TASK 49 is retired (creator ruling): YouTube owns chat moderation. Its blocked-words filter and
hold-for-review run upstream of `liveChatMessages.list` — held messages are never returned
(https://stackoverflow.com/questions/74511524/) — so a second local list would duplicate a switch
the creator already owns, with a second set of false positives and a second support surface.
What we actually owed the platform, and had wrong:
- The parser added every item to the overlay. A deleted message arrives as a `tombstone` carrying
no text at all ("it has since been deleted … only liveChatId, type and publishedAt are present" —
https://developers.google.com/youtube/data/live/reference/rest/v3/liveChatMessages), so every
deletion rendered as a BLANK chat row. `hasDisplayContent:false` messages and chat-mode events
did the same.
- Deletion events (`messageDeletedEvent`/`messageRetractedEvent`/`userBannedEvent`) are documented
but have not been delivered to clients for years (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44346893/),
so nothing is built on them; they are skipped if they ever arrive.
- Found while testing: Super Chat read `displayString`, but YouTube's field is `amountDisplayString`
— every amount silently fell back to a recomposed string, which mangles non-dollar locales. The
model's own comment said this was the reason the field exists.
Test: `ChatModerationParseTests` — tombstone, no-display-content, chat-mode events all produce no
row; a real Super Chat still parses its pre-rendered amount (constraint 4: reward fields are never
reinterpreted).
Docs: TASK 49 marked retired with the citations, the rule recorded in decisions.md, HANDOFF updated.
verify.sh: 550 passed, 0 failed, 0 warnings.
TASK 64 units B and C — the two pure halves, no wiring yet.
- `Services/ChromaKeyDetector.cs`: samples the frame's outer ring (the screen is at the
edges, the subject in the middle), reports Green/Blue/None plus the colour actually shot
and a confidence. Confidence is coverage × hue tightness, which is what keeps a lawn or
a football pitch from being offered as a keyable screen. Letterbox bars are excluded from
the denominator rather than counted against the screen. Never decides anything: an offer
is the creator's to accept.
- `Services/VideoFilterChain.cs`: options → `-vf` (scale → colorkey → despill → format=bgra)
plus a `Signature` so two layers keyed identically can share one decoder. Numbers clamp and
an unparseable colour falls back to the app default, so ffmpeg is never handed a filter it
rejects at spawn.
- Keying is done by the bundled ffmpeg, not by us: verified against the shipped binary that
`colorkey=…,format=bgra` emits straight-alpha BGRA (alpha 0 on keyed pixels), which is what
the compositor already blends. No per-pixel loop lands in the 16.67 ms render budget.
Test: `ChromaKeyDetectorTests` — green, blue, letterboxed, lawn (must say None), mixed scene,
dark frame, plus the chain strings and signature sharing.
Docs: TASK 64 queued in TASKS.md with its slice table; the decisions.md chroma-key reversal
recorded as a reversal (it was buried for webcam background removal, not for supplied clips).
Creator ruling 2026-11-01. One SKU, one price, Steam does the selling.
- Pro is a one-time Steam DLC on the free app: $79 introductory, $99 on a stated date, announced
where the price is shown and actually raised.
- The subscription is retired. The reasoning is in decisions.md: no service behind a monthly fee
(no servers, no cloud, no content), ~1-3 subscribers per 1,000 installs against 5-8% churn, and
it carried the most expensive code in the product.
- Polar goes dormant. Its customer-portal design is recorded, not built. The "freemium on Steam,
convert on Polar, Valve gets nothing" proposal is rejected: in-app purchases must use the Steam
Wallet, so it risks the listing to save ~$24 a sale.
- Entitlement collapses to `steamDlcOwned`. No lease, no key, no portal, no device limit; the
greyed tier opens the Steam store overlay, so every purchase stays inside Valve's own surface.
- The site publishes the model and links the store page. It takes no payment and hosts no binaries.
- The $400 lifetime died with the subscription it anchored. Founding 200 died with the coupons and
passes it needed.
Costs: $115 fixed year one; $79 nets $55.30 after Steam, so three sales cover the year.
The site said "Coming soon to Steam" while the app docs still said direct download plus
winget primary with Steam parked. One of them had to move, and the creator's ruling is
Steam exclusive: a free app on Steam with the paid edition as a Steam DLC, and the
$10/month plan sold off-Steam by Polar.
Records the constraint that shapes the code, not just the prose:
- Steamworks requires in-app purchases to use the Steam Wallet (Microtransactions doc,
quoted in commercial.md), so the monthly is *stated*, never *sold*, inside a Steam
build; the lifetime is plain DLC bought on the store page and read with BIsDlcInstalled.
- Entitlement is `steamDlcOwned || polarKeyValid`, both resolving to one OutputProfile.
steam_api64.dll ships beside the exe and is a functional dependency, not the rejected
"IP protection" native DLL — without it DLC ownership cannot be read. Launched without
Steam, the app falls back to the free profile rather than refusing to start.
- Signing is moot: Steam installs never meet SmartScreen. Artifact Signing stays on the
shelf for the day a non-Steam download exists. Year-one fixed cost is ~$115.
- The exe rename must land before the first depot upload — Steamworks warns about
renaming a live exe.
Distribution.md is rewritten to SteamPipe mechanics (publish output, depot, steamcmd,
DLC wiring, clean-account purchase/refund test). product.md, decisions.md (a new
"Steam exclusive" entry with every dead vector), TASKS.md (Steamworks entitlement row,
Steam packaging row), ai.md, index.md and the TASK 48 banner follow. MyMistakes.md gains
the Steam rules that cost real time today: installs skip SmartScreen, updates are free,
the Wallet rule, and the recurring-billing caveat.
Four things derived this session superseded what the plan said twenty-four hours earlier,
and the docs are corrected where each one died:
**Licensing needs no server.** Polar's customer-portal endpoints authenticate on the key
itself plus the public organization_id; the org access token is only needed to create
products. Channel binding rides in `conditions: {channel_id}`, re-checked on every
validate — so the "claim page" (a hosted OAuth flow that wrote the UC id onto the key)
and the key database it implied are deleted. Device management, key rotation and
subscription auto-revocation are Polar's; four states, one lease, no callback endpoint.
**Signing is deferred until two subscribers.** It never removes the day-one SmartScreen
warning (EV's instant-bypass died in 2024), so buying it before revenue buys only the
publisher line. Renamed to Azure Artifact Signing, $9.99/mo Basic, and it requires a
paid Azure subscription. Year-one fixed cost drops from ~$135 to ~$15.
**The Store account is free.** Microsoft waived the $19 individual fee and removed the
$99 company fee in May 2026, which makes the Store the only zero-cost route to a
Microsoft-signed install — the free answer to SmartScreen, noted beside the paid one.
**Support is a filter, not a promise.** Email, best effort, no SLA, refunds on request
without argument; no training service, no helpdesk. A repeated question becomes a
training video on @llamacasty, which is content and monetization instead of a ticket.
GitHub issues on the releases repo are the deliberate friction.
Also settled: binaries live in a second Gitea repo (`llamacasty-releases`) push-mirrored
to a public GitHub repo — issues and assets public, code private, one publish direction
(a git mirror carries refs, not GitHub Release assets); `@llamacasty` is
standard-verified with intermediate features, so live streaming, >15 min uploads and
custom thumbnails work today and no SIM or ID is needed; and OAuth comes out of Testing
mode by publishing the app (100-user lifetime cap, no 7-day token death).
TASKS.md now opens with the four-day surge slice — artifact shape, output gate,
entitlement seam, real-machine day — because those are what the first public release
waits on. HANDOFF.md rewritten. MyMistakes.md gains the Polar recipe and the
"verify means three different things" entry. MARCOM.md gains the support→content loop
and the surface roles.
The commercial plan was spread over five documents written in five different weeks,
and they contradicted each other: product.md sold the Store, decisions.md called the
Store dead then re-opened, Distribution.md (736 lines) still described Polar as a
download host, MARCOM.md quoted "no subscription" next to a paid tier, and README.md
promised "free forever". An outsider could not tell what ships.
docs/ai/commercial.md is now the only place money is decided: free = whole app at a
921,600 px / 30 fps output profile covering the recording as well as the stream; Pro =
$10/mo or $400 lifetime through Polar, key bound to the buyer's YouTube channel ID via
a claim page, 2 activations, 7–14 day lease with offline grace, fail closed, never
downgrade a running stream; one portable zip + winget primary, Steam and the Store
parked; Azure Trusted Signing (~$9.99/mo), no EV; Founding 200 promo; ~$135/yr costs;
anti-piracy posture and what is permanently rejected.
Everything else now points at it instead of restating it:
- product.md — money sections replaced with pointers; packaging rewritten to
winget-first, Store parked; signing updated to Trusted Signing.
- decisions.md — graveyard with cause of death for free-forever, the Store ordering,
the updater, and the 2026-10-30 reversal of the quality-ceiling rejection.
- Distribution.md — rewritten to release mechanics only (artifact, GitHub Releases,
winget manifest, signing, checklist, takedown): 736 → 120 lines.
- TASKS.md — TASK 54 rewritten, TASK 48's route settled, TASK 10 superseded, five new
rows (entitlement seam, output-profile gate, licence UI, system messages, packaging).
- README.md — "free forever" replaced with the real split.
- capture.md — obs-backgroundremoval is GPL-3.0 and so licence-INCOMPATIBLE since the
proprietary EULA; the old "compatible" line was falsified by that change.
- TASKS/task-10, task-48, task-51, task-54 — superseded-banner at the top of each, so
none of them reads as current policy.
- HANDOFF.md — rewritten: plan settled, next code unit is the entitlement seam.
MARCOM.md and MONETIZATION.md (gitignored) were corrected in place: policy pointer at
the top of each, the flash removed from every live claim, the Polar fee break-even
corrected to ~$900/mo, and the projections flagged as written against a dead model.
Records the split so neither side drifts: the app repo holds the real numbers (720p30 free, $10/mo
or $400 lifetime, Store individual account) and the site holds only the promise (free forever, every
feature unlocked, a paid edition at launch).
Creator ruling 2026-10-30: the Microsoft Store is the distribution target again, through an
Individual (not Company) developer account — which is what made the 2026-10-22 withdrawal necessary
in the first place, and why no legal entity is now required. The publisher line shows the verified
individual name; distribution work stays parked until the account exists, and the site's 'coming
soon to the Microsoft Store' copy is accurate again.
Licensing posture changes to closed-source commercial software (creator ruling 2026-10-30): free
tier caps output at 720p30, a paid licence unlocks 1080p ($10/month or $400 lifetime).
- LICENSE is now an End User License Agreement: grant, what you may do with your own content,
no redistribution/reverse engineering, third-party components prevail, updates at publisher
discretion, warranty and liability limits, termination, governing law.
- ADDITIONAL-TERMS.md deleted — those were GPL §7 terms and have no meaning under the EULA.
- THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt keeps every third-party obligation and drops the GPL header and §6
source offer; it states plainly that LlamaCasty ships no source.
- PRIVACY.md is new: exactly what is written locally (layout DB, DPAPI token, capped log,
recordings you choose), what leaves the machine (Google's APIs only, with your account), and the
standing promises (chat rendered never stored, no telemetry, no ad SDKs).
- README, docs/ai/product.md, docs/ai/decisions.md and TASKS.md record the decision and the
obligations that still bind (ffmpeg LGPL as a separate process, OFL fonts, CC0 icons, model
provenance, notices in the About screen).
Deliberately NOT decided here: key issuance/verification and the resolution gate itself. Earlier
GPL builds remain GPL for the versions that shipped under it.
TASKS.md 467 → 66 lines: one line per live item, detail stays in TASKS/
task-*.md. The old catalogue (63 rows of paragraph status prose plus the
historical narration) is preserved verbatim as TASKS/archive.md — a
2026-10-29 snapshot, not the live queue. The "out of product" list and every
retired decision moved to docs/ai/decisions.md with cause of death.
HANDOFF.md 440 → 40 lines, and it is now OVERWRITTEN, not appended: branch,
what's in flight, next action, live landmines, pending creator checks. History
belongs to git log; the previous handoff is reachable at ee3c592:HANDOFF.md.
docs/ai/decisions.md (new) collects what no longer governs: the paid tier and
its pricing, Polar, Store IAP, the Store route and why it died, the deleted
Velopack updater, signing economics, the retired monetization ideas, and the
permanent out-of-product list.
Facts that lived in the old ai.md "Current limitations" section were re-homed
rather than dropped with the router rewrite: OAuth/DPAPI/session behaviour →
docs/ai/youtube-api.md; paths, persistence and the Google project number →
docs/ai/environment.md.
verify.sh caps now cover all four always-read files (AGENTS 210, ai 100,
HANDOFF 40, TASKS 120).
Docs-only unit: scope-check run, no build.