An earlier pass in this repo mocked a car UI from imagination: a tab strip, a
header with search and queue icons, a bottom mini-player, a big-art playback
view with a linear progress bar. None of those exist. Google's line is flat —
"You don't draw your user interface directly on Android Auto; the framework
has two well-defined UIs that are created automatically" — and the reference
frames confirm it. The bottom bar is the SYSTEM's (home, notifications,
Assistant). Progress is a RING around play/pause. The artwork sits small at
the left behind a blur of itself. About THREE rows fit on screen, not eight.
So the artifact that was needed was never a layout. It is the short list of
slots the app actually fills, and this commit decides them:
tabs Recent · Albums · Artists · Saved
style albums grid, artists and tracks list
actions Shuffle · Save, 2 of the 6 allowed
reach amber dot on rows that need the app; Save shows a tick when down
accent brand teal #31C0CB
Playlists loses its tab because the phone holds exactly one, and an empty tab
is a dead quarter of the only four we get. Saved takes it because it is the
set that plays with the app shut, which is the one thing genuinely different
about this app in a car. Grid-vs-list is not density — the car fits three
either way — it is what identifies the row: a record by its sleeve, an artist
by name, a track only by text. Save is the highest-value button on the screen:
hear it, save it, it plays cold on the way home. The dot marks the RISKY row
rather than the safe one, and thins out on its own as more music is saved.
Auto allows one accent pair, set at build time, and it cannot follow the
artwork the way the app does everywhere else — so it has to be the constant,
the falcon's teal.
None of this can ship before round 48. The card is MediaSessionCompat today,
Auto needs a MediaLibraryService, and two live sessions is not a safe
intermediate. Order is unchanged: 44 → 45 → 46 → 47 → 48, soak, then 49–52
build the table above.
The mockup that settles it is research/auto-mockup (gitignored): both real
libraries — the handset's three albums and the desktop's 418 — inside the real
template, at the three DHU resolutions, with an overlay that outlines which
pixels are the car's and which are ours.
KeelrLeek
fbc6a0268b