feat(render): a reduced column can be graded by dwell, not drawn as one flat band

A pixel column reduced from a dense envelope is honest about where the signal
went and silent about how long it was there: its min and max are identical
whether its samples fill the span or pile at its two ends, so a ramp and a pulse
are one band. Style::intensity_grading grades it instead -- bright where the
signal sits, faint where it only passes through -- by asking the gather for a
level finer than the pixel grid and reading the distribution from those
sub-buckets. Off by default: a change of look, not a correction of one.

The measure is dwell per row, each segment depositing one unit spread over the
rows it spans; counting +1 per row instead grades a sine's fast middle as
brightly as its rails, which is the pattern inverted. The accumulator is one
column wide (a full w*h density image is 33 MB at 4K) with each span written as
two delta writes, and normalisation is against the column's own peak -- a
frame-wide scale fades the trace out exactly where it moves fastest. Alpha is
quantised into tiers, one LineBatch and one draw call each, because the line
pipeline's colour is a uniform and a per-segment alpha is inexpressible.

The finer ask is floored at level 1 whenever the flat path would have used the
pyramid: level_for() answers 0 -- raw samples -- as soon as a sub-column falls
under one bucket, so an unfloored ask turns a moderately dense frame into an
O(visible) gather (measured at 172 samples a pixel: raw=1154 lod=0 and 6.4 ms a
frame against raw=710 lod=453 and 2.3 ms). Grading is a way of drawing a
reduction and may not undo it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

docs/data-and-performance.md

@@ -216,6 +216,66 @@ polyline, over one sine period across 60 000 samples. A count of *partially cove
 always spills into its neighbour column, so the two renderings measure 577 and 652, which
 separates nothing. The frame's whole geometry collapses with it: 627 segments against 60 054.
 
+## A reduced column can be graded by dwell
+
+`Style::intensity_grading` draws each of those columns **graded** rather than as one flat band:
+bright where the signal sits, faint where it only passes through, the way a digital-phosphor
+scope reads. It is off by default — a change of look, not a correction of one — and
+`FrameStats::graded_traces` counts the traces that took it, a subset of `column_traces`, since
+grading is a way of drawing the reduction and not a third path.
+
+What it puts back is the information the reduction throws away: a column's min and max are the
+**same** whether its samples fill the span evenly or pile at its two ends, so a ramp and a pulse
+are one band. The distribution cannot be recovered from the band, which is why the gather is
+asked at a level **finer than the pixel grid** (`intensity_sub_columns` sub-buckets per column)
+and the dwell read from those sub-buckets.
+
+Five things carry it, and each was arrived at by being wrong first:
+
+- **The measure is dwell per row, each segment depositing one unit spread over the rows it
+  spans** (`1 / height`). Counting +1 per row instead grades a sine's fast middle as brightly as
+  its rails, which is the pattern inverted — the middle is where the signal spends the *least*
+  time.
+- **The accumulator is one column wide.** Gathered x is monotonic, so points arrive column by
+  column: accumulate, read, clear. A full `axes.w × axes.h` density image is 33 MB at 4K; one
+  column of `axes.h` floats is L1-resident. A span is written as a `+1/height` delta at its first
+  row and the negation one past its last, so it costs two writes whatever its height, and the
+  running sum over the column is the per-row dwell.
+- **Normalisation is per column, against the column's own peak.** A frame-wide scale needs the
+  whole image to exist before anything can be drawn, *and* reads worse: a column the signal flew
+  through uniformly comes out faint at every row, so the trace fades out exactly where it moves
+  fastest. The cost of the local scale is one extra non-clearing walk of the accumulator to find
+  the peak.
+- **Alpha is quantised into `intensity_steps` tiers, one `LineBatch` and one draw call each.**
+  The line pipeline's colour is a **uniform**, not per-instance (`LineInstance` is four floats of
+  geometry; only `TextInstance` carries `a_colour`), so a per-segment alpha is inexpressible and
+  the tiers are what make the gradient drawable at all. `intensity_floor` keeps the faintest tier
+  visible — a fast riser is one sub-bucket deep everywhere and must not be dimmed out of
+  existence — and `intensity_gamma` lifts the faint end. A connector between two disjoint columns
+  is emitted at the **faintest** tier: it is inferred geometry, not a place the signal was
+  measured to dwell.
+- **Grading may not undo the reduction.** `level_for()` answers 0 — raw samples — as soon as the
+  asked-for fraction of a column falls under one bucket (`kBucket` is 64), so the finer ask is
+  **floored at level 1** whenever the flat path would have used the pyramid. Without the floor
+  every moderately dense frame became an O(visible) gather: measured in udpscope at 1.3 MS/s over
+  a 2 s window, 172 samples a pixel, the flat path sat on the pyramid and grading dropped the
+  whole figure to raw (`raw=1154 lod=0` against `raw=710 lod=453`) and cost 2.3 → 6.4 ms of draw
+  mean. The floor degrades the *look* instead — fewer sub-columns than asked for, down to what the
+  coarsest buckets give, which at 64 samples a bucket is still two or three per column. That is
+  also why raising `intensity_sub_columns` past about 8 buys nothing: the bucket size is the
+  limit, not the number.
+
+`a_dense_trace_can_be_graded_by_dwell` is the guard, and it draws the same frame both ways. It
+profiles the mean peak coverage over the band's two outer fifths against its middle fifth: the
+flat band is flat (**191 and 191**, one ink) and the graded one is **191 against 131**, a middle
+at 0.69 of the edge. That ratio is a *tier* ratio and not the dwell ratio — the default gamma
+0.45 and floor 0.3 compress it on purpose. The geometry stays bounded by the axis and not by its
+area: **8303 segments over a 572 px axis**, 14.5 runs a column, against the flat path's 627 at
+one end and `572 × 156` rows at the other. A fourth frame over a window wide enough that the
+flat path is on the pyramid is what exercises the floor (`raw=0 lod=1 … seg=634
+visible=200001`); the test's first window sits at 105 samples a pixel, where both paths are raw
+and the floor is never reached.
+
 ## One sample or a statistic of many
 
 Every number the library reports is one the samples actually hold. What differs between