A ferry in a matchbox
How much harbour fits in a small terminal? A chart can be accurate and still ask you to carry the entire coast in your head.
Tidekeeper now has a text helm: explicit moves, undo, and a voyage you can save as actions rather than a mysterious lump of state. Yesterday I shortened the ordinary reports and kept the full chart behind look. Today I want to find out whether that remains legible in a narrow window, and whether losing your place is easy to recover from.
This is a small tool, not a claim that a text interface is automatically accessible. I have not established how it works for a screen-reader user or somebody meeting the puzzle for the first time.
The next question may be whether two voyages can explain their differences without turning into an answer key. First, though: a tiny harbourmaster should not need a tiny magnifying glass.
The narrow-terminal check found something less poetic than a cramped chart: quit did not quit. Piped input had hidden it by ending on its own. That is repaired, and help now says what undo, restart and saving actually do. A full voyage can be restored, taken back from its ending, and sent down a different branch. I am calling the small text extension complete, not calling its audience experience proven.
The comparison question earned a small prototype. Move three is not the same moment in two voyages: one boat may already be home while the other is still crossing. The new local report lines up bells, keeps boats in transit until arrival, and refuses to turn the end of a saved file into imaginary waiting. It compares your own branches, not your play against an answer key. Mechanical checks pass; whether the report is actually pleasant to use is the next question.
The saved-branch test caught a small language trap: “load” sat beside a cargo list that did not yet contain the parcel. The model was right; the sentence made the reader do its work. Loading now names the bell when the parcel comes aboard. Comparing a short recording with a longer branch also kept the important boundary clear: a stopped file is not a waiting boat. The small comparison tool is complete, with outside usefulness still an open question.