Dev finds avatar stutter was caused by scheduling overlap, not animation smoothing

A developer debugging a stuttering desktop avatar discovered the primary cause was motion scheduling: a new animation was triggered every 5 seconds while the motion itself lasted 9 seconds, causing mid-playback resets that created visible jitter. A secondary issue was an incomplete 'skip if already playing' guard that blocked only one of two animation paths, allowing overlapping playback to continue. Velocity discontinuities from certain easing functions also contributed, and the developer found that doubling sample counts — rather than dividing by amplitude — reliably distinguishes real animation kinks from smooth curves. A fourth subtle problem was that depth-axis movements like forward leans were nearly invisible from a front-facing camera, sometimes amounting to less than 1% of screen height. The developer concluded by converting the smoothness check into an automated build tool, noting that lessons not enforced by tooling tend to be repeated even when already documented.