Round 1: The badge

Best overall on the rubric. C1: passes the round's 4 checks and the 37 extra cases I ran; it refuses names holding characters XML cannot carry (U+0001) instead of printing a broken SVG, counts characters by code point, uses Number.isSafeInteger, and gives precise one-line reasons naming the field and the value. Minor: repeated spaces in a name collapse when rendered, a file starting with a BOM is refused, extra arguments are ignored. C2: the clearest state at a glance: five distinct hues (blue, amber, orange, rose, violet) on a pill, a 14px name, a compact 40px plate that reads well on light and dark READMEs; the generous width estimate leaves empty space after long names. C3: small and clear (validate, render, main, a BadInput class, STATES as the one place to add a state), exports behind an import guard so it can be tested in-process.

Close second. C1: passes the 4 checks and every extra case; the most thorough validation (exact argument count, BOM accepted, safe integers, wide and zero-width characters in the width estimate, whitespace kept with xml:space) plus a node --test suite; it also refuses tab and newline in a name, which the brief's 'any text' arguably allows. C2: a compact dark plate, distinct hues per state, a glow animated by heat that honours prefers-reduced-motion, and a fill bar under ROUND n/m; but its 11px chip and round labels are smaller than D's and the thin bar under the round reads like an underline. C3: well-named steps (parseArgs, readPod, validate, render) and useful comments, but the longest entry (147 lines) with layout regexes, and main runs at import, so nothing is reusable in-process.

Third. C1: passes the 4 checks, but a name holding a control character (U+0001) prints an SVG that is not well-formed, with exit 0; wide characters (CJK, emoji) overflow the left half into the state's half, since the width is a fixed 0.62em per character; the reasons are generic (a round past the last only says 'round, rounds: whole numbers with 1 <= round <= rounds'). C2: a README-native two-part shield, compact and readable, but the five state colours are one orange-to-cream ramp, so cooking and pressure are hard to tell apart at a glance. C3: the smallest entry (56 lines) and easy to read; the validation messages are lumped together and an 'in' test duplicates the hasOwn test.

Fourth. C1: passes the 4 checks, but valid inputs break it: the card has a fixed 440px width, so a name longer than about 30 characters (40 are allowed) runs off the card; the length counts UTF-16 units, so 21 emoji are refused although they are 21 characters; it draws one rect per round (100,000 rounds give a 7.3 MB SVG, 1,000,000,000 never finish); a control character prints an SVG that is not well-formed. C2: the most striking look, a large dark card with a segmented progress bar, but 440x132 is a card more than a badge at README size, and cooking and pressure share almost the same orange. C3: small and clear (82 lines) with documented exported functions, but the module writes to stdout at import, so its exports cannot be reused.