# MIL Gaze Rule — eye-contact by emotion family

Set 2026-06-07 (Jun), crystallized after the lip-sync POC made it obvious: a SMILING face that looks away reads weird — and adding speech (talking to you while NOT looking at you) amplifies it. Originated from Jun's earlier "she looks away a lot in the happy MIL" note.

## The rule
- **DEFAULT = eyes LOCKED FORWARD** (sustained eye contact, looking right at the viewer). Eye contact reads as ENGAGEMENT / being *with* you. This is the default for the library.
- **AVERTED / looking-away gaze = ONLY the WITHDRAWN family.** Averted gaze reads as pulling inward, so it only fits emotions that are themselves inward/withdrawn:
  - sadness, disappointment, shyness/bashful, contemplative/distracted (and similar withdrawn states).
- **Everything ENGAGED stays locked forward:** happy, flirty, curious, confident, playful, affectionate, positive-surprise, etc.

## Application
- Re-render the **happy MIL** with eyes locked forward (no gaze-wandering). This is the fix for the looking-away Jun flagged.
- Bake the rule into the prompt / generation for **every** emotion going forward: locked-forward unless the emotion is in the withdrawn family.
- The lip-sync POC can validate MODEL quality on the current clip; the production library uses the gaze-corrected clips. They converge in production (lip-sync the gaze-correct clips).

## Why
Eye contact = connection/engagement — the default register for an attentive companion. Averted gaze is a meaningful nonverbal cue reserved for withdrawal; using it on engaged emotions misreads as distracted / disengaged / off.