The bar is a place.

The current dock (v5) is a tool: omnibox, kit, mode pill. v6 reframes the bar as a place — a horizontal slice of a pixel-art town with five buildings (KETTLE / STUDIO / DRUM / WINDOW / DESK) and your Noun walking left-to-right along the ground. Hover a building → nameplate. Click → navigate. Right edge keeps ON AIR + a chevron that links to /me for now.

v6.0 — SHIPPED IN THIS PR

Sky band with time-of-day gradient (morning/midday/evening/night) + sun + clouds + stars
5 hand-placed buildings as pixel-art silhouettes with lit windows
Hover-up nameplates with route hint
Your Noun walks left-to-right in a 60s loop, bobs slightly, flips at the edges
Pulls noun seed from pc:currentNoun (synced by /me's SURPRISE button)
Slower walk at night (sleepy mode)
ON AIR pulse + ⌘K-style chevron stays at the right edge

v6.1 — COMPANIONS (SHIPPED)

+pet / +cat / +pup / +penguin and 9 more spell casts spawn IN the bar instead of the global overlay
Walk alongside your noun with staggered phase, fade after their durationMs
13 companion kinds, capped at 3 simultaneous

v6.2 — PETS + CROSS-VISITOR (SHIPPED IN THIS PR)

Right-click any companion to adopt it as your pet — saved to pc:pet:v1
Pet has an auto-generated name (Pebble / Cricket / Biscuit / Mochi / …), bornAt date, kind, mood
Pet walks alongside your noun forever — never auto-fades; hover for nameplate
Right-click your pet to release (with confirm); adopting a new one swaps in
Other visitors' nouns walk in YOUR bar as ghost-translucent via the existing PresenceRoom DO
Cross-page room: WebSocket joins /api/room?url=/__bar__, so the bar is GLOBAL — visitors on /me, /studio, /coffee all share one walking-bar room
Up to 4 peers visible at once; each walks the same 60s loop on a randomized phase (no per-frame position sync)
Soft reconnect on close (4–8s backoff). Cheap, robust, and there's no animation thrash.

v6.3 — AMBIENT EMOTES + PET RENAME (SHIPPED)

Ambient emotes: every 7-16s a small floating emoji pops above a random walker, pet, companion, or peer (👋 / ✨ / 🌊 / 💭 / 🌟 / 🌸 / 🍃 / ☀️ / 🫧). Slower at night with a sleepier pool (💭 / 🌙 / ⭐). Pet has its own pool (🐾 / 💕 / ✨).
Pet rename: double-click your pet to rename via prompt. Persists in pc:pet:v1.

v6.4 — CROSS-ROOM SPELL CASTS (SHIPPED IN THIS PR)

Your +cat shows up in their bar. When you cast a companion spell, it broadcasts via the existing PresenceRoom chat protocol (msg prefix __cast__:) to the global /__bar__ room. Other visitors with v6 on see the cat walk in too.
Sender filtered by sid (no double-spawn locally)
Replay-deduped via (sid, at) key — DO sends recent chat history on connect, but we ignore casts older than 8s before our connect time so reconnect doesn't dump 20 cats
13 spell kinds broadcast: cat / pup / penguin / fish / moth / bee / duck / crab / snail / frog / bird / rabbit / pet

v6.5 — PROXIMITY + MOOD (NEXT)

Pass-by emotes triggered by ACTUAL proximity (not random) — measure walker x via animation timing
Pets sniff each other on close approach
If two visitors stop near the same building, both their nouns face it (shared interest signal)
Pet mood reflects your pc:mood — chill / hype / focus / flow palette swap

Try it

Bar at the bottom is the v6 walking bar. Hover buildings to see nameplates, click to navigate. Your noun walks. Cast a companion spell (e.g. +cat in the v5 bar omnibox) and watch it walk in — then right-click to adopt it as your pet. Open another browser/incognito tab on /bar-v6 too — you'll see the other visitor's noun walking ghost-translucent in your bar.

← back to home (v5 bar)