Status: Superseded by ADR-0049

Default avatars are deterministic blobatars; missing glyphs are vendored, not cloned

A PersonaBot’s default avatar is a static blobatar generated deterministically from the Host-owned PersonaBot ID — the string generator only this round, no motion or expressions. Channel rows follow the same identity: a DM Channel shows the bot’s avatar; a group Channel shows a glyph. Custom avatars (presets, upload, crop) wait for a design pass in v1.1.

Where DSH’s ui-primitives glyph catalog has no analogue — hash and group chat first, then users/move/sort/bot/image as needed — we vendor the needed Lucide (ISC) glyphs as first-party components: {size, className} props, currentColor, and an ISC attribution header. The hash glyph may be hand-drawn (four bars at the measured DSH geometry, ≈1.3px stroke at 16) if Lucide’s stroke look is off. packages/client/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md records blobatar (MIT), Lucide (ISC), and any later assets, and ships in the package files. This is the icon-gap exception to ADR-0028: our UI still uses DSH tokens and primitives only — no component library, no runtime icon dependency.

We deliberately do not copy the Grok Bot visual identity. bloub (the community SVG recreation of the x.ai avatar) is MIT for its code only — its README says the license “covers the code in this repository, not the design it imitates” — and it is Vue + Tailwind, so nothing is portable as-is; it is useful only as an approach reference (radial-profile morph, mask-hole eyes, pure sample(t) evaluation). The cited x.ai/bot/guides/designing-grok-bot-with-grok-bot was fact-checked: it is a workflow article about always-on design agents and contains no bot-identity or avatar design specification; the earlier citation was wrong and is corrected here. A licensing gap remains: the repo has no root LICENSE (MIT is only claimed on the docs landing), so a separate ticket adds it before any MIT code is copied.

Considered Options

Custom avatar system now (presets/upload/crop) — rejected: it needs design; the deterministic generator covers the roster today (v1.1 ticket).
Copy bloub or reproduce the Grok identity — rejected: the license covers code only, and the design belongs to x.ai; provenance and license risk for no product gain.
Adopt an icon npm package (lucide-react, HugeIcons, …) — rejected: a runtime icon dependency for a handful of glyphs; HugeIcons’ 1.5/24 stroke also reads too thin at 16px (≈1.0px).
Hand-draw every missing glyph — rejected: vendoring well-shaped ISC icons is less work and visually consistent; only the hash may need hand-drawing.
Solar’s hashtag-chat — rejected: CC BY 4.0 adds attribution and share-alike obligations where ISC suffices.

Consequences

blobatar stays a bundled dependency of @botharness/client; the client bundle contract remains react-family only.
Glyphs live in a first-party module with per-file attribution headers; the bundle contract test is untouched.
THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md ships in files; the root LICENSE ticket lands before any MIT code is copied.
Motion and expressions (blobatar motion.css / gaze.css, 14 expression poses, hover/breathe/bob/blink/saccades/wrap/gaze) are deferred to a v1.1 ticket: stylesheet delivery conflicts with our bundle’s CSS injection (styles.ts), unresolved, and Safari behavior is unverified.
CONTEXT.md’s Avatar entry is updated; docs/research/2026-09-19-avatar-and-icon-references.md holds the reference facts and license obligations.