v0.8.0.3 — Skip on the left, a caption that says who, and a clock that stops

stretching

Three things from playing v0.8.0.2, all about the row rather than the mechanism.

Skip was on the far right and a player's eye is on the countdown. Moved to the
left, in front of the count.

The caption said what but never who. Measured over 40 turns of a real 3-seat game,
half the waiting is automatic phases — 21.0s of phases against 21.7s of other
players — and a phase narrates as "Mainline", which is accurate and no answer at
all to "who am I waiting on". A phase introduces itself now: "The Division:
Mainline phase". A player's move already carries its name from record(), so it is
left alone. The row was also hiding one step early, because it showed only while
behind > 0 — which goes false exactly when the last step of a burst goes up, so the
step most likely to be read lost its caption.

And the speed control was stretching the clock along with the players. It was not
his own move being replayed — own moves have cost nothing since v0.8.0.1 — it was
the phases behind it, which put 105 seconds of clock-ticking into a 5x game. pace
now scales a player's move and leaves a phase at its tabled beat, which is what the
control has always claimed to do. Off still means off for both.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01X6cF1iYvJ1kNmzYBzu4QX6

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -19,6 +19,49 @@ page as `v0.1.0 · <sha> · <date>`, so what is deployed can always be identifie
 
 ---
 
+## 0.8.0.3 — 2026-09-09
+
+Three things from playing v0.8.0.2, all of them about the row rather than the mechanism.
+
+### Skip was at the wrong end of the row
+
+Jesse: *"the skip button should be on the far left, in front of where it says [the count], so it's
+always close to where people are looking."* It was on the far right, and a player's eye is on the
+countdown. Moved.
+
+### The caption said what, but never who
+
+*"I saw 2 behind, 1 behind, and then it was caught up, but it didn't tell me what the actual action
+was, like who I was waiting on or what they were doing. I knew I was behind, but I wasn't sure what I
+was supposed to be looking for."*
+
+The caption was there. It was the wrong half of the sentence. **Measured over 40 turns of a real
+3-seat game, half the waiting is automatic phases** — 21.0s of phases against 21.7s of other players —
+and a phase narrates as "Mainline", which is accurate and no answer at all to "who am I waiting on".
+A phase now introduces itself: **"The Division: ▸ Mainline phase"**. A player's move already carries
+its name from `record()`, so it is left alone rather than stuttering it twice.
+
+**And the row was hiding a step early.** It was shown only while `behind > 0` — which goes false the
+moment the LAST step of a burst goes up, so the one step a player was most likely to be reading about
+lost its caption. It now stays up while the queue is still showing something, and reads "catching up"
+once nothing is queued behind.
+
+### The speed control was stretching the clock, not just the other players
+
+*"After my turn, when I actually execute my turn, I'm still subject to that same delay before it
+moves on. That makes no sense. Since I've just done my turn, I don't need to wait after it."*
+
+He was right, and it was not his move being replayed — own moves have cost nothing since v0.8.0.1. It
+was the automatic phases behind it, which were scaling with `pace` along with everything else. At 5×
+that put **105 seconds of clock-ticking** into the game, all of it after a player's own move and none
+of it anything to watch.
+
+**`pace` now scales a player's move and leaves a phase at its tabled beat.** The control is labelled
+as how long another player's move is held, and that is now what it does. A phase still gets its beat
+(TODO #18) and still vanishes entirely at `pace = 0`, because off has to mean off.
+
+---
+
 ## 0.8.0.2 — 2026-09-09
 
 Two things found by playing v0.8.0.1 on `phoenix.local`, neither of them in the mechanism itself.