Turn the praise down, and stop the footnotes shouting

The band made PERFECT earnable, which was the fix — but you learn a band, and
then the HUD is talking on every other serve again whatever the word says. So
the praise goes behind a shared cooldown (TUNE.praiseEvery, 14s), the same model
the umpire's asides have used all along for exactly this problem. Eight
band-perfect serves back to back now yield one word. The bright click in the pull
is the reliable feedback for a good draw; the word was only ever garnish, and
garnish on every plate is just food.

And the free-floating slot drops 24 -> 18. It shares that slot with CLEAR THE
COURT, DOUBLE KILL, RETURNED and GAME N — half of which are a footnote to
something you already watched happen. Sharing the loud FACE with the milestone
cards is right; sharing their SIZE made every footnote read as a milestone.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

HANDOFF.md

@@ -343,7 +343,13 @@ zombie (now an occasional opponent, `TUNE.racketEvery`, not the every-game fixtu
   `perfectMs` window, the slingshot earns it by STOPPING in `pullFull..pullFull*perfectBand`. The
   draw clicks brighter when you enter that band and goes quiet when you overshoot — without that
   audible target it would be invisible skill. The word itself rotates through `PRAISE` (cycled, not
-  random: the same word twice running reads as a stuck HUD element, not as praise).
+  random: the same word twice running reads as a stuck HUD element, not as praise) and sits behind
+  `TUNE.praiseEvery`, the same shared-cooldown model the umpire's asides use — you LEARN to hit the
+  band, and then a per-serve word is noise again whatever it says. The click is the feedback for a
+  good pull; the word is garnish.
+- **The free-floating slot is 18px, not card-sized.** Half of what lands in it (the praise words,
+  `RETURNED`, `DOUBLE KILL`) is a footnote to something you already watched happen. Sharing the loud
+  FACE with the milestone cards is right; sharing their SIZE made every footnote read as a milestone.
 
 ## Session log: the sidestep, and two type registers (2026-08-03)