--- name: idea-secret-figure-variant description: "OWNER IDEA (2026-07-13) — a secret alternate STATUS-screen figure that rolls randomly at boot and persists until the next boot or a game switch. Unbuilt. Folded into Hardware Life." metadata: node_type: memory type: project originSessionId: 0b7c5f41-bb34-4ab4-93be-fdb363f5eb40 --- **Owner, verbatim (2026-07-13):** *"We should make a secret model for the silhouette guy that only shows up randomly and has chances like the broken boot. Should happen on boot and stay until the next boot / game switch."* ## THE IDEA A **secret alternate version of the STATUS-screen figure** (the silhouette). It **rolls on boot with a small chance**, exactly like the existing degraded/randomised boot-flavour roll. If it hits, that figure is what you see **for the whole session** — until the next boot, **or until you switch games.** ## PLACEMENT — SETTLED: folded into **HARDWARE LIFE** Owner approved 2026-07-13: *"just go ahead and fold it there."* It was initially filed dead-last as a for-fun item; the owner moved it on Dispatch's recommendation. **The reasoning is the part that matters: it belongs wherever the boot-flavour roll already lives.** Built there it is nearly free — one more outcome in a roll that already exists. Built standalone later, it means re-deriving the roll, the session persistence, and the forced-trigger hook from scratch. **So it is not a for-fun/dead-last item any more; it is a Hardware Life sub-item, and it should not be built as a standalone unit.** Two things make it cheap that are easy to forget: the figure is an addressable, swappable inline SVG, so **a variant is just a different path set against the same contract** and the existing damage wiring keeps working untouched — and Fable already drew several variants during design, so **the unpicked ones are candidate secrets** rather than new art. ## THE INVARIANTS IT MUST HOLD 1. ⛔ **ZERO campaign-state write.** This is Hardware-Life-class flavour. It may hold a transient session value or at most a device preference, but it **must never touch campaign state or the save**. That is Hardware Life's hard invariant, and this feature is not an exception to it. 2. **Per-game DATA, not a literal.** Each game's figure gets its own secret-variant list on its identity data; a game with none simply never rolls one. **No hardcoded per-game branch.** 3. **ORIGINAL DRAWING, never a trace** — the same rule that governs the main figure and the map. 4. ⭐ **It MUST ship with a forced-trigger entry in the diagnostic shell, in the same commit.** This is exactly the class of feature that rule exists for: **ambient, random, view-once, impossible to reproduce on demand.** Without a way to force the roll, the feature silently rots — nobody can ever test it, and nobody finds out it broke. See `CLAUDE.md` + `rules/` for the protocol text. 5. If it animates at all: a plain keyframe animation toggled by class, so the global reduced-motion block neutralises it for free. 6. **It is still on the glass** — it must satisfy the same visual guard every other rendered surface does. *Correction 2026-07-20: removed version numbers, protocol numbers, and a mockup file path. Placement and sequencing authority is `QUEUE.md`.* Related: [[fo3-pipboy-program]], [[robco-os-architecture]] (Hardware Life), [[roadmap-parked-placement]].