diff --git a/.pi/skills/yellowjacket-dev/SKILL.md b/.pi/skills/yellowjacket-dev/SKILL.md
index b252f1b..c0398ff 100644
--- a/.pi/skills/yellowjacket-dev/SKILL.md
+++ b/.pi/skills/yellowjacket-dev/SKILL.md
@@ -158,7 +158,7 @@ only climb when it cannot.
 | You changed | Run | Cost |
 |---|---|---|
 | A Lit component, a store, the shortcut service | `make ui-test` | ~2 s, no app |
-| …and it renders differently | `make ui-visual` | + 6 baselines, opt-in |
+| …and it renders differently | `make ui-visual` | + 10 baselines, opt-in, never gates |
 | Any Go code | `make test` | 3 passes, ~2 min |
 | A service that emits events | `make test` — assert on the payload, see `backend/queue/emit_test.go` | in-process, no app |
 | A bound method or a bound struct field | `make bindings` then `make ui-test` | ~1.5 s + 2 s |
@@ -180,6 +180,13 @@ less than it looks.)
 
 Two rules about climbing:
 
+- **If you moved a component's geometry, run `make ui-visual` and
+  refresh that component's baseline in the same commit.** Nothing else
+  will: it is the one tier in this repo no hook and no CI job runs, and
+  it cannot be one — its references are machine-specific, measured in
+  [references/ui-tier.md](references/ui-tier.md). Four of them drifted
+  across three merges before anyone noticed (#196). Read the image;
+  never bless a reference you did not cause.
 - **A component test passing is not the app rendering.** If you touched
   anything in `frontend/src`, verify it in the real app too — start it
   headless, `screenshot --filename=/tmp/shot.png`, and *read the PNG*.
diff --git a/.pi/skills/yellowjacket-dev/references/ui-tier.md b/.pi/skills/yellowjacket-dev/references/ui-tier.md
index f25904d..66eb0d8 100644
--- a/.pi/skills/yellowjacket-dev/references/ui-tier.md
+++ b/.pi/skills/yellowjacket-dev/references/ui-tier.md
@@ -78,9 +78,58 @@ synchronously.
   Microtasks and not a timer, deliberately: a timer hangs forever under
   the suites that install fake ones.
 
-Visual baselines are font-hinting and compositing sensitive, which is
-why they are opt-in: they only mean anything on the machine that
-recorded them.
+## The visual tier does not gate, and that is measured (#196)
+
+`make ui-visual` is the same suite with nine `toMatchScreenshot`
+baselines switched on. **Nothing runs it but a person**, deliberately,
+and the reason is a number rather than a preference: the committed
+baselines were recorded on Arch, and replayed in a bare `ubuntu:24.04`
+container — CI's `check` image — three of them fail for reasons that
+have nothing to do with any component.
+
+| baseline | Arch | ubuntu:24.04 |
+|---|---|---|
+| `page-header` filtered-by-search | passes | ratio 0.03 differ, against a 0.02 allowance |
+| `track-info` | passes | ratio 0.03 differ |
+| `seek-bar` | 1152×18 | 1152×17 |
+
+The two references that were genuinely stale did not even agree about
+their *new* size — `now-playing` renders 1152×65 on Arch and 1152×64 in
+the container. So moving CI's `check` job from `make ui-test` to
+`make ui-visual` is not a one-line change: it needs a second,
+container-recorded baseline set, which every local run would then fail
+against. That is the same trap the other way round, and a pre-push hook
+is the same fault again — one machine's baselines against everybody
+else's renderer.
+
+So the tier stays local and opt-in, and the rule that replaces the gate
+is:
+
+- **A change that moves a component's geometry refreshes that
+  component's reference in the same commit, having read the image.**
+  Look at the PNG; the dimensions in the failure message are the cheap
+  half of the answer.
+- **Never refresh a reference you did not cause.** #196 exists because
+  four of them drifted across three unrelated merges, and every red run
+  made the next person likelier to stop running the tier than to read
+  it.
+- **State the world the shot is taken in.** The stores are singletons,
+  so a visual case that sets nothing photographs whatever the previous
+  case left behind — which is how the sidebar's baseline came to have
+  Tracks lit and `now-playing`'s to be playing from a dynamic mix.
+- **`make ui-visual-update UI_ARGS=<path>` does not filter** and
+  re-records *every* baseline, blessing any stale one in silence:
+  vitest's `--update` takes the following positional as its value. Until
+  #204 lands, record one file with
+  `cd frontend && YJ_VISUAL=1 npx vitest run --update=true <path>`, and
+  check `git status` before committing either way.
+
+What the tier is worth, for the record: it is a *layout* check, blind to
+colour (the component tier has no `:root`, so it renders the fallbacks —
+`make ui-visual` passed unchanged through a whole palette rewrite,
+twice), and it has caught one thing nothing else could — swapping
+`library-status-indicator`'s `<button>` for a `<span>` lost the UA
+stylesheet's `box-sizing` and grew the badge 36→38px.
 
 ## Bindings
 
diff --git a/CLAUDE.md b/CLAUDE.md
index 97eb7a5..f422da6 100644
--- a/CLAUDE.md
+++ b/CLAUDE.md
@@ -3424,6 +3424,25 @@ Pre-commit hooks verify generated code is fresh — always run `make generate` a
 Tests use `database.NewTestDB(t)` for in-memory SQLite, built by the same
 `applySchema` production uses so the two cannot diverge. Test audio fixtures live in `test_data/music_library_test/`. Table-driven tests are the norm.
 
+**`make ui-visual` is the one tier nothing but a person runs, and it
+cannot become one.** Its ten `toMatchScreenshot` baselines were recorded
+on a developer's Arch box; replayed in a bare `ubuntu:24.04` container
+— CI's `check` image — three of them fail on font metrics and
+compositing alone (`track-info` and one `page-header` shot at a 0.03
+mismatch ratio against a 0.02 allowance, `seek-bar` one pixel shorter),
+and two components disagree about their own height between the two
+machines. So CI keeps running `make ui-test`, which is the same suite
+with the comparisons off, and a pre-push hook would be the same fault
+with the machines swapped. What replaces the gate is a rule, in
+`.pi/skills/yellowjacket-dev/references/ui-tier.md`: **a change that
+moves a component's geometry refreshes that component's baseline in the
+same commit, having read the image, and never one it did not cause**.
+That is #196, which was four stale references accumulated across three
+unrelated merges — a red tier nobody could read, which is how it stayed
+red. A visual case must also **state the world it photographs**, since
+the stores are singletons and a case that sets nothing records whatever
+the previous one left in them.
+
 ## Git Workflow
 
 Feature branches and PRs are the only way in: **`main` is a protected
diff --git a/frontend/test/components/__screenshots__/chrome.test.ts/app-sidebar-chromium-linux.png b/frontend/test/components/__screenshots__/chrome.test.ts/app-sidebar-chromium-linux.png
index 16a793a..5dee3aa 100644
Binary files a/frontend/test/components/__screenshots__/chrome.test.ts/app-sidebar-chromium-linux.png and b/frontend/test/components/__screenshots__/chrome.test.ts/app-sidebar-chromium-linux.png differ
diff --git a/frontend/test/components/__screenshots__/now-playing.test.ts/now-playing-chromium-linux.png b/frontend/test/components/__screenshots__/now-playing.test.ts/now-playing-chromium-linux.png
index 4444ae8..c9ff005 100644
Binary files a/frontend/test/components/__screenshots__/now-playing.test.ts/now-playing-chromium-linux.png and b/frontend/test/components/__screenshots__/now-playing.test.ts/now-playing-chromium-linux.png differ
diff --git a/frontend/test/components/chrome.test.ts b/frontend/test/components/chrome.test.ts
index 5cb7290..b2dc871 100644
--- a/frontend/test/components/chrome.test.ts
+++ b/frontend/test/components/chrome.test.ts
@@ -137,6 +137,11 @@ describe('<app-sidebar>', () => {
   });
 
   it('looks the way it did last time', async () => {
+    // Stated rather than inherited: `activeViewStore` is a singleton, so
+    // without this the shot records whichever view the *previous* case
+    // left in it and the reference moves when the file is reordered.
+    activeViewStore.setView('home', true);
+
     const el = await fixture('app-sidebar');
 
     await visual(el, 'app-sidebar');
diff --git a/frontend/test/components/now-playing.test.ts b/frontend/test/components/now-playing.test.ts
index a269311..2b46e80 100644
--- a/frontend/test/components/now-playing.test.ts
+++ b/frontend/test/components/now-playing.test.ts
@@ -366,6 +366,16 @@ describe('<now-playing>', () => {
     const el = await fixture('now-playing');
 
     emit(Events.TrackChanged, { ...TRACK, trackChangeId: 6 });
+    // Stated rather than inherited: the queue store is a singleton, so
+    // without this the shot records whichever source the *previous*
+    // case left in it and the reference moves when the file is
+    // reordered. Three lines is what the bar renders while playing
+    // from somewhere, which is the arrangement worth recording.
+    setQueue([queueTrack(1, 'Ashes to Ashes')], 0, {
+      type: 'album',
+      id: 7,
+      label: 'Scary Monsters',
+    });
     await flush();
     await el.updateComplete;