id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation

Part of the worlds design program: #5955. Statements S66–S72 of the 2026-11-04 brief. Extends the presentation-tiers design in #786 — that issue covers capability tiers with in-band terminal detection; this one covers user-supplied assets and filters living on top of the tiers.

Requirement (Drew, in substance)

In the future, users might provide GPU shaders, and images or sprites that were uploaded already as a given ID.
A user will be able to set their sprite to have a cape and apply the filter "sparkle" to the cape — without any of that being specifically coded by a given app.
This is an imperfect system, and the app would have to enable such capabilities.
Over time there may become a common interface for different formats and basic conversion tools at the presentation layer, to allow this to work on a variety of devices and a variety of worlds, which may or may not support different capabilities.
Per-world gating: one world might not support filters, because you could make yourself look like a different kind of creature, or make a filter that basically makes you invisible — so it's just disabled in this world.
Graceful fallback is authored, not improvised: "when filters are disabled, put static sparkles on the GIF image of my sprite."
Terminal degradation: another user viewing on a terminal that only supports ASCII drops down to Dwarf Fortress-style sprites or to a specific character that represents that user — instead of a blue cape with sparkles, it's a blue letter C or an emoji of a cape — even though in other worlds, or in this world with a sufficient client, it's practically MapleStory.

Design points to settle

The asset/filter model: assets by ID (uploaded once, referenced everywhere), filters as named composable transforms applied to asset parts (cape), each with declared capability needs.
The fallback chain as a first-class declaration: rich → static-substitute → sprite-sheet tier → glyph/emoji. Who authors each rung (asset author, world author, client)?
World policy: which asset/filter capabilities a world enables is a world-level declaration users can see before joining (composes with the permission/registry story).
Abuse surface: filters as disguise/invisibility is a gameplay decision per world; shaders are code — do user shaders go through the same compile/trust pipeline as user functions (DLL child of #5955)?

Done looks like

A design doc: asset-by-ID model, filter capability declarations, the authored fallback chain, and per-world enablement policy — mapped onto the tiers in #786.

CODE-1636

Wave-2 tie-in (findings F8 item 6, F10) — this design is a deferred decision coming due.

Charter (2026-10-28, ID dictation item 6): capability-based specialization — code asks for a form/location and gets the platform's version (phone location vs ESP32 GNSS; pixel-count screens; rotary encoders), text-only mode as the main mode for agents/scripts, and media framed as "typed image/video vs raw byte streams + capabilities — decide over time." The brief's sprite/filter degradation ladder is that media question; this design is the decision point Drew's earlier framing scheduled.
Constraint (F10, shipped): presentation is data — legacy UTF-8 text or the versioned Screen cell buffer (max 120×50, cells + style spans); guests never supply terminal escapes, HTML, or CSS. Sprite/filter work must be expressed inside presentation-is-data (new Screen/image-plane data kinds), not as guest-supplied markup.

Record: workspace/scratch/worlds-capabilities-brief-2026-11-04/conversation-tie-ins.md (F8, F10).

Wave-2 follow-ups filed from the prior-art research (Lane B). Granular sub-scopes of this issue, each carrying the relevant research findings + citations:

id: design: semantic cell/tag presentation model — one tagged state, many renderers
id: design: terminal rendering ladder — kitty → sixel → iTerm2 → symbols → ASCII, selected by probing
id: design: visual-feature cost ranking — measured ranks, per-world gates, per-viewer minimums, fallback substitution
id: design: shader asset format — named-format shader units with declared inputs, gated by the ranking system

Research source: workspace/scratch/worlds-capabilities-brief-2026-11-04/prior-art-research.md. Full wave-2 mapping: workspace/scratch/worlds-capabilities-brief-2026-11-04/wave2-map.md.

🤖 Agent note · handed off

Agent: queue worker (repo-worker-code), lane code-w
Session / ID: task 10339
Found via: queue claim
Task: triage for issue id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970 — assigned execution lane opencode; handing off to the opencode claimant, not worked directly by this lane
Expectation: claimant launches the bound opencode session and drives task 10339 to a terminal state; issue id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970 verified OPEN with no hard-stop labels at handoff
Links: issue id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970

🤖 Agent note · handed off

Agent: queue worker (repo-worker-code), lane code-n
Session / ID: task 10339
Found via: queue claim (re-claim after prior handoff park expired unbound)
Task: Triage id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation (design) — execution lane assigned opencode; handing off to the laptop opencode claimant, which launches the bound session. Verified fresh: issue id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970 is OPEN with no hard-stop labels (no held, user/owned, do-not-merge, do-not-auto-edit).
Expectation: Claimant's bound opencode session triages issue id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970 at current main and records blockers/ordering or routes the fix; if unbound by park expiry, task 10339 returns to the queue.
Links: task 10339 (repo-health-code-pilot)

🤖 Agent note · picked up

Agent: queue worker (repo-worker-code), OpenChamber scheduled lane
Session / ID: task 10339
Found via: atomic queue claim
Task: triage issue id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970. Fresh GitHub state: OPEN; no hard-stop labels; no matching PR found. Existing design follow-ups id: design: semantic cell/tag presentation model — one tagged state, many renderers #6010–id: design: shader asset format — named-format shader units with declared inputs, gated by the ranking system #6013 are open, with id: design: shader asset format — named-format shader units with declared inputs, gated by the ranking system #6013 in progress.
Expectation: record the current routing and dependency order on id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970; do not duplicate the existing child scopes.
Links: id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970, id: design: semantic cell/tag presentation model — one tagged state, many renderers #6010, id: design: terminal rendering ladder — kitty → sixel → iTerm2 → symbols → ASCII, selected by probing #6011, id: design: visual-feature cost ranking — measured ranks, per-world gates, per-viewer minimums, fallback substitution #6012, id: design: shader asset format — named-format shader units with declared inputs, gated by the ranking system #6013

Triage outcome at current main (`cc45860abb4427fa873f26b81583682af2a7d548`)

id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970 is still open, has no hard-stop labels, and has no matching PR. This is a design umbrella, not a runtime regression report, so reproduction is not applicable; no standalone code PR should be opened.
Main already has a bounded, versioned Screen presentation model with typed cells and style spans (architecture, validator). Keep uploaded assets and filters inside bounded presentation data, not arbitrary guest markup. The existing child scopes cover this:
- id: design: semantic cell/tag presentation model — one tagged state, many renderers #6010 — semantic cell/tag model for tier-independent state.
- id: design: terminal rendering ladder — kitty → sixel → iTerm2 → symbols → ASCII, selected by probing #6011 — client-side terminal capability probing and rendering ladder.
- id: design: visual-feature cost ranking — measured ranks, per-world gates, per-viewer minimums, fallback substitution #6012 — measured visual ranking, world/viewer gates, and fallback substitution.
- id: design: shader asset format — named-format shader units with declared inputs, gated by the ranking system #6013 — named shader formats with declared inputs; its final gate mapping consumes id: design: visual-feature cost ranking — measured ranks, per-world gates, per-viewer minimums, fallback substitution #6012’s rank contract.
Suggested ordering: id: design: semantic cell/tag presentation model — one tagged state, many renderers #6010, id: design: terminal rendering ladder — kitty → sixel → iTerm2 → symbols → ASCII, selected by probing #6011, and id: design: visual-feature cost ranking — measured ranks, per-world gates, per-viewer minimums, fallback substitution #6012 can progress in parallel; id: design: shader asset format — named-format shader units with declared inputs, gated by the ranking system #6013’s format work can continue, with final gate integration following id: design: visual-feature cost ranking — measured ranks, per-world gates, per-viewer minimums, fallback substitution #6012. These children are already open, so no duplicate follow-up was filed. Keep id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970 open as the integration umbrella until their outputs are reconciled with the asset-by-ID, authored-fallback, per-world policy, and id: Phase 13 F13.4 presentation capability tiers with in-band terminal detection #786 presentation-tier requirements.
Current child labels show id: design: semantic cell/tag presentation model — one tagged state, many renderers #6010/id: design: terminal rendering ladder — kitty → sixel → iTerm2 → symbols → ASCII, selected by probing #6011 parked and assigned, id: design: visual-feature cost ranking — measured ranks, per-world gates, per-viewer minimums, fallback substitution #6012 unclaimed, and id: design: shader asset format — named-format shader units with declared inputs, gated by the ranking system #6013 in progress; the dependency above is the only ordering callout.

🤖 Agent note · done

Agent: queue worker (repo-worker-code), OpenChamber scheduled lane
Session / ID: task 10339
Found via: atomic queue claim
Task: triaged id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970 at current main; routed existing child work and recorded ordering above.
Outcome: no code change or new follow-up; parent remains open for integration.
Links: id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970, id: design: semantic cell/tag presentation model — one tagged state, many renderers #6010, id: design: terminal rendering ladder — kitty → sixel → iTerm2 → symbols → ASCII, selected by probing #6011, id: design: visual-feature cost ranking — measured ranks, per-world gates, per-viewer minimums, fallback substitution #6012, id: design: shader asset format — named-format shader units with declared inputs, gated by the ranking system #6013

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id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970

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id: design: user presentation assets — shaders, sprites by ID, filters, per-world gating, graceful degradation #5970

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developing-today commented on Nov 5, 2026

dezren39 commented on Nov 5, 2026

dezren39 commented on Nov 5, 2026

dezren39 commented on Nov 5, 2026

dezren39 commented on Nov 5, 2026

dezren39 commented on Nov 5, 2026

dezren39 commented on Nov 5, 2026

Triage outcome at current main (cc45860abb4427fa873f26b81583682af2a7d548)

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Triage outcome at current main (`cc45860abb4427fa873f26b81583682af2a7d548`)