"Terribly high CPU usage, the MacBook gets really hot" - a fanless MacBook
Air on a 144Hz screen. Measured on that machine with headed engines
(process CPU plus the per-process GPU time macOS keeps): an idle Aero
library cost LibreWolf ~110% CPU and ~230ms/s of GPU, the study feed ~130%,
Chromium up to ~57% CPU and ~350ms/s of GPU, Safari ~220-250ms/s of
WindowServer GPU. Priced one by one:
- the gradient mask on .ice-floats re-rendered the animated layer offscreen
on every frame (~75 points of Gecko CPU). The floats now rise through a
plain rectangular band clear of the header, the bottom chrome and the
rail, and fade in and out inside it, so the clip never cuts a visible one;
- the overlay grain forced a backdrop readback per frame for a texture that
measured a mean <=0.11/255 difference: removed;
- the invisible blob drift made every frame a full-screen redraw: the blobs
are painted once;
- static glass (answer tiles, feedback panel, chips, inputs, dropzones,
lists, segmented controls, Aero hint chips) re-blurred the moving scene
every frame: only floating glass blurs now, and Aero's baked chat chrome
drops a live blur that never showed under the bake;
- the scene also parks while the window has no focus and under any dialog
or sheet scrim (.scene-pause); the loading icon is a compositor-run CSS
animation instead of a framer-motion main-thread loop.
After, focused and animating: LibreWolf library 109% -> 33% CPU, study
134% -> 34%, chat 130% -> 42%; Chromium GPU 2.5-4.4x lower with 7-22 points
less CPU; Safari's WindowServer GPU -20-26% in Aero, about half in dark.
Unfocused or under a sheet: nothing. bubbles-test sweeps every float through
41 phases against the band and pins the parking and the cost contract;
tests/heat-probe.mjs (macOS) repeats the measurement; the suites find
Playwright's Chromium on macOS.
All 15 suites pass, lint clean, the contrast scan lost a finding. Version
0.6.7, SW v89.
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Buttons: the recipe's thin veils let btn-secondary/btn-ghost/glass-pill
blend into the grass and sky - they now carry a stronger pale-glass veil
(the Ask-pill look) over the blurred scene, ghosts plus a rim and
full-contrast text. Homework make/check results gained the same red "!"
report control as the feeds and the guide (a synthetic short-answer
activity maps into the report flow; pinned in phase3).
Reduced motion: the manual toggle only fed framer's MotionConfig, which
strips transform animations - while components branched on the OS-only
useReducedMotion - so translucent sheets still spring-faded their opacity
in over the page (the "ugly visual glitch with the settings panel"). All
16 components now read useAppReducedMotion() (OS or toggle), and the
settings sheet/scrim and the library's phone sheet go instant. Verified
frame by frame: opacity 1.00 from the first frame.
Contrast 0 findings, axe clean; mobile 126/126, chat 102/102, providers
20/20, wizard 95/95, phase3 31/31, bubbles 34/34, i18n 13/13, native
33/33. Version 0.5.4, SW -> freezmo-v76.
The deck wizard had the good one — app icon, rotating stage message as the
headline, progress bar, stage checklist, tip, Cancel — while homework showed
a spinner with a title and route loads a pulsing icon with a smaller line.
All of them now render components/LoadingState:
- the wizard passes its vision/generation stages and keeps its deck tips;
- homework passes the same shape with homework wording (no tips: they are
deck-specific);
- route screens (review/stats/exam loading boundaries + the link overlay)
pass a single message, no stages or progress.
Cancel stays a 44px touch target, the icon animation respects
prefers-reduced-motion, and the unused homework.loading.title string is
gone from both languages.
Suites: freeze-loading 6/6, review 18/18, wizard 88/88, mobile 105/105,
regression 38/38, native 31/31, phase-2 62/62, phase-3 30/30, i18n 13/13.
README: decision 60. SW -> freezmo-v47.
