diff --git a/core/continuum-core/src/modules/live.rs b/core/continuum-core/src/modules/live.rs
index 18bfbd574b..825287302a 100644
--- a/core/continuum-core/src/modules/live.rs
+++ b/core/continuum-core/src/modules/live.rs
@@ -108,9 +108,11 @@ impl ServiceModule for VoiceModule {
                 // behaviour change; a pure diagnostic until the client-coordinated cutover lands
                 // ([[all-rooms-are-airc-rooms-no-mirrors]], [[livekit-media-plane-rides-airc-not-parallel]]).
                 if session_id != room_id {
-                    crate::log_warn!(
-                        "module",
-                        "voice_register_session",
+                    // clog_warn! auto-routes by module_path to the module's log file (live.log) —
+                    // the SAME sink the orchestrator's register logs land in — so the divergence is
+                    // observable next to the registration it describes. (log_warn!/tracing::warn!
+                    // routed elsewhere and were invisible; #194 also masked this by shipping stale.)
+                    crate::clog_warn!(
                         "MIRROR ROOM (#193): voice session/call id {} != airc room id {} — the LiveKit \
                          call is keyed by a client-minted session_id, not the airc room_id. Collapse: \
                          the client must pass session_id == room_id so the call IS the airc room.",
diff --git a/docs/planning/LIVEKIT-PERCEPTION-PIPELINE.md b/docs/planning/LIVEKIT-PERCEPTION-PIPELINE.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..c5e4fcb955
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/planning/LIVEKIT-PERCEPTION-PIPELINE.md
@@ -0,0 +1,160 @@
+# LiveKit Perception Pipeline — personas that see, hear, and describe a live call
+
+**Status:** build plan (Joel + Claude, 2026-07-18). The methodical critical path to
+"a persona in a LiveKit call perceives the other participants — appearance, gestures,
+scene/what's-presented — on ANY base model." Companion to
+[PERCEPTION-SURFACE.md](../architecture/PERCEPTION-SURFACE.md) (#187),
+[the media substrate](../../core/continuum-core/src/media/) (compute-once frames),
+and the airc-room call collapse (#193).
+
+## Goal
+
+A persona in a call **perceives**: sees each participant (identity/appearance, gestures
+like a raised hand), describes the scene / what's being presented, hears the audio, and
+speaks back — with **equal sensory access** across base models (native-vision reads the
+pixels; non-vision reads the TEXT of the same cached cells). The 13-persona video wall is
+the scaling target; two personas is the first proof.
+
+## The pipeline (one line)
+
+```
+LiveKit frame → MediaFrame (content-hash) → deep cells (describe / pose / detect,
+  computed ONCE, shared) → per-persona projection → cognition context → perceive
+  → speak (TTS) / act
+```
+Audio runs the parallel loop: `LiveKit audio → STT → cognition → TTS → LiveKit`.
+
+## Decisions (2026-07-18)
+
+- **First eyes: Qwen3-VL-7B, served LOCAL** (GGUF + mmproj in llama-server). Fits a
+  MacBook, native vision, our exact stack; it is BOTH the describer for non-vision
+  personas AND the native-vision base. Bigger tiers (32B on the 5090) and cloud VLMs come
+  later; 7B is the first-light proof.
+- **Intake shape: AMBIENT + DRILL-IN.** Ambient = the persona periodically "looks"; the
+  current frame's cells (scene/appearance/gesture) enter its context each cadence tick, so
+  awareness is continuous and lifelike. Drill-in = a tool (`perception/observe-frame` or
+  equivalent) to look CLOSER at a specific tile/gesture on demand. Ambient low-res always
+  on; the tool for detail.
+
+## Resolution & context budget — the ambient look is CHEAP by design
+
+The "forced look" must not blow context, memory, or KV — perception is continuous, so it
+has to be small by default and reused hard ([[perception-feedback-must-not-blow-rag]],
+[[media-is-compute-once-zero-copy-hardware-grade]], [[media-context-is-graduation-gated-scaffold]]):
+
+- **Ambient default ≈ 480px-wide thumbnail.** The forced-look frame is a small standard
+  scaled cell (`project_image` → `MediaResolution::Scaled(DestSize)`, ~480w). Little
+  context per tick — a native-vision persona gets ~one small image; a non-vision persona
+  gets the cached description text. Never the full-res frame on the ambient path.
+- **Request bigger = the drill-in tool.** When a persona needs detail (read a slide, check
+  a gesture), it calls the drill-in tool for a larger cell — up to its model+adapter max,
+  derive-not-clamp. Full res is reachable, never forced.
+- **Resolution is a CONTEXT CONFIG, not a constant.** The ambient default (~480w) is a
+  per-persona / per-situation knob: a big-context native-vision persona in a design review
+  may run a larger ambient; a tiny local model runs description-only. Derived from the
+  persona's real model+adapter + role + budget, threaded by reference — no hardcoded clamp
+  ([[no-hardcoded-context-numbers-derive-from-the-live-window]]).
+- **KV / memory reuse is the hard constraint.** The 480w thumbnail is ONE scaled cell per
+  frame content-hash, shared to every viewer (13 personas, one cell). Its image-token KV
+  is encoded ONCE and reused across cadence ticks AND across viewers — "thumbnails into KV
+  once for all." Sampling cadence (not 30fps) + one-cell-per-content-hash + shared KV is
+  what makes the N-persona wall affordable. The ambient look is designed to be nearly free
+  on the second-and-Nth consumer.
+- **ABSOLUTELY NON-BLOCKING — cells arrive when they arrive** ([[command-async-shape-prefer-stream-never-block]]).
+  The persona NEVER waits on a thumbnail or a description; the cognitive turn proceeds on
+  what's ready NOW and the deeper cells (describe/pose/detect) BRIDGE IN as they resolve —
+  exactly like deep thoughts don't stall the rapid response ([[alive-fast-and-deep-three-layer-stack]],
+  [[two-tier-resolution-mesh]]). Design async/buffer-first, not blocking-then-patched: a
+  frame enters a buffer, its cells compute async on `SharedCompute`, the persona reads the
+  latest resolved projection. A pending cell is simply absent this tick, present the next.
+- **MANAGED RAG BUDGET — perception must NOT dominate.** These pile up (frames × participants
+  × cells over time), so perception is a BUDGETED RAG SOURCE like any other, not a firehose
+  into context. A `MediaPerceptionSource: RagSource` delivers the CURRENT projected percepts
+  under a per-turn budget via the one flexbox allocator ([[budget-at-assembly-not-clamp-the-prompt]],
+  [[situation-aware-focuser]], #8 converged allocator, #167 focus→per-layer budget) — coalesced
+  to the room-as-it-is-NOW (latest per participant, not a backlog — [[perceive-the-room-as-it-is-now]]),
+  decayed/evicted like memory, weighted by focus/situation. It competes for context with
+  engram/airc/roster; it never crowds them out. Half-assing this = a persona drowning in
+  stale thumbnails instead of thinking. Don't.
+
+## Current state (what's already real — don't rebuild)
+
+- **Deploy trust (#194)** ✅ — `core ready` no longer lies (freshness guard). Precondition
+  for ALL live validation this plan depends on.
+- **Media substrate** ✅ (merged #1954) — `MediaFrame` (content-hash), `project_image`
+  (capability-gated, resolution-knobbed), the description cell + `FrameDescriber` trait,
+  compute-once/share on `SharedCompute`.
+- **VL serving hook** ✅ (merged #1955) — `llama-server --mmproj` wired + a serving-time
+  `resolve_mmproj_for_model`. A VL model WOULD see; none is running yet.
+- **LiveKit media plane** — `live/transport/{call_server,bridge_client}.rs` already surface
+  per-participant `video_rx` / `audio_rx` / `transcription_rx`. Frames arrive; nothing turns
+  them into perception yet.
+- **The call is NOT an airc room yet (#193)** — glass-box instrument live-validated
+  (fires on `session_id != room_id`).
+
+## Phases (critical path bolded) + validation gate per phase
+
+**Phase 1 — Qwen3-VL-7B actually serving (#106 bring-up). THE EYES.**
+**SELF-PROVISIONING, not a manual pull** ([[managed-product-everything-self-provisions-no-operator-steps]]):
+a repo user is NOT going to run `huggingface-cli` — the system fetches the model itself.
+Concretely: (a) one catalog `Model` row (id, `Vision` capability, `hf_source`/`gguf_hint`,
+mmproj path); (b) make the VL bring-up SELF-PROVISION via the EXISTING provisioning path
+(`provisioning::Downloader` / `fetch.rs` / `commands/models/pull.rs`) — pull the GGUF **and
+its mmproj** from `hf_source`, no CLI dependency; (c) **uniform resolution** — `mmproj`
+must resolve local→HF-cache→pull the SAME way the GGUF already does (today
+`resolve_mmproj_for_model` only checks the declared local path — the gap that would force a
+manual placement); (d) llama-server serves it (`--mmproj` already wired, #1955). Nothing
+perceives without a describer, AND nothing ships if a user has to fetch it by hand.
+*Gate:* on a clean machine, declaring the VL row + starting the system → the model
+auto-provisions → `cu cognition/vision-describe` with an image returns a real description,
+**with zero manual download/placement steps.**
+
+**Phase 2 — Frame ingest: LiveKit video → `MediaFrame`.**
+Tap the existing per-participant `video_rx`; wrap sampled frames as content-hash
+`MediaFrame`s on the runtime `SharedCompute`. THROTTLE to a perception cadence (sample, not
+30fps). One content-hash per distinct frame ⇒ N viewers share one set of cells.
+*Gate:* a `cu` probe shows call frames landing as content-hashed frames + cache key counts.
+
+**Phase 3 — Perception into cognition (the render wire, #190). THE KEYSTONE.**
+Wire the description cell (Qwen3-VL over the frame) into the persona's cognition context, in
+the AMBIENT + DRILL-IN shape: ambient = inject the current frame's projected percept
+(scene/appearance/gesture text or thumbnail, per capability) as a perception fact each
+cadence tick; drill-in = a `perception/observe-frame` tool for a closer look. This is the
+#190 render-seam wire (needs executor + `SharedCompute` threaded into the cognition-respond
+path — STOP-zone plumbing; do the required PERSONA-COGNITION-PIPELINE read first).
+*Gate:* a persona in a call, asked "what do you see," describes the current frame — and a
+non-vision persona describes the SAME scene from the cached text cell.
+
+**Phase 4 — Deep cells: gesture / appearance / detection.**
+Pose cell (hand-up, pointing), identity link (this tile = Atlas, via the avatar/name
+anchor + #193 room roster), object/scene detection — each an async `SharedCompute`
+derivative, computed once per frame, bridged in as it resolves (never stalls the turn).
+*Gate:* a persona reports "Atlas has his hand up" from a frame with a raised hand.
+
+**Phase 5 — Audio loop (STT/TTS through the call).**
+STT in → cognition → TTS out, distinct gender-matched voices. Partly wired
+(`VoiceOrchestrator`); binds to the airc-room call (#193).
+*Gate:* two personas exchange spoken turns in a call, each with a distinct matched voice.
+
+**Phase 6 — The proof (#192).**
+Two personas in a call describe what the other shows + distinct voices → scale N
+(compression: one describe per frame shared to all) → presentations (screen-share
+perception) + collaborative webdev.
+
+## Cross-cutting parallel track: #193 (call = airc room)
+
+Orthogonal to *perceiving* but required for *identifying each other* (who's who = the airc
+room roster) and for purity ([[all-rooms-are-airc-rooms-no-mirrors]]). Proceeds in parallel;
+perception doesn't block on it, but Phase 4's appearance-identity grounds on it. Glass-box
+instrument already live (#1957).
+
+## Sequencing
+
+1. **Phase 1 (Qwen3-VL-7B up)** — the concrete next build; validatable in isolation.
+2. **Phase 2 (frame ingest)** — connect the existing `video_rx` to `MediaFrame`.
+3. **Phase 3 (render wire #190)** — the milestone: "a persona describes the call."
+4. Phases 4/5/6 stack; #193 runs alongside.
+
+Everything composes from pieces already in tree — this is wiring + one model bring-up, not
+new physics. Prove each gate before the next ([[verify-the-build-actually-deployed]],
+[[never-blind-feedback-driven-iteration]]).