frames/skills/embedded-captions/dna

DNA registry — pick a visual language, not a preset

A DNA is a complete, art-directed visual language: typeface, palette logic, motion grammar, and hero orchestration. It parameterizes per scene instead of shipping a fixed look: the accent color is sampled from THIS scene, the contact shadow falls along THIS scene's light, embed text blur matches THIS scene's depth-of-field, and the hero's entrance amplitude follows how hard the word was actually spoken (RMS).

This replaces the template grab-bag. Six deep languages × scene adaptation beats 54 shallow presets — every render is already fitted to its footage.

Category lock (deliveries field, enforced by the compilers)

Every classic DNA's home is Cinematic (column) — that is where all ten were built and validated. (Standard/rail mode was retired 2026-06-12; the verbatim-rail need is served by the anchor theme. The old rail combos live in ~/Downloads/embedded-captions-archive/.)

The ten

DNA	Register	Scene fit	Voice
cream	premium-warm	dark / mid warm scenes (band luma < 150)	Inter, warm cream, screen blend, glowing emergence hero. The poetic default.
ink	premium	bright scenes (band luma > 150)	Inter, near-black, multiply blend — type reads as printed on the wall. Fixes the bright-scene hole.
editorial	editorial-luxe	introspective / fashion / poetic, mid-dark	Bodoni Moda, bone, lowercase italic hero — magazine elegance over shout.
keynote	tech-premium	product / launch / founder updates	Inter 800, opaque white, line-wipe reveals, hero wipes UP. Stillness = confidence.
documentary	formal	interviews, serious subject matter	Inter, bone, burn-in reveals, no hero. Gravitas IS the style.
loud	loud	hype / sport / music / social	Anton, scene-sampled accent hero, single-unit slam + caption-layer ripple; body announces in front (bodyLayer: "fg" — k-pop depth, deliberate).
neon	loud-neon	neon-noir / nightlife / tech-noir (dark scenes)	Orbitron + electric cyan; words flicker-ignite like tubes; the hero powers ON with a strobe and hums (glow 0.5).
glitch	loud-neon	digital / hacker / AI / dystopia	Space Grotesk; RGB-split echo layers converge as each beat lands; 0.10–0.12s machine percussion; landing bumps co-visible captions 2px.
chrome	loud-luxe	Y2K / fashion-tech / music	Audiowide cast in a liquid-metal gradient (background-clip:text on the word spans); one sheen sweep crosses the hero during the hold.
velocity	loud-sport	sport / automotive / fitness	Teko italic; every word arrives along its motion vector (streak + skew settling upright); the hero passes through with blurred speed-trail echoes and looms while held.

fx fields (hero block) the engine understands

entrance: emergence | settle | slam | rise | wipe-up | flicker-on | streak · glow (0–0.5) · echoes: [{dx,dy,color,opacity,blur}] (converge-on-land duplicates) · sheen: true (gradient sweep — pair with wordCss background-clip) · wordCss (per-word treatment; required for background-clip:text, which can't clip through composited children) · ripple (px — landing bump, captions only) · loom / breathe (hold-life) · letterBlur · bodyLayer (top-level: default layer for narration lines).

How to pick (agent)

1. Read safe-zones.json → heroAnchor.bandLuma + palette.temperature.
2. Bright band (>150) → ink (never fight a bright scene with cream/screen).
3. Else pick by content register: poetic/warm → cream · introspective/luxe → editorial · product/tech → keynote · serious/interview → documentary · hype/social → loud.
4. State the pick + why in one line; the user decides (SKILL.md Step 0 still applies).

Authoring

• Cinematic mode: cinematic.json → "dna": "<name>" (drop the template field).
• Locked per DNA: family, palette scheme, blend, motion curves, hero orchestration.
• Open per group (unchanged): size / weight / style / case / spacing + planes.
• var(--accent) is available in per-group CSS — it resolves to the scene-sampled accent.

What the engine generates from the DNA (no authoring needed)

• Hero three-act: co-visible captions dim 0.35s before the hero lands (setup) → entrance with per-letter stagger, amplitude ∝ spoken loudness (impact) → slow breathe
  • glow until exit (afterglow).
• Scene optics: depth-match blur on embed captions, light-direction contact shadow.
• All deterministic — measured from files, no randomness.

Climax selection — what earns the promotion

Pick the payoff, not the topic: the words you would quote when paraphrasing the beat. "The stars were only limited by the pixel size" — the payoff is pixel size (the surprising claim), not "stars" (the subject). Test: would the word alone, big on screen, make the listener nod? A topic word makes them wait.

• Phrases are legal (match: "pixel size" / "skin food"): a peak is a semantic unit, not necessarily one token. 2–4 words max — beyond that it's a sentence, not a peak.
• Prefer clause-final — nothing left dangling to place after the lift.
• Never strand a determiner: lifting "stars" out of "The stars…" leaves an orphan "The" that vanishes mid-air. The compiler auto-absorbs a line-leading article into the promoted phrase; mid-line, match the phrase including its article.
• Sizes are TARGETED by the compiler, not just floored — author sizes are hints:
  • apex = frame event: under 88% of usable width → raised toward a 93% fill. Std height cap = sizeRange[1] × 1.25 (≤46cqh; formal register ×1.0) — a std apex bursts a rail, not a body composition. Cinematic cap = sizeRange[1].
  • short words fill with TRACKING: when the height cap binds before the width target (SHINE — 5 glyphs), the compiler letterspaces up to +0.32em until the word owns ~88% of the width (film-title craft: HER / DUNE). Long words fill by scale, short words by air — impact is WIDTH-led either way.
  • minor = damped beat in the apex family: max(3× rail, 0.55× apex-final), width-capped. A peak that reads as a label is a bug.
  • lockup context is RATIO-LOCKED: kicker/tail = 0.26× hero (clamped 0.05–0.085·h), recomputed after any width-fit raise. Don't hand-tune context sizes — size the hero; the context follows like a poster system.

Climax placement — the lockup is the default, NOT the only composition

A hero line takes "placement": "subject" | "column":

• subject (default) — the ORBIT lockup centered ON the subject. NOT a centered sandwich: context anchors to the hero's EDGES like a poster kicker/tagline — pre-context flush-left off the hero's top-left corner, post-context flush-right off its bottom-right — so the small lines land BESIDE the head/shoulder (on the scene), never on the face, and therefore EMBED (bg) like everything else. The eye reads a diagonal: kicker ↘ HERO ↘ tail. Only the hero crosses the silhouette (the matte-occlusion showcase). The context's job is reading continuity — it gets the margins; the hero's job is the cinematic event — it gets the subject. Right when the peak is THE dramatic moment: cream / loud / glitch / neon / velocity lean here.
• column — the apex stays IN its column's reading flow and BURSTS it (oversized, full hero motion + dim/glow privileges, but composed within the sentence's home zone; spills toward the subject naturally when oversized). Right when the content is a continuous read and the column is the narrative's home: keynotes, tutorials, explainers, documentary. Registers: keynote / documentary / editorial lean here.

Applying ONE composition to every peak is monoculture — the same failure the motion review caught. Pick per beat: a 15s explainer might run column peaks throughout and save the subject lockup for the single apex. (A third pattern — the editorial split, bg context upper + fg hero lower-third — lives in references/composition-craft.md and is the next placement candidate.)

The motion language (five layers, each DNA answers all five)

A DNA's animation is not a parameter tweak on a shared fade — it's a distinct physics:

Layer	What it governs	Where it lives
word entrance	how each word materializes on its beat ({y,x,blur,scale,rot,dur,ease} or burn)	motion.soft/present/impact
line exit	direction + speed of leaving, optional top-to-bottom cascade	motion.exit ({dur,y,x,scale,ease,stagger})
hold-life	what text does while on screen — stillness is a deliberate choice	hero.breathe / hero.loom (0 = print-still)
hero orchestration	the three-act entrance signature (emergence / settle / slam / rise / wipe-up) + glow / letterBlur / ripple	hero.*
timing physics	the duration & easing register everything obeys (percussive 0.15s ↔ atmospheric 0.6s)	implied by the values above — keep one family per DNA

Shipped signatures: cream = light condenses (blur-settle, drift-up exits) · ink = letterpress (scale-press, no float, dead-still) · editorial = the pen glides (x-glide with the italic, cascade-out page turns) · keynote = surgical reveal (burn words + line wipe + hero wipe-up, exits never move) · documentary = burn and hold (motion's absence IS the language) · loud = percussion (back-eased punches, alternating tilt, hero ripple that bumps every caption — never the footage).

Rules inherited from frames motion-principles: exits faster than entrances; vary ease families BETWEEN DNAs (not within one); .out enters, .in leaves; never two transform tweens on one element in the same window (wipe-up is clip-path so the afterglow scale channel stays free; loom subsumes breathe).

Adding a DNA

Copy an existing dna/<name>.json, change the voice, keep the schema. The engine (modes/cinematic/engine.html) and both compilers consume it as-is. A DNA earns its place by being a distinct voice with a reason to exist — not a recolor.