CHANGELOG

Changelog

All notable changes to Cortex. The format follows Keep a Changelog and the project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[Unreleased] — Phase J: user-facing polish

This release closes the audit's user-facing polish layer that sits on top of the foundational fixes (Phase A through Phase H). The hostile auditor wouldn't flag any of it; a real first-time user would notice all of it.

Added

• Onboarding refinement. The first-run wizard now (a) detects a paired iPhone / iPad Continuity Camera and surfaces an inline "we will skip your iPhone camera" callout on the Camera card, and (b) renders a "Why we need this" expand-on-click chevron on every card with rationale copy explaining where the data lives (e.g. "video stream never leaves your Mac", "Bedrock token stays in the macOS Keychain"). Expander buttons carry accessible names so VoiceOver announces them semantically.
• Top-bar error toast with cid quote-back. Daemon errors now surface in a dashboard top-bar toast that shows the F19 correlation id (rendered in the mono font as ref: <cid>) selectable so the user can copy it into a support ticket. Auto-dismisses after 8 s; a manual close button is always available. Hooked to a new DaemonBridge.error_occurred(str, str, str) Signal so any daemon callback that has a correlation context bound can surface a toast.
• Empty states. Before the first capture frame arrives, both the consumer biometrics card ("Start a session to see your biometrics.") and the developer-debug advanced tab ("Start a session to populate signal quality, heart-rate trace, and state scores.") render explicit empty-state placeholders. The flag is sticky — a transient WS disconnect does not collapse the UI back to an empty state because the cached numerics are more useful than a placeholder.
• Overlay micro-interactions. The intervention overlay plays a subtle scale-in (250 ms, OutCubic) on the headline and a fade-in (180 ms, InOutSine) on the causal-explanation row when the overlay appears. The two read as one continuous motion (the fade starts exactly when the headline tween finishes). Strictly purposeful: the dismiss button and micro-step checkboxes are not animated; the breathing pacer keeps its existing rhythm.
• Reduce Motion support. mac_native.prefers_reduced_motion consults NSWorkspace.accessibilityDisplayShouldReduceMotion; when the user has the System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Reduce motion preference enabled, the overlay's tweens are skipped and the end state is applied directly.
• A11y sweep on remaining surfaces. Segmented-control tab buttons, the dashboard Connect / Stop buttons, the connections-panel back button, and every _primary_button on the connections panel now carry setFocusPolicy(Qt.StrongFocus) so they participate in the keyboard tab cycle on every Qt build (macOS Qt sometimes inherits WheelFocus which silently excludes a button from tabbing). Segmented-control buttons gain explicit accessible names + a descriptive long-form description for VoiceOver.

Known limitations (residual a11y, intentionally deferred)

These are documented here so a future polish pass (or the v0.3 audit) can pick them up; they did not block the Phase J close-out.

• VoiceOver rotor item announcement on the biometrics numerics (P3). The Cormorant numerics (BPM / HRV / BLK) are decorative font glyphs; VoiceOver reads them as raw text. A future commit could wrap each numeric in a QAccessibleWidget subclass that surfaces a semantic "62 beats per minute" string for screen readers. The current behaviour is not WCAG-failing — the labels above the numerics provide context — but it is not as rich as the visual affordance.
• High-contrast mode (P2). Cortex respects the system light/dark appearance but does not yet honour the macOS Increase Contrast accessibility preference. Under increased contrast, the warm greyscale label tints would benefit from a flatter palette. The token registry is already structured to support a third tier (SEMANTIC_HIGH_CONTRAST), so the work is plumbing rather than design.
• Live-region announcements on state transitions (P3). When Cortex detects an overwhelm transition, VoiceOver does not announce the new state — the dashboard's state pill updates but is not registered as a live region. A future commit should setAccessibleRole(QAccessible.Role.StaticText) on the state pill and emit QAccessibleEvent.UpdateContents on every state change.
• Reduce Motion on non-overlay surfaces (P3). The Phase J pass honours Reduce Motion on the overlay tweens only. The dashboard's HR-trace plot, the breathing pacer, the focus-ring transitions, and the connections-panel status pill colour transitions are not yet gated by prefers_reduced_motion. They are all small (≤ 200 ms, easing curves) and below the typical perceptual threshold for motion sensitivity, but a thorough Reduce Motion pass would gate them too.

Verification

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen pytest \
    cortex/tests/unit/test_dashboard_toast.py \
    cortex/tests/unit/test_dashboard_empty_state.py \
    cortex/tests/unit/test_onboarding_hints.py \
    cortex/tests/unit/test_overlay_animation.py -q
# 26 passed

Manual QA: start daemon, open onboarding, click each "Why?" chevron, confirm rationale appears. Plug in an iPhone, reopen onboarding, see the Continuity callout on the Camera card. Trigger an overlay, watch the headline scale-in then the causal row fade-in. Toggle System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Reduce motion, trigger again, confirm both elements appear without tweens.

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The pre-Phase-J audit work (Phase A through Phase H) is tracked in audit/findings.md (the 56-finding ledger) and audit/execution-log.md (the per-commit log). This CHANGELOG starts with Phase J because that is the release boundary at which the audit closes out.