Advanced Spiral Task (AST)¶

An Advanced Spiral Task is a timeline of blocks. Each block is a complete session of one of the other types (Mantra Spiral, Brainwash Spiral, Write Lines, Story Trance, Engram Completion or Action) with its own content, settings and image collection. The player runs the blocks in order on one page, as one session: audio keeps playing across the joins, the screen fades from one block to the next, and the whole run is tracked as a single session instance.

Use it where you would otherwise chain several sessions in a playlist: a spiral warm-up, a write-lines exercise, then a story, without the page reloading and the audio restarting between them.

The session completes when the last block completes. Timer-paced blocks (MST, BST) end on their own; user-paced blocks (WLT, STT, ECT, ACT) end when the subject finishes them. The subject is then returned to the project page, or moved to the next item in a playlist or schedule.

Timeline¶

The editor for an AST session is the block studio. The timeline runs across the top of the page; a palette of block types sits beside it.

Drag a type from the palette onto the timeline to add a blank block of that type, or press Add on the palette entry to append one.
Drag blocks along the timeline to reorder them. Every block also has Move left, Move right, Duplicate and Delete buttons, and the arrow keys move the selection, so nothing depends on the mouse.
Import an existing session copies another session’s content and settings into a new block. It is a copy: later edits to the source do not follow. You can import your own sessions, sessions on projects you co-author, and sessions from projects whose creator has enabled export. Audio and Custom CSS are dropped from the copy (they are session-wide layers, see below) and its image list is cleared; pick a collection for the block instead. The block records where it was imported from for the transparency report.

A timeline holds up to 64 blocks. Blocks never nest: an AST cannot be a block of another AST.

Blocks¶

Select a block to edit it. The block inspector shows that block type’s own editor tabs (Content, Spiral, Settings, Images and Script, as the type requires), so everything documented for MST, BST, WLT, STT, ECT and ACT applies inside a block, including YSS on spiral blocks.

Each block also has:

Title: The label shown on the timeline and in the player console.
Type: Fixed when the block is created. To change it, delete the block and add a new one.
Collection (MST and BST blocks): Which of the session’s image collections the block shows. Leave it blank to show all of the session’s images.

Next to each block is an estimated duration: for MST the line count multiplied by the line duration, for BST the repetition count multiplied by the average words per line and the word duration. User-paced blocks have no estimate. The project page shows the sum of these estimates as the session’s expected duration.

The Checks panel lists anything that would stop a block from playing properly: empty line lists or text, a block whose collection has no images, and unknown block types. Each problem has a Select link that jumps to the block.

Collections¶

Images uploaded to an AST session are grouped into named collections. The Collections panel uploads into a collection, creates, renames and dissolves collections, and moves or deletes images in bulk. Dissolving a collection keeps its images; they return to the ungrouped pool that “all images” blocks show.

Each MST or BST block picks one collection. Two blocks can share a collection, and a block with no collection shows every image in the session.

The per-session image limit for your account tier counts every collection together; see Images.

Layers tab¶

Layers are the things that live across the whole timeline rather than inside one block:

Audio: One track that starts with the first block and keeps playing, without restarting, until the last block ends. Same field as Audio.
Custom CSS: A stylesheet applied to the whole run. See Custom CSS.
Persistent spiral: Turn this on to draw one spiral behind every spiral-type block instead of each block’s own. The spiral stays on the page between blocks and is hidden during non-spiral blocks, so the subject never sees it reset. Its settings are the same as the Spiral tab.
Transition: Fade (the default) dims to black between blocks over the fade length, 400 ms unless changed; None cuts straight from one block to the next. Fades are skipped for subjects who have asked their device for reduced motion. See Block timeline.

Script tab¶

The Script tab shows the whole session as one HypnoSpec document. The timeline is the space.hypna.feature.content.blocks feature and each block carries its own complete spec:

content:
  type: ast
  features:
    - id: space.hypna.feature.content.blocks
      configuration:
        blocks:
          - id: b_7f3a2c
            title: Intro spiral
            type: mst
            collection: Intro
            spec:
              content: { ... }
              settings: { ... }
              spiral: { ... }
              images: { ... }
settings:
  type: ast
  features:
    - id: space.hypna.feature.settings.ast
      configuration: { transition: fade, fade_ms: 400 }

Block image features carry no image URLs: the collection is resolved to the current image files every time the session launches, so exporting, forking and cold storage cannot leave a block pointing at a stale address.

Validate & Apply works as on every other type; see Editing the HypnoSpec document. Block ids must be unique and block types must be one of the six above. The studio warns once the document grows past 2 MB; the API rejects an AST spec above 4 MB, and a bundle caps the whole session document at 16 MB.

Launching¶

AST sessions always open in the new player, from the project page, a playlist or a schedule, whatever rollout cohort the subject is in. A session whose timeline is still empty shows “This session has no timeline yet” instead of launching.

In the player, the console (the ~ key) has a Blocks tab listing the timeline with the current block marked, plus a Skip block control that is also on the always-visible corner strip. Screen readers are told “Block N of M” as each block starts.

XR is offered only when every block is a spiral type (MST or BST), because the headset view only knows those layers, and block changes in XR are hard cuts rather than fades.

Tips¶

Give the subject a short spiral block first so the audio and images are established before a task that needs their attention.
Turn the persistent spiral on when most of the timeline is spiral blocks; give each block its own spiral when the look should change between phases.
Keep collections tight and named for their phase (“Intro”, “Deepener”, “Reward”); a block that shows all images loses the sense of progression.
Because imported blocks are copies, re-import after you change the source session.
Export the session as a bundle before large rearrangements; the bundle keeps every block, its collection and the session layers.