A bare abcd on an interactive terminal opens with a generated banner: the flag hoist in half-block colour on its painted panel, version beside it, tagline beneath — identity baked in at build time, full colour ladder, never a byte on a machine-consumed stream

Typed links: builds_on itd-133 — the livery grids and palette are the banner's art source; refines itd-102 — the text renders from the canonical identity block, baked into the binary at build time behind a drift gate. itd-134 carries the managed-repo generator half of the original capture and declares its refines edge itself. (Slug renamed from the capture slug 2026-08-22 after the split; the retired slug is banned per retire-the-name.)

Press Release

Alice opens a terminal and types abcd. Before the status board they already know, the tool now greets them: the a-b-c-d signal-flag hoist in colour — half-block pixels on their painted panel, true flag geometry — with abcd v0.6.0 beside it, the tagline underneath, and two highlighted next-action commands. It reads correctly on a light terminal and a dark one, in tmux, and over SSH. When Bob pipes abcd into a file, greps a CI log, or reads a hook's context injection, there is no banner and no escape byte — machine surfaces stay exactly as they were. When Carol builds from source, their unstamped build says abcd (dev build) and never pretends to be a release. The banner is generated, not hand-drawn: the art comes from the livery grids, the words from the canonical identity block baked in at build time, and a drift gate holds both.

Why This Matters

A bare abcd today opens straight into the status board — correct, but faceless. The identity block (itd-102) keeps the words canonical and the livery package (itd-133) holds the marks; nothing yet composes them into the first thing a person actually sees. The banner is that composition: identity rendered, never hand-drawn, topping the existing output without replacing it — and the colour ladder it builds becomes the exported, banner-independent primitive later styled surfaces (itd-110 first) consume instead of reinventing.

Reference Designs (observed 2026-08-15, maintainer's terminal)

Two live exemplars from the maintainer's private toolchain set the bar (described generically; private tool names stay out of the record):

• Wordmark style: a block-ASCII wordmark with a per-letter colour gradient, followed by a plain monochrome pitch paragraph and standard CLI help. Identity lives in the wordmark alone; everything below stays quiet.
• Object style: a small pictorial colour object (~6 lines, ~18 columns) in the left column; the right column carries name vX.Y.Z in a warm accent, a two-line tagline in muted grey, then closing hint lines with runnable commands highlighted inline. Object as brand, tagline as orientation, hints as the next action.
• Common properties preserved: the banner reads correctly with colour stripped (never blank), and the bare invocation stays useful — the banner tops the existing status output, it does not replace it. The exemplars' ~50-column budget is deliberately relaxed here (interview ruling below): the real tagline is 66 characters and truncating it lost to laying it full-width beneath the strip.

Decisions (grilled 2026-08-21, interview rulings 2026-08-22)

• Scope split (2026-08-21): itd-112 ships abcd's own banner and the terminal colour stack only. The managed-repo generator is itd-134.
• Trigger (2026-08-21): bare invocation on an interactive TTY (stdout) only. Non-TTY, CI, hooks, --json, quiet modes, and every subcommand stay banner-free — the plugin/model surface never receives banner bytes.
• Identity source (2026-08-22): title and tagline are baked into the binary at build time — a generator writes them from the identity block into a Go constant with a drift test, and the generated file is registered as an itd-102 positioning surface. The banner never reads the cwd's identity block (an installed abcd in a foreign repo must not wear that repo's tagline); runtime text therefore stays trusted.
• Strip form (2026-08-22): half-block pixels (two pixel rows per text row, 23 columns × 3 rows) painted over the livery panel colour — the terminal analogue of the SVG panel — which resolves both half-block transparency and light-theme erasure of the white pixels. The five-row strip is padded to an even height at render time; canonical grids are never mutated.
• Layout (2026-08-22): strip left with abcd vX.Y.Z beside it; tagline and next-action hints full-width beneath; total width ≤66 columns, fixed (no terminal-width detection, no new dependency).
• Colour ladder (2026-08-21/22): truecolor straight from the livery hex palette, then the pinned 256- and 16-colour tables (promoted into livery beside the palette with a key-set parity test), then mono. Precedence: --no-color > NO_COLOR (present and non-empty) > TERM dumb/unset > COLORTERM > 256-colour TERM > 16. The ladder ships as an exported, banner-independent primitive.
• --no-color shape (2026-08-22): root-local flag — colour exists only on the bare invocation, so no inert persistent flag lands on every subcommand.
• Mono form (2026-08-22, revising the 2026-08-21 shade-block ruling's geometry): mono renders the art as five-row shade-block glyphs — the prototyped ░▒▓█ form — since half-blocks cannot carry an image without colour. Art-always survives; the mono banner is taller than the colour one. UTF-8 is assumed for all art rungs.
• Palette (2026-08-21): the fixed livery house palette. Per-repo accents belong to itd-134.
• Version (2026-08-22): stamped builds render abcd vX.Y.Z from the build-time version; unstamped builds render abcd (dev build); the banner never reads the repo to discover a version.
• Object vs text-logo (the capture's open question): foreclosed by the itd-133 decision — the object is the flag hoist.

What's In Scope

• The banner composition on bare interactive invocation, topping the unchanged status board.
• The identity bake: generator, Go constant, drift test, positioning-surface registration.
• The colour ladder and TTY seam as exported primitives (the repo's two hand-rolled stdin TTY checks consolidate here; the banner checks stdout).
• The pinned ANSI tables in livery with parity tests.
• The emission-discipline record: one ADR plus one brief invariant (decoration only on interactive TTYs; machine-consumed streams undecorated; untrusted text always sanitised; trusted-static art may carry ANSI).

What's Out of Scope

• The managed-repo banner generator and per-repo accents (itd-134).
• Styling any other surface (itd-110 consumes the ladder later).
• Terminal-width detection and responsive layout.
• Windows terminals: "any terminal" means the shipped release targets (darwin/linux); abcd ships no Windows binary.

Scope Conditions

None stated.

Acceptance Criteria

Adopted by the maintainer 2026-08-22 at the planning interview.

• Given an interactive TTY and a bare abcd invocation, when Alice runs it, then the banner renders above the status board — the true-geometry flag hoist in half-block pixels on the painted panel colour, abcd vX.Y.Z beside it, tagline and next-action hints beneath, within 66 columns — and the status board's own bytes are unchanged from today's output.
• Given a non-TTY stdout, --json, a hook invocation, or any subcommand, when Bob captures the output, then it contains no banner bytes and no ANSI escapes from the banner path — asserted in tests through the injected TTY seam.
• Given the colour ladder, when the environment declares truecolor, 256-colour, 16-colour, TERM dumb or unset, NO_COLOR present and non-empty, or the root-local --no-color flag, then the banner renders at exactly the rung that precedence selects — and the mono rung still renders the art as five-row shade-block glyphs, never blank and never coloured; a non-UTF-8 locale receives the text lines only.
• Given a release build, when the banner renders its words, then the title and tagline come from a Go constant generated from the canonical identity block, a drift test fails on any divergence, and the generated file is registered as an itd-102 positioning surface; given Carol's unstamped source build, then the version segment renders (dev build).
• Given the livery package, when the banner needs ANSI colour, then truecolor derives from the hex palette, the pinned 256- and 16-colour tables live beside it with a key-set parity test, and the render-time padding of the five-row strip never mutates a canonical grid (the itd-133 geometry and drift gates stay green).
• Given the emission-discipline ADR and brief invariant, when itd-112 ships, then both are recorded, the colour ladder and TTY seam are exported banner-independent primitives, and itd-110 carries builds_on: [itd-112] so the second styled surface consumes rather than rebuilds them.

Open Questions

All resolved at the 2026-08-22 interview: the termsafe carve-out routes to the emission-discipline ADR + brief invariant (see Decisions); Windows is scoped out by the release matrix; the Unicode floor is ruled (UTF-8 assumed for art, text-only otherwise).

Audit Notes

Fidelity review — receipt rcp-c0f8eb651646 (verifier intent-auditor claude-fable-5-1).

Provenance: intent-auditor@claude-fable-5-1 · rubric_hash sha256:effa65b3e9e88ff29433b443ec2be159522a8b0b71cf1434526514aa61edb13e · prompt_hash sha256:969936afc794c3d4550ca52dc1f15e03dbbba813eac98f9e074334017c8f4e58 Input attestations: diff:tree at 4c09b5c749de3dc3d1a1e0ab85d9dcd58ffcb4d5 (main lineage, itd-112 shipped)@-;

Acceptance rollup: MET 6 · MET_WITH_CONCERNS 0 · NOT_MET 0 · INCONCLUSIVE 0

Per-criterion verdicts:

• ac-1 — MET: the root RunE writes the banner before the board only when the TTY seam says yes; RenderHalfBlock yields 3 rows of 23 half-blocks on the panel colour, the name sits on strip[0], tagline and hints follow, the 66-column bound is asserted in display columns, and TestBannerRendersAboveBoard byte-compares the board with and without the banner evidence: internal/surface/cli/cli.go:274 — "if !asJSON && bannerTTY(cmd.OutOrStdout()) {" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner.go:58 — "strip := livery.RenderHalfBlock(logo, mode)" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner.go:68 — "const bannerWidth = 66" evidence: internal/livery/ansi_test.go:69 — "half-blocks, want 23" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:126 — "board bytes changed under the banner" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:236 — "if w := terminalColumns(line); w > 66 {"
• ac-2 — MET: the seam is a package var defaulting to a real character-device check; TestBareInvocationMachineStreamClean asserts no escape byte and no banner on a buffer, TestBannerJSONNeverDecorated forces the seam true and asserts --json stays clean, TestBannerNeverOnASubcommandOrHook does the same for --version and hook prompt-router evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner.go:28 — "var bannerTTY = func(w io.Writer) bool {" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:76 — "machine stream carries an escape byte" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:148 — "--json output decorated" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:288 — "func TestBannerNeverOnASubcommandOrHook(t *testing.T) {"
• ac-3 — MET: ResolveColorMode encodes the ruled precedence and TestResolveColorModePrecedence covers flag, NO_COLOR non-empty vs empty, TERM dumb/unset, COLORTERM truecolor/24bit, 256color, and the 16 floor; TestBannerLinesRungs asserts the mono rung is 5 shade rows with no escape byte and the non-UTF-8 rung is text only; TestWriteBannerHonoursNoColor covers the root-local flag evidence: internal/term/term.go:35 — "func ResolveColorMode(getenv func(string) string, noColorFlag bool) ColorMode {" evidence: internal/term/term_test.go:19 — "flag beats everything" evidence: internal/term/term_test.go:21 — "NO_COLOR empty string does NOT count" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:169 — "mono banner: %d lines, want %d (5 shade rows + name + %d tagline + hints)" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:179 — "non-UTF-8 banner: %d lines, want %d" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:196 — "--no-color output carries an escape byte"
• ac-4 — MET: identitygen writes bakedTitle/bakedTagline into identity_gen.go through the one IdentityGenSource template, TestBakedIdentityInSync regenerates from the identity block and byte-compares, positioning.json registers the file as the banner-baked-identity surface, and bannerNameSegment renders (dev build) when core.Version is empty or dev evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner.go:141 — "func IdentityGenSource(title, tagline string) []byte {" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:33 — "func TestBakedIdentityInSync(t *testing.T) {" evidence: .abcd/positioning.json:34 — ""id": "banner-baked-identity"" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner.go:39 — "return "abcd (dev build)"" evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:186 — "if text[0] != "abcd (dev build)" {"
• ac-5 — MET: sgrFG/sgrBG decode the hex palette for truecolor, ansi256 and ansi16 live in livery/ansi.go beside the palette with TestAnsiTableParity holding key sets equal, and TestRenderHalfBlockGeometry asserts the render neither mutates the grid it was given nor the canonical asset; the livery package tests are green at BASE evidence: internal/livery/ansi.go:55 — "r, g, b := hexRGB(palette[key])" evidence: internal/livery/ansi.go:19 — "var ansi256 = map[rune]int{" evidence: internal/livery/ansi_test.go:12 — "func TestAnsiTableParity(t *testing.T) {" evidence: internal/livery/ansi_test.go:84 — "RenderHalfBlock mutated the grid it was given" evidence: internal/livery/ansi_test.go:87 — "canonical grid changed"
• ac-6 — MET: adr-49 is accepted and dated 2026-08-22, brief invariant 13 records the discipline and names adr-49, ResolveColorMode and IsTerminal are exported from internal/term with no banner dependency and IsTerminal is consumed by update.go, report.go and cli.go beyond the banner, and itd-110 carries builds_on: [itd-112] evidence: .abcd/development/decisions/adrs/0049-terminal-emission-discipline.md:4 — "status: accepted" evidence: .abcd/development/brief/02-constraints/03-invariants.md:39 — "13. Decoration never reaches a machine-consumed stream, and untrusted text never carries ANSI" evidence: internal/term/term.go:59 — "func IsTerminal(f *os.File) bool {" evidence: internal/surface/cli/report.go:27 — "var reportInteractive = func() bool { return term.IsTerminal(os.Stdin) && term.IsTerminal(os.Stdout) }" evidence: .abcd/development/intents/shipped/itd-110-terminal-styling-for-abcd-output-the-abcd-house-style.md:8 — "builds_on: [itd-112]"

Gap audit:

• honoured:
  • banner tops the unchanged status board on an interactive TTY only evidence: internal/surface/cli/cli.go:274 — "if !asJSON && bannerTTY(cmd.OutOrStdout()) {"
  • identity baked at build time behind a drift gate, never read from the cwd evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner_test.go:33 — "func TestBakedIdentityInSync(t *testing.T) {"
  • colour ladder and TTY seam exported as banner-independent primitives evidence: internal/term/term.go:35 — "func ResolveColorMode(getenv func(string) string, noColorFlag bool) ColorMode {"
  • fixed 66-column layout with no terminal-width detection evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner.go:68 — "const bannerWidth = 66"
• diverged:
  • the tagline is laid full-width beneath the strip on one line; at BASE it is word-wrapped to the 66-column bound at render time (spc-2609230613206687), which moves line breaks only and keeps the text canonical evidence: internal/surface/cli/banner.go:74 — "return wrapWords(bakedTagline, bannerWidth)"
• missing: (none)