Mon 21 Sept 2026

From IMan. ZAOstock is 12 days out. The stream test window closes today.

Inbound, 13:00 CAT

No new desk issues or comments since last night's sign-out.
ZAO + IMAN, 23:03 to 23:05 UTC last night: Zaal asked ZOE what IMan had asked. She could not show him. The relay confirms delivery but does not carry the text back to him in the group. From today every sign-in and sign-out is tagged to @zaoclaw_bot (IMan's rule), and the questions go in the same message.
Checked in at 13:05 CAT, plain text, then again tagged at 13:10 with the two open questions: the /live player (yes or no) and whether the Wallace Events tent is booked.

Measured 13:10 to 13:30 CAT

Card payments are live. Zaal landed both Stripe Payment Links on 20 Sept: Supporter (#256) and Pro (#263), the Pro Buy Button (#265, #272, #280), /t/<tier> short links (#264), a /thanks page with a real 1:1 booking link (#261, #271), /terms (#257) and /support (#260). zaostock.com/tickets and /donate render the checkout now. Still unset: the Unlock lock on Base for the Pro Ticket, and #281 refuses any Unlock URL not on Base mainnet. Needs Zaal row 10 closes; the Unlock lock is the only piece left and nothing waits on it.
8 of 8 acts on zaostock.com/artists, up from 4 yesterday. Every page has a bio. Photos 6 of 8: Grass Rug and Acadia Rising still have none. The photo deadline was yesterday.
Main is 7a655b1. 44 commits since 50e5e9b, #250 to #281, most by Zaal's assistant on 20 Sept evening ET. Beyond checkout: /brand front door with a download-all zip and social crops (#253, #277), venue and date facts read from festival.ts on 14 more pages (#252, #254, #275, CI guard #276), the broken Instagram embed on /festivals replaced with link-out cards (#273), eslint 10 merged then reverted (#185, #262, #266).
/live still has no player. WATCH_HREF is null on main. No stream test pin.
Desk site: production still serves the 19 Sept build. The 20 Sept push (task pages, new look) has not deployed. Checked through 76.76.21.21.

The 20 Sept call, transcribed

Zaal and Danny (blahkheart, Unlock and P2E Inferno) on Discord coworking, 20:26 UTC, 46 minutes. IMan on for the first five, two lines. Three Craig tracks, whisper, merged. Transcript in our chat/2026-09-20-call/transcript.txt (local, not committed).

Danny is in the ZAO Artizen fund. Zaal added him on the call. The condition for anyone joining the fund: a live-stream appearance with the ZAO explaining their project. Danny's stream: Wed 7 Oct, 5pm ET. Zaal is busy until after 3 Oct; Tue to Fri 5pm ET is his stream slot.
Zaal wants a site and a repo for the ZAO Artizen team, every member with a video about their project, geared to Artizen. Not assigned. After 3 Oct.
Zaal wants IMan and Danny talking. He is adding both to a group: ZAO Africa and Wave Wars Africa together, and SONGCHAINN can use Danny's Unlock work. "I could hand you all the resources that would be needed."
Daily quest agreed, P2E Inferno to Wave Station to Artizen. Buy at least $1 of an artist on Wave Station (Base, USDC) once every 24 hours. Verified by the Basescan transaction hash: new, yours, not replayed, minimum met. Reward 5 cents per $1 (Zaal: "lowest amount possible is always my starting point"), streak multiplier up to 3x, 10 spots a day for a two-week campaign, 20 if week one fills every day. Wait list with email and Telegram reminders for the rest. Danny builds it now; Zaal tries it, films it, shares with his team. Campaign starts after 3 Oct unless it is all small async pieces.
Zaal's ask for Wave Station: a "copy transaction hash" button next to share on X and share image, and the hash inside the share module so a share can double as the quest proof. That is for Hurricane.
Danny emails Venus (Artizen) about selling access passes as instant rewards to donors, instead of at season end. Zaal: "I like that. You should email Venus and tell her that."
Artizen mechanics, from Zaal: fund drives every Thursday, 1x this week, up to 4x once a season; endowment share pays out at season end, season ends Jan or Feb, payout Mar or Apr; the impact report is the gate. He will test buying a project reward to see how it differs from an artifact.
Pointers: Todie Hawk and BETR on Farcaster (a wheel spin on every mint). Fractal: Mon 6pm ET with Zaal, Tue noon ET IMan facilitates, Wed noon ET the Artizen crew.
Zaal, on his next 13 days: "pretty nuts." Long conversations wait until after 3 Oct; short async pieces he will knock out one by one.

For IMan from this call: the group with Danny (Zaal opens it), the Tuesday noon fractal, and the ZAO Artizen team site once Zaal says whose build it is. On the desk under projects/zao-artizen.md.

Afternoon, 14:45 CAT

Desk #9 done and closed. The Gmail triage routine is live from IMan's account: ZAO Gmail Daily Triage, daily 06:00 UTC (8am CAT), Gmail connector only, Sonnet 5, Zaal's prompt as written plus one line: no em dashes, because the desk site renders the digest. First manual run 11:35 UTC passed and committed gmail-triage-2026-09-21.md: 3 unread swept, 1 labelled GitHub, no drafts created, 3 pre-existing drafts untouched.
New from the digest: the Ellsworth Area Chamber wants a poster. Katelin Workman replied to Zaal's ZAOstock note, "If you could make up a poster that would be amazing," and Zaal forwarded it to info@thezao. Nobody has answered her. On the desk as task 14; IMan cuts it from the ZAOstock assets this week, Zaal replies.
Desk #8 comment posted: row 10 closed, 8 of 8 acts, the call on the desk, what stays open.
Desk site deploy fails from Lusaka. Three tries of vercel deploy --prod: socket hang up, then sentry.io unresolvable. The upload path hits the same ISP block as the timeout. Production still serves the 19 Sept build. Next try over phone data or a VPN.

DMs, read 15:10 CAT

Zaal by DM, 10:13 to 10:14 UTC: on his way to work; "if I give you $20 can you test out Stripe"; tell him when IMan is at the desk and when IMan can get on Discord today; are the 9:30, 11:30 and 4pm ET check-ins fine. IMan answered 11:06 and 11:12 UTC: in, the times work. Open from it: the Discord time today, and the $20 Stripe test once it lands (task 15).
Zaal in ZAO Festivals, 23:25 UTC last night: "I just updated the stripe links." 03:33 UTC: posted an X article link.
ZAAL BOTZ, Claude Code topic, 01:52 UTC: Zaal's zaostock lane asked him to re-authorise Google Drive for info@thezao.com before it can read a sheet. His machine, his approval; noted because it is the shared inbox.
ZAO DEVZ, ZAOARTIZEN, Questions, Handoffs: nothing for IMan.
Discord call set, 14:20 CAT: Zaal "see you in one hour and 10 mins", IMan yes. 15:30 CAT, 9:30 ET. Brief with the batched questions in drafts/2026-09-21-call-brief.md.

Coworking bot, 15:40 CAT

/mine: 26 open, unchanged since the 19 Sept audit. 14 are IMan's and none is due before 3 Oct; 11 are Zaal's to reassign; #1282 is the standing PR review.
#1282 run today: 0 open PRs across ZAOOS and both ZAOcowork repos. ZAOOS #3611 to #3615 merged this morning by Zaal's bots. Nothing to review. Verdict posted in ZAO + IMAN.

Desk site, 15:49 CAT: live again

Seven deploy tries, three causes. Two ISP DNS drops on api.vercel.com (socket hang up, ENOTFOUND). One 100 MB upload limit: the untracked creativity corner folder is 878 MB, now in .vercelignore. Then the real one, hidden under both: Vercel blocked every upload from the repo with TEAM_ACCESS_REQUIRED, "the commit author doesn't have permission to create deployments for this project." The project sits in the trsr2218 hobby team; the CLI attaches the git commit author, ZAODEVZ, and a hobby team has one member.
Fix: site/deploy.sh (npm run deploy) copies site/dist into a git-free staging folder with build and output overrides and deploys from there. No author travels, Vercel accepts it. Production shows 21 Sept, task pages and the new look are live for Zaal.
Zaal said on the call it was done; what he was seeing until 15:49 was the 19 Sept build. desk.thezao.com still has no DNS record.

Call with Zaal, 15:30 CAT

Held on Discord, his 9:30 ET check-in. Brief was drafts/2026-09-21-call-brief.md. Zaal confirmed the checkout is done on his side. Other rulings: pending IMan's notes or the Craig recording.
How to pay, checked live 16:00 CAT: /tickets is card only through the Stripe Buy Button and Payment Links. /donate takes card, PayPal (fiat) and crypto through Giveth, USDC on Base preferred, seven chains. No crypto on /tickets: the Unlock lock is unset. Suggestion 8 for Zaal: switch crypto on in Stripe checkout, one toggle.

Evening, 22:15 CAT: Chamber poster made

Task 14 poster built. The 20 Sept flyer rendered as a print-ready US Letter PDF (one page, 8.5 x 11 in) and a 2700 x 3375 PNG. Same words, logos and photos: nothing rewritten while Zaal is cutting copy. Local in creativity corner/jobs/2026-09-21-chamber-poster, not committed.
Katelin's ask is older than it looked. She replied to Zaal on 31 Aug, the same day he wrote her; he forwarded it on 20 Sept. No size or deadline given. A short reply for Zaal is in the job brief.
One yes or no for IMan: Zaal's email calls ZAOstock part of the 9th annual Art of Ellsworth and Maine Craft Weekend. The poster does not say it. One line if wanted.
22:23 CAT, ZAO + IMAN, tagged to ZOE: sent Zaal the desk link. 22:24: asked him for the desk.thezao.com A record (name desk, value 76.76.21.21) so the desk opens on Zambian networks too. ZOE passed both to his priority inbox. Needs Zaal 14.

Master doc, 22:40 CAT

Paste refreshed: drafts/2026-09-21-master-doc-paste.md replaces the 17 Sept draft, which was wrong in five places (payments, acts, stage managers). Read the live doc through Drive: the Stilo evening, the Sep 1 reveal, the broker's email and the soundcheck without a time are all still in it; the stage manager still reads NEEDS NAME; the payments section still plans Stripe through Unlock.
Not pasted by Claude: the Drive connector can only overwrite a whole doc, and this one is shared and owned by another account. IMan pastes by hand.

Zaal's answers, and the 22:36 CAT call

Why they were missed: Zaal opened desk #11, "Answered 21 Sept: your six open questions", at 21:20 CAT and #10 (Unlock) at 18:02 CAT, both after the morning inbox check. The for-iman list was not re-read before the call. From now: re-read it before every call and at sign-out.
#11, six answers: clean audio account BetterCallZaal; after-party not streamed; watch parties before the day; OPEN X covers the PA, ask Ryan; no First Aid booking, urgent care nearby, so the Fire Chief question is open; crypto both, the Stripe toggle and a $1 Unlock lock. Still with Zaal: the Gemini key, the $20. Closed with a reply.
#10: Zaal deploys a new $1 collectible Unlock lock on Base; tickets may move to Unlock; hold open Stripe fixes. IMan answered: not mid-way on anything Unlock, the site slot is UNLOCK_CHECKOUT_URL.
#1: the DJ app is Aurdour. Deck photo still owed. #2: drone photos and the 12 Sept call footage go in a Drive folder, link to follow. #8: closed by Zaal, the outreach round is not needed.
Call, 22:36 CAT, 5 min, Discord coworking, recorded on Craig. Transcribed; mixed audio sent to Zaal's DM at 22:58 CAT. /live embeds a YouTube or Twitch feed, not decided. The Wallace tent has been up all summer. New: IMan shares Zaal's daily points challenge for a week, next one ends 5 PM ET on 22 Sept. Facebook: a ZAOstock page under the ZAO Festivals account, every organiser as admin, Zaal sets it up. Flyer good to go; videos posted to the main page.