The length of the flick is the strength of the aim, and you can see it leave

The rally flick was read as three lanes: sideways past 0.38 of its own length
took the whole corner, a hair under it took dead centre, and nothing lived in
between — "sometimes applied very strong, sometimes it barely does anything",
with no way to tell which one you had asked for. swayOf reads the swipe's LENGTH
as a continuous strength, exactly as the serve already did, and doHit spends
that instead of the lane vote. Keys keep the full lane; the opponent's aim has
no length and is untouched.

That is also what hands the OUT back: going out was never a choice, because
every aimed shot took the full width and then the scatter on top. Below about
0.7 of a full swipe — the line minus aimError, over the width timing can earn —
the worst mistiming in the game cannot sail it now, and above it the old risk
curve is exactly as tested.

And the aim is drawn while the thumb is still moving: the placement ring is a
receipt that arrives with the ball already gone, so the same ring is shown live
with a ray from the player's feet, cream while the ask is safe and hot once the
sway crosses that derived threshold. The receipt goes red when the shot really
is out, so the two rings together are the lesson.

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

PROJECT.md

@@ -493,6 +493,35 @@ it in one of the pauses") — the first cut rode the incoming ball, at the momen
 least attention to spare. Touch only, rally modes only, and the tap lesson wins if both qualify:
 teaching placement to someone who cannot reach the ball is the wrong lesson.
 
+**...and its LENGTH is its strength** (2026-08-18). Oliver: *"the flick to aim sometimes is applied
+very strong, sometimes it barely does anything. this leads to a lack of agency, the player can't
+really tell if there was skill or luck."* He was right and it was the gesture reader, not the feel:
+the rally flick was quantised to THREE LANES (`ax`, a swipe past 0.38 of its own length sideways),
+so two neighbouring gestures differed by the whole court and nothing lived in between. `gameplay.
+swayOf` reads the swipe's length as a continuous 0..1 (`TUNE.flickMin`..`flickFull`, px) exactly as
+the SERVE already did, and `doHit` spends that instead of `ax`. Keys have no length, so they keep
+the full lane, and the AI's aim (no `mag`) is untouched.
+
+**This is also what hands the OUT back to the player.** Oliver: *"the number one reason i die is
+that i myself keep firing balls into the out."* Going out was never his choice — every aimed shot
+took the FULL width and then `err()` on top, so the dice decided. Width follows the swipe now, so
+the risk band has a floor the player can stop short of: **below `(line - aimError) / (flickWidth *
+flickReach)` ≈ 0.7 of a full swipe, the worst mistiming in the game cannot put the ball out**, and
+above it the old risk curve is untouched. The tested contract from the pass before this one still
+holds — a perfectly timed flick never sails, a badly timed full one can.
+
+**THE AIM IS DRAWN WHILE THE THUMB IS STILL MOVING.** Oliver asked to *"visualize the strength of my
+flick at flick-time"*, and he was asking for the half the placement ring cannot give: the ring is a
+RECEIPT, it arrives with the ball already gone. `G.swipe` (set by input.js during the drag, cleared
+on release) draws the same target ring live, plus a RAY from the player's feet — the ring alone sits
+deep in perspective and 300 ms is not long enough to go looking for it. Cream while the ask is safe,
+`UI.hot` once the sway crosses that derived threshold: the colour is the answer to "was I too hard".
+Only inside the window where a release would still BE a flick (`FLICK_MS`/`TUNE.flickMin`, the same
+gate `endTouch` uses) — past that the gesture is a run and a target hanging off it would be a lie.
+Rally modes only (`rallyFeel`); gore's flick free-aims at a body, not at a lane. The placement ring
+turns `UI.bad` when the shot really is out, so the two rings together ARE the lesson: what you asked
+for, what your timing gave you, and the difference between them.
+
 **The umpire and the boy.** `aside()` refused during any interlude and the match runs on a permanent
 one, so he was silently muted for the entire mode — the one mode that is literally a tennis match he
 is sitting over (`G.interlude && !G.match` now, the same shape as `sendBoy`). Six dry lines: two on