M10: the seam for media, and no media

The media extension contract asks for a scene snapshot a future image or video
provider could be handed: location, who is present, what they hold, what must
stay true, and where in the story it sits. Building one was the milestone's
obvious first task, and it was the wrong one. That snapshot has existed since
M5. `narrative_state["scene"]` holds the summary, the location, the cast and the
coordinate it was written at; a validated `set_scene` event writes it, every
position snapshots it, and every head move restores it. It survives Undo, Redo,
Retry, divergence, Save Point restore and a process restart because it is the
authoritative state rather than a copy of it.

So there is no scenes table here. A second scene store would have been a second
answer to "where is the story now", with its own lineage rules to get wrong —
and the lineage rules are the expensive part, which is the argument for reusing
the ones that already work rather than against it. The Scene Packet is derived
on read, and its identity is computed from the campaign and the position rather
than allocated: the same position yields the same id in another process, after a
restart, and after the packet is thrown away and rebuilt, with no row to keep in
step. That is the part of a future media_assets table that would be expensive to
retrofit, so it is fixed now even though the table is not built.

One table, then: visual_profiles, the only thing the contract's scene list asks
for that nothing already stored. Campaign-scoped and not per-position, because a
character does not change appearance when the story forks — a reader who
diverged would otherwise lose their cast, and the same descriptors would land in
every per-position snapshot, measured at 245 copies of 367 bytes in a 120-turn
campaign to say something that never varies. Keyed by the M5 entity key rather
than a new identity namespace, and one table for characters, locations and items
alike, because a location is an entity with a type and splitting them would
reintroduce the genre shape M5 spent a milestone removing.

What the packet leaves out is the more interesting half. Not the transcript, and
not imported knowledge — none of it, not merely the sources marked hidden. The
rule is what the story established at this position, not everything the narrator
was told, and drawing it by class is what makes it hold for a secret nobody
thought to mark. A hidden Canon source proves it, with a positive control
showing the narrator did receive the sentinel the packet does not carry. Once a
validated event puts the observer in the room, the observer is in the packet:
that is no longer narrator-only knowledge, and a packet that hid it would be
hiding the story from itself.

The providers are contracts and nothing else. Protocols for image, video, audio,
speech and transcription, an empty registry, no adapter, no dependency, no
socket, and no media setting to point anywhere — a setting that exists can be
pointed at a cloud by mistake. A future provider endpoint must be loopback,
stricter than narration's trusted-LAN allowance, because a picture of a scene
carries the scene with it. Transcription returns an editable draft with no
commit method, so STT structurally cannot bypass the authoritative path.

Nothing here can write the story. Not by convention: no module under media/
imports the code that writes state, no media event type exists in the state
vocabulary, and every test in the authority suite compares the authoritative
document byte for byte either side of a media operation — including one where a
provider insists Alice is in a red coat in a corridor, and the campaign goes on
disagreeing.

One defect, found by the milestone's own tests. M10 first added a migration
creating an index that create_all already builds from the column, so an upgraded
database ended up with two indexes and a fresh install with one. Comparing the
two schemas is what caught it; neither database examined alone would have. The
migration is gone rather than renamed, and the right number of migrations for a
new table whose indexes are declared on its columns is zero.

Backend 1,191 passed / 14 skipped / 0 failed, 89 of them M10's. Frontend 145
passed. Lint, production build and Docker build clean. No frontend file changed:
M10 adds no reader-facing surface, and ordinary play — turns, state, memory,
knowledge, Undo, Redo, Retry, Save Point restore, restart — runs with no media
configuration, no warning, no connection attempt and no media row written.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Qyn3oRd4D6pi72nKBG725B

backend/app/media/profiles.py

@@ -0,0 +1,220 @@
+"""M10: reading and writing how an entity looks.
+
+`models.VisualProfile` carries the design reasoning — why these rows are
+campaign-scoped rather than per-position, why there is one table for characters,
+locations and items, and why nothing here is story state. This module is the
+narrow set of operations on them, and its own job is to make two things true:
+
+* **a profile can only name an entity the campaign actually has**, so a typo
+  produces an error rather than a row describing nobody;
+* **writing one changes nothing authoritative**, which is guaranteed by this
+  module not importing anything that could.
+
+## Why the entity is checked against the current head
+
+An entity key means something only in a state document, and a campaign has a
+different document at every position. The check is made against the state at
+the **active head** — the story the reader is on — for the same reason
+`narrative/validate.py` resolves its `refs` there: it is the only position the
+reader is looking at, and a key that means nothing there is a mistake, not a
+branch subtlety.
+
+The row that results is campaign-scoped anyway, so a profile written while
+standing on one branch is visible from every branch. That asymmetry is
+deliberate and is the continuity the profile exists for: the check is *"does
+this name someone"*, and the storage answers *"what do they look like"*, which
+does not vary by path.
+"""
+
+from __future__ import annotations
+
+from sqlalchemy import select
+from sqlalchemy.orm import Session
+
+from .. import models
+from ..narrative import model as narrative_model
+from ..narrative import store as narrative_store
+
+#: How many descriptors one profile may carry, and how long each may be. A
+#: profile is a handful of stable traits, not a document: the bound exists so a
+#: future provider's prompt cannot be grown without limit through this door, and
+#: so one campaign cannot store an essay per entity.
+MAX_DESCRIPTORS = 40
+MAX_FEATURES = 40
+MAX_VALUE = 400
+MAX_STYLE_NOTES = 2_000
+MAX_KEY = 200
+
+
+class ProfileError(ValueError):
+    """A visual profile could not be written, and why."""
+
+
+def entity_exists(state: dict, entity_key: str) -> bool:
+    """Whether the state document names this entity."""
+    return narrative_model.entity(state, entity_key) is not None
+
+
+def set_profile(
+    db: Session,
+    adventure: models.Adventure,
+    entity_key: str,
+    *,
+    descriptors: dict | None = None,
+    features: list | None = None,
+    style_notes: str | None = None,
+) -> models.VisualProfile:
+    """Records how `entity_key` looks, creating or replacing the profile.
+
+    Replaces rather than merges. A profile is one answer to "what does this look
+    like", and merging would make it impossible to *remove* a descriptor — the
+    caller would be able to add "wearing a red coat" and never take it off,
+    which for continuity metadata is the wrong default. A caller that wants to
+    amend one reads it first.
+
+    Raises `ProfileError` if the campaign's state at the active head does not
+    name the entity, or if the profile is malformed. It writes nothing in either
+    case, and it writes nothing to `narrative_state` in any case.
+    """
+    key = _checked_key(entity_key)
+    state = narrative_store.current(adventure)
+    if not entity_exists(state, key):
+        raise ProfileError(
+            f"This campaign has no entity called {key!r}, so there is nothing "
+            f"for a visual profile to describe. Profiles attach to the "
+            f"campaign's own entities, not to names."
+        )
+    row = get_profile(db, adventure, key)
+    if row is None:
+        row = models.VisualProfile(adventure_id=adventure.id, entity_key=key)
+        db.add(row)
+    row.descriptors = _checked_descriptors(descriptors)
+    row.features = _checked_features(features)
+    row.style_notes = _checked_notes(style_notes)
+    return row
+
+
+def get_profile(
+    db: Session, adventure: models.Adventure, entity_key: str
+) -> models.VisualProfile | None:
+    return db.execute(
+        select(models.VisualProfile).where(
+            models.VisualProfile.adventure_id == adventure.id,
+            models.VisualProfile.entity_key == entity_key,
+        )
+    ).scalars().first()
+
+
+def all_for(db: Session, adventure: models.Adventure) -> list[models.VisualProfile]:
+    return list(db.execute(
+        select(models.VisualProfile)
+        .where(models.VisualProfile.adventure_id == adventure.id)
+        .order_by(models.VisualProfile.entity_key)
+    ).scalars().all())
+
+
+def by_key(db: Session, adventure: models.Adventure) -> dict[str, dict]:
+    """Every profile in the campaign, keyed by entity, as plain dictionaries.
+
+    One query, because the Scene Packet needs several profiles at once and
+    fetching them per entity would be a query per character in the scene.
+    """
+    return {row.entity_key: as_dict(row) for row in all_for(db, adventure)}
+
+
+def as_dict(row: models.VisualProfile) -> dict:
+    """One profile as it appears in a Scene Packet."""
+    return {
+        "descriptors": dict(row.descriptors or {}),
+        "features": list(row.features or []),
+        "style_notes": row.style_notes or "",
+    }
+
+
+def delete_profile(
+    db: Session, adventure: models.Adventure, entity_key: str
+) -> bool:
+    """Removes a profile. Returns whether there was one.
+
+    Deleting a profile removes a *description*, never the entity: the entity
+    lives in the authoritative state document and nothing here can reach it.
+    """
+    row = get_profile(db, adventure, entity_key)
+    if row is None:
+        return False
+    db.delete(row)
+    return True
+
+
+# ------------------------------------------------------------- the checking
+
+def _checked_key(entity_key) -> str:
+    if not isinstance(entity_key, str) or not entity_key.strip():
+        raise ProfileError("A visual profile has to name an entity.")
+    key = entity_key.strip()
+    if len(key) > MAX_KEY:
+        raise ProfileError(f"Entity keys are at most {MAX_KEY} characters.")
+    return key
+
+
+def _checked_descriptors(descriptors) -> dict:
+    """Trait -> value, both short strings.
+
+    Values are text rather than arbitrary JSON on purpose. A descriptor is
+    something a future provider will put in a prompt, and a nested structure
+    would either be flattened by whoever does that — inconsistently — or
+    smuggle a provider-shaped payload through a story-side field, which is the
+    boundary this package exists to keep.
+    """
+    if descriptors is None:
+        return {}
+    if not isinstance(descriptors, dict):
+        raise ProfileError("`descriptors` must be a map of trait to value.")
+    if len(descriptors) > MAX_DESCRIPTORS:
+        raise ProfileError(
+            f"A profile may carry at most {MAX_DESCRIPTORS} descriptors."
+        )
+    out: dict[str, str] = {}
+    for trait, value in descriptors.items():
+        if not isinstance(trait, str) or not trait.strip():
+            raise ProfileError("Every descriptor needs a name.")
+        if not isinstance(value, str):
+            raise ProfileError(
+                f"The value for {trait!r} must be text — a profile describes "
+                f"how something looks, in words a person could read back."
+            )
+        if len(value) > MAX_VALUE:
+            raise ProfileError(
+                f"The value for {trait!r} is longer than {MAX_VALUE} characters."
+            )
+        out[trait.strip()[:MAX_KEY]] = value
+    return out
+
+
+def _checked_features(features) -> list:
+    if features is None:
+        return []
+    if not isinstance(features, list):
+        raise ProfileError("`features` must be a list of short phrases.")
+    if len(features) > MAX_FEATURES:
+        raise ProfileError(f"A profile may carry at most {MAX_FEATURES} features.")
+    out = []
+    for feature in features:
+        if not isinstance(feature, str) or not feature.strip():
+            raise ProfileError("Every feature must be a non-empty phrase.")
+        if len(feature) > MAX_VALUE:
+            raise ProfileError(f"A feature is longer than {MAX_VALUE} characters.")
+        out.append(feature.strip())
+    return out
+
+
+def _checked_notes(style_notes) -> str:
+    if style_notes is None:
+        return ""
+    if not isinstance(style_notes, str):
+        raise ProfileError("`style_notes` must be text.")
+    if len(style_notes) > MAX_STYLE_NOTES:
+        raise ProfileError(
+            f"Style notes are longer than {MAX_STYLE_NOTES} characters."
+        )
+    return style_notes.strip()