that actually decide "is this alive?".

What changed (screen-table.jsx only — additive, first-beat-scoped)

• Rotating flavor headline for the cold-open: "The Dungeon Master is composing your opening scene…", "Lighting the candles and unrolling the map…", etc., rotating every ~4s — so consecutive renders / aria snapshots differ (visible, honest progress; not fake percentages).
• Elapsed counter is no longer aria-hidden for the cold-open ("composing · 0:42") — it's in the accessibility tree and visibly ticks. A live readout that changes every second is the strongest "still alive" cue a screen reader / snapshot can perceive.
• No screen-reader spam: the per-second-changing text lives outside the aria-live region. A separate visually-hidden role="status" announces a stable reassurance once on mount (a polite region re-announces its whole text on every change, so the ticking clock stays out of it — the exact noise [playtest][P1] "DM is narrating…" state has no progress animation — 35–60s waits feel like a freeze #336 avoided by hiding elapsed).
• Action bar reads as "the DM is taking its turn" (alive), not broken: for the first beat the input placeholder is "The Dungeon Master is composing your opening scene…" and the button reads "Composing…". Disabled state preserved.
• Later beats (~35–60s norm) are byte-identical to before — the firstBeat early-return leaves the original [playtest][P1] "DM is narrating…" state has no progress animation — 35–60s waits feel like a freeze #336/[playtest][P1] Nav buttons time out / unclickable during active DM narration (can't leave Table, can't return to it) #341/[playtest][P1] DM first-response ~60s NO narration → recovery fired; recovery-timeout may pre-empt the legit multi-minute DM opening #348 path untouched (only the inline label string became a label var that evaluates to the same string for later beats).

Tests

New viewer/tests/test_cold_open_progress.py (6 tests) transpiles the real screen-table.jsx with the shipped Babel and renders DmNarratingBeat under a createElement-capturing React stub (same architecture as test_recovery_timing.py). It asserts:

• the cold-open accessible text changes at t=2s / 30s / 120s (the exact frozen-app failure);
• the headline rotates through several flavor lines;
• the announced live-region text is stable second-to-second (no per-tick spam, no m:ss in it);
• the old static "Setting the opening scene — the first beat" copy is gone from the cold-open;
• later-beat treatment is unchanged (regression guard).

Full viewer suite: 162 passed, 1 skipped, 17 subtests (single-process). test_recovery_timing.py (#348) still green. license_check clean. JSX transpiles under the bundled Babel.

Scope notes

• Touched only viewer/openworlds/screen-table.jsx (+ the new test). No app.jsx change needed — pending.firstBeat was already threaded through; the bug was purely in the render, not the hook/state plumbing.
• styles.css NOT touched (the existing dm-narrate-style keyframes already cover the dots/shimmer; reduced-motion still stills them; the elapsed/flavor are information, not decoration).
• Honest "composing…" + elapsed timer — no faked progress.

Follow-up (separate, tracked in #385)

The first-beat latency itself ("a few minutes", no streaming) is a distinct quality concern; this PR only makes the wait obviously-alive so a first-timer waits instead of bouncing.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features

  • Opening scene composition now displays distinct UI with "Composing…" text instead of generic narration copy.
  • Added rotating flavor labels and improved timer display for the first beat.

• Improvements

  • Enhanced accessibility for cold-open progress with better live-region announcements and stable status updates.

[coderabbitai]

Caution

Review failed

Pull request was closed or merged during review

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: 0f673a78-4530-4a86-b838-8b780e609918

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 71616cd and 2f82f72.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• viewer/openworlds/screen-table.jsx
• viewer/tests/test_cold_open_progress.py

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The PR introduces cold-open (first-beat) UI that distinguishes initial narration from subsequent beats by computing pendingFirstBeat state, rendering rotating flavor labels via DM_COLD_OPEN_FLAVOR, and adjusting action-bar copy and DmNarratingBeat accessibility behavior accordingly. Comprehensive tests validate that the cold-open is observably alive to accessibility consumers.

Changes

Cold-open first-beat UI and accessibility

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Cold-open state and flavor pool definition viewer/openworlds/screen-table.jsx	Derives pendingFirstBeat to detect when the pending action is the first beat, introduces DM_COLD_OPEN_FLAVOR array of rotating cold-open status strings, and exposes the flavor pool on window for test and devtools access.
DmNarratingBeat cold-open rendering with accessibility viewer/openworlds/screen-table.jsx	Refactors DmNarratingBeat to detect firstBeat and render specialized cold-open UI: rotates through the flavor pool based on elapsed time, applies first-beat-specific wait guidance, and implements accessibility by adding a role="status" live region announced once on mount while keeping the visible label and elapsed timer updated outside the live region. Later beats continue using the steady narrating path.
Action-bar UI wiring for cold-open viewer/openworlds/screen-table.jsx	Updates action-bar input placeholder and Declare button label to use cold-open "composing your opening scene" wording when pendingFirstBeat is true, otherwise preserving existing narrating/stuck/read-only text behavior.
Test infrastructure and comprehensive behavior validation viewer/tests/test_cold_open_progress.py	Adds embedded Node+Babel harness to transpile and render screen-table.jsx, extracting visible text, aria-hidden-filtered accessible text, and role="status" live regions. Validates that the cold-open is observable to accessibility consumers: flavor pool rotates across time, accessible text changes between elapsed times and includes clock tokens, visible text uses composing language, live-region statusText is stable (no ticking clock), and later beats maintain previous aria-hidden elapsed behavior while displaying ticking clocks in full text.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 4 (Complex) | ⏱️ ~50 minutes

Possibly related issues

• electricsheephq/WorldOS#385: The PR directly implements the cold-open first-beat UI and accessibility behavior described in the playtest issue, including rotating flavor labels and live-region accessibility semantics to make the cold-open "obviously alive" to screen readers.

Possibly related PRs

• electricsheephq/WorldOS#328: Introduces the DmNarratingBeat narrating affordance that this PR extends with cold-open-specific flavor rotation and accessibility behavior.
• electricsheephq/WorldOS#343: Restructures narration rendering around pending/in-flight states; this PR extends DmNarratingBeat rendering within that same pending-UI context for the cold-open first beat.
• electricsheephq/WorldOS#351: Adds firstBeat-aware wait-hint and recovery timing contract; this PR adds the firstBeat-driven cold-open flavor/UI and accessibility behavior that pairs with that contract.

Poem

🐰 The first beat now shimmers with rotating flair,
Composing scenes while the clock ticks fair,
Accessibility whispers without a care,
No more silent static—the cold-open's there! ✨

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 3 | ❌ 2

❌ Failed checks (1 warning, 1 inconclusive)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 8.33% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.
Description check	❓ Inconclusive	The description provides comprehensive context (root cause, changes, tests, scope) but lacks the required CLA and validation checklist sections from the template.	Add the missing 'Licensing / CLA' and 'Validation' sections with appropriate checkboxes and checks-run list to match the repository template.

✅ Passed checks (3 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately summarizes the main change: fixing the cold-open waiting state to be clearly alive, not frozen, and references issue #385.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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