# HANDOFF — 2026-10-30 (audio dock shipped; needs an eyes/hands pass)

## State

- Branch `main`, worktree clean. Ten dock units landed on top of the design conversion; nothing
  pushed since `1724922` — this batch is local.
- **The sound bars exist**: `Controls/AudioDock` — master strip on top (nearest the preview), four
  bays below (MIC / GAME / TRAX / LIP-SYNC), 148px, auto-collapsing to 36px below a 900px window
  height. The dock is now the ONLY audio surface; the preview's mic row, game chip, TRAX button and
  sync slider are deleted.
- Faders speak dB (`Helpers/GainDb`, 0 dB = unity). Ladders are measured (`SegmentMeter` +
  `MeterScale`), never decorative. The duck badge prints the gain the mixer applied.
- **MONO output** (creator ruling): folds the finished mix to both channels, persisted as
  `Audio.MonoOutput`, one click in the master strip. Exists because single-sided audio is inaudible
  with profound right-side deafness, not merely unbalanced.
- Deliberately absent: L/R ladders (one ladder + an imbalance flag instead), TRAX scrub/prev-next
  (OBS territory), CPU/GPU/NVENC readouts, acrylic.

## Next action

Nothing queued. **Needs the creator's hands**: launch and judge the dock at the real window size —
bay proportions at 148px, the master strip's ladder/label density, and whether the MONO fold sounds
right through their own ears/headphones (the one thing no test can answer).

## Landmines

- **Not every hex is a theme colour.** `BorderColorPalette` and the chat/socials config defaults
  are USER DATA — they keep their literals. On-stream graphics now come from `OutputPalette`,
  never from a literal or from app resources (the pump thread must not touch them).
- A red settings control is a bug now — red means live/record.
- Pre-existing: the **full test suite hangs** (WASAPI teardown). Per-class runs are the way.

## Pending

- **Launch and eyeball**: fonts render (pack-URI resolution cannot be proven in the test host),
  the blue accent, blue-staged / red-live tiles, and mono telemetry.
- Vertical-tier camera check; webcam-cadence take in the failing geometry.