CHRON-0007: Day Five (site) - Player Persistence and S1E1 Recut Media
What Happened
The site's episode experience shifted from placeholder scaffolding toward a real production surface. Codex shipped a sequence of website updates that made the persistent player behave more like a standing listening tray and made the first episode page serve actual production media instead of static placeholder state. Cursor then pushed an updated 20-minute S1E1 video sync fix on top of that wiring.
The changes landed across several commits on main: 883a2e7, 07ae246,
66ed842, eb8ac43, and 5294f1d, followed by Cursor's media update commit
993203f.
Site Impact
- The lower audio tray now loads either the listener's last-played episode or the first published episode, rather than appearing empty
- The S1E1 detail page now reflects a produced episode rather than a placeholder page, with manifest-driven media, production details, and embedded video
- The site now prefers the 20-minute S1E1 recut assets when they exist, for audio, video, thumbnail, playback metadata, and duration
- Closed captions and chapter markers are now wired into the embedded episode film experience for S1E1
- RSS inherits the recut audio automatically because the site-level episode resolver now points to the canonical 20-minute media keys
Files and Commits
site/lib/episodes.ts- manifest-aware media resolution, now preferring 20-minute audio/video assets and exposing captions and video metadatasite/app/episodes/[id]/page.tsx- richer episode detail page and recut media usagesite/app/episodes/[id]/EpisodeFilm.tsx- embedded video with captions track and clickable chapter markerssite/app/components/AudioPlayer.tsx- persistent tray default-load behaviorsite/lib/player-store.ts- load path for a paused default episodesite/app/layout.tsx- passes published episodes into the player default-load flow
Relevant commits:
883a2e7- site/media fallback and documentation alignment07ae246- first episode detail page refresh66ed842- persistent player tray default loadeb8ac43- removal of duplicate video CTA on the detail page5294f1d- S1E1 recut media wiring, captions, and chapter markers993203f- Cursor's updated 20-minute video sync fix
Process Change
The same work session also formalized project-log/ as the canonical website
log. AGENTS.md, project-log/README.md, and project-log/chronicle/README.md
now specify that website changes should be recorded here, with Codex serving as
the default maintainer of those entries unless the human assigns that role
elsewhere.
Follow-Up
- Continue adding one consolidated website chronicle entry per active site day
- Add site snapshots at larger milestones, especially first public episode and any major navigation or AI-surface changes
- Keep future episode media wiring aligned to the same manifest pattern used for S1E1