Lightcone v0.8 visual contract

Status: frozen for demo validation.

Scope: Omnis Helix Studio Lightcone view for in silico, deterministic outcome-family review. This contract freezes the current visual behavior so the next milestone tests the demo loop and traceability claim instead of continuing cosmetic polish.

Contract claim

Every visible branch, story node, and horizon zone must map to deterministic simulated data or a receipt-backed explanation.

The Lightcone is an evidence navigation surface, not a decorative chart. If a visible element cannot be traced to a stable selection id, modeled outcome family, fixture field, run summary, or audit-pack receipt, it must be removed, hidden, or labeled as an explicit visual guide.

Frozen visual elements

• Lightcone volume: the central cone represents the modeled future-state space for the active synthetic or live in silico run.
• Branches: visible trajectories map to deterministic Lightcone geometry selections and preserve stable selection ids.
• Selected branch: the active dominant branch gets primary emphasis; non-selected branches are intentionally dimmed.
• Probability density: selected-branch glow communicates branch importance from deterministic probability mass, not freehand styling.
• Story nodes: edit event, repair pathway, allele state, phenotype risk, and final outcome are inspection anchors on the selected branch.
• Horizon zones: corrected, silent, partial loss, toxic, and unknown are semantic outcome buckets for modeled states at the upper horizon.
• Receipt affordances: export and verification surfaces must preserve linkage from visual selection to audit-pack manifest, selection dump, and receipts.

Demo acceptance path

1. Load synthetic sequence.
2. Run guide discovery.
3. Select guide.
4. Generate modeled outcome family.
5. Open Lightcone.
6. Focus dominant branch.
7. Inspect story nodes.
8. Open Builder from branch window.
9. Export audit pack.
10. Verify receipt linkage.

Acceptance checks

• The dominant branch can be selected by click, hover-assisted selection, or automatic top-branch focus.
• The selected branch displays story nodes without requiring hidden state or non-deterministic layout data.
• The selected branch can open Builder with the branch-specific focus window.
• The audit pack exports with deterministic file ordering and manifest hashes.
• selection_dump.json, when included, carries the selected branch id, branch window, linked outcomes, and deterministic receipt context.
• Audit-pack verification succeeds with tools/lightcone_verify_audit_pack.py.
• No visual branch, story node, or horizon zone implies wet-lab execution, diagnostic use, or clinical decision support.

Stop conditions

Do not keep polishing the Lightcone visuals until the full demo acceptance path has been recorded or failed with a concrete traceability gap.

Allowed changes before demo proof:

• Fix crashes, unreadable overlap, or broken layout.
• Fix deterministic traceability from a visual element to data or receipt.
• Fix export or verification linkage.
• Update copy only to preserve in silico, deterministic, non-clinical positioning.

Disallowed changes before demo proof:

• New visual metaphors.
• New color systems.
• Unbacked decorative particles, labels, or zones.
• Any language that implies clinical, diagnostic, wet-lab, or in vivo use.