Telegraphs — readable threat

What it is. The tell: the flash, wind-up, or warning tile that fires before a threat can hurt you, giving a window to react. A telegraph is the contract that makes reactive play possible — without it, damage is a dice roll disguised as a fight. It is the readable half of every system-combat-model.

Player fantasy / why it’s fun. “I saw it coming and I moved.” Every dodged blow is the player’s skill, not the game’s mercy. A death after a telegraph is fair — you read it or you didn’t; a death with no telegraph is the designer’s fault.

When to use / when NOT

Telegraph when…	Skip when…
A threat can kill/hurt in real time	Damage is player-initiated only (you hit them)
Perfect information is the promise (tactics)	The threat is a slow, always-visible hazard (lava)
A boss/elite has committal, punishable moves	The genre’s fun is not reacting (idle, puzzle)

Turn-based games still telegraph — they just do it as shown intent on the board (the arrow, the highlighted tiles), not a timed flash.

Variants

Telegraph	Channel	Window	Anchor	Note
Flash / color wind-up	visual	~0.45s (§4)	Zelda-likes	the default reactive tell
Wind-up animation	visual	scales to move weight	brawlers, `anchor-shadow-of-mordor`	big moves telegraph longer
Audio cue	audio	leads the visual	rhythm, horror	a growl before the lunge
Ground marker / AoE	visual	fills over the window	ARPGs, bosses	the red circle grows, then fires
Shown intent (turn)	visual, static	until next turn	`anchor-into-the-breach`	the arrow you rewrite
Charge / meter	visual	fills to threshold	bosses	commit-punish window

Tuning levers

Lever	Does	Healthy range
Reaction window	telegraph frames before the hitbox	~0.45s flash floor (FUN.md §4); scale up for heavier moves
Salience	how loud the tell reads	brightest thing after the avatar (JUICE salience gate)
Recovery	punish window after the move whiffs	long enough to answer; short enough to stay dangerous
Overlap budget	simultaneous telegraphs	few enough that each still reads (bullet-hell coherence, §7)
Channels	senses the tell fires on	≥ 2 for the big ones (sfx + flash)

The window is a derived inequality (FUN.md law 3): reaction window ≥ human reaction floor + the frames the dodge costs. Don’t vibe it — compute it.

How it wires to Hayao

The gate is real. telegraphIssues(timeline, minFrames) (in @hayao) walks a per-frame TelegraphFrame[] ({ telegraphing, active }) and flags any hitbox that goes live after fewer than minFrames of contiguous wind-up. This is the direct proof that reactive play is possible.
Store tells as DIRECTIONS, not target tiles. FUN.md §12: a tactics telegraph is a direction on the unit, so a shove/redirect rewrites the outcome for free — the future is editable, which is the whole fun of the genre. Encode the intent, resolve it late.
The tell is cosmetic; the timing is sim time. The flash/marker are view; the window is world.time and fixed dt (FUN.md law 6). Wire the flash to the sim event, never to wall-clock — a replay reproduces the exact tell.
Reference: the top-down §4 pattern (kiting bot reads flashes); anchor-into-the-breach DNA for shown-intent telegraphs.

Fails when…

No wind-up. A hitbox that goes live cold is an unfair death — telegraphIssues fails and it should.
The tell is illegible. Too dim, too brief, or buried under five other flashes. If the salience gate can’t find it, neither can the player (pattern-readability).
The telegraph lies. The flash points left, the hit lands right. Perfect information demands perfect honesty (FUN.md §12) — shown must equal resolved.
Uniform windows. Every move telegraphs 0.45s regardless of weight, so nothing reads as scary. Scale the tell to the threat.

Verify

FUN.md §4 — ~0.45s flash makes reactive play possible; kiting-bot telemetry with an hp floor.
FUN.md §12 — telegraphs as directions; intent honesty (resolve each telegraph, compare to the shown number/arrow).
telegraphIssues(timeline, minFrames) → VERIFICATION Channel 4.
Salience: salienceIssues proves the tell out-contrasts scenery (JUICE Part 2/3).

Composes with

system-combat-model — the telegraph is the reactive half of the resolution rule.
system-boss-design — bosses live or die on legible, escalating tells across phases.
system-enemy-ai — the AI must commit to a telegraphed move, not cancel it.
pattern-readability — signposting and salience are how a tell gets read.