fix(v3): recycle library grid cards on scroll instead of rebuilding the window (#742)

The virtualized v3 Songs grid rebuilt its entire visible window
(grid.innerHTML = _renderCardsRange(...) + a full wireCards pass) every
time it slid by one row. Each row-boundary crossing was therefore a heavy
synchronous frame — reparse ~60 cards, re-attach hundreds of listeners,
reflow — that stalled the main thread and buffered held-arrow key-repeats,
flushing them in a burst. Testers saw the library "go super fast for a
second then slow down," skipping "every so many scrolls," up or down, at
the same spots each time. It hitched scrolling back up over already-loaded
songs too, because the cost was DOM teardown, not fetching.

renderWindow() now reconciles the window in place: it reuses the card
nodes that stay on-screen and builds only the row that enters/leaves
(~6 nodes per slide instead of ~60). Nodes are keyed by absolute index
(data-idx) with a real-vs-skeleton + select-mode signature (data-sig) so
hole-fills after a page fetch and select-mode toggles still rebuild
exactly the nodes that changed. wireCards()'s existing data-wired guard
then wires only the freshly-built nodes, so per-slide listener churn drops
with it. Everything keyed off data-fn (favorites, ⋮ menu, right-click,
selection, accuracy badges, A–Z rail) is unaffected.

Follow-up to the stage-2 virtualized grid (#636 item 3). Frontend-only.

Tests: tests/js/v3_songs_window_recycle.test.js — window stays [start,end)
contiguous and in-window node identity is reused across a down-then-up
scroll; select-mode toggle and a rail-seek jump rebuild correctly.

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: byrongamatos <xasiklas@gmail.com>

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ and this project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0
 - **Player frame-time hotspots removed (trace-backed) + weak-hardware hardening.** A Chrome performance trace of a 3D-highway session surfaced two core per-frame layout-thrash sources, now fixed: the highway's visibility check read `canvas.offsetParent` every rAF frame (forces style/layout recalc — now sampled every 10th frame with a cached value, force-refreshed on init/canvas-replace/resize/override-clear), and the v3 player chrome loop called `matches(':hover')` per frame and unconditionally rewrote the Up-Next pill's `textContent`/bar width at 6 Hz (now hover-tracked via mouseenter/mouseleave, DOM writes only on value change, progress bar moved from `width` to compositor-only `scaleX`). The 3D highway pre-warms shader programs (`ren.compile`) and deterministic label textures at init — and chart-dependent chord/section label textures on first draw — so first-appearance shader-compile/texture-upload frame spikes move into the load spinner. For weaker hardware: the per-frame renderer bundle is now a single reused object instead of a fresh ~35-field allocation per frame (object identity is stable and meaningless; array fields still swap reference on chart changes), custom viz get `bundle.lowerBoundT`/`bundle.lowerBoundTime` binary-search helpers for visible-window culling, the default 2D highway's beat lines no longer scan every beat in the song per frame, and the 3D highway stops reading `localStorage` per frame (1 Hz poll) and caches its lyrics text-measurement layout per displayed line instead of re-measuring every syllable every frame. A second, throttled-CPU trace pass additionally removed: shader-program re-resolution churn from label texture swaps (`material.needsUpdate` is now only set on a null↔texture transition — swapping between two cached label textures never changes the compiled program), the 3D highway's per-frame `getBoundingClientRect` layout read in its canvas-size self-check (now every 10th frame, still immediate on backing-store change), and the core 60 Hz HUD clock rewriting `textContent` on every tick (now write-on-change, ~1/s). The dominant residual — steady `getParameters` shader-program re-resolution (~4% of throttled main thread) — turned out to be Three r158+'s transparent-DoubleSide two-pass rendering, which sets `material.needsUpdate` twice per object per frame; all 18 of the 3D highway's transparent DoubleSide materials are flat unlit quads (labels, rails, chord frames, lanes), so they now declare `forceSinglePass: true`, eliminating the recompile churn and halving those objects' draw calls.
 
 ### Fixed
+- **v3 Songs grid: fixed the scroll stutter that "skips every so many scrolls," up or down.** The virtualized grid rebuilt its **entire** visible window (`grid.innerHTML = …` + a full `wireCards` pass) every time it slid by one row, so each row-boundary crossing was a heavy synchronous frame that stalled the main thread and buffered held-arrow key-repeats into a visible lurch (a tester's "super fast for a second then slowed down") at fixed scroll offsets — in **both directions and regardless of whether the page was already loaded** (the cost was DOM teardown, not fetching, which is why scrolling back up over cached songs hitched too). `renderWindow()` now **reconciles the window in place**: it reuses the card nodes that stay on-screen and builds only the row that enters/leaves (~6 nodes per slide instead of ~60), keyed by absolute index with a real-vs-skeleton + select-mode signature so hole-fills (after a page fetch) and select-mode toggles still rebuild exactly the nodes that changed. `wireCards`'s `data-wired` guard then wires only the freshly-built nodes, so per-slide listener churn drops with it. Follow-up to the stage-2 virtualized grid (got-feedback/feedBack#636 item 3). Frontend-only: `static/v3/songs.js`. Tests: `tests/js/v3_songs_window_recycle.test.js` (window stays `[start,end)` contiguous + in-window node identity reused across a down-then-up scroll; select-mode toggle and rail-seek jump rebuild correctly).
 - **Starter content seeds again (and now ships The Adicts' "Ode to Joy").** `_BUILTIN_STARTER_SOURCES` still listed `beethoven-ode_to_joy.feedpak` after that pack was deleted, and never wired up its replacement `the_adicts-ode-to-joy_vst_cover.feedpak` that landed on disk. The listed-but-missing file made the all-present gate never fire, so **no** starter songs seeded on first run. Synced the manifest to what's on disk (Für Elise, Star Spangled Banner, The Adicts' Ode to Joy). Tests: `tests/test_builtin_starter_seed.py` (the present/unlisted guards were red on `main`).
 - **Edit Metadata now writes into `.feedpak` files, not just legacy `.sloppak` ones.** `lib/songmeta.py`'s suffix gate predated the format rename — core reads both suffixes everywhere else (`sloppak.SONG_EXTS`), but the metadata writer only dispatched on `.sloppak`, so editing a zip-form `.feedpak`'s title/artist/album/year silently fell back to a DB-only update. That looked fine until the next **full library rescan** re-derived metadata from the file and reverted the edit (directory-form packages were unaffected — they dispatch on manifest presence, not suffix). The gate now accepts both package suffixes. Tests: `tests/test_songmeta.py` `TestWriteSongMetadata` (both zip suffixes, mixed-case suffix, directory form, unknown-suffix fallback).
 - **3D Drum & Keys highways now re-frame on fullscreen/layout drift under splitscreen.** The guitar/bass `highway_3d` self-detects when its panel canvas changes size and re-runs `applySize()` every frame, because the splitscreen host overrides `hw.resize` and never calls `renderer.resize()`. The drum and keys highways lacked that fallback — they only re-framed when the host explicitly called `resize(w, h)` — so their panels stayed framed for the pre-fullscreen size while the guitar/bass panels adapted (visible as a too-small, off-center highway after maximizing a split-screen session). Both draw loops now port `highway_3d`'s per-frame drift check: they re-apply on backing-store change (`canvas.width/height`) AND on CSS-box drift (`clientWidth/clientHeight` vs the last applied logical size, throttled to every 10th frame), and reset the tracking in `destroy()` so a reused instance re-frames on the next song. `plugins/drum_highway_3d` → 0.3.1, `plugins/keys_highway_3d` → 0.1.1. Tests: `tests/js/drum_keys_highway_3d_resize_reframe.test.js`.

static/v3/songs.js

@@ -1859,13 +1859,57 @@
             '</div>';
     }
 
-    function _renderCardsRange(start, end) {
+    // Signature of the card at absolute index i: real-card vs skeleton, plus the
-        let html = '';
+    // select-mode it was built under. A change here is the ONLY reason a recycled
+    // node must be rebuilt (a hole filled after a fetch, or select mode toggled) —
+    // otherwise the node is reused as-is across window slides.
+    function _cardSig(i) {
+        return (state.songs[i] ? 'r' : 's') + (state.selectMode ? '1' : '0');
+    }
+
+    function _buildCardNode(i) {
+        const s = state.songs[i];
+        const tmp = document.createElement('div');
+        tmp.innerHTML = s ? songCard(s) : _skeletonCard();
+        const node = tmp.firstElementChild;
+        node.setAttribute('data-idx', String(i));
+        node.setAttribute('data-sig', _cardSig(i));
+        return node;
+    }
+
+    // Reconcile the grid's children to exactly cover [start, end) in ascending
+    // index order, REUSING the card nodes that stay in-window. Sliding the window
+    // one row now mutates only the row that entered/left instead of tearing down +
+    // rebuilding (+ re-wiring) the whole ~60-card window every frame — that
+    // per-slide teardown was the main-thread stall behind the "library skips every
+    // so many scrolls, up or down" report (the stall buffers held-arrow key-repeats
+    // that then flush in a burst). wireCards()'s data-wired guard wires only the
+    // freshly-built nodes.
+    function _syncWindow(grid, start, end) {
+        // Pass 1: drop nodes that left the window, are untagged, or whose content
+        // signature is stale (skeleton→real, or select-mode toggled). What remains
+        // is a reusable, correctly-rendered subset in ascending DOM order.
+        for (const el of Array.from(grid.children)) {
+            const a = el.getAttribute('data-idx');
+            const idx = a == null ? NaN : Number(a);
+            if (!(idx >= start && idx < end) || el.getAttribute('data-sig') !== _cardSig(idx)) {
+                el.remove();
+            }
+        }
+        // Pass 2: walk [start, end) in order, reusing survivors and inserting new
+        // nodes into their correct slot; `ref` tracks the child expected next.
+        const existing = new Map();
+        for (const el of grid.children) existing.set(Number(el.getAttribute('data-idx')), el);
+        let ref = grid.firstChild;
         for (let i = start; i < end; i++) {
-            const s = state.songs[i];
+            let node = existing.get(i);
-            html += s ? songCard(s) : _skeletonCard();
+            if (!node) node = _buildCardNode(i);
+            if (node === ref) {
+                ref = ref.nextSibling;
+            } else {
+                grid.insertBefore(node, ref);
+            }
         }
-        return html;
     }
 
     // Fetch a single OFFSET page into the sparse store. Uses the stage-1 keyset
@@ -1983,7 +2027,7 @@
         }
         if (_closeCardMenu) _closeCardMenu();   // its DOM is about to be replaced
         grid.style.top = (firstRow * rowH) + 'px';
-        grid.innerHTML = _renderCardsRange(start, end);
+        _syncWindow(grid, start, end);   // recycle in-window nodes; only the entering/leaving row rebuilds
         wireCards(grid);
         decorateTuningChips(grid);   // colour tuning chips by working-tuning match (async, feature-detected)
         state.winRange = { start, end };

tests/js/v3_songs_window_recycle.test.js

@@ -0,0 +1,143 @@
+'use strict';
+const { test } = require('node:test');
+const assert = require('node:assert');
+
+// Mirror of static/v3/songs.js _cardSig / _buildCardNode / _syncWindow (the
+// windowed-grid recycle path, #636 item 3 follow-up) — keep in sync. Exercised
+// against a minimal DOM shim so the reconcile invariants are covered off-browser:
+//   (1) after every slide the grid's children are exactly [start,end) ascending,
+//   (2) card nodes for indices that stay in-window are REUSED (identity kept) —
+//       i.e. sliding one row never tears down + rebuilds the whole window (the
+//       per-slide stall behind the "skips every so many scrolls" report), and
+//   (3) a select-mode toggle rebuilds the visible window (checkbox/ring change).
+
+let NODE_SEQ = 0;
+function makeNode() {
+    const attrs = {};
+    return {
+        _uid: ++NODE_SEQ,
+        parent: null,
+        getAttribute(k) { return k in attrs ? attrs[k] : null; },
+        setAttribute(k, v) { attrs[k] = String(v); },
+        get nextSibling() {
+            const p = this.parent; if (!p) return null;
+            const i = p._kids.indexOf(this);
+            return i >= 0 && i + 1 < p._kids.length ? p._kids[i + 1] : null;
+        },
+        remove() {
+            const p = this.parent; if (!p) return;
+            const i = p._kids.indexOf(this);
+            if (i >= 0) p._kids.splice(i, 1);
+            this.parent = null;
+        },
+    };
+}
+function makeGrid() {
+    return {
+        _kids: [],
+        get children() { return this._kids.slice(); },
+        get firstChild() { return this._kids[0] || null; },
+        insertBefore(node, ref) {
+            if (node.parent) node.remove();
+            if (ref == null) this._kids.push(node);
+            else { const i = this._kids.indexOf(ref); this._kids.splice(i < 0 ? this._kids.length : i, 0, node); }
+            node.parent = this;
+            return node;
+        },
+    };
+}
+
+// --- state + the three helpers, mirrored from songs.js ---
+const state = { songs: [], selectMode: false };
+for (let i = 0; i < 5000; i++) state.songs[i] = { filename: 'song' + i };
+
+function _cardSig(i) { return (state.songs[i] ? 'r' : 's') + (state.selectMode ? '1' : '0'); }
+function _buildCardNode(i) {
+    const node = makeNode();
+    node.setAttribute('data-idx', String(i));
+    node.setAttribute('data-sig', _cardSig(i));
+    return node;
+}
+function _syncWindow(grid, start, end) {
+    for (const el of Array.from(grid.children)) {
+        const a = el.getAttribute('data-idx');
+        const idx = a == null ? NaN : Number(a);
+        if (!(idx >= start && idx < end) || el.getAttribute('data-sig') !== _cardSig(idx)) el.remove();
+    }
+    const existing = new Map();
+    for (const el of grid.children) existing.set(Number(el.getAttribute('data-idx')), el);
+    let ref = grid.firstChild;
+    for (let i = start; i < end; i++) {
+        let node = existing.get(i);
+        if (!node) node = _buildCardNode(i);
+        if (node === ref) ref = ref.nextSibling;
+        else grid.insertBefore(node, ref);
+    }
+}
+
+const idxOf = (g) => g._kids.map((n) => Number(n.getAttribute('data-idx')));
+const uidOf = (g) => { const m = new Map(); for (const n of g._kids) m.set(Number(n.getAttribute('data-idx')), n._uid); return m; };
+function assertContig(g, start, end) {
+    const a = idxOf(g);
+    assert.strictEqual(a.length, end - start, `len == ${end - start}`);
+    for (let k = 0; k < a.length; k++) assert.strictEqual(a[k], start + k, `child ${k} == ${start + k}`);
+}
+
+const COLS = 6, WIN = 12 * COLS; // 12 rows visible
+
+test('window stays [start,end) contiguous scrolling down, one row at a time', () => {
+    const grid = makeGrid();
+    for (let row = 0; row < 40; row++) {
+        const start = row * COLS;
+        _syncWindow(grid, start, start + WIN);
+        assertContig(grid, start, start + WIN);
+    }
+});
+
+test('in-window card nodes are reused across a slide (no whole-window teardown)', () => {
+    const grid = makeGrid();
+    _syncWindow(grid, 0, WIN);
+    const before = uidOf(grid);
+    _syncWindow(grid, COLS, COLS + WIN); // slide down one row
+    const after = uidOf(grid);
+    let reused = 0, built = 0;
+    for (const [i, uid] of after) (before.get(i) === uid ? reused++ : built++);
+    assert.strictEqual(built, COLS, `only the entering row is built (${COLS}), got ${built}`);
+    assert.strictEqual(reused, WIN - COLS, 'every overlapping card node is reused');
+});
+
+test('scrolling back UP reuses nodes too and keeps order', () => {
+    const grid = makeGrid();
+    for (let row = 0; row < 30; row++) _syncWindow(grid, row * COLS, row * COLS + WIN);
+    let prev = uidOf(grid);
+    for (let row = 29; row >= 0; row--) {
+        const start = row * COLS;
+        _syncWindow(grid, start, start + WIN);
+        assertContig(grid, start, start + WIN);
+        const now = uidOf(grid);
+        for (const [i, uid] of prev) if (i >= start && i < start + WIN) assert.strictEqual(now.get(i), uid, `idx ${i} reused going up`);
+        prev = now;
+    }
+});
+
+test('a select-mode toggle rebuilds the visible window', () => {
+    const grid = makeGrid();
+    const start = 6 * COLS;
+    _syncWindow(grid, start, start + WIN);
+    const before = uidOf(grid);
+    state.selectMode = true;
+    _syncWindow(grid, start, start + WIN);
+    const after = uidOf(grid);
+    let rebuilt = 0;
+    for (const [i, uid] of before) if (after.get(i) !== uid) rebuilt++;
+    assert.strictEqual(rebuilt, WIN, 'select-mode change rebuilds every visible card');
+    assertContig(grid, start, start + WIN);
+    state.selectMode = false;
+});
+
+test('a large jump (rail seek) rebuilds cleanly with no stale survivors', () => {
+    const grid = makeGrid();
+    _syncWindow(grid, 0, WIN);
+    _syncWindow(grid, 1000 * COLS, 1000 * COLS + WIN); // non-overlapping jump
+    assertContig(grid, 1000 * COLS, 1000 * COLS + WIN);
+});