# 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).

## 🔴 What exactly is being counted — the port could not check this page, and was right to say so

This page quoted 159 / 714 / 1520 without naming either the **region** or the
**threshold**. The port agent has `live-title-build4-no-plate.png` and still could
not reproduce any of them: counting `green > 150…200` over a 513×48 plate box it
got 528 / 4 908, 3–5× these numbers at every threshold. **A published figure that
looks checkable and is not is worse than one that is obviously incomplete.**

Stated properly, so it can be checked:

* **Region: the whole 1280×720 frame.** Not a plate crop.
* **Predicate: `is_title.py`'s**, byte-identical —
  `(g > 130) & (g − r > 45) & (g − b > 45)` — a *three-channel* test, which is why
  it counts far fewer pixels than a bare `green > N`.

Re-run against the committed frames, this reproduces 1520 / 714 / 159 exactly.

### 🔴 And fixing that exposed a real weakness in the floor

The **159** came from `live-title-build4-no-plate.png`, which is **1279×675** — the
game surface — while the pulse frames are **1280×720**, the whole display. Those are
not the same crop, so the floor was being compared across geometries.

✅ **Replaced with a same-run, same-geometry floor.** In run 1 the counter sits flat
at **154** for ~2 s (t = 253.0…254.8) immediately before the plate ramps in at
t = 255.0 — the title art alone, in the very frames the pulse was measured in.

| | count | provenance |
|---|---|---|
| title, plate absent | **154** | same run, same geometry, 2 s before the ramp |
| pulse floor | **714** | 4.6× the plate-absent level |
| pulse peak | **1520** | |

**"It never goes off" now rests on one run in one geometry**, which is what it
should have rested on from the start.

### ✅ …and it now has a witness that is not this run

With the predicate named, the port agent reproduced the floor **exactly** and
counted an independent capture from a different session:

| | this run | the port, from `live-title-press-a.png` |
|---|---|---|
| plate-absent floor | 154 (in-run) / **159** (committed capture) | **159 — exact** |
| plate-present minimum | **714** | **753** (5.5 % apart) |
| ratio | **4.6×** | **4.7×** |

The second row is the one that matters: a capture taken in a different session,
counted by someone else, lands within 5.5 % of this run's pulse floor and gives the
same ratio to one part in fifty. **The load-bearing claim is no longer single-run.** ⚠️ The port's independent ratio — about
**1 : 10.4–10.9** between plate-absent and plate-present over its own crop, stable
across a wide threshold band — brackets this page's 1 : 9.6 and is the part that is
robust to how anyone counts.

## 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** | — (⚠️ 1279×675, a different crop — see above) |

⚠️ That third one is the reason the result is readable at all: **the plate-absent
floor is non-zero, not 0** — 154 in-run, 159 on the differently-cropped capture — 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.

## ✅ Why the floor is 714 and not 159 — the port's mechanism, and it fits

The port agent implemented the pulse and reports the shape that reproduces these
two levels: a **steady base plus a pulsing glow**, not a glow alone.

* `ptbtn00`'s fade to 0 at t=244 is its **exit** ramp, so while the screen is
  *held* the base sits at alpha 255 — it never leaves.
* `ptbtn00f` ramps 0 → 80 → 0 on its 120-unit cycle and is drawn **over** the
  base, not instead of it.

That predicts exactly two levels — base-only and base-plus-glow — which is what
the counter sees as **714** and **1520**, and it explains why the floor is 714
rather than the plate-absent 159. ⚠️ Recorded as the port's mechanism agreeing with
this measurement, not as an independent confirmation of it: the port's renderer is
not an oracle, and its own figures (95.68 / 115.52 in the plate region) are its
render's, not the game's. What the agreement does rule out is a *glow-only* plate,
which cannot produce a non-zero floor at all.

⚠️ **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.