KN-86 Visual-Effect References

Captured: 2026-06-06
Sibling of: ../inspiration/ (feel), ../prototype/ (build), ../research/ (how)
Purpose: Visual-effect / rendering-technique references and KN-86-internal specs for how the device renders imagery, animations, and interactive ASCII surfaces.

This is the fourth sibling folder under the inspiration corpus, introduced in Batch 6. The split now reads:

inspiration/ — what the device should feel like
prototype/ — what to build it from
research/ — how to build the implementation layers
effect/ (this folder) — what the visual-effect grammar looks like — distilled specs and reference implementations for the rendering layer

Files

File	Role
ascii-effects.md	⭐ Project-wide KN-86 ASCII Effect Spec. Defaults, character ramp, three event types (hover, click, reveal), composition with existing visual effects, proposed NoshAPI primitives. The central deliverable for the Batch-6 ASCII rendering thread.
libcaca.md	The C library reference for colour ASCII / text-mode graphics — engine reference for the on-device implementation.
react-video-ascii.md	The WebGL2 React component whose prop matrix the spec distills from. The interaction-grammar north star.

Batch 8 — single-color rendering / ambient (2026-06-12)

Six visual-effect entries from the Batch 8 corpus. They drive the single-color adaptation analysis and the ambient/screensaver-mode architecture in ../synthesis-batch8.md §2–§3. Canon: 128×75 + 128×150 half-block per ADR-0027.

File	Role
neo.md	Matrix digital rain — the canonical single-color screensaver reference (per-column head/tail crawl + brightness ramp + glitch shimmer). The `matrix-rain` ambient scene.
astroterm.md	Terminal planetarium — braille star-density rendering; the lowest-draw `starfield` ambient scene and a magnitude→glyph-density reference.
cbonsai.md	Procedural ASCII bonsai — seed-deterministic growth; the `bonsai` ambient scene and the “your deck grows your tree” Deck-State-seeding model.
chafa.md	Image → terminal graphics (C library + CLI) — image-engine technique reference (tag-selected symbol map + FGBG coverage matcher); not a device dependency (GLib/x86-SIMD/license caveats).
cava.md	Terminal audio-spectrum visualizer — the `▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█` eighth-block ramp reference, and the cavacore core/render split named in `../synthesis-batch8-architecture.md`.
mapscii.md	Vector-tile → braille/ASCII map renderer — the braille 2×4 sub-cell companion to browsh’s half-block; pan/zoom spatial navigation + label placement.

Synthesis pointer

The full consolidated KN-86 build brief (now extended through Batch 6) lives in ../inspiration/index.md. This folder is the source material for the ASCII-rendering portions of that brief. The Batch 8 single-color / ambient synthesis lives in ../synthesis-batch8.md.

Folder structure

effect/
├── index.md                     ← this file
├── ascii-effects.md             ← ⭐ the project-wide ASCII spec
├── libcaca.md
├── react-video-ascii.md
├── neo.md                       ← Batch 8
├── astroterm.md                 ← Batch 8
├── cbonsai.md                   ← Batch 8
├── chafa.md                     ← Batch 8
├── cava.md                      ← Batch 8
├── mapscii.md                   ← Batch 8
└── screenshots/
    ├── libcaca-social.png
    ├── react-video-ascii-demo.png
    └── cava-social.png