0769 — The profile fades while idle and its personal text grows

Superseded by 0772, which adds slower scrolling as size increases and retains the fade and lifecycle.

Context

The member profile’s repeating “the end is never” should gradually take over the page. The user reviewed a timing sketch, chose inactivity as the trigger, and approved implementation with a five-second initial delay. Movement, keyboard input, and touch must bring the profile back.

Decision

• After five idle seconds, fade the surrounding page into its background over 110 seconds. Scale the personal text from 13px to an apparent 113px over the same interval, using quadratic growth so it becomes more noticeable later. Hold that size and continue scrolling until activity.
• Keep the effect in the route-local member-personal-text component and its runes state class. Hydrate MemberProfile with client:idle. A fixed, pointer-transparent veil covers the viewport; the personal text rises above it only while the effect is active. Two semantic z-index tokens add these steps to the existing scale; BoardLayout needs no changes.
• Scale a wrapper around the existing two-copy scrolling loop, preserving its phase. The enlarged line overlaps the fading profile rather than reflowing it, so links stay under the pointer when activity restores them.
• Pointer movement/presses, keyboard input, wheel scrolling, touch movement, and focus restore immediately and restart the five-second delay. Layout scroll events are not reader activity. No event is intercepted or canceled.
• Reduced motion disables the effect and the existing scroll animation. Hiding the document resets it; returning starts a fresh delay. Abort listeners and cancel pending animation/timers before an Astro page swap and on component teardown. Returning to the profile creates fresh state.

Consequences

• The rest of the site has no idle listeners or changed layout. The profile gains a small hydrated island without a dependency.
• Both board styles use their existing page background color. The veil also fades page notices; any interaction restores their normal layering.
• Browser flows cover the delay, growth, stable link positions, input restoration, reduced motion, hidden time, and navigation away and back.
• Television noise is not part of this treatment. The approved sketch is removed once the implementation and verification are complete.