Update reel

#When it happens

• Once per REEL_VERSION, stored on the phone as ow_reel, on Home, for players who have played before. Never mid-round.
• A new player is marked as having seen it, so a first visit never opens on a reel. A player who switches in with a recovery code is marked too.
• It opens 700ms after Home is clear of sheets, and it takes the visit's one ask: on the 1st the podium goes first, and Keep your spot waits until the reel has been seen (Recovery and save nudges).

#When a release gets a reel

The reel has been keyed to its own REEL_VERSION, not APP_VERSION, since 3.21.1. Features are minor bumps and fixes are patch bumps, so the version alone says whether a reel is possible.

#What gets a chapter

From the 3.21 template (spec §14). The 3.22 format changed the open and the close, and kept this test.

#Composition

The current format dates from 3.22 (decisions/update-reel-format.md). The 3.21 reel opened on a board spelling NEW and closed on a recap list; from 3.22 the reel is a story on real screens and closes on the new Home.

The reel is authored on the design canvas and exported as data: one HTML template of the pieces, a list of style changes over time, beat marks and keyframes. The app's player mounts the template itself and applies each change on a timer, so the app plays exactly what was approved. Name tokens are filled in when it plays. Because the template carries its own inline styles rather than the game's classes, it has no live specimen here.

#Flow

The shape, about 25 seconds: the badge, then 1 to 3 chapters, one per new thing, then the close.

How a chapter is told:

1. Start where they are. Open on the screen they already know, Home, then tap into the new thing. The finger lands on the exact card.
2. Show it working. Use the real game pieces, and show every number that matters: the clock, the points.
3. Give the key moments room. Each rule gets its own beat, with a hold so it can sink in. Move fast through everything between them, with no dead air between a tap and what it causes.
4. Land the payoff. The earned moment gets the celebration, then the story comes back to Home to show where the new thing lives.

#The 3.22 reel

The reel that ships today. Its template marks beats at 0, 4.2, 8.6, 11.4, 17.4 and 20.3s, and the close arrives at 21.9s.

#Before it ships

From the 3.21 checklist, where the 3.22 format didn't replace it: every field filled with real copy; the badge counts the changes and the rail names them; every piece real and at true proportions; one move per beat and a hold after each caption; the player's own name; confetti only where earned and gone before the close; reduced motion opens on the close and still makes sense; it plays once per feature release, on Home, for returning players, never mid-round.

#States

#Why it's built this way

#Known issues and gaps

• The reel that ships describes 3.22 trivia. Its trivia chapter shows one question a day, a hint at 1:00, decoys fading at 0:20, and "First to solve unlocks it", and its Home shows "2 min · 1 question". 3.23 replaced all of these. REEL_VERSION is still 3.22.2, so a returning player whose stored ow_reel is older than that still sees it.
• The NEW tags are green. The format puts a small green NEW tag on each new part (filled with #7BE0A3, the dark --earned), while the colour rules keep green for something earned and rule it out for badges. See D-002.
• It's always dark. The template and the player's CSS write the dark values in directly (#202845, #F2F0EA, #7BE0A3), so the reel plays dark in light mode too.
• The spec points to a section that doesn't exist. §14 says it's superseded by "15.4"; there is no 15.4. The 3.22 format lives in §19 and decisions/update-reel-format.md. The reduced-motion table still says the reel "opens on the recap close", though 3.22 has no recap.
• The 3.21 reel's styles are still shipped. 41 of its wn-* classes style nothing the app renders. See System health.
• A reel can't be rebuilt from this repo. The exporter the format names (tools/export_reel.py) and the canvas file aren't in it.

#Related

• Celebration: the moment map, and confetti in the reel
• Home and Compete: where the reel plays, and what the close shows
• Recovery and save nudges: the other asks that share the one per visit
• Motion: the moves and the reduced-motion design
• Voice: caption copy

#Changelog