Fable Review

fable/03-feedback.md

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+# Feedback
+
+Ordered by how much I think each item matters. Praise is included only where
+it's load-bearing for a recommendation.
+
+## 1. You are avoiding the print, and the repo shows it
+
+Eight creative phases in six weeks, and the master pipeline — the thing the
+project exists for — was last fed on day two. This has the signature of a
+familiar creative pattern: exploring is reversible and always rewarding;
+printing is a commitment that risks discovering the piece doesn't work at
+scale. So the exploration space keeps widening (new generator, new renderer,
+new subject) because widening is the move that never has to survive contact
+with a wall.
+
+The honest counter-argument is that the vocabulary wasn't ready. It's ready.
+The BEBC plates read as archival photographs; the watercolor stillwater study
+holds up; PRINT.md already contains the assembly recipe. Every week of further
+exploration is now producing information about the *screen* version of a *wall*
+piece. One A1/A2 test print of one strong seed would generate more course
+correction than any three future sketch series — it will tell you whether the
+grain scales, whether the δ-ray curls reward approach, whether "standing
+closer" works, and it will almost certainly reorder the roadmap.
+
+## 2. Decisions are being deferred into the working tree
+
+Three currently open:
+
+- The wind-field milkweed (branch, Jun 17) vs. the botanical milkweed (working
+  tree, Jun 25) — two incompatible `generateUmbel`s. Which milkweed is *the*
+  milkweed, or are they two subjects (a field study and a specimen plate)?
+  Either answer is fine; not answering is what costs.
+- The watercolor renderer: 427 good lines, uncommitted for 10 days. Ten more
+  days of this and merging the branch becomes an archaeology project.
+- The GROUP_BUILDERS registry on the branch is a strictly better composition
+  engine than what's on main, independent of milkweed. It could be
+  cherry-picked today.
+
+A useful rule given how you work (commits = sessions): **end every session with
+a commit, even a WIP one.** Your commits are already narrative; let them be
+frequent-narrative.
+
+## 3. Nothing verifies that a plate contains what its scene model says
+
+The ripple bug survived three sketch series because the only QA is your eye,
+and your eye judges *feeling*, not *inventory*. Determinism is the project's
+religion, but determinism without ground truth just means you reproducibly get
+the wrong image. Cheap fixes that fit the project's culture:
+
+- A layer-census check: render a scene, assert every `id` in the scene model
+  produced a nonempty layer/group in the output. ~30 lines, would have caught
+  the ripple drop on day one.
+- Golden-seed snapshots: 3–4 canonical seeds rendered per renderer, diffed on
+  commit (you already have headless Chrome plumbing in `shoot.sh`).
+- Stamp the build: embed the source git hash + date in `bubble_chamber.html`
+  so staleness is visible instead of silent.
+
+## 4. The look needs its own seam
+
+The scene/renderer split is genuinely well-kept — which makes it strange that
+the *style* never got the same treatment. Three renderers currently disagree
+about bubble size, and each new visual feature is hand-ported (or, for PDF,
+quietly not). `bubbleStops()` already demonstrates the fix: one shared module
+of style formulas (stroke widths, alphas, radii, spectrum mixes) consumed by
+all renderers. This is a half-day of consolidation that removes the largest
+source of drift in the codebase. Do it before renderer #5, because there will
+be a renderer #5.
+
+## 5. Sketch tools: keep the data, share the harness
+
+The 17 QFT scripts are a legitimate serial sketchbook — the variation configs
+*are* the artwork's process record, and hardcoded OUT dirs are honest about
+their one-shot nature. But the 12-line render loop, `F()`, `paper()`, and the
+gallery HTML are copy-pasted across all of them, with signature drift. One
+40-line `renderSketch(outDir, baseSeed, variations)` harness turns every future
+sketch into a pure data file. Same for the deep-`merge()` in 5 compose tools.
+Don't retrofit the old ones; they're finished documents. Change the template
+for the next one.
+
+## 6. Small structural debts worth an hour each
+
+- `carpet.js`/`perspgrid.js` are compose-system primitives parked in
+  `src/qft/` — they share nothing with the QFT pipeline.
+- `src/compose/composition.js` imports parameter defaults from
+  `src/ui/controls.js` — the headless engine depends on the UI layer. Move
+  defaults down; let the UI consume them.
+- The `MILK` pigment table just colonized core `palette.js` from the milkweed
+  satellite. One entry is fine; it's the precedent to watch — palettes should
+  be injectable from the satellite that owns them.
+- Delete or archive: `bubble_chamber.v2.html`, `tools/inkwash-export.mjs` (it
+  says goodbye in its own header), `tools/find-semicircle.mjs`. Fix or delete
+  `compositions/hero.mjs` (currently half-ignored by the code) and
+  `tools/archive-wall.html` (frozen curation), or explicitly rename them as
+  dated snapshots.
+- `params.js` QFT: either seed the camera/perturbation params or drop the
+  "seed → complete fingerprint" claim from the header. The claim is currently
+  the documentation equivalent of the ripple bug.
+
+## 7. What's working — keep doing these on purpose
+
+- **Literate headers.** Nearly every file explains *why the fake was chosen
+  over the real*. This is the best code-as-notebook practice I've seen in a
+  personal art repo, and it's why the intent/execution comparison in this
+  review was even possible.
+- **The β thesis.** "Get the statistics right and the eye believes" was the
+  founding bet and it paid; the outputs are convincing at thumbnail and at
+  1500 px. Protect that thesis as you add renderers — watercolor already
+  correctly routes 1/β² into stroke weight.
+- **Deterministic fiction.** Plate numbers and exposure dates derived from the
+  seed hash — the forgery itself is reproducible. This idea is bigger than its
+  current use (see ideas §2).
+- **Commits as sessions** produce a legible creative history. The fix from §2
+  isn't to change the style, just the frequency.