# Spectator reason and controls

The local observer hint now explains the replicated reason for spectating: the player has used their round's life, joined after extraction began, or could not be spawned. It tells a spectator with a selected survivor about the existing `/esc spectate next` and `/esc spectate previous` commands. Those commands already use the ordinary nonadministrator path; the change does not grant administration, change spawn/identity policy or alter camera control.

When the server has selected no survivor, the hint says that nobody is currently available to follow and that the view will follow a survivor when one becomes available. It omits ineffective cycling advice in that state. Availability is read from the replicated selected entity ID, not from whether that entity has finished streaming to this client, so streaming delay is not mistaken for an empty survivor set.

The existing 250 ms observer monitor refreshes the twelve-second hint on first display, a reason change or a change between having/no selected survivor. Stable state does not repeat hints, and switching between two available survivors does not produce another hint. Closing the camera clears the shown flag. If the native hint manager is temporarily absent, the monitor retries without consuming the first display. There are no new timers, input bindings, RPCs, permission checks or server mutations.

`tests/test_spectator_guidance.py` executes the actual message and refresh methods for every current reason, a fallback reason, both availability states and all prior/current refresh combinations. It also checks the existing monitoring/command boundaries: no extra timer, state recorded only after a hint exists, close/reopen reset, cycling handled before the admin transport and unchanged admin rejection. These are source-local policy and integration-contract checks. Native compilation, real hint rendering, actual chat input and remote target streaming still require their own tests.