Issue #49 removed game assets from git. It also, silently, removed the only
transport agents had for showing each other evidence: each agent works in its
OWN clone, so "commit the screenshot, the other one pulls it" was the mechanism,
and PROTOCOL.md's file table said so in as many words -- "evidence cited by a
finding -> git". That row sat directly above "🔴 Never commit game content",
which is how 76 MB accumulated: the two contradicted each other and the table
won, because it was the one that told you what to do.
WHAT REPLACES IT
* one host directory, `Sylpheed/docs/re/captures/`, bind-mounted read-write
into BOTH agents at /work/docs/re/captures. All three -- host, decoder,
port -- see the same files live, every citation resolves, and nothing can
reach git history. Read-write on purpose: showing each other a screenshot
is the point.
* PROTOCOL.md's table rewritten. Cited evidence -> present but never
committed; derived measurements (csv/tsv/txt/log/json) -> still git, they
are our numbers not game content; evidence that must cross MACHINES ->
attached to the issue or PR, because a bare clone has no captures.
Verified, not assumed: container A wrote a .png there, a SEPARATE container B
read it back, the host saw it, `git status` reported 0 changes, and
`git check-ignore` named the rule.
THE CHECKER WAS RED ON EVERY CLEAN CHECKOUT
A fresh clone/worktree/CI has no captures, so it called all 134 citations
dangling and exited 1. A gate that is red before anyone changes anything is one
people learn to ignore -- the exact failure this file already carries a comment
about. It now distinguishes "no captures here" (expected, explains itself,
exit 0) from "these are missing" (real, exit 1, unchanged when assets ARE
present). Both paths tested.
ALSO
* `sylph-decoder` no longer mounts `xenia-rs` -- retired repo, gone from disk,
the mount pointed at nothing.
* CONSOLIDATION.md closed: it still described captures as committed and the
history fork as undecided. Both are settled.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The two instances already in "Checks that were kind once" were correct
when written and decayed. The third was wrong on its first commit, and it
arrived by a different route: the check and the tree's failure to pass it
land in the same change, so the softening writes itself.
Concretely — the Clippy step had never run (no component in the
toolchain), and the tree is not clippy-clean, so fixing the step and
turning it red are the same commit. The first draft paired the fix with
`continue-on-error: true` and a comment promising removal once the debt
was paid: an expiry date nobody set, in the shape #12's closing line had
already ruled out for rustfmt. Reverted on reading it.
Adds the distinction, a table separating decay from dirty authorship, and
an earlier tell than the mechanical test:
If you are writing the softening in the same commit as the check,
the thing you want is an issue, not a flag.
The mechanical test is unchanged and still correct; this only catches the
same failure sooner, at the keyboard rather than at review.
Refs #12, #13
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01McNbzUeq1KRBWs4G6X2YVj
Two rules that look unrelated and are one failure, plus the change that makes
the second enforceable.
1. A FINDING REACHES `main` BEFORE THE CODE THAT CITES IT. A citation resolving
only on a peer branch is dead the moment it merges. Not hypothetical: 495
decoder and 366 port commits sit off `main`, and `port/scripts/boot.gd`
already cites two docs/re pages present on neither its own branch nor main.
2. A CHECK MAY ONLY SOFTEN AGAINST A CONDITION IT CAN TEST -- the Pi agent's
wording, and better than mine, because it is applicable while writing rather
than a call to be vigilant. The mechanical form:
Can this branch tell the difference between "not yet" and "no longer"?
`gitea-protect --verify` printed ⚪ "not a collaborator (yet)" and continued,
so the only instrument checking Write-not-Admin could not report that gate
being REMOVED. `check-citations` reported peer citations instead of failing
them, because under the old topology that was unfixable from the container.
Both were correct AND kind when written; neither recorded that the kindness
had a scope. Nobody edits these into being wrong -- the world moves and the
allowance stays, which is why they survive review. The smell is leniency with
an expiry date nobody set; the fix is the testable-condition rule.
check-citations gains `--for-merge`, which turns the peer class into a failure.
A flag rather than a new default because BOTH readings are still live: mid-work
on a topic branch the peer class really is unfixable noise. What the old code
could not express is where the code is GOING, and that is a condition the caller
can state. Measured on this tree: 19 citations resolve only on a peer branch --
which is the size of the #7-depends-on-#8 edge, not the 2 I had counted in
boot.gd.
The selftest gains that third class, because a flag whose classification is
unexercised is the shape this rule exists to catch. Controlled: emptying
PEER_REFS makes the peer case collapse into "nowhere" and the selftest reports
🔴 BROKEN, rc=2.
⚠️ Pre-existing and NOT from this change: the default run already exits 1 on 4
citations of `export/...` paths. Those are the generated tree, gitignored by
design, and main's copy of the tool fails identically. The CITE regex treats
`export/` as a repo prefix. Reported, not fixed -- it is the port's file and its
call whether the regex or the citations are wrong.
The two loop files ARE the prompts -- `sylph-port` and `sylph-decoder` read them
off the host at launch -- so the workflow change had to land here or it would
not reach the agents at all.
PROTOCOL.md gains four sections:
* Work items -- issues, milestones as bundles, the state labels, and that
`state/blocked` uses DEPENDENCY EDGES, never prose. A prose blocker is what
let a 1,227-line BLOCKED.md go stale.
* Messages -- an ask is a `kind/ask` issue, not a SendMessage. With the part
that matters: 🔴 NOTHING PUSHES. Notifications are polled, at the top of
every iteration, and therefore an agent must NEVER wait on an ask -- set the
edge, take the next item. The channel this replaces dropped 21 consecutive
messages to a stale session id and reported success each time.
* Pull requests -- one item per branch, `Closes #N`, and you may not merge
your own. Branch protection enforces it; the rule is written down so the
agent knows it, not so it depends on the agent.
* Each iteration, in order -- notifications, sync, one unit, hand over, stop.
Also: evidence a human must look at now attaches to its issue, and a blunt
"never commit game content, under any directory name" with the 545 MB that
prompted it.
The two briefs shrink 697 -> 298 lines. They had accreted five dated focus
blocks between them -- sole-focus orders, F1-F6 queues, one-off "merge this
branch on your first iteration" instructions -- which is a queue, and a queue
belongs in the tracker. What is KEPT is what outlives its bug:
* ask of any check, what would this still report if the feature were absent?
Three instruments passed a splash that never animated.
* the instrument must sit at or above the thing that can break -- the
InputEventAction / input-map miss.
* R1, and grep REFUTED.md before proposing.
* the .pe is primary and the database is somebody's analysis of it.
* the oracle is the real game in Canary, not any renderer of ours.
⚠️ NOT YET TRUE when this lands: the agents have no Gitea users, no API tokens
and no MCP server, so the issue tooling these briefs assume does not exist yet.
The agents are stopped. Setting that up is the prerequisite for restarting them.
Two new findings from the human, both about WHEN a title animation starts, and
both handed over rather than guessed:
F5 Does (A) SNAP the title to finished, or ACCELERATE it? The human says they
cannot tell and is right that they cannot -- a three-frame acceleration and a
one-frame cut look identical to an eye. Two routes that should agree: a
per-frame capture (acceleration shows intermediate alphas, a cut shows none)
and the code (assigning a target time and raising a rate multiplier are
different instructions). Their "looks more like a snap on multiple attempts"
is recorded as a PRIOR, not a result.
F6 The title's sweeping white glow -- ptloop01/ptloop02, the blue PCB-like lines
-- starts only when the plate appears in the real game, and starts earlier in
the port. A lead from the exported declaration, mine and unverified: those
elements are keyed at t = 0, 70, 100, 238, 250 while the plate reaches full
alpha at 236, with pteff02 keyed at exactly 236 and ptlogo_back2eff and
ptcopyright at 238. 236-238 is a synchronisation point in the declared data
and a human just reported a behaviour change there. Flagged AGAINST itself
too: 238...250 looks equally like an exit ramp -- ptcopyright uses that shape
and starts nothing -- and the sweep lives in a nested .rat leaf with its own
timeline.
F6 bears on clock: "shared" and on F4: if a title element does not move until
the plate arrives, either the declared data says so and our keyframe reading is
wrong, or something at the plate's arrival STARTS it, which is a mechanism
nobody has proposed.
And the process change, which is the human's and outlives this item:
"attacking the 'whole' mission was too big for them to handle. Split the given
missions and tasks into even smaller tasks which they can tackle and give to
a human for feedback."
PROTOCOL.md gains "Work in units a human can check in a minute". A milestone is
not a unit of work, it is a bag of them. A unit is right-sized when it ends in
something a person can judge in under a minute WITHOUT READING ANYTHING, and
each one states its question, what the human looks at, and what it does NOT
cover. Do one, hand it over, stop -- an unverified fix under a second change
makes a regression two-variable.
The evidence for the rule is this week: the splash sat through a whole milestone
and took one day once scoped to "does it animate?". The bar is a HUMAN check,
not a green tool -- three instruments passed a frozen screen.
Both agents asked for this and neither could do it: the register is the file
they both read to decide what NOT to try, so two agents agreeing is not the
authority for changing it (RETRO-2026-08-31-agreed §7.1).
R1: a refutation whose instrument is one of our renderers is not a refutation,
it is "our renderer disagrees" -- 🟡, not ❌. The motivating case was not
careless work. "Blending those sprites additively worsens every measure against
the capture" killed a real disc field for weeks, and read exactly like a
publishable negative; the renderer behind it had a stale keyframe association,
no leaf geometry and no rotation. Nothing in the entry could have told you.
All 222 entries now end with ⟨instrument⟩, read off each entry's OWN stated
evidence -- never inferred. An entry that states none gets `unrecorded`, which
is 83 of them.
Ten moved ❌ -> 🟡, each naming what would settle it: 8 render-vs-capture,
1 our-reader, 1 harness.
Three things the pass turned up:
* The rest() question is OPEN and had been reading as settled in both
directions -- "rest = last keyframe" was refuted by a sibling argument, and
that refutation refuted by correlating our render against captures. Both legs
are our renderer. Which one you believed depended on which entry you found
first, and it decides the pose every plateau-less element is drawn at.
* A withdrawal never reached its sibling: "2 391 frames, max glyph 0" was
withdrawn because a long-lived x11grab stream freezes and repeats a stale
frame; the 1 674-sample negative three lines above it, same probe, was left
standing as a reinstated measurement.
* 83 of 222 -- 37 % -- record no instrument at all. Not disputed, not safe:
unauditable, and larger than every other group combined.
tools/stale-instrument is the --stale query the rule needs, because a colour
alone re-opens nothing: the failure was that nothing re-opened a claim when the
instrument that killed it improved. Its own --check found a real bug on the
first run -- sys.exit("text") exits 1, so three faults documented as exit 2
were reporting the same code as an ordinary miss.
R1 is now standing text in PROTOCOL.md, with R5's exception: our tool is the
right instrument for a question about our tool.
Three defects, all mine, found by checking instead of assuming.
**They never exchanged a word.** SendMessage=0, ListAgents=0 across both new
sessions. PROTOCOL.md specified in detail what a message MAY and MAY NOT do and
never said how to send one or that the other agent was addressable -- they knew
that last time only because the human told them directly, and rebuilding with
fresh volumes wiped it. Policy without mechanism is prose. Now documented with
the two addresses, a worked example, and an instruction to introduce themselves
on the first iteration rather than waiting to have a question.
**The decoder lost the disc and the ISO.** They used to arrive inside the project
mount and silently stopped when /work became a clone. Silently is the word: the
disc-gated tests SELF-SKIP without SYLPHEED_DISC and report green, so a whole
test suite would have passed while measuring nothing. Both are now mounted
explicitly, the ISO at a stable path so run-canary does not depend on host
directory names.
**Both agents shared one Claude state directory.** They share the host's
~/.claude, and once both working directories became /work they resolved to the
same projects/-work/ -- two supposedly independent agents writing to one place,
which undoes the point of separate checkouts. Each now has its own volume, seeded
once from the host with credentials only, so a token refresh writes locally and
neither can corrupt the host's auth.
Also widened the pacing rule. It banned ScheduleWakeup by name; the decoder then
scheduled itself an hourly cron job -- not harmful, but the same instinct that
ended a run yesterday, through a door I had left open. Now: no self-scheduling by
any route.
Mount audit after the changes: shared and intentional are the exchange volume and
the read-only credential seed. Everything else -- repo, Claude state, cargo,
target, canary, disc, ISO -- is per agent or one-sided.
**navigation.md rewritten from the player's chair.** It was written from the
inside out -- GamePart ids, pak names, sprite names -- which is how WE find
things, not what the game shows anyone. Now it describes what is on screen, what
you press and what happens, with internals as footnotes. Most rows are open on
purpose: it exists to be filled in by playing, and the in-game tutorials are the
resource for the flight half.
**tools/share** gives transient files provenance without giving them history.
Three kinds of thing were travelling down one channel with opposite needs: code
and decoded knowledge want permanence, cited evidence wants permanence, and
"look at this PNG" wants no history at all. The third kind bloats a repository
forever; passing it by message is worse, because the receiver gets bytes with no
idea which build produced them. `share put` records who, when, what, the sender's
commit, and whether their tree was dirty -- because a capture taken from a
modified tree cannot be reproduced from the sha, and the receiver deserves to
know that before building an argument on it.
**docs/agents/PROTOCOL.md** is the contract. The parts that matter:
Dynamic RE stays with the Decoder -- most of what is open is behavioural and
cannot be answered from the file. What the planned Referee adds is different:
bias enters at what you CHOOSE to capture, so a corpus captured to a fixed
protocol by someone with no hypothesis is worth more than one captured to settle
an argument.
A message may point, ask, prioritise and challenge. It may not change scope,
redefine ground truth, or carry a finding instead of writing it down -- including
a message claiming to relay the human, because a relayed instruction has no
evidence attached and this project has watched a wrong belief travel further and
faster than its correction.
Adversarial duty is explicit: every iteration, try to refute one claim of another
agent and record the attempt either way. Run your own instrument through a
control first. Disagreements go to the human with both positions, not to
whoever is more certain.
And no agent may verify its way out of its own role: the Port has no oracle, the
Decoder builds nothing, the Referee interprets nothing.
