How a descent works

A single descent goes through six stages. The whole thing takes ~3–4 minutes from page load to minted token.

1. Pairing

The browser opens a WebSocket to the bridge and receives:

• a 6-character pairing code that namespaces this session, and
• a ready-to-paste hermes mcp add ... command.

The intro screen shows both, with a TROUBLESHOOT panel for the common “Hermes can’t reach the bridge” cases.

2. Agent connects over MCP

The player runs the printed hermes mcp add ... command on their machine. Hermes opens an MCP connection to the bridge using the Streamable HTTP transport. The bridge marks the session as “agent paired” and the BEGIN button on the page lights up.

At handshake the MCP server hands Hermes a context block including the descent’s specific scale, mode “feel”, and the layer-type / intent guidance. See The agent → MCP tool surface.

3. Onboarding + BEGIN

The player clicks BEGIN. The web page:

• starts the audio context (must be inside a user gesture in browsers),
• starts a MediaRecorder capturing the master bus, and
• shows a one-screen onboarding panel with the rules. Press Enter to drop into the descent.

4. The descent (15 turns)

Turns alternate between player and agent. Each side has a 10-second cooldown after they place. 15 layers total.

• The player places by clicking in the 3D scene. Click position drives both the spatial position of the layer’s orb and the candidate set the pitch picker draws from.
• The agent places by calling the MCP place_layer tool with a type, a short comment, and an optional intent. The bridge auto-picks a position (just below the descending camera) and snaps the pitch into the descent’s scale.

The player can also touch three atmospheric pads (GLOW, AIR, DEEP) that sustain background voicings derived from the session scale. Pads are one-shot toggles, not turn-consuming.

5. Fade + artifact generation

When the 15th layer lands:

1. The master bus fades over 8 seconds. The recorder keeps capturing.
2. In parallel, the bridge calls Kimi K2 once for the journal and three times in parallel for the glyph candidates (the highest structural-score wins). See Artifacts → Journal and Artifacts → Glyph.
3. When the fade completes, the recorder is stopped and the WebM blob is pushed to Pinata. The CID comes back.

6. Mint

The player clicks MINT. The bridge sends a transaction to the Sonoglyph contract on Monad mainnet, embedding:

• the 32×16 glyph,
• the journal,
• the IPFS CID of the recording,
• the 6-char session code,
• the player’s chosen recipient address,
• the block timestamp.

Token URI rendering happens fully on-chain. See Chain → On-chain storage.