--- url: https://spellingcreator.org/docs/developers/web-app/vakt-activities.md --- # VAKT activities For how to use this, see [VAKT activities](../../guide/vakt-activities.md). A **VAKT activity** is a regulation break: a movement or sensory activity a speller does partway through a lesson. VAKT stands for **v**isual, **a**uditory, **k**inesthetic, **t**actile. Everything about the block (its color, its label, and its shape) lives in one place, `packages/core/src/vakt.js`, so the editor, the viewer, both exporters and both importers stay in sync. ## Not a question A VAKT activity is **its own block type** (`type: "vakt"`), not a question type. The distinction is load-bearing: * it is addressed to whoever is running the lesson, not to the speller; * it is never answered and never scored; * it isn't counted by [interactive mode](./interactive-mode.md)'s progress bar, and it appears with a section's material rather than as a step of its own; * it doesn't appear in the printed footer legend, which names question types. Question blocks carry answers and print in the legend. Making VAKT a question type would have given it all of that and then required exceptions for each one. (A comment in `vakt.js` still calls the alternative "a seventh question type"; there are eight question types now.) ## The color and the label VAKT activities print in a **bright red** (`VAKT_COLOR`, `#ee1111`), the one color the eight [question types](../../guide/question-blocks.md) and the teal spelling block deliberately leave free. The red is hue-0 rather than anything warmer on purpose: an orange or an amber would collide with the **Multiple answers** question type, which is what pushed that type off burnt orange in the first place. Every activity is prefixed **`VAKT:`** (`VAKT_LABEL`). That prefix is **not part of the activity**: whatever renders the block adds the label, exactly the way the spelling block's `Spell:` works, so the label can be translated on screen while the export keeps its canonical form. The editor stores the text as typed; `vaktText` strips a leading `VAKT:` when the block is rendered, so an author who types the label in never sees it printed twice. Unlike a question, where only the *prompt* is colored and the answer follows in black, the whole VAKT line is red. It's an instruction to the person running the lesson, and it has to be findable at a glance on a page of black body text. ## Images and links Two optional extras, both off by default: * **An image.** It's referenced by content hash exactly as an image block's is, so it resolves, uploads and exports through the same path, and it's framed by the same `size` (small / medium / large / full) and `align` (left / center / right) fields from `packages/core/src/image.js`. The **defaults differ**: an image block starts full width, a VAKT picture starts **medium (a 0.65 scale) and centered** (`VAKT_DEFAULT_IMAGE_SIZE`, `VAKT_DEFAULT_IMAGE_ALIGN`). A VAKT picture illustrates the action rather than carrying the lesson's content, so a smaller picture is the right starting point. A picture whose `size` or `align` is missing or unrecognized falls back to the VAKT defaults (`vaktImageSize`, `vaktImageAlign`), not to an image block's full width. Framing describes the **lesson page**: the editor, the read-only view, and what's printed. [Interactive mode](./interactive-mode.md) ignores it, for a VAKT picture and an image block alike: there a picture is sized by the reading column so it fills the width on a phone, which is the point of that view. * **Links.** Each is stored as `{ id, label, url }` (`createVaktLink`); the label is optional. On screen they're real links, opening in a new tab. On paper, where a link can't be clicked, `vaktLinkText` prints the label, then `VAKT_LINK_JOINER`, then the address, so the address itself is readable. Only `http:`, `https:` and `mailto:` links are kept (`vaktLinks`). That's the same rule the comment and bio sanitizers enforce (see [Rich text](./rich-text.md)); a lesson's links are authored rather than user-submitted, but they still become real `` in a published page and in a Word document. An unsafe or half-typed row is dropped at render time rather than refused as you type, so a URL in progress never destroys what's in the field. ## Round trips | Path | What survives | | ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Export/Import JSON** | Every supported field, unchanged, the closest thing to a lossless round trip. The importer still drops an unsafe link and a block with no activity in it at all (`vaktHasContent`). | | **Export DOCX** | The red (via a Word character style), the picture at its own size and alignment, and the links as real hyperlinks. | | **Print PDF** | The red, via that same character style; see below. | | **Import DOCX** | The activity, its picture and its links, read back off the `VAKT:` label. The picture's framing is **not** recovered: it comes back at the VAKT defaults, medium and centered. An image block's is lost the same way (each lands on its own defaults) and for the same reason: mammoth hands back no paragraph alignment, and a printed width can't be told apart from a picture that was simply small. | The Word character style (`VAKT_STYLE_NAME`, `S2C VAKT`, mapped to the class `s2c-vakt`) exists for the same reason the question ones do: mammoth drops run colors, so the PDF path, which renders the docx as HTML, would otherwise print every activity in plain black. The `S2C` prefix is a historical name that stays so Word round trips and older exports keep working. See [the export pipeline](./export-pipeline.md). The DOCX **importer** matches on the visible `VAKT:` label rather than on that style, so a lesson typed by hand in Word imports just as well as one this app printed. ## In the MCP server The MCP server can write VAKT blocks too, as `{ "type": "vakt", "text": ..., "links": [...] }`. They are **optional and off by default**: the assistant adds them only when you ask for them. When you do, the authoring standard puts one per section, **last**, after that section's questions, and a lesson with one somewhere else is flagged with a warning (never an error, since a break mid-section is a legitimate thing to want). See [Lesson validation](../mcp-server/lesson-validation.md). A block written there may also carry an `image` from `add_image`, with the same optional `size` and `align` an image block takes; left off, they land on the VAKT defaults above.