boxbox hardware · document a-001 · rev. 3, enter is real now
the kit ships pre-built, so these instructions assemble you. they teach the board the way its one operator drives it: glance, tap, talk. five steps are live checks — do them on the figures and the manual scores you.
the board renders light. the daemon, a small program on the mac, decides every frame. the brain is the server the whole fleet talks to. no daemon, and the board puts its 2023 numpad colours back on and types numbers: a fallback, not a fault. when the daemon comes up, it runs that lap — the formation lap — and goes to work.
press any key on the figure. a real numpad works too. the light answers under your finger, and the manual checks you off.
the operator never reads a list, he reads light. the nine center keys are seats — every thread that wants him takes one, loudest at the top-left. lime pulses are agents working; they need nothing. a rose key is a thread waiting on him: one pulse to announce, then it holds. ignored for ten minutes, it goes hot by itself. the top row is the heartbeat and the three machines, and the tall + is copy — mark the loudest call read, the most-used verb in the whole system. . pages, on the day more than nine threads want him. one glance, whole fleet.
six paints, all light. tap three pots to pass (0/3). muted is standing by, saturated is shouting.
look. the browser is already on that agent's thread.
listen. the board becomes a gauge: spend, or your voice.
speak. the thread comes up on the glass, mic ready.
combine. radio plus a seat points the radio at that agent.
the firmware only reports presses; the daemon decides which verb you meant, so the timings are settings, not solder. three keys skip all of this — the radio, ent, and the two-second calc hold live in the firmware and keep working with the daemon dead.
a gold seat is an agent stopped at a gate: it wants to spend money or touch something real. tap it and the board becomes the decision — no window opens, the options move onto the number keys. this one is live:
a permission is waiting · clauseo-v2 wants to run a migration
1 yes once · 2 yes always · 3 no · − skip. the no is armed on purpose: one rejection fails every pending request in the session, so it takes two presses.
the figure is running the whole lap. now you: hold the wide key for one steady second — mouse, finger, or a real numpad's 0. (a tap is different: tap the zero and the board reads the loudest call aloud instead. and on the real unit, wispr learns ctrl+F18 as push to talk, once.)
new work starts here, not at a keyboard. in grid mode the seats turn blue: repos. tap one, tap it again for the model seats, pick an effort rung on the three machine keys, then ent. five red rows build like a start gantry, lights out — and a session exists on whichever machine you picked.
deep work: only money and faults may speak. night: dims on an hourly curve, whispers at 3am. calc: hold nl two seconds, it is a numpad again. visit all three (0/3).
back in its 2023 colours and typing numbers is the designed fallback, not a fault. everything else, read the table.
| symptom | read |
|---|---|
| old numpad colours, types numbers | no daemon. correct behavior. it is a numpad again, like the drawer days. |
| went back to numpad colours mid-session | the two-second watchdog handed the board back. it recovers alone, formation lap and all. |
| truly dark | the mac is asleep or the cable is out. the board has no power to argue with. |
| lit, but wrong | the daemon lost the brain. it reconnects by itself; the lights catch up. |
| meter won't move | the mic grant is missing. it will never fake a meter. |
0 of 5 checks done: press a key (02), try three paints (04), answer a permission both ways (06), hold the radio (07), visit all three quiet modes (09).
every timing is a number in one config file, and the daemon reloads it while running — no restart, no reflash. a hold becomes a hold at 350ms. a double-tap window is 300ms. the no stays armed for 5 seconds. night is 24 numbers, one brightness per hour. even the voice it reads calls in is a setting.
the fuel gauge shows spend, not context. launching from the grid sends no brief yet. queue depth is exact on a new enough serve, inferred on the rest, and briefly wrong after a reconnect.