Make the background FX drain visible: a busy cursor over the panel and a footer readout that names its direction, driven off fxReclaimActivity

src/core/ui/CLAUDE.md

@@ -107,7 +107,7 @@ L7 sub-pass, 2026-07-27):
 - `theme` — pure palette module: role→color mapping, REAPER-grey neutral ladder + the pastel accent system, the keyboard strip's spectral ramp, WCAG contrast-floor helpers + `compositeOver` (the effective color of a translucent fill, so alpha overlays are testable). Only the ramp's MID stop is its own constant; lo/hi are still aliases of `accent/primary`/`accent/tertiary`, so a categorical accent move CAN still reorder the ramp — `testSpectralRampLuminanceIsMonotonic` is the build-time catch, not the structure.
 - `component_geometry` — pure button/slider/list-row geometry + hover hit-test helpers.
 - `action_bar` — pure task-grouped action-bar layout/hit-test: clusters (Capture / Placement / Maintenance / Tagging / Switching).
-- `footer_bar` — pure footer layout/hit-test: `[Arrange|Design]` mode-toggle geometry, Tail button, and Prune placement, plus `modeSegmentEnabled` — the mode segment's live/dead predicate under the playback gate AND under whether the shell resolved a routable command id for it (both bools passed IN, so this stays REAPER-free).
+- `footer_bar` — pure footer layout/hit-test: `[Arrange|Design]` mode-toggle geometry, Tail button, and Prune placement, plus `modeSegmentEnabled` — the mode segment's live/dead predicate under the playback gate AND under whether the shell resolved a routable command id for it (both bools passed IN, so this stays REAPER-free) — plus `footerReadout`, which decides what the footer's ONE passive readout box says: a MOVING background FX drain pre-empts the per-mode member count, since the drain is transient and the count is not. Its `FxDrainState` mirrors the shell's `FxReclaimActivity` name-for-name (a shell header cannot be included here); the shell owns the decision, this owns only the wording, and the two directions word differently because parking and restoring are different acts.
 - `overflow_menu` — pure overflow-menu-button geometry/reserve/hit-test for the top-toolbar More (⋯) button.
 - `mode_enable` — pure opposite-mode enablement predicate: given the active mode, computes per-button live/disabled state for the four Item/Track × Arrange/Design tag buttons.
 - `insert_fx_enable` — pure refusal fold behind the Insert-as-FX verb (one instance holds one capture, so it needs exactly one focused capture AND a destination track), plus the button's live/dead bit derived from that same fold and one sentence per refusal. The payload/destination axes are ordered deliberately because they are knowable at different times — the header states which half the button may speak for.

src/core/ui/footer_bar.cpp

@@ -83,4 +83,15 @@ bool modeSegmentEnabled(bool isActiveSegment, bool transportRunning, bool routab
     return isActiveSegment || (!transportRunning && routable);
 }
 
+std::string footerReadout(FxDrainState drain, int activeModeMembers) {
+    // Enumerated rather than defaulted so a fourth state has to be answered here instead
+    // of inheriting the count by accident.
+    switch (drain) {
+        case FxDrainState::Online:  return kFxRestoringReadout;
+        case FxDrainState::Offline: return kFxParkingReadout;
+        case FxDrainState::Idle:    break;
+    }
+    return std::to_string(activeModeMembers) + (activeModeMembers == 1 ? " track" : " tracks");
+}
+
 } // namespace reasampler::ui

src/core/ui/footer_bar.h

@@ -13,6 +13,8 @@
 // (computeSegmentRects / hitTestSegment) for per-segment tiling — mode_switch stays the one
 // owner of segment geometry.
 
+#include <string>
+
 #include "core/ui/prune_button.h"  // FooterRect — the shared footer strip input type
 
 namespace reasampler::ui {
@@ -79,4 +81,25 @@ FooterHit hitTestFooterBar(int px, int py, const FooterBarLayout& layout);
 // `core/ui` — stays REAPER-free, exactly as `transportRunning` is.
 bool modeSegmentEnabled(bool isActiveSegment, bool transportRunning, bool routable);
 
+// Which way the background FX drain is moving, as the readout needs to hear it. Declared
+// here rather than taken from the shell's FxReclaimActivity because `core/ui` may not
+// include a shell header; the member names are deliberately the shell's, so the one map
+// between them (panel_input) is a name-for-name switch and a drift shows up as one.
+// Idle is "nothing moving", never "no work queued" — the shell's enum owns that reasoning.
+enum class FxDrainState { Idle, Online, Offline };
+
+// DRAFT wording, pending sign-off. Short on purpose: these share the count box, whose
+// default 64px holds roughly a dozen glyphs at the panel's smallest font before the
+// shell's kit end-ellipsizes it. The two directions read differently because they ARE
+// different acts — Offline takes the inactive modes' chains out, Online brings the
+// entering mode's back.
+inline constexpr const char* kFxParkingReadout   = "parking FX";
+inline constexpr const char* kFxRestoringReadout = "restoring FX";
+
+// The footer's ONE passive readout. A moving FX drain pre-empts the per-mode member count
+// — the drain is transient and the count is not, so it borrows the slot the user already
+// reads rather than earning a second box that this footer's greedy layout would be the
+// first to drop on a narrow panel.
+std::string footerReadout(FxDrainState drain, int activeModeMembers);
+
 } // namespace reasampler::ui