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re: the PRESS A plate PULSES -- measured, and it keeps an authored entry

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Answers the port's ask #1, which it had flagged as the only one of its four
that could delete an authored entry rather than confirm one. It confirms one.

Held at the title with no input, the plate oscillates continuously: two windows
in one boot, 58 s and 57 s, ~23 cycles each, no decay. Periods 2.530 and 2.540 s
by upward mid-crossings -- 0.4 % apart.

It never goes off. The plate-absent floor is 159 green pixels, measured on the
committed live-title-build4-no-plate.png; the pulse bottoms at 714, 4.5x that.
So the port's 'flash and nothing after', reasoned from ptbtn00 expiring at
t=244, is wrong on the boot's end state -- ptbtn00f's 120-unit cycle is what
runs.

Instrument controls were run before it was pointed at anything unknown: the
glyph counter reproduces the documented 753 on live-title-press-a.png and 327 on
live-main-menu.png exactly.

Two estimators, and only one replicates. Mid-crossings agree across the two
windows to 0.4 %; a single-sinusoid least-squares fit does not (2.553 vs 2.413),
because the waveform is fast-rise/slow-decay rather than sinusoidal -- its own r2
of 0.468 and 0.228 is the tell. Both were controlled on synthetic sinusoids at
2.24/2.55/3.10 s laid on the ACTUAL timestamps and recovered every one exactly,
so neither is broken; one is misspecified. Recorded as such.

The wall-clock is 13 % longer than the corpus's earlier 2.24 s mean. Same
declared 120 units, different emulator pacing (x1.27 here against x1.12), so
this corroborates 'author the units' rather than disturbing it.

Reach stated: one boot; does not distinguish the boot title from an attract-loop
title; and the glyph count is a thresholded pixel count, so 714/1520 is not an
alpha ratio and no duty cycle can be read off it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
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# The `PRESS Ⓐ` plate **pulses**, continuously — it does not blink once
**Classification: measured.** Xenia Canary, 2026-08-30, one no-input boot, two
separate title windows. Answers the port agent's ask #1, and the answer **deletes
nothing** — it says the port is currently wrong on the boot's end state.
## The question, and why it mattered
The port had removed a speculative `looping_focus_records` pulse, leaving a
renderer that *"shows a flash and nothing after"* — reasoning from `ptbtn00`, whose
keyframes make it opaque for 8 units (t=236–238, gone by 244). It asked for the
observed shape, saying this was the one ask that could **delete** an authored entry
rather than confirm one.
It confirms one. **Keep the pulse.**
## What the running game does
Held at the title with **no input at all**, the plate oscillates continuously for as
long as the title is up — 58 s in one window and 57 s in another, ~23 cycles each,
with no decay and no settling.
| | window | duration | glyph px | period |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| run 1 | t = 254…312 s | 58 s | **714 … 1520** | **2.530 s** |
| run 2 | t = 83…140 s | 57 s | **714 … 1520** | **2.540 s** |
Two windows of one boot, agreeing to **0.4 %**. Evidence:
[`../data/plate-pulse-timeseries.txt`](../data/plate-pulse-timeseries.txt) ·
[peak frame](../captures/title-builds/live-title-plate-pulse-peak.png) (1520) ·
[trough frame](../captures/title-builds/live-title-plate-pulse-trough.png) (714).
## The instrument, and its controls
`tools/re-capture/plate_timeseries.py` counts the green Ⓐ-glyph pixels — the same
counter as `is_title.py`, byte-identical. **Controls run before it was pointed at
anything unknown**, on committed captures:
| capture | counted | documented |
|---|---|---|
| `live-title-press-a.png` | **753** | 753 ✅ |
| `live-main-menu.png` | **327** | 327 ✅ |
| `live-title-build4-no-plate.png` | **159** | — |
⚠️ That third one is the reason the result is readable at all: **the plate-absent
floor is 159, not 0** — the title art carries green pixels of its own. During the
pulse the count never goes below **714**, four and a half times the floor, so *the
plate is never absent*. It dims and brightens; it does not blink off.
### 🔴 One estimator replicates and one does not — and the failing one says so
| | run 1 | run 2 | agrees? |
|---|---|---|---|
| upward mid-crossings | **2.530 s** | **2.540 s** | ✅ 0.4 % |
| single-sinusoid least squares | 2.553 s | 2.413 s | ❌ 5.8 % |
Both were controlled on synthetic sinusoids at 2.24 / 2.55 / 3.10 s laid on the
**actual sample timestamps**, and both recovered every one exactly — so neither is
broken. The sinusoid fit is **misspecified**: the waveform is a fast rise and slow
decay, not a sinusoid, and its own variance-explained ($r^2$ = 0.468 and 0.228) is
the tell. **Take 2.535 s**, from the estimator that does not assume a shape.
⚠️ Indexing by sample position rather than timestamp is the documented trap here
([`ui-clock-freezes-at-settle.md`](ui-clock-freezes-at-settle.md), where it returned
48 against a true 51); both estimators use the timestamps.
## 🟡 The wall-clock is 13 % longer than the corpus's, and that is expected
[`ui-record-loop-length.md`](ui-record-loop-length.md) decodes the plate's cycle as
**120 units declared**, and earlier runs measured 2.12 / 2.19 / 2.34 / 2.31 s
(mean **2.24**). This run gives **2.535**.
| | implied units→seconds factor |
|---|---|
| declared 120 units at a nominal 60 units/s | 2.000 s |
| corpus's earlier runs | ×1.12 |
| **this run** | **×1.27** |
Same declared number, different emulator pacing — this container was under load.
✅ **This corroborates the existing instruction rather than disturbing it: author
the 120 units, never a second count.** Any wall-clock figure from this container is
pacing-dependent and is not comparable across runs without an independently
measured pacing factor, which this run does not have.
## Reach
⚠️ **Boot title or attract title — this does not say.** The first window opens at
t≈255 s from launch, and Q9's no-input baseline puts the title at ~193 s, so run 1
may already be an attract-loop title rather than the boot's first. Both windows are
"the title, held, with no input", which is what was asked; neither is proof about
the *first* appearance specifically.
⚠️ **The glyph count is a thresholded pixel count, not an alpha.** A dip to
714/1520 is 47 % of the *counted pixels*, not 47 % of the plate's alpha — pixels
near the green threshold drop out first. Do not read a duty cycle or an alpha ramp
off these numbers; the shape (periodic, non-decaying, never absent) is what is
measured.
⚠️ **One boot.** Two windows inside it are not two boots, and the pacing factor is a
property of the run.