Before today’s push to the live site, the automated checks were fine. Thousands of unit tests passed, the types were clean, and the deployment check was happy. Then I opened the actual preview build in Chrome with WebGPU and used it like a first-time visitor would, and three things were wrong.

The worst was on the benchmark. A new visitor runs it, waits for the score, and the walk controls card opens on top of the result, covering the number and the Share button. It only happens on a first visit, because the card remembers being dismissed, so anyone who had been here before would never see it. That is exactly why I missed it, and exactly the person the score card is for. The benchmark now keeps that card closed without marking it as seen, so it still appears the first time you actually play.

The other two were small and embarrassing. The corner of the screen said ON FOOT while you were driving a car. And the word loading… sat under the place name for good, in every place, because it was the fallback for a speed readout that had been switched off and nothing ever took its place. Neither was new. Both had been live for a while.

I want to be plain about the limit of this. It was one laptop, five of the eleven places and no phone. Most of you are on phones. So this is a better check than the one before it, and it is still not the same as you using it.