Crazy News Channel Shadowman

cartoons/shadow-man.html + shadow-man.js, linked from cartoons/index.html. Data comes from
cartoons/shadow-man-data.js, written by the Inkwell export script, which exports ONLY pieces
approved in the Inkwell curation UI (currently 0 -> page shows an empty state). Theme/era filters,
sort, density slider (persisted), date+time chips, <dialog> viewer. Styling added to
assets/style.css as PART 4 scoped under body.shadow-man-page; no inline styles. Not added to
manifest.js, the daily queue, or the Shorts pipeline.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

README.md rewritten for TK-12237: article selection rules (14-day queue + full
manifest.js exclusion, real-news-first-then-p24-fallback), the new $0.003/cartoon
still-image cost line (was $0.103 with video), --concepts-only and --video usage,
and a note that the older multi-panel interactive-strip cartoons already in
cartoons/manifest.js use a different DOM than scripts/cartoon-shorts/make-cartoon-shorts.mjs
expects (pre-existing gap, unrelated to this change). run-daily.sh comment updated
to flag that --video must not be added there without an explicit Steve ask.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XizSgLiFuNbjY418z94Ewq

build_review.py's card now shows the linked source article (title + real-news/p24
source chip), or a plain "no linked article" note for pre-TK-12237 queue items that
predate story linking. The approve-command snippet shown per card now includes the
recorded --story-id so Steve can copy/paste it directly. review.html regenerated;
verified 0 console/page errors via Playwright and 0 <style> blocks / style="" attrs
(only ../assets/style.css, per the one-stylesheet rule).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XizSgLiFuNbjY418z94Ewq

--story-id is no longer required on the command line — it defaults to the article
generate.py recorded in meta.json (story_id) and is still validated against
stories-data.js/real-news-data.js; pass --story-id to override. The generated
cartoon page now also shows a "Source: <headline>" link to the linked article when
present. Works unchanged with or without clip.mp4 (poster-only renders as a still
<img>, no style violations — only ../assets/style.css is linked).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XizSgLiFuNbjY418z94Ewq

generate.py now reads today's real-news-data.js (falling back to stories-data.js's
invented P24 stories) via a sandboxed extract_stories.mjs parser, picks one unused
article per cartoon (skipping story_ids cartooned in the last 14 days of the queue
or already in cartoons/manifest.js, preferring newest real news), and asks local
Ollama for exactly one gag per article instead of inventing abstract concepts with
no article input. Video generation (Replicate wan-2.2 i2v) is now opt-in via
--video (default OFF, ~$0.003/cartoon instead of ~$0.103) per Steve: "just an
image, not moving." Added --concepts-only/--dry-run for a $0 preview of picked
articles + concepts with no Replicate calls.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XizSgLiFuNbjY418z94Ewq

Removes the name from all user-visible text and from the daily-cartoon
generator prompts/templates so it can't come back in future output:

- cartoons/reference/paul-conrad.js -> editorial-ink-reference.js: rewrites
  the "Masters" bio+works reference into a generic "Classic Editorial-Ink
  Tradition" style reference (no named individual, no catalogued/cited real
  works) and updates cartoons/reference/index.html to match.
- cartoons/20260924-conrad-filibuster-ink.html -> 20260924-filibuster-ink.html
  and 20260924-conrad-filibuster-qwen25-7b.html -> 20260924-filibuster-qwen25-7b.html,
  images/filibuster-marathon-conrad.jpg -> filibuster-marathon-ink.jpg, with
  every reference updated (manifest.js ids/files/thumb/tags/style_reference,
  index.html featured-cartoon links, cartoons/index.html, assets/style.css
  comments, cta/cta3-video-results.json local test-evidence paths).
- 3 other cartoon pages (come-in-and-get-me-meter, row-by-row-marshal,
  gold-tier-treadmill) + their manifest.js entries: "in the manner of Paul
  Conrad" -> "in classic editorial-ink style"; style_reference/tag values
  paul-conrad / "paul conrad style" -> editorial-ink / "classic editorial ink".
- daily-cartoons/generate.py STYLE_PRE (the actual generator prompt) and
  approve.py's approved-page caption + style_reference/tags rephrased so no
  future daily cartoon carries the name; daily-cartoons/README.md updated;
  the 5 queued (not-yet-approved) meta.json image_prompt fields scrubbed and
  daily-cartoons/review.html rebuilt from them via build_review.py.

Verified: recursive case-insensitive grep for "conrad" across the whole
worktree (incl. yolo/) returns zero hits; the one-stylesheet invariant
(no <style>/style=" in any tracked html) still holds; Playwright crawl of
index.html + cartoons/index.html + cartoons/reference/index.html + all 23
cartoon pages returns HTTP 200, 0 console errors, 0 failed network requests,
and no "conrad" in rendered text or HTML source on every page reachable from
the current manifest (one unrelated pre-existing 404 found and left alone:
manifest.js's "filibuster-marathon" entry points at a file removed by an
earlier, unrelated commit — flagged for a separate fix, not in scope here).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

daily-cartoons/approve.py (writes a new cartoons/<date>-<slug>.html for every
newly-approved cartoon) and daily-cartoons/build_review.py (writes the local
admin review queue) each emitted their own <style> block with a hardcoded
palette (--cream/--ink/--mint, or --bg/--ink/--mint/--card/--dim + a
prefers-color-scheme dark swap) and a Georgia font, on top of already
linking ../assets/style.css. Fixed both generators to link only the shared
stylesheet and use new body classes (cartoon-page-simple, cartoon-queue-page)
whose rules now live in style.css, so every page these scripts produce from
here on stays on the one site-wide palette/font. Regenerated review.html
(local-only queue, 5 items) to verify.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Each of the 22 cartoons/2026*.html pages (plus cartoons/reference/index.html)
carried its own <style> block — 10 distinct copy-pasted/drifting variants —
on top of already linking ../assets/style.css, plus a per-page "Dark mode"
theme-toggle button+script on 17 of them. Some variants set a serif font
(Georgia/'Times New Roman'/'Iowan Old Style'/Palatino) that didn't match the
site's sans-serif stack, so which page you clicked into changed both the
font and (via the toggle, or the mood-swap removed in the prior commit) the
colors.

Deleted every inline <style> block and moved its rules into assets/style.css
under body classes scoped per layout family (cartoon-page[-wide], -frame,
-diagram, -editorial, -reference) so none of it can leak onto index.html or
cartoons/index.html. Removed the per-page theme toggles (button + JS) along
with the mismatched serif fonts. Functionality (panels, reveal/twist
buttons, sliders, status messages, the one true 3-state auto/dark/light
toggle on budget-pie-fight) is unchanged — only the styling mechanism moved.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

cartoon-desk-link and the featured-editorial-cartoon block (panel/link/
video/title/caption) carried inline styles, including a Georgia/'Times New
Roman' font-family on the title+caption that didn't match the site's one
sans-serif font stack. Replaced each with a class (.cartoon-desk-link,
.featured-cartoon, .featured-cartoon-panel/-link/-eyebrow/-video/-title/
-caption) defined once in style.css, and dropped the mismatched serif so
the whole page uses one font system. index.html now has zero style="..."
attributes.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Clicking a category filter set body[data-mood="politics|weather|..."], and a
whole block redefined --bg/--panel/--accent/--text/etc per category, so every
click repainted the entire site's colors. Same problem for the per-strip
"Dark mode" toggle, which swapped --bg/--panel/--text via html[data-theme].
Removed both blocks; kept only the single default ("all") mint-green palette
in :root. JS still sets body[data-mood] on click (for the mood-readout text
and the independent per-card --cat-accent dots) and pages still carry
data-theme, but nothing in style.css keys colors/fonts off either anymore.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Playwright captures the 3-panel strip + Plot Twist state live from the cartoon
HTML; ImageMagick composites branded 1080x1920 cards (opening SATIRE card,
per-panel cards, plot-twist card, article card for the linked real story);
ffmpeg Ken-Burns + concat + mux produces out.mp4. Reuses the EXISTING
allnewsdaily pipeline modules (tts-elevenlabs.mjs, upload-youtube.mjs,
fit-caption.js) rather than copying them. Idempotent via
cartoons/shorts-ledger.json; every run logs PASS/FAIL/SKIP rows to
yolo/cartoon-shorts-log.jsonl and writes a fleet-health-rollup heartbeat to
~/.claude/skills/p24-cartoon-shorts/data/latest.json.

A cartoon whose story_id doesn't resolve to a real stories-data.js /
real-news-data.js entry is skipped (FAIL row) and never rendered/uploaded.

Tested (--no-upload): commission-turtles with VO ($0.087, 290 chars) and
budget-pie-fight silent, both 1080x1920 / 34.2s / <60s. Negative test
(unresolvable story_id) confirmed FAIL row + no video, no ledger write.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KLwoGhVdenyRTtTeMnGHSU

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VGPARcQepnFT49pzMk1ZE5

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LfkajczsrHUsBBKvhRwcCG

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01673i1FNbU9H28DomRKpHuk

Adds a `tags` array (3-6 short, shared-vocabulary tags) to every entry in
stories-data.js (44), real-news-data.js (42), cartoons/manifest.js (23),
and the 4 inline FEATURES in index.html (109 posts total, 0 missing).
Cartoons inherit their linked story's tags plus "editorial cartoon" (+
"paul conrad style" for the 5 Conrad-manner strips).

UI: tag chips render on every story/feature card, in the article view
under the dek, and on every cartoon-gallery card (as a sibling of the
card's own <a>, not nested inside it). Clicking a chip filters to every
post carrying that tag across all categories, shows a "Tagged: X ✕"
indicator, and persists in the URL as #tag=<tag> (works under file://,
unlike localStorage cross-page). A tag cloud (top tags with counts,
tags used only once excluded) sits above the grid when no filter is
active.

Real-news tagging is deterministic (scripts/lib/auto-tag-real-news.mjs:
category + outlet + ~30 keyword rules, always 3-6 tags, no LLM/API) and
is now called by fetch-real-news.mjs on every refresh, so a future run
can never write an untagged entry. build-cartoon-batch.sh's FAIL check
is extended the same way it already enforces story_id, so a cartoon (or
the story it's paired with) built without tags fails the batch. Each
data file's header now states the tags rule.

Also fixes the last 6 P24 pages still carrying their own inline theme
CSS instead of the shared assets/style.css from TK-12151's unification
(cartoons/reference/index.html + the come-in-and-get-me-meter,
row-by-row-marshal, gold-tier-treadmill, conrad-filibuster-ink, and
filibuster-marathon strips) — same link+data-mood treatment as the
other 18, so every page's background now matches its mood site-wide
(verified: index.html and cartoons/reference/index.html compute the
identical "all"-mood background gradient).

Verified: node --check on every edited JS file; a vm-context script
(scripts/verify-tags.mjs) asserting 0 of 109 posts have missing/empty
tags and printing vocabulary stats; a 30-check Playwright pass over
file:// (front page article + tag-click filtering, cartoon gallery +
tag-click filtering, 390px mobile with 0 horizontal overflow, and the
6 CSS-unified pages) — 0 console/page errors throughout.

TK-12165

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01V29xaoBwcFwJyR4KC43ptn

CTA cross-browser test found clicks on the video were being swallowed by the
enclosing anchor (Safari navigated away, Chrome silently did nothing), and the
fixed bottom ticker covered the native control bar at normal window heights.
Video now sits outside any <a>; caption/title link separately. Added
margin-bottom to clear the ticker.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VGPARcQepnFT49pzMk1ZE5

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VGPARcQepnFT49pzMk1ZE5

Extracts the front page's 818-line inline <style> into assets/style.css
(Part 1, verbatim) and links it from index.html, cartoons/index.html
(Part 2: gallery-only grid/card/controls rules, deduped against Part 1),
and all 18 cartoon strip pages (Part 3), replacing three drifting inline
stylesheets with one shared file — still pure file:// static HTML, no
server/build step.

The 18 strips previously hand-rolled a separate "parchment newspaper"
serif theme (--ink/--ink-dim/--rule/--seal, Georgia font, a per-file
light/dark toggle). Rather than rewrite each strip's SVG-drawing JS
(several read these var() names directly at render time), the legacy
names are aliased onto the shared mint-green token system on the `body`
selector (not `:root` — aliasing at :root freezes the substitution using
html's own default-mood value instead of re-resolving per body[data-mood],
verified by isolated repro) so every strip re-themes automatically,
including a `data-mood="<category>"` attribute per strip matching its
manifest.js section (13 politics, 1 each business/entertainment/scitech/
sports/weather).

Also found and fixed: 17 of 18 strips explicitly set data-theme="light"
on load by default (only one has real 3-state auto/dark/light logic), so
a literal parchment-color override on data-theme="light" was permanently
masking every mood palette. Light is now a no-op (mood palette shows by
default); the toggle's "dark" state layers a night-viewing neutral on
top of whichever mood is active, verified working via Playwright click.

Verified with Chrome headless screenshots + Playwright (front page,
gallery, and 3 varied strips: politics 3-panel, scitech, weather) —
correct per-category theming, legible contrast, 0 console/page errors,
click-advance SVG interaction intact, dark-mode toggle intact.

Out of scope (left untouched, in-flight from other concurrent agents):
cartoons/manifest.js, cartoons/reference/*, and the newer cartoon files
not yet in the 18-file manifest (filibuster-marathon, come-in-and-get-me-
meter, conrad-filibuster-ink, gold-tier-treadmill, row-by-row-marshal) —
those will need the same link+data-mood treatment once their owning
tickets land.

TK-12151

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01V29xaoBwcFwJyR4KC43ptn

9 cartoons shipped with story_id: null (no underlying article at all):
commission-turtles, budget-pie-fight, pork-barrel-train, quorum-call-hide-seek,
cloture-oclock, lobbyist-revolving-door, conrad-filibuster-ink,
conrad-filibuster-qwen25, filibuster-marathon.

Added 7 new stories-data.js entries (window.P24_EXTRA_STORIES, matching the
existing schema exactly): 6 distinct stories for the 6 non-filibuster
cartoons, plus one shared story (pw-filibuster-holloway) for the 3
Paul-Conrad/model-contest/plain filibuster variants, since they all depict
the same invented Delegate Holloway event. Re-pointed all 9 cartoons'
story_id fields in cartoons/manifest.js accordingly. Verified via a vm-context
load of both files: all 23 cartoons now resolve to a real story (0 orphans,
0 broken links).

Codified the standing rule (Steve, verbatim: "always link images cartoons to
the real article") as a comment block at the top of cartoons/manifest.js, and
wired the same requirement into scripts/build-cartoon-batch.sh — the
not-yet-installed daily batch pipeline that appends new manifest entries:
updated its claude -p prompt to require writing a companion story + a
non-null story_id, and added a cheap substring-based post-build check that
now fails (not passes) a build whose manifest entry has story_id: null.

Scope: only cartoons/manifest.js, stories-data.js, and
scripts/build-cartoon-batch.sh touched. Left untouched (a sibling agent's
uncommitted CSS-unification work): cartoons/index.html, index.html, and all
cartoons/*.html strip files.

TK-12158

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01V29xaoBwcFwJyR4KC43ptn

Links from the cartoons index header ("Masters: Paul Conrad ->") to a new
cartoons/reference/index.html: bio, creed, the visual devices/brief P24
uses to draw "in the Conrad manner," and a documented-works table that is
metadata + citation-only (no cartoon images hosted — Conrad's actual work
is copyright LA Times/estate and non-embeddable). Explicitly credits and
links to the standalone research catalog at ~/Projects/paul-conrad-cartoons
(run `node server.js`, http://localhost:9933) for the fuller 38-record
archive. Presents P24's Conrad-styled strips as original in-house satire
inspired by his technique, never as reproductions.

Verified: node --check on manifest.js + reference/paul-conrad.js, and a
Playwright pass through cartoons/index.html (23 cards, 0 console errors)
into reference/index.html (12 works rendered, correct rights disclaimer).

TK-12155

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01V29xaoBwcFwJyR4KC43ptn

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VGPARcQepnFT49pzMk1ZE5

Delegate Holloway filibusters the invented Assembly, cycling reading
material (phone book -> cereal box -> furniture instructions -> his
own bill) via Plot Twist. Panel 2 has a melting Dali-style clock;
panel 3 shows the chamber asleep at their desks. Fully self-contained,
matches the commission-turtles.html house style. Verified click-advance
+ plot-twist cycling with Playwright, zero console/page errors.

Also fixed manifest.js, which a concurrent process had left with a
JS syntax error (a raw object literal appended after the array's
closing bracket) — folded that entry properly into the array and
appended this cartoon's entry alongside it.

TK-12146

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01V29xaoBwcFwJyR4KC43ptn

- Qwen2.5 7B won the 3-model Conrad showdown (vs Qwen3 14B; Claude CLI failed)
- Stark black-ink single panel: delegate reads phone book, clock melts Dali-style, Congress sleeps
- Challenge 56406f116d2a auto-judged by vision-referee (qwen25-7b PNG 7.5x larger → more detail)
- Added to cartoons/ + registered in manifest.js with model attribution + challenge_id
- No external publish; fully reversible (git revert + cartoons/ delete)

Challenge: https://localhost:9758/#/challenges/56406f116d2a
Model Arena: https://localhost:9758 (admin/DW2024!)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01V29xaoBwcFwJyR4KC43ptn

Atomic read-modify-write per coordinator direction (re-read fresh, parse
with the same regex daily-cartoon-gen.mjs uses, append, write back) to
avoid a race with the concurrently-running build-cartoon-batch.sh politics
batch (still in flight, 4/6 done at commit time, its own entries untouched).

Added a `section` field (politics/business/entertainment/scitech/sports/
weather) to all 16 entries -- backfilled "politics" on the 11 pre-existing
ones, set to the real category key on the 5 new ones -- for the parallel
gallery color/filter work on cartoons/index.html. Non-politics entries use
category: "Editorial Cartoon" instead of "Political Cartoon".

Verified directly (not just read the diff): git log confirms b0b4970 shipped,
button POSTs /api/refresh-real-news, server binds 127.0.0.1 only (lsof
confirmed), a live POST re-ran fetch-real-news.mjs and refreshed
real-news-data.js (mtime advanced, 42 real headlines), and file:// direct-open
still degrades gracefully via the location.protocol guard.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01166faVcwiztzWqhHwD9yer

Replace the single hard-coded red palette with the same 8 mood blocks
(all/politics/weather/scitech/sports/entertainment/business/uncategorized)
from ../index.html, add the matching 8-chip category filter that retunes
body[data-mood] the same way, give each card a data-cat + --cat-accent
color (left border + badge) so the All view is multicolored, classify
cartoons via section -> story_id lookup (../stories-data.js) -> "Political
Cartoon" -> uncategorized, and persist the selection via
localStorage/#/category/<key> hash (hash wins on load). Sort, density,
grid/list toggle, and textContent-only rendering all preserved.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01DqUe1Hvqsnrkxpe4R6jrk1

Five single-panel interactive SVG cartoons (matching the
20260924-gnome-who-wouldnt-hush.html pattern: 5-stage click-to-advance,
Plot Twist button, dark mode, keyboard nav, reduced-motion safe), each
linked via story_id to a real invented story in stories-data.js:
- tollpoints-diamond-status -> bs-toll-loyalty (Business)
- jackalope-custody-battle -> es-jackalope-statue-town-rivalry (Entertainment)
- tuber-bank-of-chugwater -> sci-battery-potato (Sci-Tech)
- the-zipper-that-ended-an-inning -> sw-mascot-costume (Sports)
- the-corner-with-its-own-weather -> sw-persistent-crosswind (Weather)

Playwright-verified at 1440/390px, dark+reduced-motion, and full keyboard
nav (Tab reaches #art, Enter/'n' both advance) — zero console/page errors
on all 5. manifest.js registration follows once the live
build-cartoon-batch.sh run (today's 6-cartoon politics batch) finishes
writing to that file, to avoid a race on the shared array.

Also (prep only, not wired into rotation mix): cartoon-prompt-bank.mjs now
carries a category field per bank entry (existing 12 default to politics)
plus 3 new stub entries per non-politics category (15 total), and
daily-cartoon-gen.mjs threads category through to queue briefs. The picker
itself is still a flat shuffle across the whole bank -- a future session
decides the rotation mix.

- Malformed-URL crash: decodeURIComponent was outside try; a single
  'curl /%' killed the process on Node v26 (unhandled URIError). Now 400.
- Path-traversal prefix bug: startsWith(ROOT) without separator let a
  sibling <ROOT>-secrets path through. Now boundary is ROOT + path.sep,
  plus a top-level allowlist (index.html, *-data.js, cartoons, images)
  so .git/, scripts/ source, and .env are no longer served.
- Unauthenticated cross-origin POST: 127.0.0.1 is not a CSRF boundary;
  now rejects any non-same-origin Origin on the state-changing refresh.

All three reproduced live before fixing and proven fixed with negative
tests (crash→400, leak→403, drive-by→403); legit paths + refresh still 200.

Adds a segmented Grid/List view-mode toggle to the P24 cartoon gallery
controls bar. List mode renders cards as full-width horizontal rows
(reusing the existing textContent-only card-building code via a
.list-mode CSS modifier) and hides the density slider since row width
is no longer density-controlled. View mode persists to localStorage
(p24cartoons.viewmode) alongside the existing sort/density keys.
Verified with Playwright at 1440px and 390px viewports: 0 console
errors, 0 page errors, correct persistence across reloads.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01DqUe1Hvqsnrkxpe4R6jrk1

- The Meter That Wouldn't Yield (pw-meter-street): a parking meter's honors escalate from street-naming to a council seat to a re-election bid to a one-day mayoralty it refuses to vacate.
- Row by Row Only (pw-corn-etiquety): Kansas legislates the one true corn-eating method, deputizes Corn Marshals, and bans cob holders as cheating devices.
- The Gnome Who Wouldn't Hush (pw-lawn-gnome-tax): a loud lawn gnome gets registered, ankle-monitored, sued over, and finally reviewed by a Gnome Parole Board.
- Four Minutes Ahead of Everyone (pw-clock-secession): a town clock set 4 minutes fast escalates into its own named time zone and a secession petition from Mountain Time.
- The Casserole Succession (pw-bean-queen): a ceremonial Bean Queen title gets term-limited, the sash is contested, and a courthouse rules succession passes by casserole, not bloodline.
- The Hedge Non-Aggression Pact (pw-hedge-statue): a statue-shaped hedge draws a height limit, a fine, an interstate espionage accusation, and a formal treaty with Idaho.

Each cartoon is a single-panel inline SVG scene with a Plot Twist button that cycles through the story's own 5-headline escalation arc, concluding cleanly at the final stage (no loop-back). Dark mode, keyboard nav (N/arrow/Enter/Space), focus-visible outlines, and prefers-reduced-motion all match the commission-turtles template. manifest.js gains an additive story_id field on every entry (null on the pre-existing commission-turtles cartoon) linking each cartoon to its source invented-politics story for category-view lookup.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XKaojLnVW8hyxsVriY5f9a

Steve picked V4 (of 6 Figma mockups: figma.com/design/oqcZhYvN4kWvw0VRUa1FYG) — dense
multi-column newspaper-style headline listing for the category route (#/category/<x>),
distinct from the 'All Categories' home view which keeps its original photo-card stack.

- .story-grid.newspaper-mode: true CSS column-count flow (1/2/3/4 cols by breakpoint),
  restyles the SAME storyCardHTML() markup used everywhere else — no markup fork, so
  patchStoryGrid()'s keyed morph reconcile never bridges a shape change from this toggle
  alone (a category route change already swaps the id set on its own).
- Inline category label (.np-cat-label) replaces the badge-pill kicker in dense mode;
  detail paragraph + read-more link hidden (headline does the work); escalation bar
  shrinks to a left rail-style accent.
- Toggled in renderStories(): els.storyGrid.classList.toggle('newspaper-mode',
  state.category !== 'all').
- findCartoonForStory(): looks up cartoons/manifest.js (window.P24_CARTOONS, now loaded
  via a new <script> tag) by story_id. A POLITICS story with a linked cartoon shows a
  cartoon-thumb link INSTEAD OF its photo, in the same image slot, styled for both card
  and newspaper mode. Gracefully falls back to the plain photo (or nothing) when no
  cartoon is registered — safe to ship ahead of / independent from the cartoon content
  landing. Real-news political stories are NEVER cartoon-linked (only invented pw-*
  stories get one — the Cartoon Desk's own policy: invented bureaucracy only, never real
  people/parties).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XKaojLnVW8hyxsVriY5f9a

Steve wanted a button instead of typing `node scripts/fetch-real-news.mjs`
in a terminal. Browsers on file:// can't execute local processes, so this
adds an opt-in zero-dependency admin server (scripts/admin-server.mjs,
binds 127.0.0.1 only) that serves the static site and exposes
POST /api/refresh-real-news to shell out to the existing fetch script.

The admin panel's new "Refresh Real News" button posts to that endpoint
and reloads on success. Opening index.html directly via file:// (the
default, unchanged "no server needed" experience) shows a clear
instruction to start the admin server instead of failing silently.

Verified live: server-mode click-through refreshed 42 real headlines
(real-news-data.js mtime advanced) with a real headless-Chrome run, and a
separate file:// run confirmed the rest of the page is unaffected and the
button degrades gracefully with zero console errors.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01166faVcwiztzWqhHwD9yer

Re-ran scripts/fetch-real-news.mjs to restore current real headlines after a
parallel-session rewrite left the feed stale. $0, no API key.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01166faVcwiztzWqhHwD9yer

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01DqUe1Hvqsnrkxpe4R6jrk1

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01DqUe1Hvqsnrkxpe4R6jrk1

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01DqUe1Hvqsnrkxpe4R6jrk1

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01DqUe1Hvqsnrkxpe4R6jrk1

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01DqUe1Hvqsnrkxpe4R6jrk1

47 tracked recordings (~317MB) from prior screenrecord/cta harness runs
were regenerable QA artifacts, not source — permanently bloating .git for
every future clone/gc, including one 0-byte truncated recording. Untrack
them (files remain on disk unchanged) and add *.webm/*.mp4 to .gitignore
so future harness runs stop re-committing video. debug-log.jsonl and the
*.md reports under screenrecord/ stay tracked (small, useful history).

Note: this untracks going forward only — the 317MB already sits in git
history/blobs and .git stays large until that history is rewritten
(filter-repo/BFG), which is a separate, more invasive action not taken
here since it permanently discards the original commit objects.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019yVgDG93UFMN6sNbRaUfzd

Two bugs in the same step, both confirmed by direct repro against the
live app with a fake clock:

1. The 12x25s=300s virtual-time cap was sized for the app's old 6s stage
   interval. Once MIN_STAGE_INTERVAL_SEC (a separate fix) raised the
   effective floor to 75s, a full escalation needs 4 advances x 75s =
   300s ALONE, leaving zero room for any story's offsetSec — and in
   run-orderings where this step executes before tier1/2/3 (e.g. run1's
   reversed order), elapsedSec is still ~0 when it starts, so the loop
   fell a few seconds short and PLEASE STAND BY was never reached.

2. Even with enough virtual time, the standby flash is only visible for
   ~2900ms of app-time before its own auto-hide timer fires. Sampling at
   25s chunk boundaries meant the entire visible window could open and
   close inside a single chunk and never get observed — verified
   empirically: with (1) fixed alone, allConcluded reliably went true but
   caught stayed false.

Fix: read MIN_STAGE_INTERVAL_SEC live from the page instead of
re-hardcoding a number that can drift out of sync with the app, size the
loop off it with headroom, and sample every 1s (well under the flash's
visible window) instead of every 25s. Verified end-to-end against the
exact worst-case ordering (elapsedSec~3 at loop start): caught=true,
allConcluded=true, ~0.8-3.5s real wall-clock overhead.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019yVgDG93UFMN6sNbRaUfzd

computeChaos() scored every story's stageIndex/(stages-1), with a `span>0 ? … : 1`
fallback that returned FULL chaos for a single-stage story. After the "one feed"
real-news merge, ~42 of 82 stories are single-stage (real news doesn't escalate),
so each was counted as maximally escalated — pinning a fresh channel at ~51%
"Concerning" and making the Nominal band unreachable on load.

Compute the gauge over escalatable (multi-stage) stories only. Verified: fresh
load 0% Nominal, climbs to 100% Post-Journalism at true meltdown, klaxon +10
bump preserved, 0 console/page errors.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BkfgaotGs6PaEBcnKxnfZG

fetch-real-news.mjs had overwritten stories-data.js, deleting the 37 invented
stories. Real news now lives in real-news-data.js (P24_REAL_STORIES); the
invented set is restored from 195e22c. Saved browser lists pick up any
default story they've never seen, while admin deletions stay deleted.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VLjoHsyGTDeVCa1rdrAxnk

At high chaos, concluded stories were stamped [CORRECTION], which on real
Google News headlines reads as if the outlet issued a correction.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VLjoHsyGTDeVCa1rdrAxnk

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VLjoHsyGTDeVCa1rdrAxnk

The empty-state 'All Categories' link added in b868846 still native-navigated
to '#/', recreating the two-home-URLs bug. Replaced the per-link listeners
with a single delegated handler for a[href="#/"] so no home link can miss it.
Modified clicks (cmd/ctrl/shift/middle) are left to the browser.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VLjoHsyGTDeVCa1rdrAxnk

- goBackToGrid() now derives its target from the OPEN ARTICLE's own category
  (works the same for a direct deep link), not from a since-changed shared
  variable — fixes the regression Cody's proposed one-liner would have
  introduced (Escape/back-link on a category page with no article open would
  have silently done nothing, since state.category already equals the target).
- New goHome() is the single path to hash="": the logo and the category
  page's "All Categories" link both route through it now, instead of the
  logo native-navigating to a second, non-canonical "#/" URL.
- Escape now closes one layer per press (article -> its category -> Home),
  matching the UI's own depth instead of collapsing two steps into one.
- The category-empty-state's "All Categories" text is a real link now,
  not inert bold text next to a working one two lines up.

Verified: composed category->article->back/Escape journeys, deep-linked
article back, categoryBackLink always-home even mid-category, second-Escape
depth, logo->home canonical hash, empty-state link href. 0 console errors,
390/1440/reduced-motion clean.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VLjoHsyGTDeVCa1rdrAxnk

Loop duration was fixed (60s -> 24s by chaos tier) while the loop grew to
40+ headlines, so the crawl hit ~1,600 px/s. Duration is now computed from
the track length so the speed stays readable at any headline count.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VLjoHsyGTDeVCa1rdrAxnk

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VLjoHsyGTDeVCa1rdrAxnk

index.html is static with no server, so it can't fetch news.google.com
itself (CORS). This is the offline refresh step (run manually or via
cron) that pulls current headlines from Google News RSS — no API key,
no spend — and writes them into stories-data.js as
window.P24_EXTRA_STORIES, replacing the invented satire that lived
there before.

- politics/weather -> Google News search RSS (no topic feed exists)
- scitech/sports/entertainment/business/uncategorized -> topic feeds
  (TECHNOLOGY/SPORTS/ENTERTAINMENT/BUSINESS/WORLD)
- Dependency-free XML parsing (regex + a small entity decoder); Google's
  <description> is XML-entity-encoded HTML, so entities are decoded
  BEFORE tags are stripped (stripping first leaves literal escaped tags
  sitting in the "stripped" text — caught and fixed during verification).
  Topic-feed descriptions are a related-coverage <ol><li> list; <li>
  becomes a bullet separator instead of one run-on line.
- Each story ships with exactly ONE stage (stageIndex 0), so tick()'s
  alreadyMax check holds it there forever -- real news never escalates
  into the satirical spiral (dovetails with the Ask-1 slowdown/pause).
- Carries sourceUrl/sourceName so the article view's new outbound-link
  block (previous commit) renders a real, working link to the source.

Ran live: 42 real, current, correctly-categorized headlines across all
7 categories (politics/weather/scitech/sports/entertainment/business/
uncategorized), verified via Playwright against a fresh page load --
each category filter shows its real stories, the outbound link opens
the real news.google.com redirect URL in a new tab with rel=noopener,
zero console errors.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01166faVcwiztzWqhHwD9yer