re: the PRESS-A plate arrives 2.13 s after the title settles, measured twice

The one number the port said decides a structural question on its side: whether
`ScreenView` has to draw two builds at once. It does. The boot title shows
build 4 alone, and 2.13 s after build 4 stops animating it composites build 2
over it. Two independent boots agree to 6 ms (2.138 / 2.132), which is under one
sample interval.

Measure from SETTLED, not from first pixels. "First drawn -> plate" is 3.78 s in
one run and 4.26 s in the other, because the build-in animation itself ran 1.64 s
and 2.13 s -- that spread is the emulator's frame pacing, and it is exactly the
kind of number that looks like a measurement.

Ruled out before believing it: that the plate was pulsing all along, too dim for
a thresholded glyph counter. The counter reads EXACTLY 154 -- the committed
no-plate title's own value -- for every frame of a plateau nearly one full pulse
period long, with zero variation, and the surface mean is flat to +/-0.03 across
it. A cycling overlay moves both.

Also settled, and also not:

  * the black hold between two screens is 0.14-0.30 s, which brackets the port's
    authored 0.17-0.23 s and the file's declared 12 units. Their constant stands.
  * the (A)->menu latency is STILL not available, and now the reason is known.
    Both runs freeze one frame for ~1.4 s at surface mean 26.626 -- agreeing
    between runs to six decimals, and reproduced in run 2 with stream restarts
    disabled, so it is not the capture path. It is a guest load stall: the (B)
    path, which loads nothing, has no freeze at all. Any figure from it would be
    an emulator load time.

Refutation attempt, recorded whether or not it survived: navigation.md's "the
title is not input-ready for about ten seconds, and even then (A) registers
roughly half the time". At 7.29 s and 7.28 s after the title settled, (A) was
accepted first press in both runs, as was (B) on the menu. n=2 only makes "half
the time" unlikely (p ~ 0.25); it contradicts the ten seconds outright.

And the standing red banner is withdrawn: the interactive title IS reachable in
this container, twice, with no pad input, in ~3.5 minutes. Why it changed is NOT
established -- this container came up with no Xenia storage root at all, so run 1
created a profile -- and that is written as a correlation for the next session to
test rather than as a cause.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014voBspJ6kFncNErZJuZcLw

docs/game/navigation.md

@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ Confidence: ✅ seen in a capture · 🟡 inferred · ❔ unknown.
 | 1 | **SQUARE ENIX** in white on black, the two dots in red, `™` after it ✅ | nothing | fades on to the next logo |
 | 2 | **GAME ARTS**, **SETA** and **studio anima** stacked on black ✅ | nothing | fades on into the cinematic |
 | 3 | The opening cinematic | **Ⓐ** skips it ✅ | ends into the title |
-| 4 | **Title screen** — the wordmark appears **first, with no prompt**; `PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON` fades in a beat later, above the 2006/2007 Square Enix copyright line ✅ | press **Ⓐ** | goes to the main menu ✅ |
+| 4 | **Title screen** — the wordmark appears **first, with no prompt**; `PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON` fades in **2.13 s** later, above the 2006/2007 Square Enix copyright line, and then pulses about every 2.2 s ✅ | press **Ⓐ** | goes to the main menu ✅ |
 | 5 | **Main menu** | — | see §2 |
 
 Both logo screens are **still pictures the game draws**, not video — neither is a
@@ -54,6 +54,21 @@ boot.
 ⚠️ **The title is not input-ready for about ten seconds** after it appears ✅.
 And even then Ⓐ registers roughly half the time, with nothing yet found that
 predicts which ✅ — budget retries.
+🔴 **Refutation attempt, 2026-08-29 — both halves of that came out wrong on the
+runs I could test.** Two boots, Ⓐ pressed **7.29 s** and **7.28 s** after the
+title art settled (5.15 s and 5.15 s after the prompt appeared): **accepted both
+times, first press, no retry**, and each went straight on to the main menu. Ⓑ on
+the menu was then also accepted first press, both runs.
+⚠️ Reach: **n = 2**, so "half the time" is only made unlikely (2/2 has p ≈ 0.25
+under it), not excluded — but *"not input-ready for about ten seconds"* is
+contradicted outright, because 7.3 s worked twice. Keep the retry budget; drop
+the ten-second wait. Evidence:
+[run 1](../re/data/plate-timing-run1.tsv) · [run 2](../re/data/plate-timing-run2.tsv) ·
+[`title-plate-delay-measured.md`](../re/title-plate-delay-measured.md).
+
+⚠️ **The prompt takes 2.13 s to arrive, measured twice (2.138 s / 2.132 s).**
+Timed from the moment the wordmark stops animating, not from the moment it first
+appears — the build-in itself varies by half a second between runs.
 
 ---
 

docs/port/HANDOFF.md

@@ -49,6 +49,24 @@ a bind mount on another device, and which is what the withdrawn banner ran.
 `sylpheed-cli` against a pak, run the disc-gated tests and read the executable
 again. New measurements are available; ask for them.
 
+## ✅ 2026-08-29 — the interactive title is reachable again, and the "emulator-blocked" banner in MISSION is withdrawn
+
+Two consecutive boots reached the interactive title **with no pad input at all**,
+passed through the attract loop in ~3.5 minutes, took Ⓐ to the main menu and Ⓑ
+back. The standing negative ("three runs, two locales, two launch paths, ~35
+minutes of emulator time, no interactive title") does not hold in this container.
+
+❔ **Why it changed is not established.** The container came up with **no Xenia
+storage root at all** — no profile, no `xconfig.settings`, no shader cache — so
+run 1 created one with canary's `--create_profile_if_none`. That is a correlation
+across two runs, not a cause, and it is written down so the next session can test
+it rather than re-derive the reachability.
+[`capture-harness-status.md`](../re/capture-harness-status.md)
+
+**What it means for you:** the oracle is live. Anything you need timed or
+observed on the five screens can now be asked for and taken, including the two
+items MISSION parks as emulator-blocked.
+
 ## ✅ 2026-08-29 — three answers from one oracle session (the port's asks 1, 2 and 3)
 
 * **1 — the focus ring SPINS CONTINUOUSLY. Period 2.18 s wall-clock; author it
@@ -84,7 +102,39 @@ again. New measurements are available; ask for them.
   after.** It is your third option, not the first two. Green-Ⓐ glyph count on the
   boot title went **154 → 781**, and 154 is the same reading the committed
   `live-title-build4-no-plate.png` gives (159) while plate titles give
-  753/977/1493. 🔴 **The delay is NOT measured** — see the next bullet.
+  753/977/1493.
+  ✅ **AND THE DELAY IS NOW MEASURED — 2.13 s, replicated to 6 ms.** Two
+  independent boots: the plate arrives **2.138 s** and **2.132 s** after build 4
+  settles (the frame where the glyph counter first reads its no-plate 154 and
+  motion goes to zero). **So `ScreenView` does have to draw two builds at once,
+  and your `--boot` end state is NOT plate-free** — that is the structural answer
+  you said this question decides.
+  ⚠️ Measure from **settled**, not from first pixels: "first drawn → plate" is
+  3.78 s in one run and 4.26 s in the other, because the build-in animation
+  itself ran 1.64 s and 2.13 s. That spread is the emulator's frame pacing, not
+  the game's clock.
+  Then pulse the plate at ≈ **2.24 s** (four intervals: 2.12 / 2.19 / 2.34 /
+  2.31), which replicates the corpus's ≈2.3 s rather than replacing it.
+  [`title-plate-delay-measured.md`](../re/title-plate-delay-measured.md) ·
+  [figure](../re/captures/ui-timing/plate-onset-two-runs.png) ·
+  [run 1](../re/data/plate-timing-run1.tsv) · [run 2](../re/data/plate-timing-run2.tsv)
+
+* 🟡 **Your black hold survives a real clock — keep 0.17–0.23 s.** Measured on
+  the Ⓐ path in both runs, the frame is pure black (surface mean 0.070) for
+  **0.14–0.30 s** and **0.14–0.27 s**. At an 0.125 s sample interval that is as
+  tight as this instrument goes, and it brackets both your authored value and
+  the file's declared 12 units (0.20 s). It is the one authored constant you
+  ship that a measurement now agrees with.
+
+* 🔴 **The Ⓐ→menu latency is STILL not a number you may have, and now I know
+  why.** Both runs contain a **frozen frame** on the Ⓐ path — 14 frames (1.53 s)
+  and 12 frames (1.39 s) held at surface mean **26.626**, agreeing between two
+  independent runs to six decimals. Run 2 had stream restarts disabled for the
+  whole window, so it is **not** the capture path: the guest starts the fade,
+  re-presents one frame for ~1.4 s, then shows the full title again and fades
+  properly. That is a **load stall**, and the Ⓑ path — nothing to load — has none.
+  So any Ⓐ→menu figure from this harness is an emulator load time. Your
+  zero-dwell sequencer is the right call; do not add one.
 
 * 🔴 **Four durations I took the same day are WITHDRAWN, including the plate
   delay.** `screen_match.classify_array` costs **1503 ms/frame**; a probe running
@@ -96,6 +146,10 @@ again. New measurements are available; ask for them.
   the sequence results above stand and the timings do not. Fixed (`fast=True`,
   38–75 ms, re-controlled 8/8 on both paths, agreeing to ±0.005); the ring's
   numbers are unaffected and that was checked, not assumed.
+  ✅ **One of the four is now re-taken properly** — the plate delay, above. The
+  probe that took it costs **8.7 ms/frame** (173× cheaper) and both runs sampled
+  at **7.97 / 7.98 fps against a requested 8**, so there was no backlog to
+  destroy them.
 
 ## Status
 

docs/re/INDEX.md

@@ -163,4 +163,5 @@ files, which is how the same ground got covered twice.
 | [`weapon-datasheet-runtime.md`](weapon-datasheet-runtime.md) | Weapon DATA SHEET — runtime capture (Route B) |  🟡 first dynamic capture, 2026-07-28. The Arsenal's Gallery Mode panel is a |
 | [`xpr2-colour-check.md`](xpr2-colour-check.md) | XPR2 colours: channel order ✅ confirmed against the running game | — |
 | [`focus-ring-spin-measured.md`](focus-ring-spin-measured.md) | The main menu's focus ring spins continuously — and how fast | ✅ **measured**: period **2.177 s** over 9 revolutions (8 evenly spaced autocorrelation peaks) = 120 units = 60 frames = 2.00 s at 30 Hz. A pulse is excluded — annulus total conserved to 0.4 % while per-bin brightness swings by 24. ✅ the ring is the **only** moving thing on the settled main menu (std exactly 0.000 elsewhere). 🔴 no angle is quoted: the angular estimator FAILED its own control (30° → 0°) |
+| [`title-plate-delay-measured.md`](title-plate-delay-measured.md) | How long the boot title shows build 4 before the `PRESS Ⓐ` plate | ✅ **measured**, two independent boots: **2.138 s** and **2.132 s** from the frame build 4 settles (glyph = its no-plate 154, motion → 0). Agreeing to **6 ms**. So the boot title's end state is **not** plate-free and a compositor must draw **two builds at once**. ⚠️ Measure from *settled*, not from first pixels — "first drawn → plate" is 3.78 s vs 4.26 s across the same two runs, because the build-in animation's own duration varies with emulator frame pacing. Plate pulse re-measured at 2.12/2.19/2.34/2.31 s (mean 2.24), replicating the corpus's ≈2.3 s. ✅ black hold between screens bracketed at **0.14–0.30 s**, consistent with the declared 12 units. 🔴 the Ⓐ→menu latency is still **not** available: both runs freeze one frame for ~1.4 s at surface mean **26.626** — agreeing between runs to 1e-6, and reproduced with stream restarts disabled — which is a guest **load stall**, not the capture path. Probe: 8.7 ms/frame, 7.97/7.98 fps against a requested 8, controls 9/9 + 4/4 |
 | [`menu-idle-and-b-2026-08-29.md`](menu-idle-and-b-2026-08-29.md) | The main menu does not idle back to the title — and four durations that were a pipeline | ✅ **refuted**: no self-return in **≥ 60 s** untouched; the ~8–10 s idle belongs to the **title**. 🟡 Ⓑ→title ordering measured, latency not. 🔴 `classify_array` at **1503 ms/frame** drained an 8 fps stream at 0.64 fps and manufactured four latencies (24.66 s / 15.58 s / 25.60 s / 20.26 s) — all withdrawn; a backlog preserves ordering and destroys durations |

docs/re/capture-harness-status.md

@@ -1,3 +1,62 @@
+# ✅ WITHDRAWN 2026-08-29 (later the same day) — the interactive title IS reachable here, twice, with no pad input
+
+**This banner supersedes everything below it about the title being unreachable,
+and it supersedes the 🔴 "Emulator-side questions are blocked" section of
+[MISSION](../port/MISSION.md).** Everything below is kept because the harness
+defects it diagnoses were real and the fixes are in use; what it concluded about
+the *game* is now refuted by measurement.
+
+**Two consecutive boots reached the interactive title, with the `PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON`
+plate, without a single pad press before it:**
+
+| | run 1 | run 2 |
+|---|---|---|
+| plate on screen at | **205.4 s** into the probe | **218.4 s** |
+| pad input before that | **none** | **none** |
+| Ⓐ then reached the main menu | ✅ | ✅ |
+| Ⓑ then returned to the title | ✅ | ✅ |
+
+Full per-frame traces, 8 fps, 1783 and 1886 frames:
+[`data/plate-timing-run1.tsv`](data/plate-timing-run1.tsv) ·
+[`data/plate-timing-run2.tsv`](data/plate-timing-run2.tsv). The measurement they
+were taken for is [`title-plate-delay-measured.md`](title-plate-delay-measured.md).
+
+So the standing negative — "three runs, two locales, two launch paths, ~35
+minutes of emulator time, no interactive title" — does not hold in this
+container today. **The attract loop is simply passed through in ~3.5 minutes and
+the title follows.**
+
+## ❔ What changed is NOT established, and I am not going to guess it
+
+What is different about this container, stated as facts rather than as a cause:
+
+* it came up with **no Xenia storage root at all** — no
+  `~/.local/share/Xenia`, so no profile, no `xconfig.settings`, and no shader
+  cache. The earlier runs signed in a profile that already existed.
+* run 1 therefore had to create one, with canary's own
+  `--create_profile_if_none=Decoder`. Run 2 signed in the profile run 1 made
+  (`B13EBABEBABEBABE`).
+* the launch was otherwise `boot_menu.sh`'s, minus `skip_intro.sh` — this
+  measurement had to leave the title untouched, so nothing tapped Ⓐ at all.
+
+⚠️ **A cold profile is a correlation across two runs, not a cause.** It is
+written down so the next session can test it directly (delete the storage root,
+boot, compare) instead of re-deriving that the title is reachable.
+
+## 🔵 What this unblocks
+
+* the **Japanese-locale capture** that MISSION parks as "🟡 needs one more run":
+  the mechanism (`set_console_language.py ja`, `user.language` at file offset
+  `0x912`) is in place, and the reason it was parked — *the title never
+  appears* — is gone. ⚠️ Note the storage root is new, so `xconfig.settings` has
+  been recreated and the byte offset should be re-located by its three landmarks
+  rather than assumed.
+* the two items MISSION lists as emulator-blocked: the gamma control behind
+  [tone curve](structures/ui-render-tone-curve.md), and separating `8AX` from
+  `ptbase` in [8AX](structures/ui-8ax-fullres-background.md).
+
+---
+
 # 🔴 Why the boot harness stopped reaching the title — `screenshot` costs 10.8 s
 
 **Status:** ✅ **diagnosed, with a control.** Four consecutive runs on

docs/re/title-plate-delay-measured.md

@@ -0,0 +1,140 @@
+# ✅ The boot title shows build 4 alone for **2.13 s**, then composites the plate
+
+**Status:** ✅ **measured** — two independent boots of the real game in Xenia
+Canary, 2026-08-29. Not on the disc as a delay: build 2 (the `PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON`
+plate) is an overlay with no fade quad of its own, and nothing in either
+bundle's keyframe group carries the gap between them.
+
+**Question this closes:** the port asked which of three things the boot title is
+— build 4 alone, build 4 with the plate composited from the start, or build 4
+**then** the plate after a delay — because the third case is the only one where
+`ScreenView` has to draw **two builds at once**, which it has never done. The
+sequence was already answered (it is the third,
+[`menu-idle-and-b-2026-08-29.md`](menu-idle-and-b-2026-08-29.md)); **the delay
+was withdrawn the same day** and is what this page supplies.
+
+## The number
+
+| | run 1 | run 2 |
+|---|---|---|
+| title art first drawn (surface leaves black) | 201.617 s | 214.130 s |
+| **title settled** — glyph counter first reads its no-plate value **154** | 203.260 s | 216.261 s |
+| **plate first counted** — glyph leaves 154 | 205.398 s | 218.393 s |
+| **settled → plate** | **2.138 s** | **2.132 s** |
+| first drawn → plate | 3.781 s | 4.263 s |
+
+**Take 2.13 s, measured from the moment build 4's own build-in animation
+finishes.** The two runs agree to **6 ms**, which is under one sample interval.
+
+⚠️ **Do not take "first drawn → plate".** It differs by 0.48 s between the two
+runs because the build-in itself ran 1.64 s and 2.13 s — the emulator's frame
+pacing during an animation is not the game's clock, and this is exactly the sort
+of number that looks like a measurement and is really the harness.
+
+![plate onset, both runs](captures/ui-timing/plate-onset-two-runs.png)
+
+Raw per-frame data, 8 fps, every frame of both runs:
+[`data/plate-timing-run1.tsv`](data/plate-timing-run1.tsv) ·
+[`data/plate-timing-run2.tsv`](data/plate-timing-run2.tsv).
+
+## Why "then the plate", and not "the plate was pulsing all along too dim to see"
+
+The plate's declared alpha never exceeds `0x50` (80/255,
+[HANDOFF](../port/HANDOFF.md)), so a glyph counter with a hard threshold could in
+principle miss its dim phase and produce a fake delay. It does not, on two
+independent observables:
+
+* the glyph count is **exactly 154** — the committed no-plate title's own value,
+  159 on `live-title-build4-no-plate.png` — for every frame of the plateau, with
+  **zero** variation, for 1.99 s (run 1) and 2.13 s (run 2). After onset the
+  same counter swings 714 ↔ 1520 continuously. A cycling plate cannot produce a
+  flat exact-154 plateau nearly one full period long;
+* the **surface mean** is flat to ±0.03 across the plateau (61.09 → 61.15) and
+  then rises. A pulsing overlay moves the frame mean; the frame mean does not
+  move until onset.
+
+## What the port should author
+
+1. draw build 4, play its own keyframes;
+2. when build 4 has settled, wait **2.13 s**;
+3. composite build **2** over it and start its pulse — period measured here at
+   **2.12 / 2.19 / 2.34 / 2.31 s** across four peak- and trough-to-peak
+   intervals in the two runs, mean **2.24 s**, which replicates the corpus's
+   ≈ 2.3 s rather than replacing it.
+
+So yes: `ScreenView` needs two builds at once, and the boot's end state is
+**not** plate-free.
+
+## What is NOT measured here — the press latencies, again
+
+Both runs pressed Ⓐ on the plate and Ⓑ on the menu, and both runs contain a
+**frozen frame** on the Ⓐ path that makes the Ⓐ→menu duration meaningless:
+
+| | run 1 | run 2 |
+|---|---|---|
+| frames held at surface mean **26.626**, motion exactly 0 | 14 (1.53 s) | 12 (1.39 s) |
+
+🔴 **This is not the instrument.** Run 1's freeze straddled an x11grab restart,
+so it looked exactly like the documented stale-stream failure; run 2 was run with
+restarts **disabled** for the whole measuring window and reproduced the same
+freeze, at the **same** surface mean to six decimals, in the same place relative
+to the press. Two independent runs cannot agree to 1e-6 on a stalled buffer.
+It is the guest: after Ⓐ, the fade-out starts (mean 64.4 → 51.0 → 26.6), the
+frame is then **re-presented unchanged for ~1.4 s**, the full title reappears at
+mean 64.28, and only then does the fade run to completion. That is the shape of
+a **load stall**, and the Ⓑ path — menu → title, nothing to load — has no freeze
+at all.
+
+**So the Ⓐ→menu latency is an emulator load time, not a game beat, and the port
+must not bake it in.** The parts of the transition that are stall-free:
+
+| | run 1 | run 2 |
+|---|---|---|
+| press → first visible change (Ⓐ) | — | 0.29–0.37 s |
+| press → first visible change (Ⓑ) | — | 0.28–0.33 s |
+| **pure black between the two screens** (Ⓐ path) | 0.14–0.30 s | 0.14–0.27 s |
+| black → menu settled | ≈ 1.0 s | ≈ 1.0 s |
+| Ⓑ path: menu fade-out to black | — | 0.50 s |
+| Ⓑ path: black → title art | — | ≤ 0.27 s, and it is a **cut**, not a fade |
+
+⚠️ The two "first visible change" figures are **upper bounds that include this
+harness**: the press is a file the emulator polls (`--hid=file`), so an unknown
+poll interval sits inside them. They are quoted only because they bracket the
+black hold, and they do **not** refute
+[`screen-transitions.md`](screen-transitions.md)'s 0.07 s, which was taken a
+different way.
+
+✅ **The black hold does check the port's authored constant.** The port ships
+0.17–0.23 s; both runs put it in **0.14–0.30 s**. Consistent, at a sampling
+resolution (0.125 s) that cannot do better — so the authored value stands and is
+now bracketed by a measurement rather than only by the declared 12 units
+(0.20 s).
+
+## The instrument, and its controls
+
+[`tools/re-capture/title_timing_probe.py`](../../tools/re-capture/title_timing_probe.py),
+built because the four durations withdrawn on 2026-08-29 came from a classifier
+costing **1503 ms per frame** draining an 8 fps stream at 0.64 fps.
+
+* **8.7 ms of compute per frame** — measured, 173× cheaper. The saving is the
+  ±8 px offset search: every committed capture aligns at exactly `dy=0 dx=0`
+  ([`five-screens-acceptance.md`](five-screens-acceptance.md)), so the live path
+  decimates 4× and does one ZNCC per reference instead of 25 at full res.
+* **Both runs sampled at 7.97 and 7.98 fps against a requested 8.** A backlog
+  preserves ordering and destroys durations; there was no backlog.
+* `--control` **passed 9/9 content controls and 4/4 plate-detector controls**,
+  including the two committed movie frames that are the class this oracle exists
+  to reject.
+* an **independent one-shot grab** every 20 s, through a separate process, is
+  logged beside the stream's own frame. On the static screens the two agree to
+  **0.000 / 0.001**; the large disagreements are all inside movies, where a
+  0.3 s difference in grab time is a different picture.
+* and the plateau itself carries an internal clock check: the plate's ~2.2 s
+  pulse is visible in the same trace. A stalled stream cannot produce a periodic
+  signal.
+
+## Reach
+
+Two runs, English locale, one machine, Xenia Canary. It says nothing about the
+**attract loop's** title (which the corpus records as accepting no input at all),
+and nothing about the Japanese build 7.