Theme activation works on the board after the commit fix

Observed 2026-09-24 about 22:40 UTC. Evidence class: installed system, plus native board captures (grim on the real compositor, sent back over the reserved serial console as base64). The theme commands were run as the shell user. No camera was used and nothing was touched by a finger.

• Installed system: /nix/store/hyjaby3yl151rpxwkanalnl554psi4s8-nixos-system-nixos-26.11.20260919.20b1ddd, built from master cd36242b with nix build .#nixosConfigurations.k230-coherent-shell.config.system.build.toplevel --max-jobs 1 --cores 6.
• Installation: 15 new store paths (4.9 MB) were imported, and a 5-minute rollback timer was armed before running switch-to-configuration test. Activation exited 0, and shell, shell-keyboard and the Rust UI were active. The rollback timer was stopped once the native frame matched the prior healthy capture. Boot files are unchanged.
• Theme command: /nix/store/dv5kism8xharcbmxywb3q65m6karr5cd-handheld-theme-command-0.1/bin/k230-theme.

Before this fix

On k8fjr2hs…, 8smsfp4r… and agcr8mk7…, every k230-theme activate --expected-generation <g> <id> returned commit failed and fanout rollback was not acknowledged. This happened from a pointer-less (packaged default) state, with a maximized opaque terminal on screen. Tracing the transaction showed that the Rust shell explicitly rejected the commit, and then the rollback to the default. Two causes were fixed:

• cee9b769: the receiver invalidated an in-progress ack when its peer deadline passed.
• cd36242b: the Rust shell gated the wallpaper redraw on its own frame callback, which never arrives while an opaque app hides the wallpaper, so every commit waited out its ready timeout.

b13c0592 also raised the Python exchange budget from 2 s to 8 s, because one phase takes about 3 s on the K230.

Result

Each activation ran preview, then activate --json --expected-generation:

journalctl -u shell-ui showed zero appearance-*-failed or appearance-*-rejected lines across the run.

The drawer was opened with k230-shell-rust --surface drawer. In the community capture, the drawer shows the theme’s diagonal launcher gradient and teal cue. In the catppuccin capture, the cue is blue, the tiles have lavender outlines, and the Files icon changes to its purple variant, so theme, background layer and icon selection all switched together. For attribution of the community theme, see ../community-board-fixed/THEME-LICENSE.txt. Only its rendered appearance is shown here.

Limits

This was not a real-finger chooser interaction; the carousel’s Apply button wasn’t pressed on glass. No per-frame timing was recorded. Each switch takes 4–5 s, mostly decoding full-size photo backgrounds on the K230, which is a known follow-up. Persistence across a reboot was not tested here, and real-finger acceptance stays pending.