DebateOwl owls at intensity B: the logo plus one owl per key screen by Programcode · Pull Request #232 · Programcode/DebateOwl

Programcode · 2026-10-24T18:56:17Z

What this is

This adds owl intensity B from ~/debateowl-owl-assets (decisions.md item 11), which is the logo plus one owl on each key screen. It stacks on the DebateOwl restyle (#228, which now includes #229) and targets design/debateowl-restyle, not main.

This is a draft. Nothing is merged or deployed. No feature, route or label changes; the only new strings are alt text for the coach and opponent avatars.

Placements

App logo: the owl mark, unchanged from DebateOwl visual restyle: tokens, fonts, tactile buttons and the owl #228. public/owl-mark.svg uses the same c-icon art as mark.svg.
Home with no current debate: pointing, mirrored so it points across the card at Start debate.
Generate while it writes: thinking, on the run status and the live-draft avatar.
Generate after a failed run: surprised. The "Ready to Generate" owl under the error panel switches to surprised, and the panel keeps its alert icon.
History when empty: sleepy, on every empty tab and on the no-debate list.
Library, No Sources Yet: reading.
404: surprised, already there in DebateOwl visual restyle: tokens, fonts, tactile buttons and the owl #228.
Sparring opponent: arguing, on the speech avatars, the "opponent is thinking" owl, the setup card and the scorecard.
Ask coach avatar: coach, in the header, on replies and on the waiting line.
Debate Timer header: timekeeper, beside the title.
Case Saved: celebrating, beside the mint check in the toast.
Won ballot: celebrating, already there in DebateOwl visual restyle: tokens, fonts, tactile buttons and the owl #228.

Tool icons are untouched. There's no owl pattern and no corner owls.

The SVGs

Every owl is now a hand-written SVG; the 26 glossy WebP cutouts are deleted. The five existing poses are the c-trace files. The six new ones were traced from poses/new-*.png in the same style. They share the body, glasses, beak, feet and palette, and only the wings, eyes and prop change.

thinking (new), 14.1 kB
reading (new), 15.0 kB
timekeeper (new), 15.1 kB
arguing (new), 15.6 kB
coach (new), 15.3 kB
sleepy (new), 13.4 kB
point, idea, skeptical, surprised and celebrating (c-trace), 13.0 to 21.4 kB each

All 11 poses total 164 kB. OwlAvatar zooms the full pose onto the head instead of shipping bust files. The offline precache now lists the six poses the offline pages show (point, reading, sleepy, timekeeper, idea, surprised); npm run test:sw passes with them.

Accessibility and motion

Owls beside text are decorative (aria-hidden).
The coach and opponent avatars are role="img" with alt text in English, Hungarian and Spanish, "The owl, your debate coach" / "A bagoly, a vitaedződ" / "El búho, tu coach de debate", and "The owl, your AI opponent" / "A bagoly, az MI-ellenfeled" / "El búho, tu oponente de IA". Spanish is there because the catalogs have to match.
The Ask "Working…" avatar stays decorative because it sits inside an aria-live status, where a label would be read out on every update.
No new motion. The existing pose crossfade and bob already follow reduced motion.

Screenshots

Each image shows before on top and after below, with light on the left and dark on the right. Every placement was captured at 375, 430, 768x1024, 1024x768 and 1440x900 in both themes (220 shots), on the local verify stack with the fake provider. The full set, the raw captures and per-shot metrics are on the owls-screenshots branch. Delete that branch when this PR closes.

Checks on every shot: no horizontal overflow, no owl box leaving the viewport. Cumulative layout shift matches before and after on every screen (max 0.039, all from existing page behaviour). One run showed Sparring at 1440 going from 0.011 to 0.018; a rerun gave 0.011 again, the same as before. Every owl box has a fixed width and height, so the images can't shift layout as they load.

App logo