595 green, 0 warnings. Completes TASK 55 (slice 1, log rotation, shipped 2026-10-22).
- **`AlertClipCleanup`**: the default alert clip is materialised into `%TEMP%` for ffmpeg to read, and
nothing ever deleted it — one orphan per profile that ever played an alert. Now: delete this session's
file in `Shutdown`, and sweep `ytLive-alert-*.mp4` at startup for anything a crash left behind. Only
the prefix we own is touched; a directory is never deleted.
- **`DiskSpaceGuard`**: a recording that dies of a full disk is a trust breach, so the numbers are a
pure policy — refuse to start under **1 GB** (toast; the stream still starts, recording does not),
warn under **5 GB** at start ("about eighty minutes" at 8 Mbps ≈ 3.6 GB/h), and one mid-show warning
under **2 GB** — the last useful moment before the encoder fails for a reason it won't explain.
Unreadable drives (a USB stick that just left) return null and never block a running recording.
Tests are policy-level on purpose: filling a real drive is not a test. `DiskHygieneTests` proves the
sweep only removes our own files and that the thresholds behave at both ends.
591 green, 0 warnings.
- `Scene.SceneMutesMic` / `SceneMutesDesktop` are **nullable booleans**: null = leave the mix alone, so
a scene is passive until the creator says otherwise. Schema columns added, NULL for every existing
layout except one deliberate default.
- **Applied once when the scene takes the PROGRAM output** (`TransitionToScene`, only when live or
recording). Staging a scene offline is auditioning, not a stream edit — the test asserts that.
- **The creator is boss:** a manual mute survives any transition into a scene with no opinion; a scene
that does have one wins on its next entry. `SetMicMuted`/`SetGameMuted` are idempotent so a repeated
"mute" cannot clobber the level that unmute would restore.
- **BRB ships muted** (creator spec) for new layouts *and* via a one-time migration for existing rows
where the creator has never expressed an opinion.
- UI: two three-state checkboxes under the layers list ("When this scene goes live"), styled with
`PropertyPillCheck` so the theme test holds.
`SceneAudioTests` covers the whole rule in one integration test: default state, offline staging does
nothing, live entry mutes, manual unmute survives a passive scene, an opinionated scene wins, desktop
untouched, and all three states roundtrip through save/reload.
Needs the creator's eye: the checkboxes are new chrome in the left panel (indeterminate = passive).
Creator ruling 2026-11-09: finish the queue before the new features, gold pass always last.
**Retired (platform's surface, not ours):**
- 34 scheduled streams — YouTube owns scheduling *and* the reminder that makes it worth anything.
- 50 publish recording — Studio owns upload (resumable, quota-aware, explains rejections), and an
in-app uploader would widen the OAuth consent to whole-channel video management for one convenience.
The app adds "Show in folder" instead.
**New tasks:** 65 replay clips (the creator-side buffer YouTube does not give you), 66 timed ticker
messages, 67 per-event alert videos, 68 edit-while-live + first-run On-Air.
**TASK 65 spec** is the interesting one: 15 s is a clip (10/15/20, default 15); the ring holds encrypted
*encoded* fragments in RAM — raw 1080p frames would be ~7.4 GB for 15 s — so there is no steady disk
write and no crash debris; F10 saves; the replay layer plays once then hides in Live and loops the last
1–3 elsewhere; silent by default; three kept; the layer is excluded from its own clip (hall of mirrors).
**TASK 14 gains Branch 3:** mic input gain ahead of the gate (table boom mics fall under it), webcam
blank hotkey, opacity/geometry parity with a collapsed Geometry disclosure, Show-in-folder.
**Decisions recorded:** the replay-buffer reversal (it was retired in 2022-era reasoning as "different
product"; the case for it won), the platform-surface rule, and voice triggering deferred — always-
listening in a streaming app hears the game, so the content is its own false-positive source.
Queue refactored to 56 lines by archiving completed rows and the superseded surge plan; HANDOFF at 40.
Slice 3. 589 green, 0 warnings.
- **`FramePump.ChangeEncoderAsync`** is a full pump stop/start, not an encoder swap. A swap leaves an
in-flight submit pointing at a disposed process, and that faults the loop — which ends the
broadcast, the one thing a quality step-down must never do. `StopAsync` already awaits the loop and
flushes, so this reuses the tested path and costs one short freeze, which the ladder accepts.
- **`MainViewModel.StepDown`**: one planner per broadcast, subscribed to `StatsReported`, unsubscribed on
every stop path. The pump thread only decides; the restart is posted to the dispatcher, because the
act stops the loop that raised the event.
- **The creator's choice is not rewritten**: `_encoderTierOverride` changes what the encoder emits while
the dropdown keeps showing what they picked, and the badge adds `· lowered` so the two never disagree
silently.
- Copy comes from `StepDownPlanner.Describe` (machine cause owns it, upload cause blames the upload);
the log gets the cause-tagged line for support.
Test: `EncoderRestartTests` runs a real pump with a fake encoder, changes the tier, and asserts a NEW
encoder started at the new fps/bitrate and produced a frame — the regression that would otherwise ship
as "it lowered the badge and the stream died".
Remaining for 33: shed our own capture cost before the fps step, and the session-report line.
Slice 2. 588 green, 0 warnings.
- `FramePumpStats` and `FramePump.StatsReported`: the 5 s window the log line already describes, as
data. `Dropped` is the ENCODER's counter (frames submitted, not accepted); `Stalls`/`AvgRenderMs`
are the pump's. `FramesRendered` is deliberately not used for classification — a static scene
reuses the paste cache and renders few frames while completely healthy, so it would read as
starvation.
- `StepDownPlanner`: one per broadcast, owns the stateful policy, converts stats → sample, exposes the
landed tier for the restart. It never acts — the VM owns the effects, which is what keeps the ladder
testable without an encoder.
- `Describe` / `ReportLine`: the sentences a creator sees. Machine cause says LlamaCasty couldn't keep
up and the connection was not the problem; upload cause blames the upload and promises no further
thrash. A test asserts the machine copy never leaks "dropped" — mechanism strings stay in the log.
Remaining for the task: VM subscription, the encoder restart at the landed tier, the toast, and
shedding our own capture cost before stepping fps.
Pure policy, no wiring yet. 12 unit tests, 584 green overall, 0 warnings.
- **Machine starvation** buys less work: 60 → 30 fps first, then 1080 → 720. The vertical tier has no
resolution step — its floor *is* its only geometry.
- **Upload congestion** buys fewer bits: `current − max(0.5, current × lossFraction)`, floored at
3.0 Mbps (16:9) / 4.0 (vertical). Resolution is deliberately not a bandwidth lever: 1080p30 and
720p60 cost the same, so dropping pixels at an unchanged bitrate relieves nothing.
- **Budgets** as ruled: three steps for a 1920-wide start, one for 720 and vertical. 15 s of evidence,
30 s cooldown, ambiguous evidence does nothing at all.
- **Recovery** is `allowClimb`, default off (the one-way ruling): the machine carries its ceiling from
construction, climbs one step after 180 s of clean windows, and a climb followed by a relapse inside
120 s freezes the session at the low value — one flap pair is proof enough.
Inputs are the poster's own counters (`PumpStalls`, `PumpDrops`, `AvgRenderMs`, `EncoderDrops`), not a
throughput reading: `StreamHealth.CurrentBitrate` is ffmpeg's *encoded output* rate and sits at target
even while the socket is gagging, so it cannot size a step.
Design settled with the creator. Two findings drove it:
- **Resolution is not a bandwidth lever.** 1080p30 and 720p60 are both 6 Mbps in the shipped table,
so "step down to 720p" relieves nothing against congestion; and 60→30 at the same bitrate relieves
nothing either. Congestion therefore steps **bitrate only** (8.0 → 6.4 → 5.1 → 4.1, ~20%), which is
what OBS Dynamic Bitrate does — cited, adopted, with its climb-back discarded for v1.
- **The other half has no OBS equivalent**: machine starvation (the game and the app on one PC) steps
fps, then resolution, and sheds LlamaCasty's own capture cost *first*. That is the app taking
responsibility for a stream it is helping to starve.
Budgets as ruled: 3 steps for a 1080 start, 1 for 720 and vertical, hard floors at 720p30 /
Vertical 1080p30, hold-and-warn at the floor, never disconnect. Trigger ≥5% drops over 15 s twice,
30 s cooldown, ambiguous evidence does nothing.
New rule in `ui-surface.md`: a toast names the cause, the culprit and the remedy. Mechanism strings
("All pipe instances are busy", HTTP codes, exit codes) are log findings, never user-facing copy.
YouTube moves the goalposts, so the app stops modelling them as its own truth and shows progress against
a threshold table that carries the date it was read.
- `Models/YppProgress.cs` — pure: three metrics, per-criterion met, and `MeetsPublishedRule`, which
encodes the real shape of the rule (subscribers AND either view route). The drawer says "x of 3 criteria
met — YouTube reviews eligibility" and spells out the either/or, so "2 of 3" can't be misread.
- `Services/YouTubeAnalyticsService.cs` — the two numbers only Analytics publishes: long-form watch hours
(trailing 12 months, `creatorContentType==video`) and Shorts-feed views (90 days, `==shorts`). No rows
means NO DATA, not zero.
- **Thresholds are data with a publication date** (`YppThresholds.AsOfUtc`, shown in the drawer) and a
test fails once that reading is more than 180 days old. The 2027-02-01 doubling (4,000h → 8,000h,
10M → 20M Shorts views) resolves from the date, not from an edit.
- **No Analytics scope → no invented numbers:** the drawer explains the missing consent instead of drawing
two empty bars as zero. Money stays behind 3·20's "Show monetary metrics" toggle.
- Fan-funding tier (500 subs) demoted to a single muted line, since the three bars are the ad-revenue path.
Tests: `YppProgressTests` — either/or eligibility, subscribers alone insufficient, Shorts as a qualifying
route, bars clamp at 100%, the doubling date, the staleness guard, Analytics parsing (no rows = no data),
and compact value formatting. FAST gate: 567 passed, 0 failed, 0 warnings.
The task asked for a `RewardEvents` table plus a backfill. That would have contradicted the published
promise that no viewer, member or donor information is retained after the session ends, and it would
have meant owning a ledger that YouTube already keeps.
So the report is DERIVED on demand instead:
- `Services/SuperChatEventService.cs` — `superChatEvents.list`, parsed for both event types (a sticker
must not be dropped), authorised by the existing `auth/youtube` scope, so no re-consent.
- `Models/SessionRewardSummary.cs` — rolls events up for the session window with **per-currency totals
that are never summed together** (a $5 and a €5 are not $10). Nothing is written down.
- The YPP drawer gains a **THIS SESSION** section: counts are neutral and always shown when there were
events; money appears only when the creator asks for it. `Show monetary metrics` is a drawer toggle,
persisted, **off by default** — a creator who never monetized is never shown a $0.00.
Also: money is labelled as estimates (removed/refunded events are excluded and totals can be restated
for weeks, not days).
Tests: `SessionRewardReportTests` — both reward types parse, the window makes it a session rather than
a channel report, currencies stay separate, an empty session shows nothing, a sticker-only session
still counts. `BackOnAirTests` moves into the serialised `MainViewModelLayoutPath` collection: it builds
a MainViewModel directly and was flaking against parallel tests that swap the static layout path.
FAST gate: 557 passed, 0 failed, 0 warnings.
The docs described Steamworks onboarding as pending work. It is pending VALVE: the partner account
exists, identity verification is under review, and the tax interview is in their queue with a quoted
turnaround of up to 30 business days. No app IDs are assigned, no store page exists, and Release
entitlement therefore still fails closed — by design.
Distribution.md §2 becomes a status table plus the critical path computed from Valve's own published
windows (30 business days verification → fee/app IDs → up to 12 business days store review → page
public ≥2 weeks before release → up to 12 business days build review). Earliest realistic launch:
early-to-mid February 2027, leaving ~7 weeks before the 2027-04-01 launch price ends.
Nothing in this blocks the code; commercial.md, TASKS 54 and HANDOFF now say so instead of implying
Steam is an outstanding coding task.
"I forgot the VPN" used to create a broadcast on YouTube that nothing ever pushed to: the app looked
live, YouTube held an empty broadcast, and the creator had to work out what happened. Prevention beats
recovery here, so go-live now asks one question first.
- `Services/IngestProbe.cs` — `IIngestProbe` + `TcpIngestProbe`: parse the RTMP URL, connect to the host
(rtmp → 1935, rtmps → 443) with a 2 s timeout. Any failure answers "not reachable"; the point is a
fast unambiguous answer, not a diagnosis.
- `MainViewModel.IngestPreflightAsync` runs **before the first API call** whenever a cached ingest URL
exists; on a first run it probes once the stream is resolved, still before any broadcast is created.
A false answer logs, tells the creator ("Nothing was created on YouTube…"), and rolls the session
back — nothing to clean up on YouTube.
- The probe is a test seam (`IngestProbeOverride`) like the camera and chroma ones.
Tests: `IngestPreflightTests` — unreachable aborts, reachable continues, URL parsing (rtmp/rtmps,
garbage), and the probe against **real sockets**: a listening port answers true, the same port closed
answers false and does so fast. FAST gate: 547 passed, 0 failed, 0 warnings.
Creator challenge (2026-11-05): "I really don't think that's going to be a constant — it's going to
depend on so many variables, some that are dark to us." Correct, so the measured-grace constant and
the countdown are dropped from the spec. YouTube's cutoff is server-side and depends on ingest health,
prior stream quality, region and load; a pinned number would be a guess wearing a timer, and it would
be wrong exactly when the creator is staring at it.
What ships instead:
- **Amber RECONNECTING** in the top bar with measured facts only: elapsed seconds and the attempt
number ("0:12 · attempt 2 of 4"). The seconds come from a stopwatch started at the drop.
- **The status poll speeds up while recovering** (30 s → 4 s) and drives the sign; it restores 30 s
when recovery ends.
- **`chatEndedEvent`** — already in the chat feed we poll and previously skipped — now raises a signal
that prompts an immediate status check. It never decides anything: `liveBroadcasts.list`
`lifeCycleStatus` stays authoritative, with `liveStreams.list` health as the push-received signal.
- At `complete`: red OFF AIR (the existing stop path) rather than a pretend-live sign.
Tests: `ChatEndedSignalTests` (the marker is not a chat row, the service raises the signal, and a
complete broadcast ends recovery with the honest message). FAST gate: 543 passed, 0 warnings.
A dead encoder used to run the whole stop path, so a one-second blip ended the broadcast. Now a dropped
push is relaunched against the same ingest while the broadcast is still alive.
- `Services/StreamRetryPolicy.cs` — immediate, +1 s, +2 s, +3 s. Minimum waits on purpose (creator
ruling): YouTube's grace is short, so every second not pushing is grace spent.
- `Services/StreamRecovery.cs` — the loop, with the audio pipe recreated before every attempt (its
server is single-instance and unusable after the old client dies, so a naive relaunch fails on a
missing input). After a push comes up it asks the API whether the broadcast survived: "complete"
ends recovery as `BroadcastComplete` instead of showing a live sign over a dead stream; an API
hiccup counts as recovered rather than ending a healthy session.
- `FramePump.EncoderFailed` — a dead push is recoverable; a compositor fault still goes through
`Failed` and ends the session, because retrying it would loop.
- `MainViewModel.Recovery.cs` — wires the steps, reports each episode into the left panel alert stack
(one row per episode, updated in place, log range painted), and cancels on Stop.
- Alert stack polish: a rule and a gap now separate the stack from the scene layers (they read as one
list before), and the licence indicator uses the creator's wording — `STEAM ID NOT PRESENT` /
`Steam ID Limit: 30fps` / `Click for More Info`, becoming `STEAM ID PRESENT` / `60fps` with a close
control once owned.
Tests: `StreamRecoveryTests` (schedule, recover on attempt 2 with the pipe restarted each time,
complete-broadcast honesty, unknown liveness, give-up, cancel, audio-restart fault),
`FramePumpTests` now pin that process death raises `EncoderFailed` and not `Failed`.
FAST gate: 538 passed (one documented pre-existing audio failure), 0 warnings.
TASK 32·4. A plain MP4 keeps its index (moov) at the end, so a power cut or a killed
process left the entire recording unreadable even though every video byte was on disk.
The record block now carries
`-movflags +frag_keyframe+empty_moov+default_base_moof`: index first, a playable
fragment flushed at every keyframe, so an interrupted take plays to the last fragment.
Record block only — the FLV stream output has no index and never gets the flags.
Rename-on-stop is untouched.
Test: `Args_RecordBlock_IsFragmentedMp4_SoACrashKeepsTheFile` asserts the flags on the
record block and their absence from the streaming block.
Not yet proven on a real interrupted take (kill ffmpeg mid-recording, play the result);
the args test is by construction.
Docs: task-32 slice 4 ticked with that caveat, TASKS row, output.md record note, HANDOFF.
verify.sh: 550 passed (mouse-injection test excluded, desktop in use), 0 warnings.
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 slice F — the two things left after the feature worked by hand.
- App Settings → **Video clips → Auto Green/Blue Screen** (off by default). When on, a
high-confidence detected screen is keyed as soon as the clip is added; the panel says
"Removed automatically" so an automatic change is never silent. Medium confidence still
asks, low says nothing — a wrong automatic key eats the picture.
- **A clip is a clip:** the alert box's own replacement clip keys through the same settings
block (one alert box per layout, so its settings are the ones the next alert uses), and
choosing an alert clip runs the same detector. The Green/Blue Screen panel now appears for
a video layer *or* an alert box with a custom clip (`Source.ShowsChromaKey`).
- Spill ships as the creator-facing **Fringe** switch; nothing further to tune behind it.
Test: `ChromaKeyApplyTests` gains the auto-apply case (no click, still explicit in the panel)
and an alert-clip case (its pipe asks ffmpeg for colorkey+despill with the blue screen type).
Docs: TASK 64 complete in TASKS.md, known limits recorded in the task file, HANDOFF rewritten.
verify.sh: 546 passed, 0 failed, 0 warnings.
TASK 64 slices D and E: the feature is usable end to end.
- Add a video file → one frame is probed (new `IChromaProbe`/`FfmpegChromaProbe`, one ffmpeg
pass at 160x90, off the UI thread) and the layer gets an offer: "Looks like a green screen —
Remove it", with the measured colour as a swatch.
- Accepting it turns the offer into settings (Amount / Softness / Fringe) that reach ffmpeg as
`colorkey` + `despill` + `format=bgra`, so the key is computed in the pipe and both consumers
(the shared preview bitmap and the compositor's frame) carry the same alpha.
- Media sessions are now keyed by **path + look** (`MainViewModel.MediaSessionKey`), so two
layers with the same settings still share one decoder, and changing the look releases the old
session and starts the new one. Removal, load reconciliation, loop and audio settings all move
to the same key.
- Settings persist on the `Source` row (six ALTER TABLE guards + SELECT/INSERT), so a keyed layer
comes back keyed.
- Panel section is plain creator words: Green/Blue Screen, Amount, Softness, Fringe.
Test: `ChromaKeyApplyTests` — the pipe asks ffmpeg to key (and does not when off); a green-screen
clip is offered, accepting it starts a keyed session, the layer's resolver then reads that session
rather than the old one; the setting survives a save.
Docs: TASK 64 D/E ticked with slice F (auto-apply setting + alert clips) left open; frame-pipeline
records the decode-option design; HANDOFF rewritten. verify.sh: 544 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).
TASK 21's picker slice: the decoder, manager, pacing and loop mechanism were
already shipped but nothing ever acquired a session, so a media Source rendered
nothing. Adds "Video File" to the (+) menu (video-filtered OpenFileDialog),
one decode session per distinct path with a HasSession guard, release when the
last scene reference goes, and a post-load reconcile. Loop is a manager-level
per-path answer ("any live reference loops") applied before StartAsync and
updated live via SetLooping. Properties panel shows the file with Change… and
Loop. Volume stays unwired: media audio rides the desktop loopback, TRAX-style.
Reference: OBS's media source (file → decode → composite into the scene) is the
established answer for this feature; the lifecycle shape mirrors this repo's
WebView2/ScreenCapture registration rather than inventing a new one.
Test: ytLive.Tests/MediaSourceAcquisitionTests.cs — add starts one decoder and
frames reach the layer, loop flip reaches the decoder, remove stops it.
Docs: task-21 closed, TASKS row + Day-4 row + stale 3·17 row corrected,
frame-pipeline acquisition note, HANDOFF rewritten. verify.sh green.
Keep non-owner resolution choices visible but muted. Selecting one preserves the free tier and opens About; external navigation is only the explicit llamacasty.com link. Ref: https://streamlabs.com/desktop
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 first half of surge day 1. One question, "may this session emit Pro output?", with
one method on the interface so nothing downstream knows which rail proved it.
SteamEntitlement reads the lifetime SKU the way Valve intends: SteamAPI.Init() then
SteamApps.BIsDlcInstalled(dlcAppId). Four different failure paths all resolve to the
free tier rather than to Pro or to a crash — no DLC id configured, no Steam client,
steam_api64.dll missing (a throw on first touch), and simply not owned. A copied folder
run without Steam is the common case, not an exceptional one.
NotConfigured() is the shipping default until Steamworks creates the DLC app; it answers
false without ever touching the native library, so today's builds behave exactly as they
did before this commit.
HasProOutput is now IsPremium || DeveloperMode || rail, with an internal EntitlementOverride
test seam (internal, because a public setter here is a licence bypass). Four tests: no id
reads false, no client reads false without throwing, the fake reports what a test sets, and
the view model takes its answer from the rail.
Steamworks.NET 2024.8.0 added; the native DLL still comes from scripts/steam-sdk.sh, so the
csproj change is three lines and no formatting churn.
Three creator directives (2026-11-01), done ahead of the surge.
**Gear moved to the preview rail** — first tab, orange (Brush.Attention), gear icon
only. Left-click opens the same app menu the top bar gear owned (Settings / Bug /
Feature / About), right-click goes straight to App Settings; both behaviours moved
with it, so nothing lost an entry point. TopBar keeps the wordmark and EDIT.
**EDIT right edge aligned to the layers panel.** The work area is margin 8 + a 360px
column, the top bar is padding 16, so the shared edge is 352 inside the bar. TopBar
column 0 is now a fixed 352 grid with EDIT right-aligned in it — alignment by
arithmetic instead of by eye.
**Preview undo/redo: Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z.** Models/PreviewHistory snapshots element
REFERENCES plus geometry, visibility, order and membership — a deep clone would mirror
every property of a dozen element subclasses and quietly miss the next one added.
One snapshot per gesture (pushed at drag/resize start, never in the move loop), bounded
at 50, redo survives multiple undos, cleared on layout load. Gated on EditingActive:
undo while the preview shows program output would rewrite a scene nobody is looking at.
Honest scope, in the type's doc comment: layout edits only. Colour/opacity/border/font
edits are not captured yet, so Ctrl+Z after one of those restores the last layout change.
6 tests in PreviewHistoryTests; 19 pass across it and the neighbouring UI classes; Debug
and Release both build at 0 warnings.
Correcting my own plan: the surge is six calendar days (Mon 2 - Sat 7), Saturday included,
and it finishes the coding side. Every open row is assigned to a day; the week-2 and
after-launch sections are gone because there are no such sections.
Days: licensing (entitlement, licence UI, greyed tiers, system messages), release blockers
(visibility picker, output contract, webcam identity, Move transitions), resilience (TASK 32,
bandwidth step-down), content and media (text layer, media wiring, profanity filter,
scheduled streams), data and settings (reward persistence, YPP slice 2, defaults split,
scene audio, settings round, disk hygiene), finish and prove (publish recording, undo, gold
pass, full sweep).
Target 6-8 units a day against a measured baseline of 3-5 — that gap is the surge. If a day
overruns, the smallest item moves; a launch blocker never does. Day 6 is the only polish day.
Non-coding is parked on Valve (identity verification, store page, depot); the week is code,
tests, debugging, polish. Ordered by what actually blocks a public build: entitlement seam
and licence UI (days 1-2), greyed tiers (2), visibility picker (3), stream resilience (3-4),
output contract (4), gold pass (5).
Sized honestly against the measured rate: ~50 units remain, 15-25 fit in five days, so the
plan names week-2 candidates and the five items that should not block launch at all
(scheduled streams, scene audio, defaults split, YPP slice 2, feedback batch).
Every unit carries the same definition of done — clean build, per-class tests, verify.sh on
the declared scope, and the falsified doc corrected in the same commit.
The SDK zip is 24 MB of headers, examples and tools we never build. The runtime
dependency is one native library, so scripts/steam-sdk.sh extracts exactly
sdk/redistributable_bin/win64/steam_api64.dll into steam/ (gitignored, like ffmpeg/ —
the script is the audit trail) and writes steam_appid.txt = 480, Valve's Spacewar app,
so SteamAPI.Init() resolves an app id locally before LlamaCasty has one of its own.
Two csproj details that would have cost a debugging session:
- Link="steam_api64.dll" puts it BESIDE the exe; without Link, None items keep their
relative path and it lands in steam/, where the loader does not look.
- ExcludeFromSingleFile, for the same reason ffmpeg needed it: a native DLL otherwise
gets swallowed into the single-file bundle and cannot be loaded at runtime.
steam_appid.txt is Debug-only — Valve's guidance is not to ship it — and the publish
output confirms it: dll present at the root, no appid file, exe still 127 MB (proof the
DLL was not bundled).
Also queued, as asked: preview undo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z) in edit mode, noted as the
partner to the defaults-vs-current split — undo covers the slip, defaults cover the mess.
The paid delta is output quality, so the rule needs to be measurable rather than a word:
921,600 pixels and 30 fps, fail-closed. Models/OutputProfile.cs is that rule as pure
policy — a permitted tier passes through untouched (Pro, or the free tier's own 720p30),
a disallowed one resolves to the best tier the budget allows and carries ITS bitrate, so
a capped user is never offered an 8 Mbps budget for a 720p frame.
Applied once, in BuildEncoderOptions. That is genuinely one place: the stream and the
local recording are two output blocks of ONE ffmpeg process fed by one EncoderOptions,
so there is no second encoder to forget. (commercial.md claimed "both encoders — never
two checks"; the code is stronger than the doc, and the doc is corrected.)
Developer override, as asked: a "Developer mode — all resolutions" checkbox in App
Settings, bound to MainViewModel.DeveloperMode, which feeds HasProOutput. It is not
hidden in a release build — Controls/DeveloperPanel's Page and Compile items are removed
when Configuration != Debug, and OverlayHost adds it at runtime inside #if DEBUG, so a
shipped exe has no BAML for it at all. The setter also refuses the value when
DevBuild.IsDevelopment is false, which is now the single source for that question (the
scoreboard partial had its own duplicate const).
Two traps worth their lines: a `const bool` dev flag makes `if (!Flag) return;` an
unreachable-code warning in one configuration or the other (CS0162), so DevBuild uses
static readonly; and a Condition on an ItemGroup is invisible to a test reading
item.Attribute("Condition") — read the parent.
Tests: 14 pass across OutputProfileTests, AssemblyIdentityTests and StorePackagingTests.
The invariant test is the one that matters: iterate every shipped tier under a free
entitlement and assert none emits more than the budget, so a future 4K tier fails here
instead of shipping to everyone. App builds Debug and Release at 0 warnings.
Renames AssemblyName to LlamaCasty before the first Steam depot — Steamworks is explicit
that renaming a live exe is painful, so this had to land first, not later.
Four assembly-qualified pack URIs carried the old name, not three: MainWindow (window
icon), OverlayHost (logo), RenameRecordingDialog and KeepBroadcastDialog. Pack URIs
resolve by assembly name at runtime, so a stale one compiles, passes every test and then
silently renders nothing the first time that view opens. AssemblyIdentityTests guards
both halves — the assembly name, and no source XAML still naming the legacy assembly.
Packaging/Package.appxmanifest and package-msix.sh carry the exe name too.
scripts/publish.sh replaces the by-hand publish: single-file win-x64, ReadyToRun,
ffmpeg beside the exe, and it refuses to finish if ffmpeg, LICENSE, PRIVACY.md or
THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt are missing, or if a test assembly leaked in.
That last guard exists because the first publish was wrong in a way no test could see:
PublishSingleFile + IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract bundled the libav*.dll family
into the exe — a 9-file output with no ffmpeg folder and a 182 MB binary, so the locator
would have found nothing at runtime. ExcludeFromSingleFile="true" on the content keeps
the folder a folder. Diffing against a control publish without the single-file flags
found it; guessing at item globs wasted two attempts first (recorded in MyMistakes.md).
Measured: 127 MB exe + 129 MB ffmpeg = 257 MB depot. Tests: AssemblyIdentity,
StorePackaging, BuildStamp, BundledFonts all pass; app builds with 0 warnings.
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.
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.
- Source.IsBrandLogo persisted (additive migration); layer healed on load, removal blocked
- Image stored as an asset; settings keep the asset id and file name
- App Settings: Brand Logo file field with Browse
- Default placement top-left; per-scene eye uses the existing element visibility
Test: BrandLogoTests; layout/background tests pass (34). Not pushed.
The transition started with no from-frame, so BlendFrame returned the new scene at once.
Start now requests a capture and the frame pump supplies its last output on the next tick.
Test: TransitionFadeTests. Docs: ai.md, TASKS.md.
Not pushed.
ai.md is the mandatory read every session; at 2,702 lines / ~64k tokens it
costs the whole subsystem history even when the task never touches it. This
is a verbatim move, not a compression - nothing is deleted and each stub is
written from the moved text.
- docs/ai/frame-pipeline.md: 'Frame cadence', 'Per-element composite timing +
scene dump', 'What the first instrumented take said', 'Render budget',
'Scene compositor' and 'Live frame pipeline', byte-identical, plus a short
'Related in ai.md' footer and two stale 'below' pointers corrected.
- ai.md keeps two stubs carrying the invariants that must not be missed
(overlay on every render path, VideoFrame.Epoch, StripPool threads,
Release-only render numbers; arrival-stamped rawvideo, non-blocking submit,
stop order, burned _outputIndex judge) and links the new file.
- docs/ai/index.md + docs/index.md route the split; schema.md inventory lists
the new tier.
- 4 index-row references and 2 TASKS.md anchors repointed; ai.md's Services
row too.
Measured: ai.md 63.6k -> 47.1k tokens, 2,702 -> 1,975 lines. Progressive
disclosure per schema.md convention 5. No source touched; no push.
Creator ruling 2026-10-26: the remaining programming work is far from
release and a complete UX redesign is about to start, so packaging,
signing, installer and updater decisions would be chasing scope that is
about to move. The task is deferred, not cancelled.
Recorded what is frozen: TASK 48 items 6-8, the signing decision, the
updater choice (Velopack's deletion left no update path, and
StorePackagingTests currently vetoes a new one), and the route question
itself - ai.md says the Store route is dead (direct + Steam) while
TASKS.md/task-48/HANDOFF still read Store MSIX + Store IAP. That
contradiction is to be settled in ONE sweep at the revisit, not patched
piecemeal now.
gramps