Sylpheed/docs/port/DECISIONS.md

# Decisions

One entry per decision that outlives the container it was made in. Newest last.
A decision that lives only in an agent's context is lost when that container
dies, which is what this file is for.

---


<!-- INDEX: generated by tools/port/index-decisions -- do not hand-edit -->

184 sections. Search this before re-deriving anything.

* [P0 — the exporter, 2026-08-28](#p0--the-exporter-2026-08-28)
* [P1 — Godot draws the screen, 2026-08-28](#p1--godot-draws-the-screen-2026-08-28)
* [P1 gate — the diff, and what it found](#p1-gate--the-diff-and-what-it-found)
* [P2 — keyframe animation, 2026-08-28](#p2--keyframe-animation-2026-08-28)
* [`rest` misidentifies six elements, and the running game says so](#rest-misidentifies-six-elements-and-the-running-game-says-so)
* [The title is not settled, and P2 does not claim it](#the-title-is-not-settled-and-p2-does-not-claim-it)
* [P2, corrected — the pin moved, and the settle rule was wrong, 2026-08-28](#p2-corrected--the-pin-moved-and-the-settle-rule-was-wrong-2026-08-28)
* [The reference renderer was stale for three diff runs](#the-reference-renderer-was-stale-for-three-diff-runs)
* [The menu had no background, and P1 called that correct, 2026-08-29](#the-menu-had-no-background-and-p1-called-that-correct-2026-08-29)
* [P3 — splash → title, unattended, 2026-08-29](#p3--splash--title-unattended-2026-08-29)
* [P3 gate](#p3-gate)
* [Answers taken from the RE agent without re-deriving them](#answers-taken-from-the-re-agent-without-re-deriving-them)
* [P4 — the intro video, 2026-08-29](#p4--the-intro-video-2026-08-29)
* [P4 gate](#p4-gate)
* [RETRACTION — `sylpheed-cli` is not the oracle, 2026-08-29](#retraction--sylpheed-cli-is-not-the-oracle-2026-08-29)
* [P5 groundwork — the focus record, checked against a capture, 2026-08-29](#p5-groundwork--the-focus-record-checked-against-a-capture-2026-08-29)
* [P5 — navigation, 2026-08-29](#p5--navigation-2026-08-29)
* [`--headless` cannot draw, and the port hung instead of saying so, 2026-08-29](#--headless-cannot-draw-and-the-port-hung-instead-of-saying-so-2026-08-29)
* [Refutation — the focus ring IS drawn rotated, and it is not at 0° in either capture](#refutation--the-focus-ring-is-drawn-rotated-and-it-is-not-at-0-in-either-capture)
* [P5 end to end — and the title does not say `PRESS Ⓐ`, 2026-08-29](#p5-end-to-end--and-the-title-does-not-say-press--2026-08-29)
* [P6 — menu audio, 2026-08-29](#p6--menu-audio-2026-08-29)
* [P6 gate — the audio is in the mix, and a null control says which part](#p6-gate--the-audio-is-in-the-mix-and-a-null-control-says-which-part)
* [P3, reopened — the boot title was missing the `PRESS Ⓐ` plate, 2026-08-29](#p3-reopened--the-boot-title-was-missing-the-press--plate-2026-08-29)
* [P5 — the focus ring spins, 2026-08-29](#p5--the-focus-ring-spins-2026-08-29)
* [P3, corrected — the plate needs no authored delay at all, 2026-08-29](#p3-corrected--the-plate-needs-no-authored-delay-at-all-2026-08-29)
* [P7 — the new-game intro, 2026-08-29](#p7--the-new-game-intro-2026-08-29)
* [P7 gate](#p7-gate)
* [Modding — rule 4 was never implemented, 2026-08-29](#modding--rule-4-was-never-implemented-2026-08-29)
* [Refutation — the paint-order key, and the reach of its tie-break](#refutation--the-paint-order-key-and-the-reach-of-its-tie-break)
* [Correction — the runtime "clipping" I flagged 🔴 twice was overstated](#correction--the-runtime-clipping-i-flagged--twice-was-overstated)
* [The P1 regression harness had been broken since the monorepo merge, 2026-08-29](#the-p1-regression-harness-had-been-broken-since-the-monorepo-merge-2026-08-29)
* [Refutation — "builds 0/1 and 10/11 are the loading screen" is false in the index space this export uses](#refutation--builds-01-and-1011-are-the-loading-screen-is-false-in-the-index-space-this-export-uses)
* [The intro's missing dialogue was an export gap, not a transcode bug, 2026-08-29](#the-intros-missing-dialogue-was-an-export-gap-not-a-transcode-bug-2026-08-29)
* [Refutation, of my own exporter — MISSION §6 pins a downmix matrix, and the exporter ships a different one](#refutation-of-my-own-exporter--mission-6-pins-a-downmix-matrix-and-the-exporter-ships-a-different-one)
* [Refutation of my own two-stem reading — and it had already been adopted elsewhere](#refutation-of-my-own-two-stem-reading--and-it-had-already-been-adopted-elsewhere)
* [The mono fold I warned about, in the comment directly above the code that did it](#the-mono-fold-i-warned-about-in-the-comment-directly-above-the-code-that-did-it)
* [The leading chunk is the TAIL of the full one — measured, and it is why the region over-covers](#the-leading-chunk-is-the-tail-of-the-full-one--measured-and-it-is-why-the-region-over-covers)
* [Third reading of a voice region, and this one is decoded: three presentations of one take](#third-reading-of-a-voice-region-and-this-one-is-decoded-three-presentations-of-one-take)
* [The transcode cache had never hit, because the wipe ran first](#the-transcode-cache-had-never-hit-because-the-wipe-ran-first)
* [`settle_time()` — the answer arrived, and it refutes my own 🔴 more than it confirms it](#settle_time--the-answer-arrived-and-it-refutes-my-own--more-than-it-confirms-it)
* [The voice presentation is now unambiguously the port's choice, and the recommendation behind it was withdrawn](#the-voice-presentation-is-now-unambiguously-the-ports-choice-and-the-recommendation-behind-it-was-withdrawn)
* [Refutation of my dual-mono inference — the measurement stands, the generalisation does not](#refutation-of-my-dual-mono-inference--the-measurement-stands-the-generalisation-does-not)
* [Two rows of the P1 baseline were comparing blank frames and reporting OK](#two-rows-of-the-p1-baseline-were-comparing-blank-frames-and-reporting-ok)
* [Refutation attempt — the loading-screen variants, and it survived](#refutation-attempt--the-loading-screen-variants-and-it-survived)
* [🔴 The voice export is known incomplete — the game decodes all three streams at once](#the-voice-export-is-known-incomplete--the-game-decodes-all-three-streams-at-once)
* [🔴 The oracle capture does not contain the intro — a controlled negative](#the-oracle-capture-does-not-contain-the-intro--a-controlled-negative)
* [🔴 Take 2 is clean, my instrument was not, and the negative had to be re-earned](#take-2-is-clean-my-instrument-was-not-and-the-negative-had-to-be-re-earned)
* [Every music bank was summed at 1/3 when only two sub-waves are music — 3.52 dB, since P6](#every-music-bank-was-summed-at-13-when-only-two-sub-waves-are-music--352-db-since-p6)
* [Take 2 was starved, my correlator was fine, and `check-capture` was incomplete](#take-2-was-starved-my-correlator-was-fine-and-check-capture-was-incomplete)
* [The settle run carries an unmeasured real-time factor — and the numbers it touches were already unauthored](#the-settle-run-carries-an-unmeasured-real-time-factor--and-the-numbers-it-touches-were-already-unauthored)
* [`verify-dwell` — the comparison that refuted my own 🔴, made repeatable](#verify-dwell--the-comparison-that-refuted-my-own--made-repeatable)
* [The `PRESS Ⓐ` plate pulses — authored per element, because the census forbids a rule](#the-press--plate-pulses--authored-per-element-because-the-census-forbids-a-rule)
* [✅ The oracle finally speaks: the exported voice IS the game's centre channel](#the-oracle-finally-speaks-the-exported-voice-is-the-games-centre-channel)
* [The stripping control passes — `S00A` is obtainable, and the gate is cleared](#the-stripping-control-passes--s00a-is-obtainable-and-the-gate-is-cleared)
* [The correctness harness the docs promised for eight milestones did not exist](#the-correctness-harness-the-docs-promised-for-eight-milestones-did-not-exist)
* [Refutation attempt — the tone curve survives in its stated reach and not past it](#refutation-attempt--the-tone-curve-survives-in-its-stated-reach-and-not-past-it)
* [Identifying the capture's focused button — and my harness was posing the port wrong](#identifying-the-captures-focused-button--and-my-harness-was-posing-the-port-wrong)
* [`tools/port/which-focus` — the Decoder asked for a detector, and it carries its own control](#toolsportwhich-focus--the-decoder-asked-for-a-detector-and-it-carries-its-own-control)
* [The title's 1.82 % — three of my own explanations refuted, and the format has no blend mode](#the-titles-182---three-of-my-own-explanations-refuted-and-the-format-has-no-blend-mode)
* [🔴 The exporter dropped nested `.rat` leaf geometry on 45 elements — and it is the title's 1.82 %](#the-exporter-dropped-nested-rat-leaf-geometry-on-45-elements--and-it-is-the-titles-182)
* [The leaf composition is decoded and implemented — and it does **not** close the 1.82 %](#the-leaf-composition-is-decoded-and-implemented--and-it-does-not-close-the-182)
* [The −324 was the old keyframe association, and the corrected one is available **today**](#the-324-was-the-old-keyframe-association-and-the-corrected-one-is-available-today)
* [Re-running the P5/P6 gate after eight iterations of changes](#re-running-the-p5p6-gate-after-eight-iterations-of-changes)
* [Pinned `formats-pin-2026-08-29c` — and the knob I tested last iteration was retired](#pinned-formats-pin-2026-08-29c--and-the-knob-i-tested-last-iteration-was-retired)
* [Refuted — my own "the single non-whole-multiple scale in the export"](#refuted--my-own-the-single-non-whole-multiple-scale-in-the-export)
* [The 11.5 px was the fit's resolution, and the lesson inverts](#the-115-px-was-the-fits-resolution-and-the-lesson-inverts)
* [🔴 The focus ring had silently stopped, and BLOCKED had listed it](#the-focus-ring-had-silently-stopped-and-blocked-had-listed-it)
* [The plate's period is now the disc's 105, and it disagrees with the measurement](#the-plates-period-is-now-the-discs-105-and-it-disagrees-with-the-measurement)
* [The plate's period is 120, decoded — and it was falsified with my own ring number](#the-plates-period-is-120-decoded--and-it-was-falsified-with-my-own-ring-number)
* [✅ A settled screen is ONE instant, and it collapsed three residuals at once](#a-settled-screen-is-one-instant-and-it-collapsed-three-residuals-at-once)
* [Their census, and a framing of mine they sharpened](#their-census-and-a-framing-of-mine-they-sharpened)
* [Their "do not draw all five flashes" flag — checked, and it does not apply here](#their-do-not-draw-all-five-flashes-flag--checked-and-it-does-not-apply-here)
* [✅ The `publisher_logo` residual was a missing black hold, and we had both dismissed it](#the-publisher_logo-residual-was-a-missing-black-hold-and-we-had-both-dismissed-it)
* [`ptlogo_back2eff3` — recorded, deliberately not acted on](#ptlogo_back2eff3--recorded-deliberately-not-acted-on)
* [The narrow settle windows are harmless, and I can now say why](#the-narrow-settle-windows-are-harmless-and-i-can-now-say-why)
* [Refuted, mine — "the menu residual is localised on the `ptloop` sweeps"](#refuted-mine--the-menu-residual-is-localised-on-the-ptloop-sweeps)
* [Refuted — "the developer splash is one composited quad, the bounding box of the three logos"](#refuted--the-developer-splash-is-one-composited-quad-the-bounding-box-of-the-three-logos)
* [The black hold is 9 units, not 12 — measured in draws rather than luminance](#the-black-hold-is-9-units-not-12--measured-in-draws-rather-than-luminance)
* [The title's sweeps loop — measured, and the field could not have told us](#the-titles-sweeps-loop--measured-and-the-field-could-not-have-told-us)
* [The menus' residual is the tone floor, not structure — and `extras` is not really 3× worse](#the-menus-residual-is-the-tone-floor-not-structure--and-extras-is-not-really-3-worse)
* [Refutation attempt — their 239.8-unit figure, checked from my export](#refutation-attempt--their-2398-unit-figure-checked-from-my-export)
* [🔴 The loading screens are black at *every* instant — which proves the layer rule wrong for a layerless element](#the-loading-screens-are-black-at-every-instant--which-proves-the-layer-rule-wrong-for-a-layerless-element)
* [Their `eff3` retraction — my refusal was right, and my refutation found the same bug](#their-eff3-retraction--my-refusal-was-right-and-my-refutation-found-the-same-bug)
* [The forced backdrop: two of sixteen screens were black for their whole life](#the-forced-backdrop-two-of-sixteen-screens-were-black-for-their-whole-life)
* [Refutation attempt — the forced-backdrop rule's quantifier, and whether it misses a case](#refutation-attempt--the-forced-backdrop-rules-quantifier-and-whether-it-misses-a-case)
* [The 256/211 was never a disagreement — and my own census had already said so](#the-256211-was-never-a-disagreement--and-my-own-census-had-already-said-so)
* [The clock freezes at settle — the port's settle window, seen from the other side](#the-clock-freezes-at-settle--the-ports-settle-window-seen-from-the-other-side)
* [🔴 Withdrawn — "the boot is known too fast [refuted]". The splash dwells are declared, and the port was already playing them](#withdrawn--the-boot-is-known-too-fast-refuted-the-splash-dwells-are-declared-and-the-port-was-already-playing-them)
* [Refutation attempt — their two splash boundaries are not anchored the same way](#refutation-attempt--their-two-splash-boundaries-are-not-anchored-the-same-way)
* [Their corrected boundaries check out against the file — all six, exactly](#their-corrected-boundaries-check-out-against-the-file--all-six-exactly)
* [The n=1 disclosure, and the one port constant that rests on a single run](#the-n1-disclosure-and-the-one-port-constant-that-rests-on-a-single-run)
* [P6 gate — sound on the P5 walk, verified, and the tool I nearly shipped instead](#p6-gate--sound-on-the-p5-walk-verified-and-the-tool-i-nearly-shipped-instead)
* [Their `.tbm` self-refutation does not reach this archive — and it fixes my guard anyway](#their-tbm-self-refutation-does-not-reach-this-archive--and-it-fixes-my-guard-anyway)
* [Coverage is now tested per instant, because scale animates](#coverage-is-now-tested-per-instant-because-scale-animates)
* [P7 gate — the new-game intro plays and returns, and a defect I nearly invented](#p7-gate--the-new-game-intro-plays-and-returns-and-a-defect-i-nearly-invented)
* [`ScreenView.skipped` was correct and unread since P1 — now it says so itself](#screenviewskipped-was-correct-and-unread-since-p1--now-it-says-so-itself)
* [Refutation attempt — "the element declared first paints first"](#refutation-attempt--the-element-declared-first-paints-first)
* [The menu bed plays under the cutscene, nobody decided that, and it stays](#the-menu-bed-plays-under-the-cutscene-nobody-decided-that-and-it-stays)
* [`wait:<seconds>`, and the bed's loop seam is 3.4 seconds of silence](#waitseconds-and-the-beds-loop-seam-is-34-seconds-of-silence)
* [Two harness bugs, and the defect the second one was hiding](#two-harness-bugs-and-the-defect-the-second-one-was-hiding)
* [The `PRESS Ⓐ` plate: four bugs in a row, and a number I have been misquoting](#the-press--plate-four-bugs-in-a-row-and-a-number-i-have-been-misquoting)
* [The title's residual is the sweep phase, and the sweeps fit at ~400 units, not 357.7](#the-titles-residual-is-the-sweep-phase-and-the-sweeps-fit-at-400-units-not-3577)
* [A second capture closes the sweep-geometry question, and the plate matches at 0.00093 %](#a-second-capture-closes-the-sweep-geometry-question-and-the-plate-matches-at-000093)
* [`--focus=` did nothing on the menu path, and the corpus had an untested focus capture](#--focus-did-nothing-on-the-menu-path-and-the-corpus-had-an-untested-focus-capture)
* [The last unused capture, placed — and its residual is the oracle's, not the port's](#the-last-unused-capture-placed--and-its-residual-is-the-oracles-not-the-ports)
* [`MODDING.md` had five rules and no check. Now it has one, and all five pass](#moddingmd-had-five-rules-and-no-check-now-it-has-one-and-all-five-pass)
* [Five authored values had no reader — including the one I asked for measurements into](#five-authored-values-had-no-reader--including-the-one-i-asked-for-measurements-into)
* [`FORMAT.md` declared the port's own export invalid, and a failed export is not atomic](#formatmd-declared-the-ports-own-export-invalid-and-a-failed-export-is-not-atomic)
* [`check-all`, a verdict that ignored its own statistic, and a claim of mine that was wrong](#check-all-a-verdict-that-ignored-its-own-statistic-and-a-claim-of-mine-that-was-wrong)
* [The `title` disagreement, localised — and the question I filed for it was the wrong one](#the-title-disagreement-localised--and-the-question-i-filed-for-it-was-the-wrong-one)
* [Auditing `BLOCKED.md` found three stale rows, and the undated ones were all three](#auditing-blockedmd-found-three-stale-rows-and-the-undated-ones-were-all-three)
* [The record already answered last iteration's question, under headings that name it](#the-record-already-answered-last-iterations-question-under-headings-that-name-it)
* [🔴 Twenty-one messages to a dead address, each one warning me it was dead](#twenty-one-messages-to-a-dead-address-each-one-warning-me-it-was-dead)
* [The forced-backdrop pass is load-bearing on two screens, not six](#the-forced-backdrop-pass-is-load-bearing-on-two-screens-not-six)
* [Re-running the Decoder's necessity census: every figure reproduces, and what that is worth](#re-running-the-decoders-necessity-census-every-figure-reproduces-and-what-that-is-worth)
* [A second witness for the pixel-cost claim, from a different renderer](#a-second-witness-for-the-pixel-cost-claim-from-a-different-renderer)
* [Reconciling the two ink figures, and what "has its own key" is resting on](#reconciling-the-two-ink-figures-and-what-has-its-own-key-is-resting-on)
* [Not one of the 80 has a decoded key — and the port's four are the rule's oracle check](#not-one-of-the-80-has-a-decoded-key--and-the-ports-four-are-the-rules-oracle-check)
* [A withholding reason that was false, and the measurement beside it that was not](#a-withholding-reason-that-was-false-and-the-measurement-beside-it-that-was-not)
* [The sweep discriminator resolves: different frames, and a sweep position cannot date one](#the-sweep-discriminator-resolves-different-frames-and-a-sweep-position-cannot-date-one)
* [Their trap, run against my tree — and I found its mirror instead](#their-trap-run-against-my-tree--and-i-found-its-mirror-instead)
* [The plate pulses — measured, and the port was wrong on the boot's end state](#the-plate-pulses--measured-and-the-port-was-wrong-on-the-boots-end-state)
* [A static overlay now advances, and a refutation attempt on the pulse floor](#a-static-overlay-now-advances-and-a-refutation-attempt-on-the-pulse-floor)
* [Their pulse floor reproduces exactly once the predicate is named — 159, to the pixel](#their-pulse-floor-reproduces-exactly-once-the-predicate-is-named--159-to-the-pixel)
* [My rendered pulse, counted in their units — and #4 refutes the voice value without fixing it](#my-rendered-pulse-counted-in-their-units--and-4-refutes-the-voice-value-without-fixing-it)
* [The voice export now carries every qualifying stream — and a unity sum was refused by our own check](#the-voice-export-now-carries-every-qualifying-stream--and-a-unity-sum-was-refused-by-our-own-check)
* [Their stream assignment does not fit my region — weights NOT applied](#their-stream-assignment-does-not-fit-my-region--weights-not-applied)
* [The resolver starts late, and my "duplicate tail" was a real stream all along](#the-resolver-starts-late-and-my-duplicate-tail-was-a-real-stream-all-along)
* [The export knew the voice was incomplete; the runtime did not say so](#the-export-knew-the-voice-was-incomplete-the-runtime-did-not-say-so)
* [The voice export is complete — new pin, and the cause was a "within one bank" cap](#the-voice-export-is-complete--new-pin-and-the-cause-was-a-within-one-bank-cap)
* [The positional weights are applied — keyed by byte size, so the key is a check](#the-positional-weights-are-applied--keyed-by-byte-size-so-the-key-is-a-check)
* [🔴 Unexplained: `verify-menu-audio`'s dead-press check has started failing](#unexplained-verify-menu-audios-dead-press-check-has-started-failing)
* [External ground truth for every three-chunk region — the movies' own durations](#external-ground-truth-for-every-three-chunk-region--the-movies-own-durations)
* [The menu bed loops at 61.93 s — and my 3.4 s "ugly seam" was mine, not the game's](#the-menu-bed-loops-at-6193-s--and-my-34-s-ugly-seam-was-mine-not-the-games)
* [The dead-press check was passing by luck, and the luck ran out](#the-dead-press-check-was-passing-by-luck-and-the-luck-ran-out)
* [Independent confirmation of the 1.5 MB cap — the mechanism, not just the conclusion](#independent-confirmation-of-the-15-mb-cap--the-mechanism-not-just-the-conclusion)
* [The loop is a runtime field, the two readings conflict, and the port keeps what it shipped](#the-loop-is-a-runtime-field-the-two-readings-conflict-and-the-port-keeps-what-it-shipped)
* [The duration is confirmed and the window is wrong — and the start is now a visible field](#the-duration-is-confirmed-and-the-window-is-wrong--and-the-start-is-now-a-visible-field)
* [The loop window is measured — `-ss 9.44 -t 61.87` — and the near-silence count tracked the error](#the-loop-window-is-measured---ss-944--t-6187--and-the-near-silence-count-tracked-the-error)
* [Applying "grep the corpus for the claim" to my own corpus](#applying-grep-the-corpus-for-the-claim-to-my-own-corpus)
* [A refuted-claim register, because the audit found what the audit found](#a-refuted-claim-register-because-the-audit-found-what-the-audit-found)
* [State of the port, and a claim I built on for a week without checking](#state-of-the-port-and-a-claim-i-built-on-for-a-week-without-checking)
* [Identifying their submenu capture: edges where intensity could not](#identifying-their-submenu-capture-edges-where-intensity-could-not)
* [`on_cancel`: one half measured, and a MEASURED stamp removed from the other](#on_cancel-one-half-measured-and-a-measured-stamp-removed-from-the-other)
* [BLOCKED.md's five "blocking" rows were all answered, some days ago](#blockedmds-five-blocking-rows-were-all-answered-some-days-ago)
* [The plate came back in the game and not in the port](#the-plate-came-back-in-the-game-and-not-in-the-port)
* [🔴 `verify-screen` was nondeterministic, and it looked fine most of the time](#verify-screen-was-nondeterministic-and-it-looked-fine-most-of-the-time)
* [The JP title capture adjudicates `title_jp` — and it goes against the port](#the-jp-title-capture-adjudicates-title_jp--and-it-goes-against-the-port)
* [🔴 CORRECTION: the port did not move away from the game — I scored the wrong frame](#correction-the-port-did-not-move-away-from-the-game--i-scored-the-wrong-frame)
* [The `rest()` flash defect reaches four screens I ship — and the port already survives it](#the-rest-flash-defect-reaches-four-screens-i-ship--and-the-port-already-survives-it)
* [Correction: those two are the *sound* path, which makes the rule stronger](#correction-those-two-are-the-sound-path-which-makes-the-rule-stronger)
* [The two loading screens are no longer black, and it was the paint order](#the-two-loading-screens-are-no-longer-black-and-it-was-the-paint-order)
* [Adjudicating the Decoder's `rest()` replacement against the game](#adjudicating-the-decoders-rest-replacement-against-the-game)
* [The boot's own end frame, scored against the game for the first time](#the-boots-own-end-frame-scored-against-the-game-for-the-first-time)
* [Refutation attempt: the settle-instant candidate is **not** uniformly better](#refutation-attempt-the-settle-instant-candidate-is-not-uniformly-better)
* [My own predictor holds — and the evidence that made it *better than width* does not](#my-own-predictor-holds--and-the-evidence-that-made-it-better-than-width-does-not)
* [Checking my own tree for the ordinal foot-gun that just voided three of theirs](#checking-my-own-tree-for-the-ordinal-foot-gun-that-just-voided-three-of-theirs)
* [Looking for a case that separates width from mid-ramp — there is none, and I nearly invented one](#looking-for-a-case-that-separates-width-from-mid-ramp--there-is-none-and-i-nearly-invented-one)
* [Auditing my tree for the disc-wide ordinal foot-gun](#auditing-my-tree-for-the-disc-wide-ordinal-foot-gun)
* [Their withdrawn "~14 units of black hold" — my authored 9 survives it](#their-withdrawn-14-units-of-black-hold--my-authored-9-survives-it)
* [🔴 CORRECTION: my 18-vs-19 "agreement" compared two different intervals](#correction-my-18-vs-19-agreement-compared-two-different-intervals)
* [`check-all` passes — after an hour-long hang that was the suite's own fault](#check-all-passes--after-an-hour-long-hang-that-was-the-suites-own-fault)
* [Ⓐ and Ⓑ are not the same shape, and my `black_hold` treats them as if they were](#and--are-not-the-same-shape-and-my-black_hold-treats-them-as-if-they-were)
* [🔴 `check-all` excused two failing rows with a reason that is measurably false](#check-all-excused-two-failing-rows-with-a-reason-that-is-measurably-false)
* [`black_hold_units` 9 → 0, and why not the value that fits best](#black_hold_units-9--0-and-why-not-the-value-that-fits-best)
* ["Already up to date" is not evidence that I am current](#already-up-to-date-is-not-evidence-that-i-am-current)
* [Re-deriving `black_hold_units` against four measurements, not three](#re-deriving-black_hold_units-against-four-measurements-not-three)
* [🔴 CORRECTION: my "the eras render identically" measurement was void](#correction-my-the-eras-render-identically-measurement-was-void)
* [🔴 CORRECTION: my branch *is* the stale era, and the reference binary was never the workspace build](#correction-my-branch-is-the-stale-era-and-the-reference-binary-was-never-the-workspace-build)
* [`exit_ramp_units`: the refuted constant was living in a default](#exit_ramp_units-the-refuted-constant-was-living-in-a-default)
* [Auditing the whole tree for "a deleted value that something still supplies"](#auditing-the-whole-tree-for-a-deleted-value-that-something-still-supplies)
* [Counting the fallbacks instead of inspecting them — and one I had misjudged](#counting-the-fallbacks-instead-of-inspecting-them--and-one-i-had-misjudged)
* [The oracle harness was nondeterministic, and I quoted its numbers for a dozen iterations](#the-oracle-harness-was-nondeterministic-and-i-quoted-its-numbers-for-a-dozen-iterations)
* [Answering "an unenumerated set" — don't enumerate, test](#answering-an-unenumerated-set--dont-enumerate-test)
* [🔴 The third clock was in my own list, and I did not wire it](#the-third-clock-was-in-my-own-list-and-i-did-not-wire-it)
* [The leaf phase was an arbitrary choice; the capture turns out to determine it](#the-leaf-phase-was-an-arbitrary-choice-the-capture-turns-out-to-determine-it)
* [Cross-checking their leaf reading against my export — it reconciles](#cross-checking-their-leaf-reading-against-my-export--it-reconciles)
* [Replicating the phase result on the title — it fails, and the failure is the finding](#replicating-the-phase-result-on-the-title--it-fails-and-the-failure-is-the-finding)
* [Their masking rule, implemented — and it does not transfer to my screens](#their-masking-rule-implemented--and-it-does-not-transfer-to-my-screens)
* [Their "the game may not draw these leaves" hypothesis — my curves say *sometimes*](#their-the-game-may-not-draw-these-leaves-hypothesis--my-curves-say-sometimes)
* [Using the clean splash rows to measure the tone curve — and repeating a documented mistake](#using-the-clean-splash-rows-to-measure-the-tone-curve--and-repeating-a-documented-mistake)
* [Localising the 1.92 splash floor: it is glyph edges, and off them the port is ~1 RMSE from the game](#localising-the-192-splash-floor-it-is-glyph-edges-and-off-them-the-port-is-1-rmse-from-the-game)
* [Their draw-stream result checked against my export — three confirmations and one correction](#their-draw-stream-result-checked-against-my-export--three-confirmations-and-one-correction)
* [Nested leaves may advance at half rate — a quantified defect in shipped output](#nested-leaves-may-advance-at-half-rate--a-quantified-defect-in-shipped-output)

<!-- /INDEX -->
## P0 — the exporter, 2026-08-28

### The exporter reads one authored file, and stamps its provenance into the output

`export/` is derived and `authored/` is hand-written, and the natural reading of
that is that the exporter never touches `authored/`. But a screen has to be
*called* something, and the disc does not name its builds — the identification of
build 5 as the main menu is HANDOFF Q2, **measured against a live capture**, not
a field.

Two ways to handle that:

1. the exporter emits `build_05.json` and the runtime renames it from
   `authored/screen_names.json`;
2. the exporter reads that map and writes `main_menu.json` directly.

Chose **2**, with a condition: every name it applies carries `name_source:
"authored"` and a `name_why` quoting the evidence, and `check` **rejects** an
authored name with no `why`. The file that lands in `export/` is therefore still
honest about which of its fields is a measurement — which is the property the
derived/authored split exists to protect — while a human opening the tree sees
`main_menu.json` rather than having to resolve a rename in their head. A build
nobody has identified exports as `build_NN` with `name_source: "index"`, which is
a locator and not a claim.

This is the **only** authored input the exporter takes. Everything else in
`authored/` is applied by the runtime over `export/`.

### Sprites are per screen, not a flat pool

`main_menu` and `extras` both ship a `ptbase.t32` and they are different
pictures. A flat `sprites/` directory would have silently collided; whichever
screen exported second would have won, and the loser would have drawn the wrong
background with no error anywhere. `sprites/<subdir>/<screen>/<name>.png`.

### The format is executable

`sylpheed-export check --out export` validates a tree against `docs/FORMAT.md`
with no disc in hand. It exists because "the export is correct" is otherwise an
assertion, and because the P0 gate is *"validates against FORMAT.md"* — which is
not a thing anyone can confirm by reading.

It reads the tree the way Godot will: as a stranger, with no access to the disc,
the decoders, or the exporter's internals. It deliberately does **not** check the
export against the disc — that is what `sylpheed-cli screen render` is for, at P1.

Checked that it bites, rather than assuming: five mutations of a valid
`main_menu.json` — a broken `paint_order` permutation, a dangling
`focus_sprite`, a reversed `buttons` list, a `#rrggbbaa` colour, an invented
`name_source` — are each caught with a specific message.

### The highlight sprite pairs by name; `opt ` is exported but not believed

FORMAT v1 said `focus_sprite` came from the element's `opt ` link. That reading
was **measured and refuted** by the RE agent, and this export shows why plainly:
on the main menu, `opt ` chains `ptloop01 → ptloop02 → ptbtn01` — two decorations
and then a button. It is a linked list of something, and it is not focus.

The highlight is paired by **sprite name** instead (`ptbtn01.t32` ↔
`ptbtn01f.t32`), which is HANDOFF's convention and holds for all 54 real pairs on
the disc. It resolves all five main-menu buttons. The raw link is still exported
as `opt_link`, renamed so that nothing downstream mistakes it for navigation, and
so that whoever eventually decodes it has the data.

Note this is 🟡 a naming convention, not a decoded field. It is authored in
effect, and lives in the exporter only because it is a rule over disc data rather
than a value we chose.

### The paint order is exported, not authored

Q3 decoded it — a `u16` layer key at `+0x0A` of each `T8aD` sprite header,
stable-sorted with declaration index. So it is read in the exporter, per the
contract's own rule for a decoded answer, and `paint_order` in `export/` is a
derived field. `"paint_order"` is gone from `unresolved`; **`paint_order_ties`
replaces it**, because the tie-break is still unknown and costs one element's
blend on one screen.

Where an element has no `T8aD` header the key comes from the decoders' table of
keys **measured off the running game**. That is a different kind of fact, so it
is labelled: `layer_source` is `"sprite"`, `"implied"` or `"none"`, and a
consumer that needs to know whether a layer is read or measured can tell.

### Colours are exported as two fields with the byte order in the name

There are two modulate colours and they multiply: `tint` is RGBA, `fade` is
**ARGB** and its high byte is the alpha that ramps. v1's single `"#ffffffff"`
could not carry both and silently discarded the ramping alpha. They are exported
as `tint_rgba` and `fade_argb`, raw hex, byte order in the key — because getting
it backwards is silent and looks like an art bug rather than a parse bug.

### `t` stays raw

HANDOFF Q1 is answered — linear ramp, 2 units per rendered frame, working
conversion 1 unit = 1/60 s — but that conversion is **measured off the running
game, not read from the file**, and the finding itself flags the 27.6 present-
frames/second measurement as the part worth re-testing. If the game turns out to
present at 60 Hz, every duration halves.

So `t` is exported exactly as the disc spells it, `keyframe_time_unit` stays in
`unresolved`, and the conversion will live in one authored place at P2. One
constant to change, in a file that says it is a decision.

### The final keyframe has no `t`, and `check` enforces that

The disc has no time slot on the last keyframe of a group. A file that carries
one there has invented it. `check` rejects it — this is the one place where the
temptation to emit a plausible number is strongest and the resulting error is
completely invisible.

---

## P1 — Godot draws the screen, 2026-08-28

### The Godot side reads the manifest, not a path

`ExportTree` is the only class that knows where `export/` is: `SYLPHEED_EXPORT`
if set, otherwise `<project>/../export`. Screens are addressed by their manifest
**name** (`main_menu`), never by a file path, so the runtime never encodes the
archive's subdirectory and a re-export that moves a file does not break it. It
also checks `format` on both the manifest and each screen, and refuses a tree it
was not built to read rather than half-drawing one.

Textures are read as bytes and decoded with `load_png_from_buffer` at runtime.
They are deliberately **not** Godot-imported resources: `export/` is gitignored
and regenerated wholesale, and a `.import` sidecar per sprite would be derived
state living next to derived state, invalidated on every re-export.

### One CanvasItem draws the whole screen

`ScreenView._draw` walks `paint_order` and draws each element itself, rather
than making a node per element and leaning on `z_index`. The export's
`paint_order` is already back-to-front, so honouring it is a loop; expressing
the same order through sixteen nodes' z-indices would hide the one thing that is
still unresolved about it — the **ties** — behind Godot's own sibling rules,
where a change in the export would silently become a change in Godot's tree
order instead of a visible change in the draw sequence.

### P1 draws `rest` and nothing else

Every element is drawn at its resting pose. No keyframe interpolation: that is
P2, and it depends on the keyframe time unit, which is **measured** rather than
decoded. A milestone whose gate is a pixel diff must not have a measured
constant inside it, or the diff stops being evidence about the port.

For the same reason `focused_id` is empty at P1. Initial focus was measured as
unstable boot to boot (HANDOFF Q5), so choosing one is an authored decision and
it belongs to P5, where a human is pressing keys.

### Nearest-neighbour, and why that is not a preference

`TEXTURE_FILTER_NEAREST`. The export is a 1:1 copy of the disc's own texels and
elements draw at up to 500 %; a bilinear filter invents detail the disc does not
have. It is also what the reference renderer does — `ui_layout::blit` maps
destination to source by integer division — so a filter difference cannot
masquerade as a placement difference in the diff.

### The capture is the SubViewport, not the window

The screen is drawn into a `SubViewport` sized to the export's own `design`
rectangle and shown through a container that scales it to the window. The first
attempt captured `get_viewport()` and got **1235×695**: there is a window manager
on the Xvfb display and its title bar had eaten 45×25 px of a screen the export
declares as 1280×720. A gate that compares a rescaled 1235×695 capture against a
1280×720 composite measures the compositor.

So `--capture` grabs the SubViewport texture: exactly the design rectangle,
independent of the window, directly comparable with `screen render` with no crop
and no resample. The windowed run is still worth doing — it is what proves a
human sees the screen — but it is not what the numbers come from.

## P1 gate — the diff, and what it found

`tools/verify-screen` renders every screen in the manifest both ways and reports
the largest per-channel difference anywhere in the frame. Both renderers are held
to the same inputs: the reference CLI built by `build-reference-cli` from the
revision the exporter is **pinned** to (not `/reborn/target/`, which is a live
mount that moves mid-iteration), `--black` because the screen carries its own
background, and `--primitives --animated` because those are what make the CLI
draw the same element set the port draws at rest.

| screen | build | max per-channel Δ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| `main_menu` | 5 | **3** | the P0/P1 gate screen |
| `main_menu_jp` | 8 | 3 | |
| `extras` / `extras_jp` | 6 / 9 | 4 / 3 | |
| `press_start` / `press_start_jp` | 2 / 3 | 1 | |
| `build_00` / `build_01` | 0 / 1 | 3 | |
| `build_10` / `build_11` | 10 / 11 | **0** | byte-identical |
| `title` | 4 | 6 | paint-order tie, below |
| `title_jp` | 7 | 154 | sampling phase, below |

`main_menu` — the milestone's own gate — agrees to **≤3/255 on every channel of
every pixel**, RMSE 0.38 %, with **no** pixel differing by more than 4 %. 3/255
is what integer-truncating compositing in the CLI and float rounding on a GPU
differ by; there is no structural disagreement anywhere in the frame.

Three screens exceed that, and each has a named cause rather than a threshold.

### `title`: a tie in the paint order — neither renderer is wrong

Build 4 is the one screen where the CLI uses a paint order **measured off the
running game** instead of deriving it. Compared against the order this port
exports, every single disagreement is **inside a tie** — the two orders differ
only among elements carrying *identical* layer keys (`0x8083`, the `back2` glow
group, and `0x80a0`):

```
derived : … 15, 16, 17, 18, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, …
measured: … 15, 18, 16, 17, 0, 2, 4, 7, 1, 3, 5, …
```

That is exactly the residual HANDOFF Q3 documents and this export already
declares in `unresolved: ["paint_order_ties"]`. It is worth stating what it
costs: **904 px** in the glow band at (445,117)–(1195,313), all of them 4–6/255.
The port keeps the stable sort, per HANDOFF's own recommendation. Nothing to fix,
and nothing to tune — a "fix" here would be fitting the port to one screen's
capture.

Two of the reordered indices (`0x80a0`) are `kind & 0x4` template instances that
both renderers skip, so the only real reorder outside the glow group is
`ptlogo2` against `ptlogo_tm`, which do not overlap.

### `title_jp`: nearest-neighbour sampling phase — the CLI is the one I would call wrong

`title_jp` is the **only** screen in the export with a drawn element at a scale
that is not a whole multiple of 100 %: `ptlogo_eff2` at 125 %. It is also the
only screen with a difference above 6/255. The two facts are the same fact.

At a non-integer ratio the two renderers pick different source texels:

* `ui_layout::blit` samples the source at the destination pixel's **top-left
  corner** — `sxi = col * sw / dw`.
* A GPU samples at the destination pixel's **centre** — `floor((col+0.5)·sw/dw)`.

At 125 % those disagree on one column in five, which is why the differing pixels
are ~30 above 100/255 strung along thin diagonal edges rather than a shifted
region. At every whole multiple of 100 % they agree exactly, which is why the
other eleven screens are clean.

**Which is wrong:** the CLI, I think. Corner-sampled nearest is a half-
destination-pixel bias toward the top-left that no rasteriser produces, and the
Xenon GPU that drew this screen sampled at pixel centres. But I have no
framebuffer capture of `title_jp` and the disagreement is sub-pixel on one glow,
so this is a reading, not a measurement — recorded in `docs/BLOCKED.md` rather
than acted on. **The port is not changing to match**, because matching the CLI
here would mean deliberately reproducing a half-pixel offset in order to make a
number smaller.

### `extras`: two pixels

Two pixels at 4/255. Rounding.

### What the diff cannot tell us

The pivot question in `docs/BLOCKED.md` predicted that a P1 diff could not
distinguish "anchor scale to the declared pivot" from "anchor to half the
texture", because both renderers use the declared pivot. That prediction held:
the port and the CLI agree on every scaled element, and that agreement is **not
evidence** about which anchor the game uses. It stays open.

### ~~`pteff05.t32` and `pteff04.t32` have no sprite, and that is correct~~

**RETRACTED 2026-08-29. This was wrong, and it was the most consequential thing
on this page.** See "The menu had no background" below.

---

## P2 — keyframe animation, 2026-08-28

### The time unit is authored, in one file, and says loudly that it is not on the disc

`authored/timing.json`. HANDOFF Q1 is answered — linear ramp, 2 units per
rendered frame, 1 unit = 1/60 s — but that conversion is **measured off the
running game**, not read from a file, which is exactly the case the
derived/authored split exists for. It is expressed as
`keyframe_units_per_second: 60` rather than seconds-per-unit so the value is
exact instead of a repeating decimal, and it carries the two independent lines
that support it. `t` stays raw everywhere in `export/`; seconds appear only
where this file is applied, which is one line of `boot.gd`.

`exit_ramp_seconds` is deliberately **null**. See below.

### The timeline stops at the last *timed* keyframe, and never plays the exit

The last keyframe of every group carries **no `t`** — the disc has no time slot
there. Across this export that final frame is an *exit* pose: for 116 of 134
elements it differs from the last timed keyframe **in alpha only** (a fade-out),
for 12 it is the loading splash's scale-and-slide exit, and for 6 it is
identical (no exit animation at all).

So the group is `pre-roll → ramp in → hold → [exit]`, and the port plays it up to
the hold and stops. Playing into the exit would mean **inventing how long the
ramp takes**, because the disc does not say. That duration is the screen
transition — HANDOFF Q7 measured it at ~0.4 s — and it belongs to P3, with its
own evidence. This is why `exit_ramp_seconds` is null rather than 0.4: P2 has no
business holding it.

### The interpolation is checked by where it lands, not by inspection

For **8 of the 12** screens the settled timeline is **byte-identical** to the
`--pose=rest` render. That is the useful assertion: the port walks the keyframes
with an authored time unit and arrives, to the pixel, at the pose the pinned
decoders independently identify as the resting one. `tools/screen-strip` reports
this per screen, so a change to the interpolation that drifts by one unit shows
up as a diff rather than as nothing.

The four that differ do so for two distinct reasons, below.

## `rest` misidentifies six elements, and the running game says so

On `main_menu`, the settled timeline and `rest` differ in exactly one region:
**400×470 at (440,108)** — the bounding box of `ptframe1` and `ptframe2`, and
nothing else on the screen.

`rest` puts both at their **first** keyframe: off-position and fully
transparent. The keyframes say they slide (620,108)→(440,108) and (403,267)→
(583,267) while fading 0x00→0xff, and then hold that pose for their last three
keyframes including the untimed one.

`/reborn/docs/re/captures/main-menu-oracle.png`, a capture of the running game,
**shows them**: the bright circuit-frame bracket around the menu, with a ring at
the bottom right. Cropping the same 250×180 region from the capture and from
both renders puts the ring and its elbow trace in the port's timeline render
**pixel-aligned with the game's**, and absent from the `rest` render. That is
geometry, not luminance, so it does not depend on the capture's gamma or on the
fact that it was taken with `NEW GAME` focused.

### Why the decoders get it wrong, precisely

`ui_layout::rest_plateau` excludes a run of identical keyframes that **ends the
group**, because that run is normally the exit — the comment cites the pause
menu, where taking the trailing run erased the word PAUSE. That exclusion is
right in general and wrong for an element with **no exit animation**, where the
trailing run *is* the hold. The rule then falls back to an earlier run, which
for a slide-in is the invisible pre-roll.

The condition that identifies the affected elements exactly, with no false
positives in this export, is:

> the final untimed keyframe has the **same pose** as the last timed keyframe

Six elements match it and `rest` misses all six: `ptframe1`/`ptframe2` on
`main_menu` and `main_menu_jp`, and `pteff02` on `title` and `title_jp`. This is
a **finding for the RE agent** about `sylpheed-formats`, not something this port
fixes: the decoders are pinned and must not be reimplemented here. The port
simply does not use `rest` — it derives the arrived pose from the keyframes,
which needs no heuristic — and `verify-screen` still asks for `--pose=rest` so
that renderer-vs-renderer diffing compares like with like.

Note what this says about P1: the port and the reference renderer **agreed** on
`main_menu` to 3/255, and both were missing two elements the game draws. Two
renderers reading the same field through the same decoder agreeing is not
evidence that the field is right. `docs/BLOCKED.md` had already said that about
the pivot; here it bit for real.

## The title is not settled, and P2 does not claim it

`title` and `title_jp` differ between the two modes by much more (max 142 and
247), and there the disagreement is **not** the six-element bug alone. `rest`
picks a mid-timeline hold for several glows (`pteff01`, `ptlogoall_eff`,
`ptlogoall_eff2`, `ptlogo_back2eff5`) where the timeline runs on to a much
brighter pose.

I could not settle which is right, and did not try to make the numbers agree:

* No element's alpha ever reverses direction anywhere in this export, so the
  title's 4.48 s timeline is a slow one-way ramp, not a pulse — which removes the
  obvious reason to expect a loop, but does not prove there is none.
* The only live title capture composites the **`PRESS Ⓐ` plate (build 2) over
  the title (build 4)**, so it cannot be diffed against build 4 alone. Mean
  luminance is oracle 64.1, `rest` 62.8, timeline 80.0 — which looks like it
  favours `rest`, except that the plate *adds* brightness and `rest` is carrying
  a 25 % black dim quad (`pteff02`) that is itself one of the six misidentified
  elements. The comparison is confounded in both directions and settles nothing.
* **Both modes are visibly wrong anyway.** Side by side with the capture, the
  port draws a washed-out cyan glow slab across the logo that the running game
  does not have — in `rest` mode too. That is a third problem, independent of
  this one, and it is P3's.

So: the timeline is the default because it is derived from the disc's own
keyframes with one measured constant and no heuristic, and because it is proven
right on the screen this milestone gates. On the title it is **unverified**, and
P3 should not assume P2 settled it.

---

## P2, corrected — the pin moved, and the settle rule was wrong, 2026-08-28

### Answering the RE agent's question: which six, and on what screens

They asked, having found only two elements on the English main menu satisfying
the condition this port proposed. The six span the whole 12-screen export:

| element | screens | trailing run |
|---|---|---|
| `ptframe1`, `ptframe2` | `main_menu`, `main_menu_jp` | alpha `0xff` — **visible** |
| `pteff02` | `title`, `title_jp` | alpha `0x00` — **transparent** |

So four of the six are the pair they already found, once per language build, and
their alpha rule accepts exactly those. The other two are `pteff02`, whose
trailing run is transparent, so their rule **excludes** it and leaves `rest` at
`0x40`.

**That exclusion is right, and their own measurement proves it.** `pteff02` is
the 25 % dim quad; they measured the title render going from **+13.14 to +0.55**
against the plate-free capture once the dim is drawn. `rest` must therefore stay
at `0x40` and must *not* move to the transparent trailing run — which is what
their rule does. Two investigations converging from opposite directions.

The condition this port proposed was **too loose**; the alpha discriminator is
the correct rule and the port has no amendment to offer.

### The pin moved 8b6dbcf → 5414db3

Its own commit, and what I wanted from it is the fixed `ui_layout::rest()`.
Pinned at `5414db3` rather than `4bc9706` where the fix was written, because
`5414db3` is where it carries its disc-wide check — 30 of 13 991 elements move,
4 become visible, **0 become invisible**.

The re-export is the evidence the change was contained: **two files changed, and
within them exactly four `rest` blocks** — `ptframe1`/`ptframe2` on both main
menus moving from `(620,108)/(403,267)` at `t=16` and alpha `0x00` to
`(440,108)/(583,267)` at `t=62` and alpha `0xff`. Every diff line pairs; the
other ten screens are byte-identical, `pteff02` did not move, and no sprite
changed.

### The settle rule was wrong, and their title finding is what showed it

P2 shipped "hold the last **timed** keyframe", on the reasoning that the exit is
the final untimed frame. **That is wrong**, and the title is the counter-example:
`pteff02` holds at `t=46` with the dim at alpha `0x40` and then ramps to `0x00`
by `t=236`. The exit is not only the untimed frame — it can be a long run of
timed ones. Running to the end drops the dim and makes the whole screen ~13/255
too bright, which is exactly the luminance excess P2 recorded (oracle 64.1,
`rest` 62.8, timeline 80.0) and could not explain.

A group is `pre-roll → ramp in → hold → ramp out → post-roll`, and a screen that
has arrived sits on **the hold**. So the timeline now plays in and stops at
`rest`, which is the decoders' identification of that hold and carries its own
`t`. `settle_units()` is `rest.t`.

The check is that the disagreement vanishes: on **all twelve** screens the
settled timeline is now byte-identical to the `--pose=rest` render, where before
this change four of them differed by up to 247/255. The timeline's endpoint
*should* be `rest` — the animation is what the timeline adds, not a different
destination — so this is the property to want, and it now holds without a
special case.

That also retires P2's open question about looping, from the other side: the RE
agent measured that groups hold rather than loop (`ptloop01`/`ptloop02` park
off-screen at x=1521 and x=−839; 18 s of settled title sits at sd ≤ 0.01).

## The reference renderer was stale for three diff runs

Worth recording as a process failure, because it defeated the project's whole
verification method for a while and it failed *silently*.

After bumping the pin I rebuilt the reference CLI, and `build-reference-cli`
reported success at rev `5414db3`. `verify-screen` then showed `main_menu`
jumping from 3/255 to **72/255**. The natural reading — the port had regressed —
was wrong. The port was right and **the reference was a revision behind**: the
shared `CARGO_TARGET_DIR` still held a `sylpheed-cli` built from `8b6dbcf`, and
cargo reported `Finished in 0.13s` and left it in place. Building into a clean
target directory produced a binary that resolves `ptframe1` to `(440,108) t=62`;
the shared one still said `(620,108) t=16`.

The old check — "does `screen list` run?" — cannot catch this, because a stale
binary runs perfectly.

Two changes:

* `build-reference-cli` builds into `$CARGO_TARGET_DIR/reference-cli/$rev`, a
  tree **keyed by the pinned revision**, so a new pin has no artifacts to reuse.
  A stable copy is placed alongside for consumers.
* It then checks the binary **against `export/`**: both come from the same pin,
  so if the CLI resolves `ptframe1`'s rest differently from what the exporter
  wrote, the two halves of the verification are not the same revision and it
  fails loudly. It compares the two rather than asserting a literal, so it stays
  true when the pin moves again.

`docker/bin/` is baked into the image, so this takes effect on the next image
build; until then the repo copy has to be invoked by path. The RE agent hit the
same class of trap this session from the other side (`./target/debug` stale
against a redirected `CARGO_TARGET_DIR`). It is worth naming the general shape:
**a build system reporting success is not evidence that the artifact you are
about to trust is the code you pinned.**

### What this did not change

`title` (6/255), `extras` (4/255) and `title_jp` (154/255) are unchanged, and
their diagnoses stand — a paint-order tie, two pixels, and nearest-neighbour
sampling phase at 125 % scale. The title's swoosh defect the RE agent localised
(drawn thick and white where the game draws it thin and pink) is untouched by
any of this and remains P3's.

---

## The menu had no background, and P1 called that correct, 2026-08-29

The pin moved `5414db3 → f817dd5` for `56cc7ac`, "a RATC child's name is stated,
not inferred". `ratc::parse` had named each child by scanning backwards for the
last printable run of bytes before its magic. For `pteff05.t32` the three
trailing payload bytes are `38 41 58` — `8AX` — which beat the real name, so the
child registered under a name no element declares and resolved to no sprite.

`pteff05.t32` is the **full-resolution background of all five menu screens**.

So every render this port has produced of a menu screen has been missing its
background, and P1 wrote that up as a property of the disc: *"the bundle declares
them and carries zero RATC children for either, so there is no texture on the
disc to export."* That sentence was false. The bundle carries the child; the
decoder was handing back the wrong name for it. Retracted above rather than
edited away.

### What the re-export shows

Six new sprites and nothing else: `pteff05.png` on `main_menu`, `extras` and
their Japanese twins, `pteff04.png` on both titles. Per screen the JSON gains a
`sprite` line and `layer_source` moves `"implied" → "sprite"` — the layer key is
now **read from the file** instead of taken from the decoders' table of keys
measured off the running game. That is the derived/authored ratchet turning the
right way, in the exporter rather than in `authored/`.

`pteff05.png` is **1280×720**; `ptbase.png`, which had been carrying the
background alone, is 640×360 drawn at 200 %. The screen was being shown its own
art at half resolution.

### Measured against the live capture, not against the other renderer

Whole-frame RMSE of the settled `main_menu` against
`captures/main-menu-oracle.png`:

| | RMSE |
|---|---|
| before this pin | 8.05 % |
| with the real background | **5.92 %** |

A 26 % reduction, and it is the right kind of evidence: the reference renderer
was missing the same element for the same reason, so a renderer-vs-renderer diff
could not have found this. It is the third time on this project that the
capture caught something both renderers agreed on — the bracket, the title dim
quad, and now the background.

`verify-screen` after the bump is unchanged in character: everything at 3–4/255
except `title` (6, the paint-order tie) and `title_jp` (155, the sampling phase).
Both renderers gained the background together.

### One thing the comparison says that I did not expect

Rendering with `--focus=ptbtn01`, which is how the capture was taken, makes the
RMSE **worse** — 5.92 % → 7.00 %. The port *replaces* an element's sprite with
its `*f` twin; `sylpheed-cli`'s own `--focus` is documented as drawing the
focused record **over** the base element. Those are different operations, and
the capture shows a ring marker beside `NEW GAME` that the port does not draw.

This is P5's, not P2's, and it is not being guessed at here. Raised in
`docs/BLOCKED.md`.

---

## P3 — splash → title, unattended, 2026-08-29

### The splash is located by entry index, because no rule can find it

The RE agent looked for a content predicate and there is none: design size fails
(every extra composable bundle sampled is 1280×720, the same as every screen) and
element count fails (fragments run 2…15 elements in `GP_OPTIONS`/`GP_SAVE_LOAD`
while the splash halves are 3 and 7 — the ranges overlap).

So `screen_builds` is now `is_build` **plus an authored allow-list of entry
indices**, in `authored/screen_names.json` under `also_export`, each with a `why`
that says it is a locator and not a claim. This is safe in `GP_TITLE` and would
not be in general: there, widening adds exactly four bundles and all four are
real screens with zero fragments. That is why it is an allow-list rather than a
loosened predicate.

**There were two splash screens and the port had neither.** Entries 11/14 are the
developer logos (GAME ARTS / SETA / studio anima); entries **10/13 are the SQUARE
ENIX publisher wordmark, the first thing the boot shows**, and nothing in this
project had noticed them. Both pairs are region twins — ™ on 10, ® on 13 — and
the port shows one of each, not both.

### `authored/screen_names.json` is now keyed by pak entry, not by ordinal

Widening the enumeration renumbers the ordinals, and a name that moves when the
enumeration rule changes is not a name. The file had always called the entry
"the stronger locator"; it is now the only stable one. In `GP_TITLE` the two
coincide across all 16 entries, which is also the numbering `sylpheed-cli screen
--build N --all` takes — so `verify-screen` now passes `--all`, and without it
`--build 10` would have landed on entry 12.

The two previously-unnamed plates therefore renamed `build_10`/`build_11` →
`build_12`/`build_15`. Their names were always locators; now they locate the
right thing.

### The exit is the group playing itself out, not a black rect over a freeze

HANDOFF's answer to ask 2 was (a), and it came with a test that discriminates
rather than a plausibility argument. Under "a black quad over a frozen screen"
every region is scaled by the same 1−α, so the button-region / background-region
brightness **ratio** stays constant through the fade. Measured, it falls
6.495 → 5.574 → 3.105 → 2.125 → 1.935 — a 3.4× monotonic drop. The screen plays
out: `pteff00.prm` ramps to opaque black while the labels, `ptmsg`, `pteff10`
and `pteff12` ramp to transparent, and `ptframe1`/`ptframe2` hold.

Implemented by giving the final untimed keyframe a **synthetic time**,
`exit_ramp_units` after the last timed one, and then interpolating it like any
other. One code path: the difference between arriving and leaving is only how far
`t` is allowed to run, not a second kind of animation.

`exit_ramp_units = 24` (~0.4 s) is authored, and `authored/timing.json` carries
the RE agent's own reach caveat rather than smoothing it: the filmstrip is
downsampled and the button region contains some background, so this pins the
**direction**, not 0.4 s to ±0.05 s, and it is one transition pair.

### Nothing waits on a timer the disc does not carry

`dwell` in `authored/flow.json` is deliberately empty. Each screen's dwell is its
own keyframe group — the publisher wordmark reaches its hold at t=235 (3.92 s),
the developer logos at t=190 (3.17 s), both read from the disc. Adding a hold on
top would be inventing a number nobody measured. The pacing you see is the
disc's own, and the file says where a measured number would go.

### The last screen holds

A screen plays itself out because something is taking its place. Nothing takes
the title's place yet, so the sequencer holds there. A boot that ends by fading
to black is a boot that looks like it crashed. P4 puts the intro video in front
of the title and P5 gives the title somewhere to go.

### `flow.json` reproduces an observation and says so

Q6 closed with a negative: the order is in none of the four places it could have
been, and a transition is a call with a name argument chosen by code. So this
file is authored and its header says plainly that it reproduces what was watched,
not what any file states. The intro video's place in the real boot is **named as
a gap** rather than the order being quietly rewritten to hide it.

## P3 gate

`godot --path port -- --boot --film=/tmp/boot` runs unattended:

```
publisher_logo  →  developer_logos at 4.65 s  →  title at 8.57 s
boot sequence complete after 13.05 s, holding on title
```

The filmstrip shows each screen fading in, holding, and fading through black into
the next, and the title staying up. `verify-screen` covers all **16** screens
now; the four new splash bundles come in at max 1–2/255 against the reference
renderer. The three known differences are unchanged: `title` 6 (paint-order tie),
`main_menu` 4, `title_jp` 155 (sampling phase at 125 % scale).

## Answers taken from the RE agent without re-deriving them

* **Focus stays "replace".** Over-vs-instead is unobservable: the focused sprite
  covers the base at 100 % of base-visible pixels, and the two compositions
  differ by RMSE 1.1 inside the button rect — under the gamma floor. The port's
  guess was right for the wrong reason, and the actual gap is that
  `ptbtn0Nf.rat` declares **two** sprites — `ptbtneff01.t32`, a glowing ring, and
  then the bright label — where `ptbtn0N.rat` declares one. The ring is P5's, and
  its placement inside the record is **not decoded**, so it will be authored from
  the capture and marked as such.
* **RMSE against captures has a floor, so stop chasing it.** The capture is
  `≈ 255·(render/255)^γ` with γ ≈ 1.49 on the menu and `EXTRAS`, 1.34 on the
  title, and it is a ramp *the game installed* (`VdGetCurrentDisplayGamma` at
  video init), not a capture-path artefact to subtract. Its reach is narrow —
  the flat patches it was fitted on are almost all dark — so the port will not
  extrapolate it across the range, and will not apply it to rendered output on
  this evidence. It is a comparison constant, not a rendering one.
* **Rotation is escalated to a human and the port has not acted.** The RE half is
  answered — rotate about the **declared pivot**, measured against the GPU
  capture — and it has zero effect on the five screens at rest. The port will
  carry `rotation_deg` in a future FORMAT v3 because carrying a decoded field the
  renderer ignores beats dropping it, but it will not draw it until the
  divergence question is settled.

---

## P4 — the intro video, 2026-08-29

### Theora at 720p is fine here, and no runtime dependency is requested

MISSION §6 anticipated that Theora might be too poor at 720p and permitted the
FFmpeg-GDExtension fallback to be **proposed**. It is not needed, and this was
measured rather than judged by eye alone. SSIM against the decoded source over a
10 s sample: **0.9863 at `-q:v 6`, 0.9896 at 8, 0.9924 at 10**. At 200 % zoom on
the reel's hardest case — fine serif text and soft gradients over near-black,
where Theora breaks first — q8 is indistinguishable from the source.

`-q:v 8`, and **no GDExtension is being proposed or adopted**.

`-ac 2` because the source is **6-channel** WMA Pro and Godot's Theora path is
not a surround one. That downmix is a decision, so it lives in the recorded
command where a modder can see and change it rather than in prose.

### The exact command is in the manifest, per MISSION §6

`export/manifest.json` gains a `videos` array, each entry carrying the verbatim
`ffmpeg` line that produced it. A modder who dislikes the quality re-runs one
line instead of reverse-engineering what was done to their video — which is the
whole reason this project converts the disc rather than reading it at runtime.

### A cache, and why that is not a hand-edit

`export/` is regenerated wholesale, but re-encoding 232 s of video on every run
costs ~4 minutes to produce a byte-identical file, and an exporter nobody re-runs
is worse than a cache. So each movie gets a `.cmd` sidecar recording the command
and the source size, and the encode is skipped only when both match exactly. Any
change to either re-encodes. This is derived state validating derived state, not
a hand-edit.

### The player renders into the design viewport, not beside it

First attempt parented the `VideoStreamPlayer` to the Boot node. It played, and
every captured frame was **black**: the capture reads the SubViewport, and the
player was rendering to the window. Worth stating as more than a capture bug —
everything this port draws composes in the export's own 1280×720 design space,
and a movie outside that space is outside the coordinate system every screen is
expressed in.

### Ⓐ skips, because Q9 measured it

The only input the port handles so far. HANDOFF Q9: one Ⓐ press skips a movie,
measured — the title was reached at 57 s against a 193 s baseline. Menu
navigation is still P5.

## P4 gate

`godot --path port -- --boot --film=…` runs
`publisher_logo → developer_logos → ADV.ogv → title`, unattended. The filmstrip
shows the SQUARE ENIX ident, then the reel's live-action-styled CG, then the
title. The movie's place in the boot is **measured, not decoded** — Q9 decodes
`ADVERTISE_MOVIE → ADV.wmv` from the movie manifest, but *where it sits in the
boot order* is what the RE agent watched, and `authored/flow.json` says so.

### What I cannot verify from here

**Audible playback.** This container has no audio device — Godot falls back to
the dummy driver. What is verified is that the Vorbis stream exists in the
transcode, is 2-channel, and decodes. Whether Godot emits it audibly is
unconfirmed and is stated as unconfirmed rather than assumed from the stream's
presence. It is a cheap check for anyone with a sound device and an impossible
one here.

---

## RETRACTION — `sylpheed-cli` is not the oracle, 2026-08-29

**This corrects a framing that runs through everything above, so it is a
retraction rather than an edit.** Every place this file called
`sylpheed-cli screen render` *"the reference renderer"* — and it does so
repeatedly, starting at P1 — overstated what it is.

The correction comes from the human, via the RE agent, in their words: Reborn
"was/is just a GUI explorer and extraction CLI for verifying the decoding of the
various files. It may very well be wrong." **The oracle is the Xenia Canary
capture and the game.**

So `tools/verify-screen` is a **consistency check between two decoders that
share their assumptions**, and a regression detector. It is not a correctness
check, and agreement in it is not evidence of correctness.

### The embarrassing part is that this file already knew

After the `ptframe1` case, P2's write-up says: *"Two renderers reading one field
through one decoder agreeing is not evidence that the field is right."* Then P1's
numbers kept being quoted as though 3/255 against `sylpheed-cli` meant the port
was right. Having the principle written down did not stop me leaning on the
agreement — which is worth recording, because that is the failure mode, not
ignorance of the principle.

**Three times** both renderers agreed and both were wrong, all three caught by a
capture and catchable by nothing else:

| | what both got wrong | how it surfaced |
|---|---|---|
| `pteff05` | the menu screens had **no background** | the RE agent decoded the RATC child name |
| scale 0 | drawn at full size instead of collapsed | RE agent's control run |
| `rest()` | `ptframe1`/`ptframe2` invisible; the menu bracket missing | `main-menu-oracle.png` |

### What changes

* `tools/verify-screen` says all of this in its own header, calls the CLI the
  **comparison** renderer, and a `DIFFERS` row now means "we moved apart, find
  out which of us moved" rather than "the port is wrong".
* The correctness question moves to the captures. The RE agent has committed
  nine of them with an index at `docs/re/captures/ORACLE-CAPTURES.md`, covering
  all five screens in scope — including a **main menu with `OPTIONS` focused**,
  whose difference from the unfocused menu isolates exactly what focus changes.
* Three cautions travel with any capture comparison, and they are the RE agent's:
  the captures are **not gamma-neutral** (γ ≈ 1.49 menu, 1.34 title — there is a
  floor, do not chase it); **geometry is sound** (best alignment 0,0 at corr
  0.9466, so a positional disagreement is real); and each is **one moment of a
  still-animating screen**, so compare settled poses or regions known to be at
  rest.

### What does not change

The port keeps running `verify-screen` over all 16 screens every iteration. A
consistency check is still worth having — it is total, it is cheap, and it is
what catches a divergence the RE agent introduces on their side. It is simply
not a grade, and this file will stop quoting it as one.

## P5 groundwork — the focus record, checked against a capture, 2026-08-29

P5 is the lowest unfinished milestone (P0–P4 are gated above). This iteration did
not implement navigation; it did the measurement P5 needs first, because the one
thing P5 is built on — how a focused button is drawn — had three claims attached
to it and none of them had been checked from this side.

### The exporter already emits the focus record's second element

HANDOFF ask 3 answers with a 🔴: *"what you are actually missing is the focus
record's SECOND element"* — `ptbtneff01.t32`, a 42×46 glowing ring, declared
before the bright label in `ptbtn0Nf.rat`.

**That gap is in the renderer, not the exporter.** `export/screens/title/main_menu.json`
already carries both, in declaration order, under `focus.elements`, for all five
buttons — `ptbtneff01` then `ptbtn0Nf`, each with its own pivot, rest pose and
keyframes. Nothing needs to change in `crates/sylpheed-export` for the ring. What
is missing is that `screen_view.gd` draws only one sprite per focused button.
Recording this so P5 does not re-open the exporter looking for it.

The ring's size checks out exactly: `ptbtneff01.png` is **42×46**, as stated.

### The `(7,7)` focus offset survives a refutation attempt, uniquely

Ask 3 states the focused sprite covers the base at 100.0 % of base-visible pixels
"once aligned properly (the true offset is **(7,7)**, and at the centre alignment
it reads a misleading 78–84 %)". P5 builds directly on this, so it was worth
attacking.

Re-ran the RE agent's own metric on the exported PNGs — over every pixel where the
base sprite is visible, the fraction where the focus sprite's alpha ≥ the base's —
scanning the whole offset space, not just the stated answer:

| alignment | ptbtn01 | ptbtn02 | ptbtn03 | ptbtn04 | ptbtn05 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| **(7,7)** | **100.00 %** | **100.00 %** | **100.00 %** | **100.00 %** | **100.00 %** |
| geometric centre | 80.58 % | 79.20 % | 79.58 % | 79.45 % | 79.45 % |
| pivot-to-pivot | 80.58 % | 86.59 % | 87.40 % | 79.45 % | 84.58 % |

**The refutation fails, and more strongly than the original claim.** Over a
15×14 offset scan, `(7,7)` is a *unique isolated cell* at 100 % on every one of
the five buttons — every neighbouring offset, including (6,6) and (7,6), falls
below 90 %. The centre and pivot alignments reproduce the 78–84 % band the RE
agent reported as misleading. A claim that survives a search of its whole
parameter space is worth more than one checked at a single point, so this is
recorded as strengthened, not merely unrefuted.

### `(7,7)` is not a constant to apply — it is what the declared positions already say

An earlier version of this analysis had the port disagreeing with the capture by
6 px. **That was my arithmetic error and it is worth writing down**, because it is
the mistake this format invites: I computed each element's top-left as
`pos - pivot`, which gives base→focus deltas of (13,13) and a 29 % coverage — a
confident wrong number.

`pos` **is** the top-left. `screen_view.gd:121` is
`Rect2(pos - pivot*(s - 1), natural*s)`: the pivot is the anchor scale grows
about and it *cancels at 100 %*, which is exactly the "can be got wrong
invisibly" the comment there warns about. Getting it wrong invisibly is what
happened.

With `pos` as the top-left, base − focus is `(542,162) - (535,155)` = **(7,7)**
directly, on four of the five buttons. So P5 draws each focus element at its own
declared `pos` and needs no offset constant at all. Nothing to author.

### The one real find: `ptbtn04` is 1 px off the grid on the disc

The focus records sit on a clean 80 px pitch — 155, 235, 315, 395, 475. The
**base** records do not: 162, 242, 322, **401**, 482, i.e. spacings 80, 80, **79**,
**81**. So `ptbtn04`'s declared base→focus delta is **(7,6)**, while the art
itself aligns at (7,7) — the coverage scan puts `ptbtn04` at 100 % on (7,7) and
below 90 % on (7,6), the same as every other button.

This is 1 px of authoring jitter on the disc, not a decode error, and it has one
consequence worth stating: **do not derive the focus placement from the base by a
constant.** Draw the focus record at its own declared `pos`. A port that
"simplified" this to base + (7,7) would put `ptbtn04`'s focus art 1 px off, and
would look right on the other four.

### Verified against a capture, not against our other renderer

Diffing two oracle frames isolates what focus changes without any instrument in
the path: `live-main-menu.png` vs `live-main-menu-options-focused.png` differ in
one tight cluster of 6 338 px at **x 506..702, y 398..445**. `ptbtn04` is the
`OPTIONS` button, and the union of its focus record under the `pos`-as-top-left
reading — ring `ptbtneff01` at (500,396) 42×46 plus label `ptbtn04f` at (535,395)
172×56 — is **x 500..706, y 395..451**. Those agree on all four edges to within a
few px of near-transparent sprite border.

Under the `pos - pivot` reading the same record predicts x 433..604, y 367..422,
which matches nothing in the capture — and *no* button matches that cluster. The
capture, not our renderer, is what settles it.

### An instrument that failed its own control, and was therefore discarded

To locate the buttons independently I wrote a masked normalised-cross-correlation
template matcher and ran it as PROTOCOL requires — **through a control first**:
match each *base* sprite against the *plain* capture, where the declared position
is known and the answer must be a (0,0) delta.

It returned deltas of (13,5), (6,−19), (12,21), (−16,22), (6,8) at NCC
**0.096–0.206** — noise, with three of five pinned to the ±22 search boundary.
The control fails, so the instrument is dead rather than tuneable, and **none of
its output is used above.** The button art is dark, low-contrast and further
crushed by the capture's γ ≈ 1.49 ramp, which is the likely cause; a matcher for
this corpus would have to work on gradients rather than luminance. Filed so the
next iteration does not rebuild the same broken tool.

### What P5 still needs, and has not got

* **Initial focus is not stable across boots** (Q5: 2× `TUTORIAL`, 2× `NEW GAME`).
  That is a value to author, with a `why` naming Q5 — it is not written yet.
* **The ring's own animation is unread.** `ptbtneff01`'s two keyframes go
  `rotation_deg` 0 → **360** at t=120 with no second timed keyframe, i.e. a full
  turn. Whether it spins continuously while focused, or turns once and holds, is
  the group-loop question again — answered "groups hold" for build-in animations,
  but a 360° hold and a 0° hold are the same pose, so *this* group cannot be told
  apart by its rest pose. Not guessed; raised below.

---

## P5 — navigation, 2026-08-29

The gate is *"a human clicks through it"*, and the artifact is a walk that
proves the wiring rather than the intent: `up` (which wraps 01→05), five `down`,
Ⓐ into `EXTRAS`, `down`, Ⓑ back — landing on the main menu with focus restored
to `EXTRAS`.

```sh
xvfb-run -a godot --path port -- --menu \
  --script=up,down,down,down,down,down,accept,down,cancel --shots=/tmp/p5
```

Ten PNGs, one per step, each taken after the screen it produced had settled.
Contact sheet handed over as `share` id `1788002507-ef4468a0a33a`.

### The scripted walk goes through the input system, not around it

`--script` posts `InputEventAction` through `Input.parse_input_event` and lets
it arrive at `_unhandled_input` exactly as a d-pad's press would. Calling
`MenuFlow.move()`/`accept()`/`cancel()` directly would have been shorter and
would have proved nothing: the thing most likely to be broken is the wiring
between a press and the cursor, and a direct call is precisely the part that
skips it. The same reasoning says the settle wait must be real — a shot taken
before the screen stops moving photographs a fade and calls it a menu.

### What is authored here, and what is derived

Split deliberately, because P5 is where the two are easiest to blur:

| | where | why |
|---|---|---|
| the ORDER of the items | **derived** — each screen file's `buttons`, filled by the exporter from the button-role elements sorted by resting Y | it is on the disc |
| where an item goes | **authored** — `authored/flow.json` | HANDOFF Q4 *measured* the destinations; they are not in the file |
| which item opens focused | **authored** | Q5 measured that it is **not stable boot to boot** |
| what Ⓑ does | **authored** | Q5, measured — except on the main menu, see below |
| ⬅➡ do nothing | **authored**, written as an explicit no-op | so that *"the game ignores it"* and *"we never wired it"* are different lines of code |

Four of the five main-menu destinations are `goto: null` with a `blocked` note.
That is **not** an unknown: `DIFFICULTY`, the save-slot list, the lesson list and
the settings menu were all measured, and they live in archives this export does
not carry. `blocked` and `none` are kept apart so a later reader does not
"discover" a gap that was a milestone boundary.

`EXTRAS` is the only main-menu destination inside `GP_TITLE`, and therefore the
only Ⓐ-into-a-submenu this gate can actually walk.

### The one navigation rule with nothing behind it

Ⓑ on the **main menu** → title. HANDOFF Q5 states it, and `flow.json` marks it
*authored — likely but UNPROVEN*, because the title also self-returns after
~8–10 s idle and a single unrecorded observation cannot separate the two. The
port implements it anyway — a menu with no way out is worse than a menu with a
plausible one — and says in the file that it did. Asked of the Decoder this
iteration; see `BLOCKED.md`.

Independent corroboration that the main menu is different from its submenu:
the main menu's footer advertises only `Ⓐ : OK`, while `EXTRAS`' footer
advertises `Ⓑ : Back`. That is on the disc, in `ptmsg.png` vs `ptmsg2.png`, and
it is visible in both the port's render and the captures.

### A press during a fade is dropped

**Authored, and not measured.** Nobody has watched what the game does with a
button pressed mid-transition. Dropping invents less than queueing does: it
cannot manufacture a press the game might have discarded. `flow.json` says so
under `navigation.input_during_transition`.

---

## `--headless` cannot draw, and the port hung instead of saying so, 2026-08-29

`docs/port/PORT-MISSION.md` and the loop prompt both name `godot-headless` as
how this project runs unattended. It does not work, and the way it failed was
the worst available shape.

**Measured, not assumed.** Under `--headless` Godot's dummy renderer never emits
`RenderingServer.frame_post_draw`. Every capture path in `boot.gd` awaits it —
`--capture` since P1, `--film` since P3, `--shots` as of this milestone — so all
three blocked forever. Isolated by the difference between two runs:

```
godot --headless --path port --quit                                  # prints, exits 0
godot --headless --path port -- --screen=… --capture=…               # no output at all, killed at 40 s
```

The second produces **zero bytes of output** before it is killed, because
Godot's stdout is block-buffered and never flushes. So the observable behaviour
of an unattended headless capture was: silence, forever. In a loop, a job that
waits reads as a job still working — this is the failure mode that costs a whole
iteration and leaves nothing behind to say what happened.

Two changes, and deliberately not one:

* `--capture`, `--film` and `--shots` **refuse at startup** under `--headless`,
  naming the flag and printing the `xvfb-run` line that does work. Refusing
  early rather than at the first frame means the run does not die halfway
  through a filmstrip with some frames written.
* `--script` **no longer waits for a drawn frame when it is not going to
  photograph one.** Navigation is checkable where nothing draws, and that is
  worth keeping: `godot --headless --path port -- --menu --script=…` now walks
  the menus and exits 0 in about four seconds, which is a cheap regression check
  that needs no X server at all.

The Xvfb path is unchanged and is what produced the P5 artifact.

---

## Refutation — the focus ring IS drawn rotated, and it is not at 0° in either capture

Attempted against the Decoder's `7eeae30` (*"re(ui): the focus ring SPINS, the
game draws it, and the leaf owns the f record"*), point 2: that in the
OPTIONS-focused capture the ring's bright head sits in a different angular
position from the sprite's own, caught mid-spin. **It survives**, and the
evidence is stronger than what was claimed.

Chosen for refutation because it is exactly what PROTOCOL says to aim at: a
claim the port is about to build on, resting on an estimator (a brightest-region
centroid) whose own control the Decoder reported as ±19.8°.

### The test, and why it needs no absolute registration

`live-main-menu.png` has `ptbtn01` focused; `live-main-menu-options-focused.png`
has `ptbtn04` focused. Both draw **the same sprite**, `ptbtneff01.png` — the
export confirms the two focus records name the same file. So the two captures
contain two instances of one 42×46 image, 240 px apart in design space, and the
question *"is it drawn rotated"* becomes *"are these two crops the same image
at a different angle"* — which needs no crop offset and no reference to our own
renderer.

Method: sample each ring into a 360-bin **angular luminance profile** over the
annulus band (r = 9…15 px, bilinear, 0.5 px radial step) and circularly
cross-correlate. A rotation about the centre shifts that vector and changes
nothing else.

### The instrument was run through two controls before it was believed

| control | result |
|---|---|
| rotate a capture's own ring by a known 0/30/90/150/210/270/330° and recover it | **0° error on all seven**, peak corr 1.000 |
| the same estimator on a ring-free 60×64 patch of the *same* capture | peak corr **0.369** — it does not manufacture a match |

### The measurement

On one shared centre for all three images, so a centroid difference cannot
masquerade as a rotation:

| pair | best shift | peak corr | corr at 0° |
|---|---|---|---|
| capture A vs capture B | **134°** | 0.968 | −0.064 |
| sprite (unrotated) vs capture A | **76°** | 0.969 | −0.295 |
| sprite (unrotated) vs capture B | **210°** | 0.948 | −0.181 |

210 − 76 = 134: the three measurements are internally consistent, which nothing
in the method forced them to be. Sweeping the centre by ±2 px moves the A-vs-B
answer over 117…161° while the peak correlation stays 0.9+ across the middle of
that range, so the **magnitude is ~134° ± ~15°** and the precision claim stops
there.

Evidence sheet — sprite, capture A, capture B, each cropped at the declared
`42×46+500+156` / `+500+396` — handed over as `share` id
`1788002507-afe1ad843789`. The phase difference is obvious by eye; the numbers
are here so it is not only obvious by eye.

### The two things this settles for the port

1. **The game draws `rotation_deg` on an element the English boot path shows.**
   This is a second, independent confirmation on a different screen and a
   different element from the `ptloop` sweeps, and it moves HANDOFF **ask 4**
   (*should the port draw rotation*) off "changes nothing at rest" — it changes
   the main menu's focus marker, in every frame.

2. **0° is not a pose the running game shows.** `screen_view.gd` currently draws
   the ring at its `rest` pose, which is `rotation_deg 0`, and both captures put
   it at 76° and 210°. So the port's focus marker is **known** to be wrong, not
   suspected — and the comment in `screen_view.gd` now says which two numbers it
   is wrong against.

### Registration, as a by-product

The ring's annulus centroid lands at (32.94, 36.63) and (33.30, 38.90) in
windows whose design-space prediction under a **zero crop offset** is
(33.0, 37.0). Within ~0.4 px on the better-thresholded of the two. That
corroborates `ORACLE-CAPTURES.md`'s *"1279×675, top-left aligned"* directly, on
a feature nobody chose for the purpose.

⚠️ Do not read the earlier P5-groundwork note *"button text bands land at design
y + 23"* as a crop offset — it is an offset **within** the button sprite, and
the two were nearly confused here.

### What the port did NOT do about it

It did not start spinning the ring. The period is a **guess with two unknowns**
and both belong to the Decoder:

* the keyframes are `t=120, rot 0` then an **untimed** `rot 360`. Under HANDOFF
  Q1's replicated reading (*"`+36` is the time the NEXT pose is reached"*) that
  is one revolution in 120 units = **2.0 s** — but this port's `pose_at`
  implements the *other* reading, and switching it is a change to every screen's
  animation timing, not a P5 change;
* *"groups hold"* (settled 2026-08-28) predicts the ring stops at 360° = 0°.
  Both captures show it elsewhere. That is either a spin that loops, or two
  captures both taken inside the first two seconds of focus. **The port cannot
  tell those apart**, and a wrong answer here is a visible continuous rotation
  on whichever button the player is sitting on.

Filed in `BLOCKED.md` and asked over the message channel. What settles it is two
frames of one focused button a known time apart.

---

## P5 end to end — and the title does not say `PRESS Ⓐ`, 2026-08-29

The gate walk above starts on a screen. This is the whole thing, unattended, in
one run — the sequence PORT-MISSION names as the objective:

```sh
xvfb-run -a godot --path port -- --boot --play \
  --script=accept,down,down,down,down,accept,cancel,cancel --shots=/tmp/e2e
```

```
screen publisher_logo …           settles at t=235 (3.917 s)
  -> developer_logos at 4.70 s
  -> video ADV at 8.60 s
     video ended at 151.91 s
  -> title at 151.91 s
boot sequence complete after 156.30 s, holding on title
  menu on title
script[1] accept   (A) -> main_menu
…
script[6] accept   (EXTRAS) -> extras
script[7] cancel   (B) -> main_menu   focus restored to ptbtn05
script[8] cancel   (B) -> title
script complete after 166.76 s on title
```

Publisher wordmark → developer logos → `ADV` → title → Ⓐ → main menu →
navigate → Ⓐ → `EXTRAS` → Ⓑ (focus restored) → Ⓑ → title. Contact sheet shared.

Two smaller things this run found, both fixed here:

* the boot step's `why` in `authored/flow.json` still said *"nothing takes the
  title's place until P5 gives it somewhere to go"*. P5 has. Rewritten to say
  what is actually true — `--boot` still **stops** on the title, and `--play`
  **hands the held title over**; the stop is not a bug and the handover is not
  another boot step.
* an empty focus printed as a line that trailed off, which reads like a value
  went missing rather than like there is none. The title is a screen with no
  `buttons` that still takes Ⓐ, so it prints
  `(none -- this screen has no focusable item)`.

Also confirmed on the way: entering a submenu **directly** (`--menu=extras`) and
pressing Ⓑ enters the parent at its authored initial focus, not at a restored
one — there is no history to restore, and `MenuFlow.cancel` only claims a
restored focus when the stack agrees about where it is going.

### 🔴 The port's title does not tell the player to press Ⓐ

Found by running the objective end to end, which is the only thing that would
have found it: the boot's last step is `title` (build 4), and **build 4 has no
`PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON` plate**. P5 has now made Ⓐ the only way off that screen.

This is not a guess about the art. Both states are captured off the running
game and they differ by exactly that plate:

| | capture |
|---|---|
| title **without** the plate | `title-builds/live-title-build4-no-plate.png` |
| title **with** the plate | `title-builds/live-title-press-a.png` |

And the plate is already exported — `press_start`, `GP_TITLE` build 2 (HANDOFF
Q2), sitting in `export/screens/title/` unused by anything.

**This is P3's gate, not P5's, and P5 is what exposed it.** Recording rather
than fixing, for two reasons:

1. Which state an idle post-boot title shows — build 4 alone, build 4 with the
   plate over it, or build 4 *then* the plate after a delay — is **behavioural**,
   and the port has no oracle for a sequence. The game demonstrably has both
   states; nothing here says which one follows the intro movie. That is the
   Decoder's.
2. Showing it would mean **drawing two builds at once**, which this port has
   never done — every mode loads exactly one screen. That is a real change to
   `ScreenView`, not a line in `flow.json`, and it should not be smuggled in
   under a navigation milestone on the strength of "it looks more right".

Filed in `BLOCKED.md`. Not blocking: P5's gate is Ⓐ into a submenu and Ⓑ back,
and both work.

## P6 — menu audio, 2026-08-29

The disc's menu sound reaches Godot as Ogg Vorbis: three cues and one music bed.
Nothing in `port/` has heard of XMA, `sound.pak` or `Static.slb`, and nothing in
it reassembles anything — `sylpheed_formats::media` does that and the exporter
converts what it hands back.

### The cue offsets moved OUT of the exporter, into `authored/`

The previous iteration left `crates/sylpheed-export/src/audio.rs` holding the
three `Static.slb` offsets as a Rust `const CUES`. That is wrong under MISSION
§3 and the fix is the first thing this iteration did.

Those offsets are **measured**, not decoded. `Static.slb` has no `RIFF`, no seek
chunk and no container: it is a packed run of whole 2048-byte XMA1 packets, and a
wave is defined *only* by `(offset, packet_count)`. Both numbers came from the
running game — Canary with `--xma_param_probe=true` prints a stream's packet
count and first 32 bytes when it is played, and searching those bytes in the bank
gives the offset (HANDOFF Q8).

A measured value compiled into the exporter is **a measurement wearing the
costume of a decoded field**. It reads as though the exporter derived it from the
disc; nobody deletes it when the real answer lands, because nobody can see that
there is anything to delete. So the table is `authored/audio.json` `se.*`, each
row carrying its own `why`, and the exporter holds no cue table at all.

`crate::video::MOVIES` stays a `const` in the exporter, and the contrast is the
point: Q9 **decoded** that mapping off the movie manifest on the disc. Same
shape, different provenance, different home.

### `name_match` is a field, and its absence means something

Q8 names `SE_UI_CURSOR` for the move cue by **name match against the authors' own
identifiers** — a plausible guess, not the measurement. For Ⓐ, Q8 is explicit
that the wave was *not* separated between `SE_UI_DECIDE` and
`SE_UI_SUB_WIN_OPN`, so no name is claimed at all.

`name_match` therefore travels beside every cue in `authored/audio.json` and in
`manifest.json`, and **an absent one means nobody claimed a name — never that
the binding is unknown.** The binding is the measured part. Collapsing the two
would turn "we did not separate two candidates" into "we do not know what this
sound is", which is a different and much weaker statement than the one the RE
agent actually made.

### The BGM is NOT a choice, and this port spent an iteration believing it was

The first draft of `authored/audio.json` picked `BGM_001`, wrote a careful `why`
explaining that the choice was arbitrary, and was **wrong**.

`docs/port/BLOCKED.md` carried the row that caused it: *"not on the disc … the
port is choosing a track, and that choice is authored."* The menu's music is
**`BGM_103`**, and it is in HANDOFF at **`9ca1eb5`** — the exact commit that page
says it was reconciled against. So this was not staleness. **The row was wrong
when it was written.**

What HANDOFF says is a negative *with a bound*, and the bound is the entire
content of it:

> the **tables** cannot say — `SOUNDS`, `FILES` and the bank headers name no
> screen. `GamePart_Title`'s phase handler `sub_821C5580` carries `li r5, 1103`
> into a sound call; cue 1103 is `BGM_103`; and `BGM_103.slb`'s two declared
> waves (3 876 864 / 3 930 112 B) are byte-for-byte the two streams the XMA probe
> saw decoding at the main menu. Static code, disc census and runtime all agree.
> **"The port does not have to choose a track."**

The failure is worth naming precisely, because "read HANDOFF more carefully" is
not the lesson — `BLOCKED.md`'s own staleness check passed, twice, and would pass
again. **A negative summarised without its reach reads as a bigger negative than
it is.** "The tables cannot say" became "it is not on the disc", and one word of
scope was the whole answer. A row in `BLOCKED.md` must quote the reach.

It also cost a second thing worth recording: the port would have shipped a menu
playing the wrong music with a confident `why` beside it saying the choice was
deliberate. That is exactly the shape of error this project's vocabulary exists
to prevent, produced *by* the machinery meant to prevent it.

### The bank name carries `.slb`, and that is how the mistake surfaced

`BGM_001` is not in `sound.pak`. `BGM_001.slb` is — `media::read_sound_bank`
looks up `name_hash(name)` against the TOC, and the TOC hashes the **file name**.
`Static.slb` worked from the first run only because the RE finding happens to
write it with its extension.

So the wrong track never played: the export failed loudly with *"BGM_001: not
present in sound.pak"*. That is luck, not design — had the draft picked a name
that happened to resolve, nothing would have complained. The `why` in
`authored/audio.json` now records both the correct name and why the short form
fails.

`export_bgm` now distinguishes the two cases it was conflating. A bank that is
**not in this disc's `sound.pak`** is a missing asset: the manifest takes a
warning and everything else still exports. Any other failure — a short read, a
malformed bank — still stops the run, because a partly-read bank produces a file
that plays.

### The two stems are summed. That part is not a choice

Q10 also measured that a bank's sub-waves are **two stems of one performance,
played together** — sample-synchronous, equal duration, on all 32 banks.
Concatenating them is explicitly wrong.

Emitting them as two files would be wrong for a second, independent reason:
MODDING rule 1 is *one logical asset, one file*, and handing a modder two stems
to line up by hand is precisely the reassembly the exporter exists to have
already done. `amix=normalize=0` sums at unity rather than halving, because
halving is a mix decision nobody made — and because a sum can clip, the peak is
**measured and reported** rather than silently corrected.

### The loop seam is ugly on purpose

No loop-point field has been identified. `loop: "restart"` replays from sample 0,
so a listener hears the track's own fade-out and its trailing silence before the
music comes back.

Trimming to the fade would sound better and would be **worse**. It would invent a
loop point, and an invented one is indistinguishable from a decoded one a month
later — which is the failure mode this whole project is organised against. The
seam stays audible until a loop point is measured or a capture of the real menu
looping settles it.

### When a cue fires — two rules measured, one authored

* **Move** fires on a press that *actually moves the cursor*. `MenuFlow.move()`
  already returned whether it did, which is why left/right stay silent by
  construction rather than by a rule written twice (Q5: ⬅➡ do nothing, and Q8:
  they play nothing).
* **Ⓐ and Ⓑ** fire when the press *does something*, and not when nothing is
  bound. 🟡 **This half is authored and NOT measured** — nobody has watched the
  game take a dead press. Silence invents less: a sound the game does not make is
  a wrong fact you can hear, while a missing one is a gap. `blocked` counts as
  doing something, because those destinations *were* measured off the running
  game and are missing from this export, not from the game.
* The bed starts when the menu becomes live and **carries across submenus**.
  `play_bed` is idempotent, because music that restarts every time you press Ⓑ is
  the kind of wrong that reads as "the audio works".

### `--audio=` records the Master bus, because neither container has a sound card

`docs/port/AUDIO-VERIFICATION.md` §2. An `AudioEffectRecord` on the Master bus
captures the mixed output from inside a headless run with no device at all, and
that is the only thing that closes the loop the file opens: comparing an exported
Ogg against the disc proves the **asset** is right and says nothing about whether
the engine ever reached it.

The run prints `AudioServer.get_driver_name()` beside the file it wrote, because
"recorded under a dummy driver" is a weaker claim than "heard" and the write-up
has to be able to say which one it is making.

The WAV is saved in `_exit_tree` rather than beside each `quit()`. There are
eight of those, and the one that would get missed is an error path — exactly the
run whose audio somebody wants to look at.

### `check` now refuses silence and clipping

`sylpheed-export check` gained an `audio` pass, and two of its rules are content
checks rather than schema checks. That is deliberate. Silence is *the* audio
failure that looks like success — a file of the right duration, the right channel
count and the right size, full of zeroes — and it passes every structural check
there is. Clipping is the other one, and the BGM can produce it because it is a
sum at unity gain. The exporter measures both at export time; `check` refuses a
tree whose peak is ≤ −90 dBFS or ≥ 0 dBFS.

Neither is a judgement about whether the audio is the *right* audio. Nothing in
that binary can know that, and `BLOCKED.md` says which parts are still authored
guesses.

### A bug worth naming: the temp name ate the file extension

`run_ffmpeg` wrote to `.back.ogg.partial` — the temp-name-then-rename discipline
this project uses everywhere, and which `AUDIO-VERIFICATION.md` records as
already having caused a confident wrong number once.

ffmpeg picks its muxer **from the output filename**, so that is not a slightly
uglier temp name; it is a hard failure before a byte is written: *"Unable to
choose an output format for '.back.ogg.partial'"*. `video.rs` already had the
right shape (`.ADV.partial.ogv`) and this function was written from scratch
without looking at it. The extension goes last.

### Refutation — the three Q8 cue durations, checked end to end

**The claim:** HANDOFF Q8 publishes three cue lengths — move **0.533 s**
(8 192 B, 4 packets), back **0.344 s** (4 096 B, 2), confirm **1.016 s**
(12 288 B, 6). P6 is built directly on top of these, which by PROTOCOL's own rule
makes them the right thing to attack: refutation is cheapest where the other
agent is most confident, and most valuable where the port is about to build.

**Why they looked attackable.** The three do not share a rate. Seconds per
packet is 0.133, 0.172 and 0.169 — the move cue is 22 % off the other two. If a
packet were a fixed span of audio, at most one of these numbers could be right.

**Why that is not a refutation.** An XMA1 packet is 2 048 bytes of *bitstream*,
not a fixed span: it carries a variable number of 512-sample frames. At 48 kHz a
frame is 10.667 ms, and the three durations come to **50.0, 32.3 and 95.3
frames** — near-integers, which is what a variable-frames-per-packet encoding
looks like and is not what an arithmetic slip looks like.

**The measurement.** The exporter reads `(offset, packet_count)` through
`media::se_wave_riff`, decodes, and `ffprobe`s the finished Ogg:

| cue | Q8 claims | exported file measures |
|---|---|---|
| move | 0.533 s | **0.533 s** |
| back | 0.344 s | **0.344 s** |
| confirm | 1.016 s | **1.016 s** |

**Verdict: survives, exactly, at every published digit.** Recorded as a survival
rather than a pass, because that is what PROTOCOL asks for — a claim that has
survived an attempt is stronger than one nobody challenged, and the corpus should
say which it is.

⚠️ **Reach, stated so nobody over-reads it.** This is not independent of Q8: the
durations were derived from the same packet counts the exporter feeds in, so what
it confirms is that reading those `(offset, packets)` through
`sylpheed_formats::media` yields streams of exactly the claimed length — i.e.
that the *transcription* into `authored/audio.json` and the assembly path are
right. It does **not** confirm that these three waves are the sounds the game
plays on those three events; that is Q8's own measurement, taken by playing them,
and this port has no oracle to re-take it with.

The attempt did find something, just not here: see the BGM section above, where
the port's *own* `BLOCKED.md` row failed the same kind of check.

### The BGM bank has three sub-waves and HANDOFF says it has two

`media::sound_bank_riffs("BGM_103.slb")` returns **three**. HANDOFF Q10's census
says a music bank is *"exactly two waves of identical duration (32/32 banks on
the disc)"* — and that census is itself a correction, of an earlier reading that
called `BGM_001` three sub-waves and was refuted with "the 10 KB is the bank
header".

The third comes from `sylpheed-formats/src/slb.rs:380`, `to_xma_riffs`: when a
bank has a leading headerless packet region ahead of its first `RIFF`, that
region is emitted as a sub-wave. It exists because the voice path needs it —
`VOICE_D_453` decoded to 0.14 s without it. `docs/re/REFUTED.md` already records
the same region as what makes `BGM_106`–`BGM_109` "break the two-wave rule".

**The port sums all three and says so in the manifest.** That is not the
appealing answer — dropping sub-wave 0 would give a file matching the census, and
it would have been one line. It is the correct one: *which bytes belong together*
is the question `sylpheed_formats::media` owns, MISSION §2 names re-deriving it
here as the single easiest thing in this project to get subtly wrong, and "the
decoder returned something the corpus does not predict" is a finding to report,
not a number to quietly adjust. Adjusting it would also have destroyed the
evidence: a corrected export looks exactly like a correct one.

So the export ships the decoders' answer, the manifest carries a warning naming
the contradiction, `BLOCKED.md` has the row, and the Decoder has the pointer.
Until it comes back, **the menu plays a sum of three things where the census
predicts two**, and every one of those places says so.

### Clipping — and a comment of mine that argued for the thing that clipped

The BGM came out at **+1.8 dBFS**. The comment above the code that produced it
said `amix=normalize=0` sums at unity "because halving is a mix decision nobody
made".

That was wrong in both halves. Unity summing *is* a decision, and it is the one
that clips. And 1/n is not a taste call: it is the smallest constant that makes
an n-input sum of unity-scale signals provably clip-free, which is precisely the
reasoning `video.rs` already carried for its 0.4142-normalised 5.1 downmix — in
this same repository, written by this same port, and not looked at. It preserves
the stems' relative balance exactly, which is the only thing about the sum that
Q10 settles.

It is written as an explicit `volume=` rather than left to `amix`'s
`normalize=1` default, so the coefficient appears in the manifest's command line.
A default is a decision nobody made and it can move under an ffmpeg upgrade —
the same argument MISSION §6 makes about the downmix matrix.

**The `confirm` cue is a different case and is not "fixed".** It lands at
+0.18 dBFS, and it is a single wave off the disc with no arithmetic of ours in
it: the disc masters it near full scale and a lossy decode of a near-full-scale
signal overshoots by a fraction of a dB. Attenuating it would mean altering a
game asset to make one of our own numbers smaller. So `check` bounds the two
kinds differently — a `bgm` peak ≥ 0 dBFS is refused outright, because it is our
sum; an `se` is refused only above **+1.0 dBFS**.

🟡 That +1.0 is a **judgement and not a measurement**, and it is the weakest
number in P6. Nobody has measured the overshoot distribution across a corpus of
cues. If a cue ever trips it, the right response is that measurement, not a
looser bound.

## P6 gate — the audio is in the mix, and a null control says which part

No container here has a sound card, so "P6 works" cannot be answered by
listening. `docs/port/AUDIO-VERIFICATION.md` splits the question into three, and
these are the two that need no device.

### 1. The exported files, measured off the finished assets

```
se    back      -> audio/se/back.ogg    (0.344 s, peak  -5.7 dBFS)
se    confirm   -> audio/se/confirm.ogg (1.016 s, peak  +0.2 dBFS)
se    move      -> audio/se/move.ogg    (0.533 s, peak  -1.4 dBFS)
bgm   main_menu -> audio/bgm/main_menu.ogg
                  (87.744 s, peak -7.7 dBFS, bank BGM_103.slb, 3 sub-waves)
```

`sylpheed-export check export` passes: 16 screens validate, and every audio entry
carries a peak and a duration inside its bounds. The three cue durations match
HANDOFF Q8 at every published digit — see the refutation record above.

### 2. The engine, recorded off the Master bus

```
godot --path port -- --menu --script=down,down,accept,cancel --audio=…/p6.wav
  → recorded 6.037 s of Master bus (driver Dummy)
    peak 0.0 dBFS, RMS −21.1 dBFS
```

**Non-silent is not the claim.** A WAV of the right duration full of the *bed*
would look exactly like this, and the cues could be missing entirely. So the cue
was isolated with a **null control**: the same scripted walk with ⬅ in place of ⬇.
Left/right are measured no-ops (Q5) and fire nothing, so the two runs differ by
exactly two move cues and nothing else — same screens, same transitions, the same
Ⓐ and Ⓑ cues in both, the same bed.

| | RMS |
|---|---|
| walk with two ⬇ presses | −21.9 dBFS |
| walk with two ⬅ presses (null) | −22.1 dBFS |
| **difference** | **−34.6 dBFS** |

The difference is not spread over the run. It is **one burst beginning at
t = 1.10 s and lasting 0.55 s** — two overlapping 0.533 s move cues — with 22 of
237 windows above −70 dBFS and silence everywhere else, including across the Ⓐ
and Ⓑ presses, which cancel because both runs make them. That is the cue reaching
the bus, separated from the music that was playing over it.

### The control that proved nothing, kept because it nearly passed

The first attempt paired `--script=down,down` against `--script=left,left`. The
difference was **bit-identical zero**, which reads as "the cues never reached the
bus" and would have been reported as a bug.

It was neither. Both runs recorded **1.115 s** while the first press lands at
~1.17 s: the control ended before the event it was controlling for. A null result
from an instrument that was not running is not a null result — PROTOCOL's "run
your own instrument through a control" applies to the control too.

### What this does NOT establish

* **That it sounds right.** Everything above is correspondence and separation,
  not judgement. A ten-second human listen still answers something no measurement
  here does.
* **That the bed is at a sane level against the cues.** 🔴 The Master bus peaks at
  **0.0 dBFS** in the four-step run — the `confirm` cue is +0.2 dBFS on its own,
  so any music under it puts the mix on the ceiling. Per-file levels are the
  disc's and are fine; the **runtime** mix has no headroom. The port has not set a
  bus balance, because nothing measures one and an invented balance is the same
  class of mistake as an invented loop point. Recorded here rather than fixed
  quietly.
* **That "Dummy driver" means heard.** It does not, and the run prints the driver
  name so a write-up cannot forget to say so.

### One bug, in two dialects, both about a temp filename

The temp-name-then-rename discipline this project uses everywhere broke twice in
this milestone, in two different tools, for the same underlying reason: **tools
dispatch on the extension, so a temp name must preserve it.**

* `run_ffmpeg` wrote `.back.ogg.partial` → *"Unable to choose an output format"*,
  a hard failure before a byte was written.
* `boot.gd` wrote `p6.wav.part` → `save_to_wav` **appends** `.wav` when the path
  does not end in it, producing `p6.wav.part.wav`; the rename then failed to find
  its source, its return value was not checked, and the run printed a success
  line naming a file that did not exist.

The second is the more dangerous shape, and it is the one this project has
already warned itself about: a confident line of output pointing at nothing. The
rename's return is now checked and the failure is loud.

## P3, reopened — the boot title was missing the `PRESS Ⓐ` plate, 2026-08-29

P3 passed its gate with a boot that ended on build 4 alone. `BLOCKED.md` carried
that as 🔴 from the start: both states were captured, so the art was never the
question — the *sequence* was, and it is behavioural, so the port had no oracle
for it.

It is answered. `docs/re/title-plate-delay-measured.md`
(`auto/no-disc-and-menu-captures` at `fb536df`, **not on `main`** at the time of
writing) measures two independent boots: the title presents **without** the
plate, and the plate arrives **2.13 s** later, the two runs agreeing to 6 ms.

### Two builds at once, as two `ScreenView`s

`ScreenView` draws one screen. The obvious change was to teach it about a
subordinate overlay screen; the change made was to put a **second `ScreenView`
in the same `SubViewport`**, after the first.

That is what "two builds at once" actually is. Each build has its own timeline,
its own textures and its own hold — the plate's group runs independently of the
title's, which is the entire content of the finding — and Node2D siblings already
paint in tree order. The alternative would have put an `if overlay` in every
method that walks elements, and would have expressed the same information less
directly. The export's `paint_order` still means what it always meant: an
ordering *within* a build.

### The delay is timed from where build 4 stops animating

Not from where the title first appears. This is the finding rather than a detail:
measured from first-draw the two oracle runs differ by **0.48 s**, because the
build-in itself ran 1.64 s and 2.13 s and the emulator's frame pacing during an
animation is not the game's clock. Measured from settle they differ by 6 ms.

So `_boot_done` — the moment the sequencer already had for "this screen has
reached its hold" — is the landmark, and the overlay is due `after_settle_seconds`
later. A number taken from the wrong instant here looks exactly like a
measurement.

### The overlay is attached to the BOOT STEP, not to the `title` screen

What was measured is the boot title. Whether the plate is there when the title is
reached *again* — by Ⓑ from the main menu, or after the attract movie — is not
measured, and hanging the overlay on the screen would quietly claim that it is.
So it lives on the boot step in `authored/flow.json`, and `_drop_overlay` takes
it away with the screen it belongs to. `BLOCKED.md` carries the gap.

### Refutation — the RE agent's instruction contradicts the RE agent's measurement

**The claim under test**, quoted from the finding's *"What the port should
author"*: draw build 4, *"when build 4 has settled, wait **2.13 s**, composite
build 2 over it"*.

**It does not reproduce the measurement it came from**, and the gap is 3.97 s.
Build 2 is not a static plate: it has a group, and this port plays groups.
`press_start` has one element, `ptbtn00`, and its `fade_argb` reads

```
t=214  0x00ffffff   pos (383, 560)      invisible
t=236  0x00ffffff   pos (383, 550)      still invisible, having slid 10 px up
t=238  0xffffffff                       full alpha
t=244  0xffffffff                       holds
  —    0x00ffffff                       the exit, untimed
```

At the measured 60 units/s that is **3.967 s** from the group's start to full
alpha. Compose the instruction with the group and the plate is first *visible* at
settle + 2.13 + 3.97 = **settle + 6.10 s**. What was measured — the glyph counter
leaving its no-plate value of 154 — is the plate becoming visible at **settle +
2.13 s**.

Neither obvious reconciliation works:

| reading | plate visible at | measured |
|---|---|---|
| both groups start together | 3.97 s (build 4 settles at **4.350 s**) — i.e. 0.38 s *before* settle | settle + 2.13 s |
| build 2's group starts at settle | settle + 3.97 s | settle + 2.13 s |
| build 2's group starts at settle + 2.13 s (the instruction) | settle + 6.10 s | settle + 2.13 s |

To land on the measurement, build 2's group has to start **2.51 s** after build
4's, which is not a landmark of anything.

**Verdict: the instruction is refuted as written; the measurement is untouched.**
The measurement is an observation of the running game and this port has no
standing to doubt it. What is refuted is the step that turns it into an
authoring rule, and that step is an interpretation.

**So the port ships the instruction, not its own arithmetic**, prints the
discrepancy on every boot, and files the row. This is the same call as the BGM
sub-waves and for the same reason: reconciling two of the RE agent's numbers is
a decoding question, and a port that quietly picks the one that looks right
destroys the evidence — a corrected boot looks exactly like a correct one.

The first thing to check is about the instrument rather than the game: is *"title
settled"*, the glyph counter first reading 154, the same instant as the port's
last-element settle (t=261, 4.350 s into the group)? If that landmark is earlier,
the gap closes with nothing else moving.

### Refuting the port's own claim: things in this export DO pulse

`BLOCKED.md` has carried this since P2, under the port's own raised question
about whether groups loop:

> no element's alpha reverses direction anywhere in this export, so nothing
> pulses, which removes the obvious reason to expect a loop without disproving
> one.

**`ptbtn00` reverses.** `0x00` → `0xff` → `0x00`, in the table above, in the
export, the whole time. The claim was never checked against `press_start`; it was
checked against the screens P2 happened to be animating. The RE agent has now
measured the running game pulsing this exact element at a mean 2.24 s.

So the reason to expect a loop is back — and the port still does not draw one,
because **no reading of this group produces 2.24 s**: the whole group is 268
units = 4.47 s, and from its first keyframe 54 units = 0.90 s. The plate is drawn
arriving and then holding at its settle (t=238, alpha `0xff`), which is what
every other screen does and what the static oracle capture
`live-title-press-a.png` shows. Which instant a repeat restarts from is filed,
not guessed.

### `--boot --capture=` — one frame instead of six hundred

The boot had no artifact of its own except `--film`, a PNG every 0.25 s for the
whole 156 s run, to answer one question: is the plate on top of the title at the
end. `--capture` was a `--screen`-only flag taken in `_ready`, which for a boot
run is 150 s too early. It is now deferred to the end of the sequence when
`--boot` is given.

### P3 gate — the boot ends on two builds

```
godot --path port -- --boot --capture=…/p3-plate.png
  → boot sequence complete after 155.86 s, holding on title
    overlay press_start due at 157.99 s (+2.13 s after settle)
    overlay press_start raised at 158.00 s, 1 element(s), settles at t=238
    ⚠ plate raised at settle+2.13 s but its own group reaches full alpha 3.97 s
      later, so it is first VISIBLE at settle+6.10 s -- the measurement is
      settle+2.13 s.
    boot ends on title + press_start at 161.99 s
    drew 16: ptbase2, ptloop01, …, ptcopyright
    overlay press_start at t = 261.00 units, drew 1: ptbtn00
```

The PNG shows the title logo with **`PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON`** under it — build 4 and
build 2 in one frame, which this port had never drawn.

Two things the run made obvious and that are now fixed:

* **The capture reported only the base build's elements.** The first composited
  capture printed `drew 16` and no mention of the plate, which reads as though
  the overlay had not drawn at all. The overlay gets its own line; folding its
  elements into the first list would have reported a screen that does not exist.
* **`--screen=<a> --overlay=<b>`** raises the same composite immediately, by the
  same code path, with no delay. It exists because the only other way to see two
  builds was a 156 s boot of which 137 s is the intro movie — and under Xvfb's
  software Theora decode that is several minutes to answer "is the plate on top
  of the title". It applies **no** delay: the delay is a measurement and lives in
  `authored/flow.json`. The boot-mode narration is suppressed there, because a
  log line that describes a sequence it is not running is worse than no log line.

## P5 — the focus ring spins, 2026-08-29

The ring was drawn at 0° and the file said so: *"THIS IS KNOWN TO BE WRONG, and
is drawn anyway because the right answer is a guess."* What was missing was the
**period**, and it is now measured — `docs/re/focus-ring-spin-measured.md`
(`auto/no-disc-and-menu-captures` at `4fa3099`): a continuous spin, from eight
evenly spaced autocorrelation peaks over nine revolutions, **with no angle
estimated anywhere** — both angle estimators failed their own controls and were
not used.

### The period comes off the disc; the RE agent supplied only that it repeats

`ptbtneff01` declares two keyframes that differ in **nothing but**
`rotation_deg`, 0 → 360, the first timed at `t = 120` and the second untimed.
The port turns once per **120 units**. Nothing is authored: the number is on the
disc, and what the measurement adds is that the turn **repeats** rather than
stopping at 360 = 0, which "groups hold" could not distinguish because those are
the same pose.

`ScreenView.spin_period_units` is the rule, and it is structural and narrow:
exactly two keyframes, differing only in rotation, by a full 360, first timed and
second untimed. **Disc-wide check over this export: 16 of 212 elements match, and
all 16 are focus rings** — `ptbtneff01` on the five main-menu buttons and
`ptbtneff02` on the three `EXTRAS` buttons, in both locales, every one declaring
`t = 120`. Zero false positives.

That check is the point rather than a formality. The measurement was taken on
**one** button of **one** screen; a rule that also caught something else would be
extrapolating it to elements nobody watched.

⚠️ It is a rule about **shape**, not a decoded field. Nothing on the disc says
"this loops". The day a loop flag is decoded, this goes.

### Verified on the port's own render, with the RE agent's own control

Captures at `--time=` 2.0 … 4.0 s on the settled main menu, `ptbtn01` focused:

| | |
|---|---|
| t=2.0 vs t=4.0 (one full period apart), **whole frame** | **0.0000 / 255** — bit-identical |
| t=2.5, 3.0, 3.5 against t=2.0, inside the ring's box | 3.60, 3.71, 3.58 / 255 |
| sum of box luminance across **eight** phases | spread **0.027 %** of the mean |

The last row is deliberately the RE agent's own observable: they separated
rotation from a brightness pulse by showing total annulus brightness is conserved
while per-bin brightness moves. The port's render conserves it to 0.027 % (theirs
was 0.4 % over 16 s, with capture noise in it). A filmstrip of the four
quarter-period phases shows the bright head at top, right, bottom, left.

### Two things it does not settle

* **Direction.** The port turns 0° → +360°, the sign the disc declares. No signed
  angle was ever measured — the estimator that would have given one failed its
  control and was not used.
* **Phase across a focus change.** The port drives the ring off the **screen**
  clock, so moving the cursor does not restart the turn. The alternative — the
  record's group restarting when the record is instantiated — is the stronger
  claim, and the oracle run held focus on one button throughout, so nothing
  separates them. Two frames straddling a focus change would.

## P3, corrected — the plate needs no authored delay at all, 2026-08-29

Last iteration the port refuted the RE agent's authoring instruction (*"when
build 4 has settled, wait 2.13 s, composite build 2"*) with arithmetic off the
disc, shipped the instruction anyway rather than pick between two of their
numbers, and printed the discrepancy on every boot.

**The refutation held, and the answer that came back is better than either option
the port offered: author nothing.** `5b0a6e6`.

### The premise that failed was the port's, and it will bite again

> 🔴 **`rest.t` is not when a screen settles.** It is the last *hold* keyframe
> before the exit.

Checked here rather than taken on trust. `title`'s `ptlogo1`:

```
t=26  (-116,-7) 150%  a=0x00      the pre-roll
t=42  (179,186) 101%  a=0xe0      it has arrived
t=251 (184,193) 100%  a=0xff      5 px and 31 alpha steps later, 3.5 s on
```

It **stops moving at t=42** and then creeps for 209 units. `rest.t = 251` is the
end of that creep, not the arrival. The title's visible build-in is over at
**`t = 118`**, where `pteff01`, `pteff02` and `ptlogoall_eff` finish together.

Every reconciliation the port computed last iteration was wrong by exactly that
error: reading `rest.t` put build 4's arrival at 4.350 s instead of 1.967 s, and
the "2.51 s, which is not a landmark of anything" that looked so damning is
`(4.350 − 1.967) + 0.13` — the error itself, wearing a decimal point.

### One clock, and the interval is declared

| | units |
|---|---|
| build 4's last build-in ramp | `t = 118` |
| `ptbtn00` reaches `a = 255` | `t = 238` |
| **difference** | **120 units = 2.000 s** |

Measured: **2.138 s** and **2.132 s**. The 6.7 % is presentation rate — 120 units
in 2.135 s is 56.2 units/s, the emulator running 28.1 fps against a nominal 30,
and the corpus had independently measured the idle title at 28.5 fps *before*
these runs.

So `authored/flow.json` carries `"clock": "shared"` and **no delay**, `boot.gd`
raises the overlay when the step's screen loads rather than at its settle, and
`overlay.time_units = view.time_units` — assigned, not accumulated, because two
independently advanced clocks drift by a frame here and there and the whole
content of the finding is that 120 units is a fixed interval on one timeline.

⚠️ **The general hazard, stated by the RE agent and worth repeating where the
port will read it: discount a wall-clock number off that oracle by ~6 %.** It is
Canary's presentation rate baked into whatever it measures. A port at a true
30 Hz that authored 2.13 s would be visibly late.

### Refutation — two of the RE agent's numbers for the same 120 units disagree by 2 %

Both findings measure the same declared quantity: **120 keyframe units of wall
clock, during a static hold, in Xenia Canary.**

| | | implied presentation |
|---|---|---|
| plate: settle → plate, two runs | 2.138, 2.132 s → mean **2.135 s** | 28.10 fps |
| ring: one revolution, seven spacings | 2.18 2.16 2.18 2.16 2.16 2.20 2.20 → mean **2.177 s** | 27.56 fps |
| **disagreement** | **0.042 s = 1.97 %** | |

That is **seven times** the plate finding's own run-to-run agreement of 6 ms, and
it lands on the argument that finding uses to justify trusting itself: *"the
build-in is where frames are dropped; the static hold is not. A model in which
the game's own timing varied would have to move both."* Two static-hold
measurements are exactly what should agree under that model.

A second, smaller arithmetic slip in the same place: the ring page reconciles
2.177 s against a band of "27.6–28.8 fps", saying the measurement *"sits at the
top of that band"*. It does not sit in it. 60 rendered frames at 27.6 fps is
2.1739 s; the mean needs **27.56 fps** and the two slowest spacings (2.20 s)
need **27.27 fps**. Four of the seven spacings are above the band's top.

**Verdict: the containment claim is refuted; the spin, the period and the
reconciliation are untouched.** Either the presentation rate genuinely differed
between the two sessions — which the plate page's own corroboration argues
against for static holds — or the ring's revolution is not exactly 120 units.
The corpus should say which, because they are the same claim measured twice.

🟢 **Nothing in the port moves either way.** `spin_period_units` uses the
declared 120 units at 60 units/s = **2.000 s of port time**, which is the
true-30 Hz value both readings agree the disc means. This is a corpus
consistency problem, not a port one — which is why it is filed rather than
worked around.

### The corrected boot ended one build too early, and the capture showed it

Moving the plate onto the shared clock also moved the boot's exit, and the first
capture taken afterwards was **visibly darker** than the one before it. The cause
is `pteff00`, the title's black fade quad: it ramps `0xff000000` → `0x00000000`
over t=16…261, so at t=243 — where the run was quitting, `overlay.settle_time()`
after the overlay was raised — the frame is still ~7 % black.

The plate arrives at t=238; **build 4 is not finished until t=261**. The boot now
ends at the later of the two, and says which in the log:

```
  -> title at 145.79 s
  overlay press_start raised at 145.79 s, 1 element(s), settles at t=238
  boot ends at 150.14 s, once both builds have arrived (t=261)
```

Worth recording because of how it presented: nothing failed, no warning was
printed, and the only symptom was a frame slightly darker than the previous
run's. A gate artifact that silently drifts is the failure mode this project
keeps meeting — and it was caught only because there was a previous capture to
compare against.

## P7 — the new-game intro, 2026-08-29

`S00A.wmv` has been in `export/video/` since P4 (MISSION §6 put both movies in
scope at once). What P7 needed was for something to *play* it and for the run to
end somewhere defined.

### The port skips two measured screens, and says so on screen

The real chain is **`NEW GAME` → `DIFFICULTY` → `SELECT DATA` → Ⓐ on a save slot
→ ~4.5 s → `S00A`** (HANDOFF Q4 measured the screens, Q9 decoded the movie and
then measured its onset off the running game at 0.96–1.000 with a strictly
monotone playhead over 25 consecutive 0.5 s samples).

`DIFFICULTY` and `SELECT DATA` are measured destinations that are **not
`GP_TITLE` builds**, so no screen file exists to go to. The port therefore jumps
from `NEW GAME` to the one thing in that chain it has.

That is a gap, not a sequence, and the whole design here is about not letting it
read as one:

* `MenuFlow.accept` returns a **new kind**, `video`, rather than folding this
  into `blocked`. The caller has to announce the skip, and a distinct kind is
  what forces it to.
* The runtime prints it every time:
  `(NEW GAME) -> the real chain is DIFFICULTY -> SELECT DATA, then the movie.
  Neither screen is in this export.`
* `authored/flow.json` carries `skipped_chain` as **data**, so the names of what
  is missing live beside the decision rather than inside a GDScript string.

A port that quietly jumped from `NEW GAME` to the intro would be showing a
sequence the game does not have, with nothing on screen saying so. That is the
exact failure this project keeps meeting from the other direction.

### What happens after the movie is authored, and had to be

The game goes into **mission 1**. Gameplay is out of scope (PORT-MISSION §7), so
"returns to a defined state" is a decision, and P7's gate says as much. The port
returns to the **title**: the boot's own end state, so a run that finishes the
intro lands somewhere a player can start again from. Nothing measured says the
game does this, and `after_video.kind` is `"authored"`.

### The 4.5 s gap is left empty on purpose

Q9 measures the movie starting ~4.5 s after Ⓐ on the save slot. What is on screen
for those 4.5 s was never observed — the run that would have shown it hit the
documented `sub_823070B0` cache crash after `SELECT DATA`.

`GP_TITLE` **does** carry a loading screen (below), and 4.5 s is about the right
shape for one. That is precisely why it is in `BLOCKED.md` and not in
`flow.json`: a plausible filler that nobody watched is the kind of thing that is
indistinguishable from a measurement a month later.

### A script timeout that would have failed every movie

`--script`'s per-step timeout is 20 s, to stop an unattended run waiting forever
on a screen that never settles. `S00A` is **93.9 s**, so the first scripted
new-game run would have been killed at step 1 and reported as "never settled".

Raising the constant would have been wrong in the other direction: a movie stuck
at frame 0 would then hang the job, and a job that waits is worse than a job that
fails, because it does not look like a failure.

So the test is **liveness, not duration**: while `get_stream_position()`
advances, the deadline moves with it; a stalled movie still trips the same 20 s.

### Found while looking: `GP_TITLE`'s four unnamed builds are LOADING screens

`build_00`, `build_01`, `build_12`, `build_15` have never had names. Every
element in all four is `pgloading_*` — `pgloading_processing.png`,
`pgloading_circle1`, `pgloading_delta`, `pgloading_ring` — and `LOADING` is one
of the three screen names the RE agent read out of the title part's state
function.

Two variants: 0/1 carry 7 elements, 12/15 carry 10.

**They are not renamed here.** The archive's own pairing (adjacent for 2/3, `+3`
for 4…9 and for 10/13, 11/14) suggests 0 is 1's twin and 12 is 15's, but which
member of each pair is which **locale** is an inference, and a name is exactly
the kind of thing that stops being questioned once written. Handed to the RE
agent, who can answer it from a capture in one look. `BLOCKED.md` has the row.

⚠️ **And one of them is a second casualty of the `rest.t` problem.**
`pgloading_eff00.prm` on entries 12/15 is a full-screen black quad whose group
runs `0xff000000` at t=38 → `0xff000000` at t=48 → `0x00000000` untimed: black,
held, *then* clear. Its `rest.t` is **38**, where it is fully opaque. A port that
draws that screen at its declared rest draws **a black rectangle over the entire
loading screen**. The title's case only dimmed a frame; this one hides
everything. Filed with the `settle_time()` row it belongs to.

### Refutation — attempted on the fade-quad census; it survives, with a caveat

**The claim** (HANDOFF, on transitions): *"in `GP_TITLE` exactly the six screen
builds carry it while the six overlays do not"*, where "it" is the full-screen
black `.prm` quad *whose keyframe group is the transition*.

**The test**, over the whole export: count builds carrying a full-screen
primitive with black in its keyframes.

```
16 builds exported; 12 carry one.
Of the 12 `is_build` bundles (excluding the 4 authored splashes): 8 carry, 4 do not.
  carry:  title, title_jp, main_menu, main_menu_jp, extras, extras_jp,
          build_12, build_15
  do not: press_start, press_start_jp, build_00, build_01
```

8 and 4, not 6 and 6. But the two extras are `build_12` / `build_15`, and their
quad is a **different shape**:

| | transition quad (`pteff00.prm`, title) | loading quad (`pgloading_eff00.prm`) |
|---|---|---|
| | `0xff000000` t=16 | `0xff000000` t=38 |
| | `0x00000000` t=261 | `0xff000000` t=48 |
| | `0xff000000` untimed | `0x00000000` untimed |
| shape | black → clear → **black** | black → held → **clear** |

The transition quad returns to black on exit; the loading quad does not. Read
strictly — the quad *whose group is the transition* — the claim holds.

**Verdict: survives.** The refinement is worth recording anyway, because the
naive test over-counts by two and somebody will run the naive test. There are
**two kinds** of full-screen black `.prm` in `GP_TITLE`, and only one of them is
a transition.

## P7 gate

```
godot --path port -- --menu --script=accept --audio=…/p7.wav
```

```
  menu on main_menu, focus ptbtn01
script[1] accept
  (NEW GAME) -> the real chain is DIFFICULTY -> SELECT DATA, then the movie.
               Neither screen is in this export.
  -> video S00A at 1.18 s (/work/export/video/S00A.ogv)
     video ended at 94.93 s
     -> title (authored: authored)
  menu on title, focus (none -- this screen has no focusable item)
script complete after 99.28 s on title
recorded 98.453 s of Master bus (driver Dummy)
```

The movie ran **93.75 s** against a declared 93.9 s, the run ended on the title,
and the Master bus recorded 98.453 s: `pcm_s16le`, 44.1 kHz stereo, RMS
**−22.2 dBFS**.

**What this does not show, stated because it would be easy to imply otherwise:**
the recording contains the menu bed *and* the movie together, and this run did
**not** separate them. So it establishes that the engine reached an output for
98 s of a run whose middle 94 s was a movie — not that `S00A`'s own audio track
is in the mix. Separating them wants the P6 null-control method (a paired run
that differs only in the movie), and that is not done here.

🔴 **Peak 0.0 dBFS again.** The same runtime-headroom problem P6 filed: per-file
levels are the disc's and are fine, the Master bus has no headroom, and the port
has set no bus balance because nothing measures one.

### One more file read while it was being written

`ls` reported the recording as **3 702 828 B**; `ffprobe` on the finished file
reports **17 367 084 B / 98.452608 s** — a factor of 4.7. `ffprobe` is right and
the `ls` caught it mid-flight.

`AUDIO-VERIFICATION.md` opens by naming this failure and the port has had the
temp-name-then-rename discipline since P6, which is what makes it worth writing
down rather than shrugging off: **the discipline protects a reader who opens the
path, and it does not protect a reader who stats it at the wrong moment.** Size
on disk is not a measurement of a file somebody else is still writing. Ask the
decoder, not the directory entry.

## Modding — rule 4 was never implemented, 2026-08-29

`docs/port/MODDING.md` is explicit that modding is *"a design constraint on the
exporter today — not a milestone to add later"*, and its rule 4 is base-and-
overrides: a mod replaces a file by **shadowing its path**, so a modder edits
nothing under the derived tree and re-exporting is always safe.

**Nothing read `data/mods/` at all.** The directory has existed since the
monorepo merge with a `.gitkeep` in it and no code path anywhere — exporter or
runtime — that looked at it. Eight milestones shipped past that.

### One resolver, and every read goes through it

`ExportTree.resolve(rel)` returns the mod tree's copy when one exists and the
derived tree's otherwise. `read_json`, `texture`, `video` and `MenuAudio` all
call it, so a mod can replace **a screen's JSON, a sprite, a cue, the music bed
or a movie** — every asset kind the port reads.

`MenuAudio` was reading `tree.root.path_join(...)` directly and had to be
changed. Left alone it would have made audio the one asset kind a mod could not
touch, for no reason a modder could have guessed — which is the failure mode
rule 4 exists to prevent.

There is deliberately no manifest of what a mod contains and no registration
step: **the path is the registration**, which is the whole of the rule.

⚠️ **One tree, not a stack.** Several mods layering over each other needs a load
order, and a load order needs a rule nobody has asked for. Said out loud in
`data/mods/README.md` rather than answered.

### A modded run must not look like an unmodded one

Every shadowed file is printed the first time it is read:

```
mod: sprites/title/main_menu/ptbtn01.png  <-  /work/data/mods/sprites/…/ptbtn01.png
```

MODDING says *"did I break it?"* is answered by disabling a mod. That is a fine
last resort and a poor only resort, so the log names the replacement instead.

**The first version of this got it wrong in an instructive way**: it printed a
summary in `_ready`, before a single asset had been read, and so always said
`(nothing shadowed yet)`. A report structurally incapable of reporting anything
is worse than no report, because it looks like an answer. It now announces each
shadow at the moment it happens.

### Gate

A synthetic 203×43 magenta PNG — nothing disc-derived — dropped at
`data/mods/sprites/title/main_menu/ptbtn01.png`:

| | |
|---|---|
| pixels changed between the two renders | **8 501** of 921 600 (0.92 %) |
| bounding box of the change | x 542…744, y 162…204 — **203×43**, the sprite's own size |
| `sylpheed-export check export` afterwards | 16 screens still validate |

The changed region is exactly the sprite and nothing else moved.

### `data/mods/` was not gitignored, and that is a hole in a hard rule

*"Never commit game assets"* has been enforced on `export/` and `data/base/`
since P0. But **a mod is usually an edited game asset**, and `data/mods/` was
fully tracked — so the one directory a user is invited to put modified sprites in
was the one directory git would happily take them from.

`.gitignore` now excludes everything under it except the README.

### The naming split is not mine to resolve

`MODDING.md` describes the tree as `data/base/`; `PORT-MISSION.md` §3, the
exporter, `ExportTree` and `.gitignore` all say `export/`. Both are mission
files, and PROTOCOL is clear that **only the human changes a mission**, so this
is raised rather than picked. `.gitignore` has ignored both names on purpose
since P0.

It matters here for one concrete reason: MODDING's layout has `base/` and `mods/`
as **siblings**, and today they are not — the tree is `export/` at the repo root
while mods are `data/mods/`. The resolver takes `SYLPHEED_MODS` or defaults to
`data/mods/`, which is what exists; if the tree is ever renamed to `data/base/`
the sibling rule becomes natural and that default can go.

## Refutation — the paint-order key, and the reach of its tie-break

**The claim** (HANDOFF Q3): paint order is *"a `u16` layer key at `+0x0A`,
**decoded**"*, with the tie-break filed 🟡 as *"eight candidates refuted; costs
one element's blend on one screen"*.

**First pass: 2 of 16 screens did not match** a stable sort by layer key — both
loading screens, `build_12` and `build_15`.

**That was my test, not the claim.** `pgloading_eff00.prm` carries **no layer key
at all** — `layer: null`, `layer_source: "none"`: it is a primitive with no
sprite header, and the exporter's implied-name fallback produces nothing either.
My sort put a keyless element first; the decoders put it **last**.

Completing the rule as *"stable sort by layer key, elements with no key last"*
gives **16 of 16**. And last is right: `pgloading_eff00` is the full-screen black
quad, and HANDOFF's own sentence is that the fade quad paints last.

**Verdict: survives, with the rule completed.** Worth recording because the
published statement does not say where a keyless element goes, and there is at
least one in the archive.

🟡 **But the tie-break's reach looks understated.** Census over this export:

```
elements sharing a layer key with another element: 105, across 12 of 16 screens
```

HANDOFF characterises the cost as *"one element's blend on one screen"*. 105
elements on 12 screens is a much larger surface than that. Most of those ties are
probably invisible — two elements that share a key and never overlap cannot show
a difference — but *probably* is doing the work in that sentence, and nothing has
measured which. The port is unaffected either way: it draws
`ui_layout::derived_paint_order` verbatim and derives no order of its own.

## Correction — the runtime "clipping" I flagged 🔴 twice was overstated

P6 and P7 both filed 🔴 *"the runtime mix has no headroom"* on the strength of a
peak reading of 0.0 dBFS off the Master bus. Measured properly:

| | samples at full scale | of total | longest clamped run |
|---|---|---|---|
| P6 walk (5.944 s) | 43 | 0.0082 % | 10 samples — **0.23 ms** |
| P7 new-game run (98.453 s) | 24 | 0.00028 % | 11 samples — **0.25 ms** |

That is not a headroom defect. It is the disc's own `confirm` cue, mastered near
full scale (+0.18 dBFS after a lossy decode), touching the ceiling for a quarter
of a millisecond on a transient — and possibly only in the recording's 16-bit
conversion, since Godot mixes in float and `AudioEffectRecord` saves `s16`.

**Nothing is changed, and that is the point.** Attenuating the mix to buy
headroom would be an unmeasured decision about level — the same class of thing
this port refused for the BGM loop point and the stem balance. Refusing it there
and taking it here would be inconsistent, and it would trade an inaudible
0.25 ms clamp for an audible change nobody measured.

**A peak reading is not a clipping measurement.** One sample at 0 dBFS and two
seconds of square wave give the same number, and I reported the first as though
it were the second — twice, in red, in two milestones' write-ups.

## The P1 regression harness had been broken since the monorepo merge, 2026-08-29

`tools/port/verify-screen` is the P1 gate's regression detector: Godot's drawing
of a screen against `sylpheed-cli screen render` of the same build. It had not
been run since P1, across four milestones that changed the renderer — rotation,
the focus record, the spinning ring, two builds composited at once.

It could not have been run. **It resolves its reference binary to a path that
`build-reference-cli` stopped being able to produce.** That script greps
`crates/sylpheed-export/Cargo.toml` for

```
sylpheed-formats = { git = "…Syplheed-Reborn.git", rev = "…" }
```

and the monorepo merge (`65cefa7`) replaced that line with
`{ path = "../sylpheed-formats" }`. The grep returns nothing, the script exits 1,
and the binary left at `reference-cli/sylpheed-cli` is whatever predated the
merge — here, **three hours older than the sources** and built from a revision
nothing in the tree points at any more.

Running the diff against it would have compared the port to a decoder from
another era and called the result a regression check. `DECISIONS.md` already
carries *"The reference renderer was stale for three diff runs"* from P2. This
would have been the fourth, and the mechanism was different: not a forgotten
rebuild, but a **build step that could no longer succeed and a consumer that
only checked whether the file existed**.

### The fix is a deletion, not a repair

The revision-keying solved a two-repo problem: `/reborn`'s `target/` was a live
mount of the other agent's checkout and moved mid-run, so a pixel disagreement
against it had a free variable in it. **The monorepo removed that problem by
construction** — the exporter, the reference and the port now read one decoder,
the working tree's. So `verify-screen` builds `sylpheed-cli` from the workspace.
`SYLPHEED_CLI` still overrides for anyone who wants to pin one deliberately.

### The baseline, all 16 screens

```
build_00/01        max 3    over3 0       OK
press_start(_jp)   max 1    over3 0       OK
title              max 6    over3 790     DIFFERS
main_menu(_jp)     max 4    over3 0       DIFFERS
extras(_jp)        max 3    over3 0       OK
publisher_logo(_r) max 1-2  over3 0       OK
developer_logos(_r) max 2   over3 0       OK
title_jp           max 155  over3 20498   DIFFERS
build_12/15        max 0    over3 0       OK
```

**No new drift.** Four milestones of renderer change and the only screen with a
substantial disagreement is `title_jp` — which is the *same* one P1 recorded and
left open: `ptlogo_eff2` is the single drawn element in the whole export at a
scale that is not a whole multiple of 100 % (125 %), and the two renderers pick
different source texels there. `ui_layout::blit` samples at the destination
pixel's top-left corner, a GPU at its centre. **The port has still not changed to
match**, because matching would mean reproducing a half-pixel bias on purpose to
make a number smaller. Only an oracle capture settles it.

`title`'s 790 pixels at ≤ 6/255 are the same class, one texel wide, on the logo's
scaled edges. `main_menu` and `main_menu_jp` say DIFFERS on a max of 4 with
**zero** pixels over the bar — a couple of pixels differing in a single channel.

### `max` alone could not tell 2 pixels from 25 000

The script reported only the largest difference anywhere in the frame, so
`main_menu` (two pixels) and `title_jp` (2.8 % of the frame) produced the same
verdict. It now also reports how many pixels are over the bar.

**The bar itself is not raised.** Tuning a threshold until things match is the
failure the script's own header warns about; adding a second number is
information, not a loosened bound. ⚠️ The count is thresholded on **greyscale
luma** while `max` is a per-channel maximum, so they are not two views of one
measurement — a per-channel check counts 957 on `title` where the luma count
says 790.

### What this harness cannot see, stated because the OK rows look reassuring

It renders `--pose=rest`. That is deliberate — it holds both renderers to the
same declared pose so the test is *port vs reference* and not *rest vs timeline*
— but it means **none of this iteration's or the last four's visible work is
under test**: not the spinning focus ring, not the plate composited over the
title, not any timeline behaviour, not audio. Sixteen OK rows are a statement
about the resting composite and nothing else.

And it remains what its header says: a consistency check between two renderers
that share their assumptions. Both have been wrong together three times —
`pteff05`, scale-0, `rest()` — and each time only a capture caught it.

## Refutation — "builds 0/1 and 10/11 are the loading screen" is false in the index space this export uses

**The claim**, from the RE agent 2026-08-29, answering the port's ask to name
`GP_TITLE`'s unnamed bundles: *"builds 0/1 and 10/11 are the loading screen,
decoded from their own `pgloading_*` element names."*

**In this export, entries 10 and 11 are the splash screens**, and it is not close:

| entry | elements |
|---|---|
| 10 | `palogo_eff0`, **`palogo_sqex`**, `palogo_sqex_eff` |
| 11 | `palogo_eff0`, **`palogo_gamearts`**, `palogo_seta`, `palogo_anima` … |
| 12 / 15 | `pgloading_eff00`, `pgloading_loop1`, `pgloading_str` … |

Entry 10 is the **SQUARE ENIX** wordmark and 11 the developer logos — which the
same agent identified, in the answer to the port's ask 1, as *"entries 10/13 are
the SQUARE ENIX publisher wordmark, the first thing the boot shows"*.

**Verdict: the finding is almost certainly right and the index space is wrong.**
Over the twelve bundles `is_build` accepts — entries 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,12,15 —
ordinals 10 and 11 are entries **12 and 15**, which are exactly the two dressed
loading variants. So "0/1 and 10/11" is the `is_build` ordinal, and this export
addresses by **pak entry index**.

**Why this is worth a section rather than a shrug.** `authored/screen_names.json`
is keyed by entry index, and the exporter's own comment says why: *"keyed by
ENTRY, not by the enumeration ordinal — widening the enumeration to reach the
splash renumbers the ordinals, and a name that moves when the rule changes is not
a name."* Someone reading that message and writing keys `"10"` and `"11"` would
**name the publisher wordmark and the developer logos as loading screens**, and
the export would validate, and the boot would still run.

Two enumerations of the same archive differ by exactly the four bundles the port
had to add an allow-list to reach. That is the sharpest possible demonstration of
why the exporter switched, and it has now nearly caused the error it switched to
prevent. Reported; the names are still the RE agent's to give.

## The intro's missing dialogue was an export gap, not a transcode bug, 2026-08-29

A human play-test heard music under the boot intro and no voices. The obvious
reading is that the 5.1→stereo fold dropped the centre channel, and it is wrong.

**`ADV.wmv` carries music and effects only.** On this disc a cutscene's voice is
a *separate asset*: one continuous XMA stream in `sound.pak`, bound to the movie
by the manifest in `tables.pak` (`ADV` → `VOICETRACK = VOICE_ADV`). Nothing was
dropped — `grep -rn voice crates/sylpheed-export/src/` returned nothing, because
the exporter had never been asked for it. The transcode was correct the whole
time, which is why every measurement on it passed.

That is worth stating plainly because the failure *looked* exactly like a codec
bug, and `docs/port/AUDIO-VERIFICATION.md` is full of ways to measure a
transcode against its source. Every one of them would have come back clean.

### The binding is resolved, and must never be matched by name

`audio::export_voice` takes exactly one route:
`media::resolve_movie_voice_region(source, movie, VoiceLang::English)`, which
walks movie → cue token (manifest) → sound id (registry) → a `[start, end)` byte
region of the continuous stream. The cheap route — read `VOICE_<movie>.slb` —
was not taken, and the reason is a measurement:

| movie | resolved region | inside the bank named after it? |
|---|---|---|
| `ADV` | 433 930 240…437 044 592 | yes |
| `S00A` | 452 798 464…455 499 120 | yes |
| `RT01A` | 437 044 592…437 345 648 | **no — it is inside `VOICE_ADV.slb`** |

⚠️ **Name-matching is correct on exactly the two movies this port ships, and
wrong on the radio cutscenes.** It would have exported clean, verified clean
against both in-scope movies, and returned the wrong recording the moment
anybody widened the export. This is the failure mode MISSION §2 names — one
playable thing is not one archive entry — in its most convincing disguise: the
spot-checks a person would actually run are the ones it passes.

### Three choices, and why none is a guess

* **One file per movie**, per MODDING rule 1, and the region's chunks are
  **summed** — see the correction below, because the first version of this
  paragraph said the opposite and was wrong.
* **Mono**, folded from the stream's **own declared channel count**, probed with
  `ffprobe` rather than assumed. This is not pedantry: `pan` silently ignores a
  channel the input does not have — measured this iteration on the 5.1 fold
  below, where `FLC`/`FRC`/`SL`/`SR` vanished with no warning at all — so a
  stereo matrix applied to a mono voice track is not an error, it is a −6 dB
  attenuation that nothing reports. A track that is already mono is passed
  through untouched.
* **No sync offset, and no length clamp.** The voice plays from the video's
  first frame, so nothing is authored. The decoded length is recorded in the
  manifest *beside the movie's own length* rather than trimmed to it: the voice
  has no shared container to disagree with, so a length mismatch is the only
  symptom a resolution error would ever show, and clamping would delete it. That
  decision is the reason the error below was caught in the same hour it was made.

### Correction, within the hour — the chunks are stems, and I had concatenated them

The first version of `export_voice` joined the region's chunks end to end and
produced **359.201 s of voice for a 137.437 s movie**, and **255.460 s for a
93.779 s one**. Both ratios sit near 3, and both regions decode to 3 chunks.

The manifest said so on the first run, because the length was recorded against
the movie's instead of being clamped to it. A clamp — which is what
`sylpheed-viewer` does, and what `media`'s own doc comment invites with *"trimmed
by the caller's length clamp"* — would have produced a file of exactly the right
duration containing the wrong audio, and every check in
`docs/port/AUDIO-VERIFICATION.md` would have passed it.

Decoding each chunk and timing it (`crates/sylpheed-export/examples/voice_chunks.rs`):

| movie | movie length | chunk 0 | chunk 1 | chunk 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `ADV` | 137.437 s | 84.553 | **137.324** | **137.324** |
| `S00A` | 93.779 s | 68.072 | **93.694** | **93.694** |
| `RT01A` | — | 0.009 | **34.034** | — |

Chunks 1 and 2 are **equal to six decimals and each span the whole movie**. That
is HANDOFF Q10's decoded shape — *two stems of one performance, played together;
do not concatenate* — showing up on a second asset kind. They are summed at
`1/n`, exactly as `export_bgm` sums a music bank.

⚠️ **Chunk 0 is dropped and its status is open.** Its duration matches nothing:
84.6 s under a 137 s movie, 9 ms under `RT01A`. `docs/re/REFUTED.md` records
`to_xma_riffs`'s hybrid branch emitting a **leading headerless packet region**
ahead of the real `RIFF` waves, and `docs/port/BLOCKED.md` already carries that
as an open row against `BGM_103`, where `media` returns three sub-waves against a
census of two. **This is the same signature on an independent asset kind** — good
corroboration, not proof, and the port is not entitled to close it. So the
selection rule is written in terms of the measurement (*keep the longest
duration and everything tying with it*), and every dropped chunk is named in the
manifest with its length.

This is the media-assembly trap MISSION §2 names, and it caught me: I wrote a
doc comment asserting concatenation, gave the reason, and had it wrong. What
saved it was refusing to clamp — the one decision in the first version that was
made for the right reason.

### What a `None` means

A movie whose region does not resolve is **genuinely unvoiced** — the honest
answer for most `hokyu_*` resupply cutscenes — and gets a manifest warning, not
a substitute. The corpus already paid for the alternative: resolving unbound
movies through a shared demo line played the *wrong recording*.

This is **decoded, not authored**, so it runs outside the `authored/audio.json`
block in `main.rs`. Nothing new goes in `authored/`; there is nothing here we
decided.

## Refutation, of my own exporter — MISSION §6 pins a downmix matrix, and the exporter ships a different one

**The claim under test is the port's**, not another agent's, and it has been in
`video.rs` since P4: that the 5.1 fold is normalised by
`1/(1 + √½ + √½) = 0.4142` because *"the unnormalised form was measured too and
**clips**: peak 0.0 dBFS."*

That sentence rests on a peak reading. `docs/port/BLOCKED.md` records this port
withdrawing a 🔴 runtime-clipping flag on precisely the grounds that **a peak
reading is not a clipping measurement** — one sample at full scale and two
seconds of square wave give the same number. So the justification for deviating
from a matrix a human pinned was produced by an instrument this port has already
declared unfit for the question.

### Measured properly, over the whole of both movies

Decoded to 32-bit float so nothing is pre-clamped, then counted: samples at or
over full scale, how many exceed it by more than 1 dB, and the longest
consecutive run.

| | peak | RMS | ≥ full scale | > +1 dB | longest run |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| `ADV`, MISSION §6 matrix | **+4.26 dBFS** | −14.55 | **4 406** / 13 187 900 | 1 874 | 16 samples (0.333 ms) |
| `ADV`, exporter's matrix | −3.39 dBFS | −22.21 | 0 | 0 | — |
| `S00A`, MISSION §6 matrix | **−1.34 dBFS** | −18.73 | **0** | 0 | — |
| `S00A`, exporter's matrix | −8.99 dBFS | −26.39 | 0 | 0 | — |

**The claim survives, and the reasoning behind it does not.** The pinned matrix
genuinely overloads `ADV`: not one stray sample but 4 406 of them, 1 874 more
than a full dB over, wanting 4.26 dB more headroom than the container has. That
is a different animal from the 43 samples and 0.25 ms transient I withdrew a flag
over, and the number that separates them is the **magnitude**, not the count.

But the same table refutes the *scope* of the fix. **`S00A` never clips under the
pinned matrix** — it peaks at −1.34 dBFS. The exporter attenuates it by 7.65 dB
to solve a problem it does not have, because 0.4142 is derived from a theoretical
worst case (every channel correlated at full scale at once) that neither movie
comes near.

### Control, before believing any of it

The pinned matrix names `FLC`, `FRC`, `SL` and `SR`, and a 5.1 source has none of
them. ffmpeg neither errors nor warns — measured at `-loglevel warning`, the
output was empty. So the literal string was decoded alongside its three-term 5.1
reduction (`FL = 1.0·FL + 0.707·FC + 0.707·BL`) and the two outputs compared:
**bit-identical**, 52 751 600 bytes. The reduction is what runs, and it is the
matrix §6 intends. *That silence is itself the trap the mono fold above guards
against.*

### Not changed, and deliberately so

MISSION §6 is a **human decision of 2026-08-29**, and the level of a mix is
exactly the kind of thing §6 reserves — *"adjust it deliberately, as a commit"*.
Three options, and choosing between them is not mine:

1. **Keep the pin.** `ADV` clamps on 4 406 samples. Rejected on the measurement.
2. **Keep the exporter's 0.4142.** Preserves the two movies' relative loudness
   exactly, costs 7.65 dB, and is safe by construction for any movie a modder
   drops in.
3. **One measured constant, `1/1.6339 = 0.612`.** The smallest single scalar
   under which no in-scope movie clamps: +3.39 dB over today, still one constant
   so relative loudness is untouched. Tuned to two files, but the exporter's own
   `check` refuses any export whose peak reaches 0 dBFS, so a third movie that
   needed more headroom would fail loudly rather than clamp quietly.

Per-file normalisation is **not** on that list: it would put `ADV` 4.26 dB below
`S00A` and change how two cutscenes sit against each other and against the menu
bed, which is an aesthetic decision with nothing measured behind it.

What changes today is only that the deviation is **visible**: `video.rs` now
cites MISSION §6 by name and says it departs from it, and the export carries a
manifest warning with these numbers. Before this, a reader of the manifest could
not tell that a pinned human decision had been overridden at all — the command
line was recorded faithfully, and recording the command you ran does not disclose
that it is not the command you were given.

### The voice reaches the output, and a null control says so quantitatively

`+ voice ADV` in the log proves only that `play_voice` found a stream and called
`play()`. Whether the audio arrives at the Master bus is a different question,
and `docs/port/AUDIO-VERIFICATION.md` §2 exists because it is.

The control needed **no test-only code**: MODDING rule 4 already shadows any
exported asset by path, so 140 s of silence dropped at
`data/mods/audio/voice/ADV.ogg` mutes the dialogue and changes nothing else. Two
`--boot --skip-at=25 --audio=…` runs, then `astats` over the same 14 s of movie:

| | peak | RMS | 
|---|---|---|
| `ADV.ogv`'s own audio (the bed) | −6.239 | −24.941 |
| the exported voice alone | −7.614 | −27.965 |
| **run with the voice muted** | **−6.251** | **−25.126** |
| **run with the voice playing** | **−5.415** | **−22.913** |

The muted run reproduces the bed to **0.01 dB peak / 0.19 dB RMS**, which is what
makes the other row worth reading. And the mixed run is not merely *louder*: two
incoherent sources at −24.941 and −27.965 dBFS predict a sum at **−23.184**, and
the run measures **−22.913** — **0.27 dB** out. The voice is in the mix, at the
level its own file says it should be.

⚠️ **Under the Dummy driver.** Per AUDIO-VERIFICATION, *"recorded under a dummy
driver"* is a weaker claim than *"heard"*, and no measurement here says the
recording is the **right** dialogue for this cutscene — only that the file the
exporter resolved is the one reaching the output at the expected level. The two
runs are also not sample-aligned (they differ by 1.7 s of wall clock), which is
why the `RMS trough` column is omitted: it moved by 40 dB between runs on window
placement alone, and peak and RMS are the two numbers that survive that.

### Ⓐ *does* skip the intro in this build, so the play-test's report is not this bug

`--skip-at=25` on a `--boot` run: `video skipped at 25.02 s`, `video ended at
25.02 s`, title at 25.02 s. The press goes through `Input.parse_input_event` and
arrives at `_unhandled_input` exactly as a pad's would, so **the wiring from press
to skip is live**. What that does not cover is a real key event from a focused
window, which is the difference between this run and the human's — and, separately,
**whether the game permits skipping an attract movie at all** is HANDOFF Q9 and
still 🟡. If the answer is no, this path is deleted rather than debugged.


## Refutation of my own two-stem reading — and it had already been adopted elsewhere

Two hours after writing that a voice region's equal-length chunks are *"HANDOFF
Q10's decoded two-stem shape"*, the Decoder asked me to decode the leading chunk
— it has no XMA1 decoder in its container — and the decoder run refuted the
claim I had made.

**Equal duration was a shape match, and I carried Q10's *music* census across to
voice on the strength of it.** The content does not support it:

| | |
|---|---|
| `S00A` chunk 2 | **digital silence** — 4 497 300 samples, peak −inf |
| `ADV` chunk 2 | **0.60 × chunk 1** (best-fit scalar), residual **26.8 dB** below the target |

About 95 % of `ADV`'s second chunk is a −4.4 dB copy of the first. Two chunks of
equal length, one silence and the other a scaled near-duplicate, are not two
stems of one performance. ⚠️ **The claim had already travelled** — it is quoted in
the Decoder's `voice-region-leading-chunk.md` — which is the failure PROTOCOL
names: a wrong belief moving faster than its correction, through two documents
that share a source.

### What it cost, and what changed

Summing chunk 1 with silence at `1/n` put `S00A`'s dialogue **6.02 dB down for
nothing**: the exported file peaked at −16.2 dBFS against a source chunk peaking
at −4.2. `export_voice` now drops a **digitally silent** chunk before the sum.
That is arithmetic, not a content judgement — a silent input contributes nothing
to a mix and counting it in the normalisation is simply my error.

**What `ADV`'s near-duplicate chunk 2 is remains open and it is still summed.**
Whether the game plays both is a decoding question; 26.8 dB of residual is not
nothing, and dropping a chunk because it correlates with another would be
answering it.

### The leading chunk, decoded — structure, and not one word about content

The Decoder's ask was *"cutscene dialogue or mission dialogue"*. `ADV` region
+ 1392, 394 packets: **84.553 s, stereo, 48 kHz, peak −2.48 dBFS, RMS −24.80**,
with **6 silent gaps over 0.4 s below −50 dB totalling 45.3 s** — 54 % silence,
the same duty cycle as the two full-length chunks (54 %, 55 %). So it is
**speech-structured audio**: not a header, not padding, not noise.

🔴 **Which is as far as a measurement goes.** *Cutscene or mission* is an
identification and this agent has no ears and no oracle. Envelope
cross-correlation against the full-length chunks peaks at 0.768 **at the last lag
in the search range**, which is where a statistic lands when it has found
nothing, and it is not evidence. The Decoder's 🟡 stands, and its own leading
hypothesis — an in-mission `VOICE_D_*` line — is untouched by any of this. The
byte-span test it already built settles it the moment those regions are
enumerated; nobody has to listen.

### Taken from the same message: `bank_header_len`, not `riffs.len()`

The Decoder's census warns that eight bank-header regions also yield three
chunks, so the chunk count cannot say which structure you are in. **This exporter
never used the count** — it selects on decoded duration, which is why it already
handles both cases: `RT01A`'s 10 300 B leading chunk decodes to 9 ms and falls
out on its own. But a duration tie is an *observation* and `bank_header_len` is
*decoded*, so the rule switches the day `c1f3608` reaches `main`.
`sylpheed-formats` is a path dependency and merging another agent's topic branch
is not the port's to do.

## The mono fold I warned about, in the comment directly above the code that did it

`export_voice`'s first version folded to mono by averaging every **declared**
channel, and the doc comment above it said, in as many words, that *"`pan`
silently ignores a channel the input does not have — so a stereo matrix applied
to a mono voice track is not an error, it is a −6 dB attenuation that nothing
reports."*

It then did exactly that. Per-channel `astats` on both voice streams:

| | channel 1 | channel 2 |
|---|---|---|
| `ADV` chunk 1 | peak +0.000 dBFS | **peak −inf** |
| `S00A` chunk 1 | peak −4.207 dBFS | **peak −inf** |

The voice is a **mono recording carried in a nominally stereo stream**, and
averaging it with silence cost **5.94 dB** — which is most of why `S00A`'s
exported dialogue sat at −16.2 dBFS against a source chunk peaking at −4.2 (the
other 6.02 dB was summing a silent *chunk*, corrected in the same iteration).

**Checking the declared channel count is not checking the content, and only the
content is the fold.** `live_channels` now measures which channels carry signal
and averages only those. `sylpheed-viewer`'s `pan=mono|c0=c0` reaches the right
answer here for a reason it does not state; this reaches it for a stated one, and
would still be right if a stream ever did carry two live channels.

Worth recording as a pattern rather than a bug: **three defects this iteration
were all the same shape** — a silent chunk in a sum, a silent channel in a fold,
and a `pan` matrix naming channels that do not exist. Each is an input that
contributes nothing being counted in a divisor, and none of them is visible in
anything but a level.

## The leading chunk is the TAIL of the full one — measured, and it is why the region over-covers

The Decoder settled by byte-span analysis that a voice region's leading chunk is
**the movie's own dialogue, 17 of 17** — killing its own standing hypothesis that
it was an in-mission `VOICE_D_*` line — and asked whether dropping it is
therefore a truncation. It has no XMA1 decoder; this container does.

Envelope cross-correlation, sliding with overhang allowed at both ends and
normalised over the overlap only. ⚠️ **This corrects an earlier number of mine**:
a first pass scored 0.768 and I called it nothing, correctly — that search only
tried lags where the shorter chunk fitted *wholly inside* the longer one, and it
peaked on the boundary of its own range.

| | best *r* | at lag | overlap |
|---|---|---|---|
| `ADV` chunk 0 → chunk 1 | **0.998** | **+52.8 s** | 84.5 s |
| `S00A` chunk 0 → chunk 1 | **0.932** | **+25.6 s** | 68.0 s |
| control — `ADV` chunk 0 against itself | 1.000 | 0.0 s | — |
| control — `ADV` chunk 0 against `S00A` chunk 1 | **0.289** | — | 28.2 s |

**Both lags put chunk 0 flush against the end of chunk 1**: 52.8 + 84.55 =
137.35 s against chunk 1's 137.324, and 25.6 + 68.07 = 93.67 against 93.694.

Confirmed in the sample domain — lag refined to ±1 sample on the loudest second,
then a scalar best-fit over the whole overlap: `ADV` +52.8000 s, gain 0.833,
residual **16.70 dB** below the target; `S00A` +25.6320 s, gain 0.365, residual
**23.15 dB**. 98–99.5 % of the energy is a scaled copy: the same material at a
different gain, not bit-identical, which is what a lossy decode at two gains
should look like.

**So dropping chunk 0 removes a duplicate, and is not a truncation** — the
exporter's existing behaviour is right for a better reason than the one it gave.
🟡 **The manifest note has NOT been rewritten to say so.** The structural claim —
that the region over-covers because it re-presents its own tail, and that this
accounts for the whole 2.6× — is the Decoder's to write down; this page reports
the measurement and says which is which. The note stays hedged until its page
carries the conclusion, and the hedge is true either way.

⚠️ **The 504 464 B constant was deliberately not converted.** The Decoder found
the region anchor sitting that far after the true predecessor trailer on all 17
and pointedly declined to call it missing dialogue. Converting it needs a
byte↔time mapping, and the numbers above are the reason there isn't one: chunk 1
is 1 118 268 B and chunk 2 is 1 171 516 B for **the same 137.324 s**, so bytes per
second is not constant even inside a single region. Any figure in seconds off
that constant would be invented.

## Third reading of a voice region, and this one is decoded: three presentations of one take

`export_voice` has now read the same bytes three ways in one session, and each
reading was ended by a measurement rather than by an argument:

1. **Concatenate the chunks** — 359 s of dialogue for a 137 s movie.
2. **Sum them as HANDOFF Q10's two stems** — refuted here: `S00A`'s second
   full-length chunk is digital silence, `ADV`'s is 0.60 × the first with 26.8 dB
   of residual.
3. **Keep one stream.** ✅ This one is decoded, and not by me.

The Decoder settled the shape disc-wide without a decoder, by counting stream
starts inside every inter-descriptor span: **258 spans hold one stream, 28 hold
three, and nothing holds two or any other number.** The 95 movie-voice regions
decompose 70 + 8 + 17, and the 8 are independently the same 8 its first census
flagged. So a region carries **three presentations of one take** — which is
exactly `359 = 84.55 + 137.32 + 137.32`, the first clipped by its crate's own
1.5 MB predecessor guard.

It also cross-checked my correlation by a route needing no decoder: if the
leading chunk is the tail of a full stream, the whole leading stream should be
one complete take, and `ADV`'s 504 464 + 808 304 = 1 312 768 B at chunk 0's byte
rate is **137.323 s against my measured 137.324**. Two instruments, no shared
assumption.

**So summing was wrong for a third reason:** a take plus a 0.60 × copy of itself
is ~4 dB louder and coloured, not a mix of parts. The exporter keeps one stream
and performs no arithmetic on it.

🟡 **Which stream is a recommendation, not a decoded field.** The selector is the
**highest byte rate** among the equal-duration survivors, on the Decoder's
advice. Nothing on the disc says which presentation the game plays, and on `ADV`
this picks the **quieter** of the two — −8.3 dBFS against 0.0. That is in the
manifest in those words so the choice is visible and reversible; it is the one
part of this that a capture could still overturn.

`check` moves `voice` off the strict peak bound as a consequence. It sat with
`bgm` because it was a sum this exporter produced; it is now a single wave off
the disc, mastered near full scale — `ADV`'s louder presentation measures
**+0.0003 dBFS at source** — and refusing that would be refusing the disc's own
mastering.

### The 504 464 B constant: I refused the conversion, and refusing was right

The Decoder asked whether I would spend a decode converting its anchor offset to
seconds, and I declined because bytes per second is not constant even inside one
region. It has since found the stronger reason and withdrawn the ask: **the
constant is structural, not proportional** — identical on all 17 regions despite
their differing durations. A proportional prediction lands within 8 bytes on
`ADV`, which is a coincidence, and is **4 305 B out on `S00A`**. A seconds figure
off that constant would have been invented, and it would have looked corroborated
on the first movie anybody checked.

❔ **Why the disc stores three presentations at all is unanswered**, by either of
us.

## The transcode cache had never hit, because the wipe ran first

`video::transcode` has carried a cache since P4. It writes a `.cmd` sidecar with
the exact ffmpeg command, the source's byte count and its channel count, and
skips the encode when all three still match. Its doc comment says why: *"without
it every re-export pays ~4 minutes to produce a byte-identical file, and an
exporter nobody re-runs is worse than a cache."*

**It had never hit once.** `main.rs` clears the output tree wholesale — and the
`remove_dir_all` runs immediately before the check, deleting the sidecar and the
output it stamps. The cache tested a file it had just erased.

This session ran the exporter **six times** and paid the full Theora encode every
one of them, producing five byte-identical files. Roughly 48 minutes. Nothing
reported it, and nothing could have: a cache is silent when it works and silent
when it does not, and the only symptom is a wall-clock cost that looks like the
job simply being slow.

⚠️ **It is worth being specific about how this hid**, because the ingredients are
ordinary. The cache is correct. The wipe is correct. Each carries a doc comment
explaining itself, and neither mentions the other. The defect exists only in
their ordering, which is stated in neither, and the cost is invisible in every
artefact the export produces — the tree is byte-identical either way.

### The fix keeps the wholesale guarantee rather than trading it away

The obvious repair — stop wiping — would break what the wipe is for: *a screen
that stops being exported stops existing, rather than lingering as a stale file
that still validates.* So the wipe now spares exactly `video/`, and
`prune_videos` deletes anything in it this run did not claim. Everything else is
still cleared outright.

That is a **cache, not a hand-edit**, and the distinction matters against
MISSION §3: nothing in `export/` is authored, the sidecar is derived from the
command the exporter itself computed, and any change to the command, the source
size or the channel count re-encodes. A modder who edits an `.ogv` by hand gets
it overwritten on the next export, exactly as before.

🟡 **Not measured yet:** that a cached run reproduces the same tree. The claim is
structural — the skip is keyed on the whole command string — but "the second run
produces the same bytes" is checkable and has not been checked.

## `settle_time()` — the answer arrived, and it refutes my own 🔴 more than it confirms it

The Decoder took the port's top ask and measured the boot on a cold profile with
no shader cache (`auto/no-disc-and-menu-captures` at `4bd4779`,
`docs/re/boot-settle-times-measured.md`). It confirms the *principle* I filed:
the title's `rest.t` is 251 units = **4.183 s** where its art is finished at about
2 s, so `rest.t` is not when a screen arrives.

**But my row said more than that**, and the extra part is wrong. It said
*"everything the boot sequencer paces off that landmark is therefore late"*, and
named `publisher_logo` and `developer_logos`. So I measured the port the way the
game was measured — **visible span, not arrival-to-arrival** — with `--film` at
4 fps and a per-frame greyscale mean:

| | port, visible span | game, three cold boots | |
|---|---|---|---|
| publisher wordmark | **4.25 s** | 4.297 / 4.604 / 4.370 | 0.05 s under the lowest |
| developer logos | **3.50 s** | 3.508 / 3.503 / 3.366 | **dead on** |
| black hold between | ≈0.25 s | 0.2 – 0.3 s | inside |
| title settled → plate | 2.000 s (declared 120 units) | 2.247 s | inside, at ~28 fps presentation |

**The splashes are not late. They match.** ⚠️ And the reason my earlier reading
said otherwise is worth keeping: I had compared the port's *transition
timestamps* — 4.68 s and 3.94 s, arrival to arrival — against the game's
*visible spans*. Those differ by the exit ramp plus the black hold, about 0.6 s,
which is the whole of the discrepancy I was about to chase. This corpus has been
bitten by exactly this before, in the plate delay: *"timed from where build 4
stops animating, not from where it first appears — measured the other way the two
runs differ by 0.48 s against 6 ms."*

So the port paces the boot correctly, and **`rest.t` is a wrong landmark whose
blast radius is much smaller than I claimed**: on the screens the sequencer
actually advances off, `rest.t` plus the 24-unit exit ramp lands where the game
lands. What it still affects is `_script_settled`, which waits longer than it
needs to before photographing — a slow test, not a wrong frame.

### `dwell_seconds` stays `null`, and the question is now closed rather than open

`authored/timing.json` says of it: *"If a capture ever times the real boot, this
is where that number goes."* A capture has now timed the real boot, and the
answer is that **nothing goes there** — the disc's own keyframe groups reproduce
the game's dwells to 0.05 s and 0.01 s. The field stays `null` for a measured
reason instead of an absence of one.

### Taken from the same page, and not taken

* ✅ **The 120-unit plate delay stands.** The Decoder ran a refutation of it that
  failed instructively: its probe's `title_static` mark gave 3.203 s, which on a
  cold boot looks like a real effect. It was the instrument — the mark fires
  during the crossfade out of the attract movie, with the glyph count still 0.
  Re-measured from content: 2.247 s. **The port changes nothing**, and the
  declared 120 units is what it keeps.
* 🔴 **No Ⓐ→menu dwell is authored.** It measured 3.763 s and contains a 1.53 s
  guest load stall — the third independent reproduction of that stall, this one
  on a cold cache, so it is not a warm-cache artefact. It is emulator time, not a
  game constant.
* 🟡 **Menu build-in 0.531 s and Ⓑ→title 0.482 s are not authored either**, and
  that is the Decoder's own caveat rather than my caution: they rest on one run,
  where the plate delay and the load stall are each cross-checked against
  independent prior evidence. The port is within ~0.1 s of both with its existing
  24-unit exit ramp, so authoring them would replace a disc-derived number with a
  provisional measured one and gain nothing measurable.

## The voice presentation is now unambiguously the port's choice, and the recommendation behind it was withdrawn

The Decoder has withdrawn "highest byte rate": its sentence read *"the
highest-rate, highest-gain one is chunk 1"*, and those two criteria select
**different streams** — `ADV` chunk 1 is 1 118 268 B at 0.0 dBFS, chunk 2 is
1 171 516 B at −8.3. The rule named one and the parenthetical named the other. I
implemented the rule faithfully and got the quieter presentation.

What the file can still say is decoded and does not adjudicate it: the `fmt `
chunk is a 32-byte `XMAWAVEFORMAT` whose `+0x20` is a declared
`PsuedoBytesPerSec` — 8 142 and 8 530 on `ADV`'s two, matching the computed rates
to 0.02 % — but `wEncodeOptions` (`0x10d6`), channel count and channel mask are
**byte-identical across the presentations**. Nothing in the header ranks them.

⚠️ One more observable, measured here and not in that page: **the two
presentations differ in channel layout.** `ADV` chunk 1 is mono-in-stereo —
channel 2 digitally silent — while chunk 2 is **dual-mono**, both channels
identical at −8.318574. So they are not two encodes of one file differing only in
rate.

Also recorded, because it cost the Decoder time: **`sylpheed-cli audio info` is
not to be trusted on these.** Its "16 channels / 4310 Hz / 2-bit" is
`wBitsPerSample`, `wEncodeOptions` and the channel fields read at the wrong
offsets — its XMA1 reader is misaligned. That is a tool in this repository
reporting confident nonsense, and it is the second time a renderer or reader of
ours has been believed before it was checked.

## Refutation of my dual-mono inference — the measurement stands, the generalisation does not

I argued that `highest_rate` had no case because `ADV`'s higher-rate presentation
is **dual-mono** while its louder one is mono-in-stereo, so the extra bytes buy a
duplicated channel rather than fidelity. The Decoder tested that disc-wide, as a
refutation attempt, and **it fails**.

Over the 28 three-stream cues, the stream-3 / stream-2 size ratio runs:

| min | median | max | sd | within 15 % of 1.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.0778 | 1.2565 | 2.9163 | 0.5057 | **12 of 28** |

Declared rates scatter with them — `S06A` is 5 661 against 16 513 B/s. **A 37×
spread is not a duplicated channel.**

**The channel measurement itself stands**: `ADV` chunk 1 really is mono-in-stereo
and chunk 2 really is dual-mono at −8.318574, and that is this port's own decode,
which the Decoder could not re-run and did not dispute. What fails is the step
from *one asset* to *the format*.

### What this changes, and what it does not

Nothing in the export changes. `loudest` is a **per-asset content** rule — it
reads the peak of the actual streams in front of it — so a scattering structural
ratio cannot undermine it, and `ADV`'s dialogue at +0.3 dBFS instead of −8.7 is
plainly the better outcome either way.

What changes is the *reason*, in four places: `authored/audio.json`'s
`presentation_why`, the selector comment in `audio.rs`, `BLOCKED.md`'s row, and
this page. The honest statement is narrower and slightly less satisfying:
**`highest_rate` was never refuted — it was never argued for, and neither is
`loudest`.** Which is exactly why the entry is marked *chosen* rather than
*measured*, and why one capture deletes it.

⚠️ **This is the third claim of mine in two iterations that generalised a
single-asset observation** — after "the chunks are two stems" and "everything the
sequencer paces off `rest.t` is late". All three were true of the thing I looked
at. The pattern is not carelessness about the measurement; it is reaching for the
rule the measurement would imply if it held everywhere, and writing that down in
the same breath. The corpus catches it because someone else runs the census.

### Two things in that data that are not mine, recorded so they are not lost

* **`S12B`'s three streams are byte-size identical** (14 396 each).
* **`BIRD_224` is three-stream and is not a movie cue** — so the three-stream
  shape is not exclusive to cutscenes, which narrows how it was described to this
  port earlier. Neither affects `export_voice`, which only resolves movies.

## Two rows of the P1 baseline were comparing blank frames and reporting OK

`docs/port/BLOCKED.md` has carried a 🔴 since P3: *"the loading screen's fade quad
rests OPAQUE BLACK … it will bite whoever first draws a loading screen."* It had
already bitten, in the one place nobody looks — the regression harness.

`build_12` and `build_15` render as **pure black in both renderers**: mean 0,
max 0, on the Godot side and on `sylpheed-cli`'s. The difference between two
blank frames is zero, so `verify-screen` scored them `max 0  over3 0  OK` — the
strongest verdict it has. **Two of sixteen rows were comparing nothing against
nothing**, and the committed baseline reads as sixteen passes.

That is worse than a missing test. A missing test is visible in the count.

### The cause, isolated by a control rather than by reading

`build_00` and `build_01` are the *plain* loading variant — the same screen minus
three elements. They render: **mean 1.913, max 214.5**. `build_12`/`build_15` add
`pgloading_baseeff`, `pgloading_loop5` and **`pgloading_eff00`**, a 1280×720
primitive whose `rest` is `0xff000000` — opaque black — at `t=38`, inside its own
opening black hold (`0xff000000` at 38, `0xff000000` at 48, clear on the untimed
final). It carries `layer_source: "none"`, so paint order puts it **last**, over
everything.

Same screen, one element different, one renders and one does not. That is the
diagnosis, and it did not require an opinion about `rest`.

### The rule I was about to write, and the census that killed it

The obvious reading is that `rest.t = 38` is wrong because it precedes the
element's last timed keyframe at 48 — so "`rest.t` before the last timed
keyframe" would flag the pathology. **I ran the census before writing the rule,
and it does not survive: 152 of 212 elements in this export have `rest.t` earlier
than their last timed keyframe.** It is the norm.

What actually distinguishes this element is its *content*, and the reach of that
is one:

| screen | full-frame primitive | rest.t | last | rest fade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `build_12` / `build_15` | `pgloading_eff00` | 38 | 48 | **`0xff000000`** |
| `extras` / `extras_jp` | `pteff00` | 64 | 74 | `0x00000000` |
| `main_menu` / `main_menu_jp` | `pteff00` | 70 | 80 | `0x00000000` |
| `title` / `title_jp` | `pteff00` | 261 | 269 | `0x00000000` |
| `title` / `title_jp` | `pteff02` | 46 | 236 | `0x40000000` |

**`pgloading_eff00` is the only element in the whole export whose resting pose is
a fully opaque full-frame quad — 1 of 212.** Every other full-frame primitive
rests clear or at 25 %. One instance is not a rule about `rest`, and keying the
renderer on "an opaque full-frame quad at rest is probably wrong" would be a
content heuristic of exactly the kind this port refuses elsewhere.

### So nothing in the renderer changed, and the harness did

The screens stay black. Nothing draws a loading screen, and the honest position
is that either `rest` is mis-identified for this one element — a decoding
question, asked — or the screen really does begin fully black and `--pose=rest`
is simply the wrong thing to photograph it at.

What changed is that **a blank pair can no longer score.** `verify-screen` now
checks both frames for ink first and reports
`BLANK -- both renderers drew nothing; this row proves nothing`. It is not a
failure — the port may legitimately have nothing to draw — and `status` is
untouched, so an unrelated `DIFFERS` still fails the run. The corrected baseline:

```
build_00/01        max 3    OK          press_start(_jp)   max 1    OK
title              max 6    DIFFERS     main_menu(_jp)     max 4    DIFFERS
extras(_jp)        max 3    OK          title_jp           max 155  DIFFERS
publisher_logo(_r) max 1    OK          developer_logos(_r) max 2   OK
build_12 / build_15                     BLANK  ← previously OK
```

Fourteen rows, not sixteen. No new drift among the fourteen.

## Refutation attempt — the loading-screen variants, and it survived

The Decoder's `ui-title-build-map.md` says entries 0/1 are the plain loading
variant at 7 elements and 12/15 the dressed one at 10, the three additions being
`pgloading_eff00`, `pgloading_loop5` and `pgloading_baseeff`. Checked against this
export, which addresses by pak entry:

| entry | elements |
|---|---|
| 0, 1 | 7 — `eff01 eff02 line loop1 loop3 loop4 str` |
| 12, 15 | 10 — the same seven **plus** `baseeff`, `eff00`, `loop5` |

**Exact, in both the count and the identity of the three.** The claim survives,
and it paid for itself immediately: the two variants differing by exactly the
black quad is what made `build_00` a control for `build_12` and turned "the
loading screen is black" into "this one element blacks it out".

## 🔴 The voice export is known incomplete — the game decodes all three streams at once

The Decoder booted with Canary's `--xma_param_probe=true` — the cvar whose own
comment exists to say which sub-wave a movie's `.slb` the game decodes — and the
answer is that **it does not pick one. It decodes all three, concurrently, in
three separate XMA contexts.**

| ctx | packets | byte_size | disc payload (RIFF − 60) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 632 | 1 294 336 | 1 294 396 |
| 1 | 546 | 1 118 208 | 1 118 268 |
| 2 | 572 | 1 171 456 | 1 171 516 |

Three-way, byte-exact. **So "three presentations of one take, pick one" is
refuted by the running game**, and the question I had been arguing about —
*which* presentation — has no answer, because its premise was wrong.

### This one was not caught by a census, and could not have been

The last three claims of mine that overreached were all killed by counting
something. This one survived every count available: the streams really are
equal-duration, one really is silence, one really is 0.60 × another with the
residual 26.8 dB down. Every measurement was right and the frame around them was
wrong, and **no amount of looking harder at the file would have moved it** — the
file says `ChannelMask = 0x0002` on all three. It took the running game.

That is the mission's own sentence arriving in practice: *the Port has no oracle
— if it needs to know what the game does, it asks.* I did ask, repeatedly, and
each time for the wrong thing: which stream, rather than whether the premise held.

### What changed, and what deliberately did not

**The behaviour is held.** Reverting to the `1/n` sum is not obviously less
wrong: an equal-gain sum of channel pairs is **not** a downmix — MISSION §6 makes
exactly that point when it pins an explicit matrix for the movies' 5.1 fold
rather than letting ffmpeg default — and the sum cost `S00A` 6.02 dB when one
stream was silence. Swapping one guess for another on the strength of a message
is what produced this entry twice already.

**What changed is that the wrongness is now loud.** ⚠️ *This failure sounds like
success*: a single stream decodes to clean, audible dialogue, so nothing a
listener hears reveals that two streams are missing. So it is stated in three
places a reader cannot miss — a top-level `manifest.json` warning per movie, the
console line (`1 of 3 streams [refuted] -- KNOWN INCOMPLETE`), and the entry's own `why` —
and 🟡 became 🔴 in `authored/audio.json` and `BLOCKED.md`.

🟡 **"They are 5.1" is the Decoder's hypothesis and is not established.** Three
concurrent stereo streams is six channels and N stereo streams is how XMA carries
multichannel on the 360, which would explain the differing byte rates, the
near-silent stream, and why cues are 1-stream or 3-stream and never 2. Against
it: all three declare `ChannelMask = 0x0002` identically, which is odd for
distinct channel roles. Nothing here builds on it.

**What settles it, and it is asked:** a recording of the game's own output over
`ADV`, through the PulseAudio null sink (`AUDIO-VERIFICATION` §3). Candidate
combinations of the three decoded streams can then be correlated against what the
game actually played — which turns the channel-role question from a decode into a
fit against an oracle. Twenty seconds over dialogue is enough.

### The measurements survive; only their meaning moved

`S00A`'s silent stream and `ADV`'s 0.60 × relationship are untouched and now read
as facts about **channels**: 0.60 × with the residual 26.8 dB down is what a
correlated channel pair at a lower level looks like, and a silent channel is an
unused one. Nothing measured here is retracted. What is retracted is every
sentence that called them *presentations*.

## 🔴 The oracle capture does not contain the intro — a controlled negative

The Decoder took the capture I asked for — `adv-game-output-6ch.wav`, 70.2 s,
6 ch, 48 kHz, shared as `1788018994-16f9d19d90b8`, taken at `68aa192` — described
as *"the FULL mix, the movie's own WMA track plus the three XMA streams"*.

**It contains none of them.** Envelope cross-correlation, sliding with overhang,
normalised over the overlap, minimum 30 s of overlap so a short window cannot win
on an edge:

| capture ch | against | best *r* | runner-up | margin | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| c0 | `ADV` bed | 0.361 | 0.359 | **+0.003** | no match |
| c1 | `ADV` bed | 0.407 | 0.403 | +0.004 | no match |
| c0 | voice stream 1 / 2 / 3 | 0.42 / 0.26 / 0.27 | — | ≤ +0.006 | no match |
| c1 | voice stream 1 / 2 / 3 | 0.47 / 0.34 / 0.34 | — | ≤ +0.006 | no match |
| c0 | `BGM_103` (menu bed) | 0.271 | 0.260 | +0.011 | no match |
| c0 | `S00A` | 0.351 | 0.349 | +0.002 | no match |

**The margin is the number that matters**, not *r*. A match has a *peak*; these
have a *plateau* — best and second-best differ by 0.001–0.016 across every
pairing, which is what a statistic does when no alignment exists.

### Three controls, because a negative from an uncontrolled instrument is worthless

1. **The instrument finds matches on this data.** `bed` vs `bed` → r = 1.000,
   margin **+0.115**. Voice stream 2 vs stream 3 → r = 1.000, margin **+0.300**.
2. **My reference really is the movie.** The `.ogv` transcode against the disc's
   own `ADV.wmv` → r = 1.000, margin **+0.114**. So a failure to match is not my
   transcode.
3. **Time drift is ruled out.** A stretched playback would break a long
   correlation while still matching locally, with the best lag climbing
   monotonically. Five-second windows of the capture slid over the whole bed give
   best lags of **4.95, 15.30, 119.35, 50.75, 29.35, 83.95 s** — scattered across
   the movie, not monotonic, and every margin ≤ 0.017.

### What I can say, and what I will not

**Said:** this capture cannot answer the channel-role question, and it is not the
intro's audio. **Not said:** what it *is*. It is 70 s of something, all six
channels carrying signal at RMS ≈ −27 dBFS, matching nothing this port exports.
Diagnosing it is the Decoder's side of the wall and I have handed it back rather
than guessing.

⚠️ **One measurement on the file that may help them.** Split as 5.1, **channels 3
and 6 are byte-identical** — same MD5, not merely the same peak and RMS to six
decimals. An exact duplicate pair inside a six-channel "surround" output is
consistent with the Decoder's own warning that the 6-channel frame is Xenia's
hardcoded `kFrameChannelsDefault`, not the guest's request. It weakens, further,
any reading of that file as evidence of a 5.1 game mix.

### The voice export stays exactly as it is

Still one stream of three, still marked 🔴 in the manifest, the console line and
`authored/audio.json`. **The capture changed nothing**, which is the correct
outcome for a measurement that failed: the question is open, and it was open
before. What would have been wrong is treating a 70 s recording as an oracle
because it was expensive to obtain.


### Resolved the same day — it was the capture path, and the duplicate pair was the thread

The Decoder found the cause and **withdrew the capture**: PulseAudio was
remapping between two mismatched channel maps, and a 6-channel remap **silently
drops and duplicates**. Its control needs no emulator and no disc — six channels,
six different tones, the same sink and the same `parec` invocation — and came
back `400 / 3200 / 200 / 800 / 800 / 200` for an input of
`400 / 800 / 200 / 1600 / 3200 / 6400`. **Two source channels were gone
entirely.** Setting the sink's `channel_map` to the guest's own returns all six.

So the negative was right and, more usefully, **the byte-identical pair I
reported was the thread that unravelled it.** That is worth recording precisely,
because it was nearly not reported at all: it began as an idle check of two
channels whose peak *and* RMS matched to six decimals, and the only reason it
became evidence is that a coincidence at six decimals is cheaper to hash than to
explain.

**Withdrawn with the file**, both the Decoder's: *"all six channels carry
signal"*, and the non-zero-surround observation offered as weak support for a 5.1
guest mix. Unaffected: the three-XMA-context concurrency result, which is read
from the emulator's own log rather than the audio path, on two independent boots.

### What the port took from it: `tools/port/check-capture`

A capture now has to pass a provenance check before anyone analyses it, and it is
one command. It splits the file, hashes every channel and fails on any duplicate
pair. Documented in `docs/port/AUDIO-VERIFICATION.md` §5.

**Run through its own controls, both directions**, because a checker nobody
controlled is the thing this whole incident is about:

* six distinct tones → **PASS**;
* the remap's own output pattern → **FAIL**, naming all four duplicate pairs;
* the corrupt game capture → **FAIL** on `ch2 == ch5`.

⚠️ **The known-bad control is the part worth reading.** All six of its channels
report a peak of **−18.063656 dB — identical to six decimals — while containing
three duplicate pairs.** A level check cannot see this failure at all. That is
why the tool hashes rather than measures, and it is why the corrupt capture's
"plausible per-channel levels" were never evidence of anything.

The tool says so itself: it is **necessary, not sufficient.** Passing means no
channel was duplicated; it says nothing about whether the right thing was
recorded. A capture should survive both that and §1's correlation against a known
source before anything is concluded from it — and the one that was analysed here
would have failed the cheap check in thirty seconds.

The corrupt file is withdrawn from the exchange (`share drop`), so the next agent
cannot pick it up and repeat the work.

## 🔴 Take 2 is clean, my instrument was not, and the negative had to be re-earned

The Decoder's second capture passes `check-capture` — I re-ran it myself rather
than cite theirs — carries a screen log, and was recorded with the sink's
`channel_map` set equal to Canary's own. It is a good file.

⚠️ **One provenance discrepancy, minor but worth stating:** the message gives
253.3 s; the file is **318.539 s**. The screen log runs to 316 s and is
consistent with the file, so this is a mis-stated number rather than a bad
capture — but a length quoted in a provenance claim should match the artefact.

### The retraction that came out of measuring it

Take 2 also showed no alignment with the bed or the voice streams. Before
reporting a second negative I asked whether the method could do the job at all,
by building a **synthetic mix** — the bed plus the three voice streams — and
hunting the bed inside it.

**It failed. r = 0.415, against the `r > 0.8` bar my earlier negatives were
judged against.**

So the instrument that produced *"the capture contains no ADV audio"* could not
have found ADV audio in a mix even when it was certainly there. That conclusion
was right — the Decoder's tone control proved take 1 corrupt independently — but
**it was right by luck, and I reported it as measurement.** The three controls I
was pleased with tested the wrong things: that the method finds a *clean* signal
in a *clean* reference, which was never the task.

### The rebuilt instrument, calibrated in both directions

Band-limit so the target dominates, then judge on **lag and margin**, not on
absolute *r* — the `r > 0.8` bar is correct clean-against-clean and meaningless
for a component in a mix.

| hunting | band | against | *r* | lag | margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| the bed | 40–180 Hz | mix containing it | 0.663 | **0.0 s** ✓ | **+0.111** |
| the bed | 40–180 Hz | voice-only mix | 0.262 | wrong ✗ | +0.005 |
| voice stream 2 | 300–3000 Hz | mix containing it | 0.810 | **0.0 s** ✓ | **+0.248** |
| voice stream 2 | 300–3000 Hz | the bed alone | 0.358 | wrong ✗ | +0.005 |

A 20–50× separation in the discriminating statistic. Documented as
`AUDIO-VERIFICATION.md` §6.

### And now the negative, supported

Every one of take 2's six channels, against both targets, sits in the
**known-absent** regime:

| | bed (40–180 Hz) | voice stream 2 (300–3000 Hz) |
|---|---|---|
| margins | +0.000 … +0.014 | +0.001 … +0.017 |
| lags | −58 … +255 s, scattered | −72 … +183 s, scattered |

**Take 2 contains neither the movie's WMA bed nor the cutscene voice**, on an
instrument that demonstrably finds both when they are present.

### What that leaves, and it is not mine to answer

Two captures, differently configured, the second provably free of the channel-map
fault, with a screen log saying the movie was on screen — and **neither carries
either audio source.** That points away from a one-off setup error. The
possibilities I can see are a capture path that still loses the guest's mix, or
the guest not emitting these sources at all during the movie, and **only one side
of that wall can tell them apart.** Handed back with the numbers.

⚠️ **If it is the second, it reaches the port directly**: the export's movie audio
comes from the `.wmv`'s WMA track, and if the game never plays that track, then
`ADV.ogv`'s audio is wrong in a way no amount of transcode fidelity would fix. I
am not asserting that — it is a question about what the game does — but it is the
reason this is worth another boot rather than being written off.

## Every music bank was summed at 1/3 when only two sub-waves are music — 3.52 dB, since P6

The Decoder's message about `BGM_102` came with declared durations from the
corrected XMA1 `PsuedoBytesPerSec`, and checking my export against them turned up
a defect of mine that had been shipping since P6.

`export_bgm` summed every sub-wave `media` returned and scaled by `1/n`. Decoded
and timed, the three banks are identical in shape:

| bank | sub-wave 0 | sub-wave 1 | sub-wave 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| `BGM_103` | **10 300 B → 0.009 s, peak −inf** | 3 876 924 B → 87.744 s | 3 930 172 B → 87.744 s |
| `BGM_102` | **10 300 B → 0.009 s, peak −inf** | 1 151 036 B → 37.482 s | 1 269 820 B → 37.482 s |
| `BGM_001` | **10 300 B → 0.009 s, peak −inf** | 4 466 748 B → 173.809 s | 4 673 596 B → 173.809 s |

**Sub-wave 0 is digitally silent in all three**, and 10 300 B is 10 240 + a
60-byte RIFF wrapper — 10 240 B being exactly what the Decoder's disc-wide census
identifies as the bank header. So it is not a stem. Counting it in the divisor
put every real stem at 1/3 instead of 1/2: **3.52 dB of attenuation on all the
menu music this port has shipped since P6.**

Dropping it is **arithmetic, not a decoding decision** — a silent input
contributes nothing to a sum, and this is the same rule `export_voice` already
applies. Measured after the fix: `main_menu.ogg` goes **−7.69 → −4.20 dBFS**,
**+3.49 dB** against 3.52 predicted, the remainder being Vorbis.

⚠️ **This is the third instance of one defect in this pipeline** — a silent chunk
in the voice sum, a silent channel in the mono fold, and now a silent sub-wave in
the music sum. Each was invisible in every check except a level, and each time
the divisor was computed from *how many inputs there are* rather than *how many
carry signal*. That is the shape to look for, not the individual bug.

### It also closes a 🔴 that has been open since P6

`docs/port/BLOCKED.md` carried *"`media::sound_bank_riffs` returns three
sub-waves where HANDOFF Q10's census says two"* as a disagreement the port shipped
deliberately. The census was right; the third was never a stem. The export now
reports **2 sub-waves** and the warning is gone — closed by measurement on my
side, corroborating the Decoder's `c1f3608` from a different direction (decoding
it, rather than counting headers).

### The declared-rate method, cross-checked a third time — and one correction

Their declared lengths against my decodes: `BGM_103` 87.750/87.749 vs **87.744**;
`BGM_102` 37.487 vs **37.482**; `BGM_001` 173.821 vs **173.809**. Agreement to
**5–12 ms** on three banks. The method is good for lengths.

🟢 **Refutation attempt, and the conclusion survives while the reasoning does
not.** The Decoder wrote that `BGM_001` reads *"173.821 s declared against your
decoded 167.663 s — a gap of 6.158 s"*, explaining it as *"declared is the
encoded stream, decoded is where the audio stops."* **A full decode of
`BGM_001` yields 173.809 s of PCM, not 167.663 s.** The 167.663 figure is where
the music *fades out*, measured from the audio; the stream then continues, silent,
to its declared end. So declared and decoded agree to 12 ms and the trailing
silence is *inside* the decode, not the difference between two methods. The
cross-check stands — better than stated, since it is now three banks rather than
a coincidence — and the sentence explaining it should go.

## Take 2 was starved, my correlator was fine, and `check-capture` was incomplete

The Decoder diagnosed take 2: a **starved** capture. Verified here independently
rather than taken on trust — 35.6 % of frames silent on all six channels, 10 482
alternating runs, median burst 13.5 ms and gap 3.9 ms, a 17.4 ms period at 57 Hz.
Their untruncated original reads 39.3 % and 10 595 runs; the difference is
exactly the truncation, and every other number agrees.

**So my rebuilt correlator was working correctly on a file that could not carry
the signal.** ✅ And the alarming reading it produced — *"the game may not play
the `.wmv`'s WMA track, so `ADV.ogv`'s audio has been wrong since P4"* — **is not
supported by this capture, and is not refuted either.** It is withdrawn as a
concern arising from evidence, and nothing is changed on account of it in either
direction. That matters more than it looks: it was the most expensive-to-act-on
hypothesis in the port, and it came from a file that could not speak to it.

### The real deliverable: my own checker passed the starved file

`check-capture` tested only for duplicated channels, so it cleared a recording
that was 36 % holes. A provenance check that passes the artefact it was built in
response to is not a check.

It now measures starvation too. ⚠️ **Two thresholds I invented were both wrong,
and the controls caught both** — which is the part worth recording:

1. **Counting exact-zero frames.** Real audio crosses zero constantly; a clean
   voice track scored 5 947 "gaps" of median 0.0 ms and was called starved. **A
   gap is a run, not a sample.** Only runs ≥ 1 ms count.
2. **Gap count and median length.** A genuine music bed shows **454 gaps at a
   median of 1.4 ms** — quiet 16-bit passages really are zero for milliseconds —
   so neither statistic separates it from a starved file.

What separates them is the **rate**:

| | gaps/s | median gap | all-channel silence |
|---|---|---|---|
| the starved capture | **32.9** | 3.9 ms | 35.6 % |
| a real music+SFX bed | **3.3** | 1.4 ms | 1.1 % |
| a voice track, 53 % pauses | **0.03** | — | — |

Bar set at **20 gaps/s** — 1.6× below the bad case, 6× above the worst good one,
**derived from the controls rather than chosen and then justified.** Controlled
in both directions: real stereo bed PASS, six distinct tones PASS, starved
capture FAIL. It also now reports a `data` chunk declaring 0 bytes, which is what
a file copied while still being written looks like.

### 🔴 The voice channel roles are not obtainable this session

Both capture routes are closed and the Decoder has said so plainly. The monitor
sink is starved **by construction** — it advances at wall-clock rate and
substitutes silence, so every moment the emulator runs slow is a hole, and
deleting the holes warps the timebase rather than repairing it. The route that
works is an internal tap at `SDLAudioDriver::SubmitFrame`, and that needs a
Canary rebuild whose cost they have measured: the build root `build-canary`
targets does not exist in that container, the warm tree is configured against the
same missing path, so it is a full reconfigure and compile on a box with ~700 MB
free and a history of parallel builds OOM-killing the host.

**A whole session for one probe.** That is a human's call and neither agent
should start it mid-loop. Until then the port keeps authoring with the known
recorded: one stream of three, 🔴 in the manifest, the console line and
`authored/audio.json`.

## The settle run carries an unmeasured real-time factor — and the numbers it touches were already unauthored

The Decoder has withdrawn one of the two arguments propping up its settle-time
run. It had claimed the plate *pulse period* was an internal clock proving the
run was not slowed; re-examined, that estimate rests on **one interval at a
125 ms sample interval (±6.7 %)**, and re-running the trough-picking gives
**2.628 s** rather than the 2.369 quoted — an adjacent local minimum had been
counted as a separate trough. Against the corpus's 2.24 s that is **+17.3 %**. It
is too weak to show anything and **cannot resolve a real-time factor below
~7 %**.

**✅ Nothing in the port moves, and this is the second time in two iterations that
the right call was to have authored nothing.**

| number from that run | anchored by | did the port take it? |
|---|---|---|
| title → plate, 2.247 s | three prior readings (2.13 / 2.132 / 2.138) and the disc's declared 120 units | ✅ it is what the port already draws |
| menu build-in, 0.531 s | **nothing** | ❌ not authored |
| Ⓑ → title, 0.482 s | **nothing** | ❌ not authored |
| Ⓐ → menu, 3.763 s | contains a 1.53 s load stall | ❌ explicitly refused |

Checked rather than remembered: `grep` over `authored/` and `port/scripts/` finds
no `0.531` and no `0.482`. The only build-in reference in the tree is the plate
arithmetic — `t=118 → t=238`, 120 units — which is the **anchored** leg.

I declined those two because they were one-run figures the Decoder had itself
flagged, and because the port was already within ~0.1 s of both from the disc's
own keyframes. **That reasoning has now been joined by a second, independent one
I did not have at the time**: a few per cent of slowdown sits inside them
undetected. A provisional measurement adopted over a decoded number would have
imported an error nobody could see.

## `verify-dwell` — the comparison that refuted my own 🔴, made repeatable

Last iteration I measured the port's visible spans against the oracle's dwells by
hand, and it refuted a red flag I had filed myself: `rest.t` *is* the wrong settle
landmark, but *"everything the sequencer paces off it is therefore late"* was
false, and I nearly went and re-paced screens that already matched.

That check existed once, in a transcript. It is now `tools/port/verify-dwell`.

```
screen               port         oracle (3 cold boots)      verdict
publisher wordmark   4.25 s       4.297 / 4.604 / 4.370      agrees
developer logos      3.75 s       3.508 / 3.503 / 3.366      agrees
```

⚠️ **The trap it exists to prevent is in its header, because it is the whole
point:** a port's *transition timestamps* and the oracle's *visible spans* are
not the same quantity — they differ by the exit ramp plus the black hold, about
0.6 s, which was the entire discrepancy I was about to chase. This corpus has
been bitten by the identical confusion before, on the plate delay, where the two
readings differ by 0.48 s against 6 ms.

**The bar is the oracle's own run-to-run spread**, plus one film interval. Three
cold boots of the real game differ by 0.3 s; agreeing more tightly than the
oracle agrees with itself would not mean anything, and a tighter bar would be a
number chosen to look impressive. The developer-logo span read 3.50 s on the
hand-run and 3.75 s here — one film interval apart, both inside the bar, which is
the tool reporting its own resolution honestly rather than hiding it.

**The oracle's numbers are quoted in the script as a test fixture and labelled as
the oracle's**, with the RE document they come from. Nothing in the port derives
them and nothing may.

## The `PRESS Ⓐ` plate pulses — authored per element, because the census forbids a rule

The human listed pulsation as first-class and the port drew nothing at all: the
plate's focus record `ptbtn00f` was never reached, because `press_start` has no
`buttons` and nothing is focused.

**That it loops is measured**, not assumed. The corpus timed the pulse four times
— 2.12 / 2.19 / 2.34 / 2.31 s — and you cannot measure a period unless the thing
repeats.

### The rule I was going to write, and the census that forbade it

The spinning ring is a **rule** in the renderer (`spin_period_units`) and it
earns that: 16 of 212 elements match its shape and **all 16 are focus rings**,
zero false positives. So I looked for the analogous shape for a pulse — a group
whose keyframes vary **only** in alpha, whose first and last alpha are equal, a
closed cycle. `ptbtn00f` fits it exactly: `0 → 6 → 74 → 80 → 80 → 74 → 6 → 0`.

**Censused before writing it: 82 of 212 elements match.** `ptcopyright`,
`palogo_sqex`, `ptmsg`, `ptlogo_back2`, and every `_eff` fade-in-hold-fade-out on
every screen. **A renderer rule on that shape would make the copyright notice
pulse.**

Narrowing to focus records leaves exactly **one** distinct element (plus its JP
twin). A rule justified by n = 1 is a special case wearing a rule's clothes. So
the pulse is a **lookup** in `authored/timing.json`, keyed `<screen>/<element>`,
and the census is recorded beside it so nobody widens it later.

### The period is the element's own group — and the alternative is stated

**129 units**: its last timed keyframe is t=105, and the final untimed keyframe
is reached `exit_ramp_units` (24) later. **No new constant** — 24 is the same
authored value every other element's exit already uses. That is 2.150 s at
60 units/s, or 2.295 s at the ~28.1 fps the emulator presents, against
measurements of 2.12–2.34 s. It sits inside the spread at either rate.

⚠️ **It is a choice, and the alternative cannot be ruled out**: the cycle could
restart at the group's first keyframe (t=6) rather than at 0, giving 123 units =
2.050 / 2.189 s — **also inside the measured spread**. Nothing available
separates them. t=0 is taken because it is where every other group in this port
starts, which is consistency and not evidence, and `authored/timing.json` says so.

A fifth reading is recorded and **not averaged in**: the Decoder re-picked its
troughs and got 2.628 s having previously reported 2.369 from the same run, then
withdrew the estimate as too weak to resolve better than ~7 %.

### Verified the way the ring was — bit-identity one period apart

20 authored periods is 2.15 × 20 = **43.00 s = exactly 172 film frames**, so
frames N and N+172 must be the same frame:

| | max difference |
|---|---|
| f_055 vs f_227 (43.00 s) | **0/255** |
| f_060 vs f_232 (43.00 s) | **1/255** |
| f_070 vs f_242 (43.00 s) | **1/255** |
| f_079 vs f_251 (43.00 s) | **0/255** |
| **control** — f_070 vs f_243 (43.25 s) | **58.7/255** |

The control is what makes the rest mean anything: a quarter-second off the period
differs by 58.7, on the period by 0–1. Measured on the held boot title, where the
glow-box mean swings **26.0 ↔ 37.7** — a real pulse, not a static glow.

## ✅ The oracle finally speaks: the exported voice IS the game's centre channel

The Decoder's fourth capture is the first faithful one — `--gpu=null` takes the
guest from 0.70× to 0.96× real time so Xenia stops padding, an ALSA `file` tee in
front of a paced slave removes PulseAudio's wall clock entirely. **59.7 s, 0.35 %
silence, one gap in the whole file, six distinct channel hashes.** Checked here
independently: it passes `check-capture`, and its header sizes verify exactly
(RIFF 34 369 572 / data 34 369 536 against 34 369 580 actual).

The correlator was already calibrated, so the fit was a re-run rather than a
rebuild. **Controls first, on this instrument: known-present margin +0.248,
known-absent +0.005.**

### Speech band, 300–3000 Hz

| | FL | FR | **FC** | LFE | RL | RR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| stream 1 (leading) | +0.013 | +0.006 | +0.012 | +0.009 | +0.012 | +0.005 |
| **stream 2 — the one exported** | +0.238 | +0.171 | **+0.305** | +0.011 | +0.035 | +0.006 |
| stream 3 | +0.240 | +0.173 | **+0.307** | +0.009 | +0.054 | +0.006 |

**`r = 0.989` on FC, margin +0.305 — above the known-present control.** And the
bed, in the low band, is the mirror image: FL 0.763 / FR 0.838 / RL 0.805 / RR
0.817, all agreeing on the same lag, and **FC 0.317**.

### What is established, and what is not

✅ **The capture contains `ADV`'s audio**, at lag ≈ +6.6–6.7 s — agreed by two
independent bands and by six channels.

✅ **The dialogue is in the centre channel and the bed is in the four corners.**
FC carries the voice and not the bed; FL/FR/RL/RR carry the bed and not the
voice. That is a textbook film mix, and it is measured rather than inferred from
a header — which matters, because the header says `ChannelMask = 0x0002` on all
three streams and would never have told us.

✅ **The port's exported voice file is the material the game plays in FC.** The
`loudest` choice in `authored/audio.json` — which I recorded as an unjustified
choice — selects the dialogue. A mono voice file played into the mix is the
right approximation of a centre channel.

⚠️ **Streams 2 and 3 are indistinguishable to this instrument**, and that is
expected: I measured months-of-iterations ago that stream 3 is 0.60 × stream 2
with the residual 26.8 dB down. They are the same take at two levels, so they
correlate identically with everything. **This does not say `loudest` picked the
*right* one of the two — only that whichever it picked is the dialogue.**

⚠️ **Stream 1 is not detectable in this window**, margins +0.005…+0.013. Consistent
with it being the tail of stream 2 (measured earlier at r = 0.998) and with a
59.7 s window that starts before the tail.

🔴 **The `1 of 3 streams [refuted]` warning stays.** Nothing here explains what the other
two contribute to the game's output, and the export still ships one. What changed
is its character: it is no longer *"one of three, contents unknown"* but *"the
centre-channel dialogue, plus two streams whose relationship to it is measured
and whose role is not."*

⚠️ **And the reach: 59.7 s of a 137 s movie**, one run, at 0.96× real time. The
`--gpu=null` route costs video, so this capture has no screen provenance — its
provenance is the XMA probe showing `ADV`'s three streams decoding during the
run, which for an audio question evidences the thing recorded rather than what
was on screen.

## The stripping control passes — `S00A` is obtainable, and the gate is cleared

The Decoder made this the gate on `S00A`, and it is the right call: `ADV` plays
itself on boot so it can be captured with `--gpu=null` at 0.96× real time, but
`S00A` starts ~4.5 s after Ⓐ on a save slot, which needs a **driven** run, which
needs screens, which rules out `--gpu=null`. So `S00A` is necessarily the 0.70×
rendered route with ~10 % additive padding — and is only worth a boot if
stripping that padding is exact.

**It is.** A real music+SFX bed (137.37 s, carrying 454 genuine zero runs of its
own) had 1 149 holes inserted at 8.37/s to +9.9 % length, matching the observed
ALSA profile, then was stripped and correlated in the low band:

| | *r* | lag | margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| original vs itself — **ceiling** | 1.000 | 0.0 s | +0.141 |
| **padded** vs original — what padding costs | **0.436** | −12.2 s | **+0.006** |
| **stripped** vs original — recovered | **1.000** | **0.0 s** | **+0.142** |
| stripped vs original-also-stripped | 1.000 | 0.0 s | +0.143 |

**Two things worth reading off that table.**

First, **padding at that profile destroys correlation completely** — r 0.436,
margin +0.006, which is the known-absent regime. That independently confirms, on
a file whose contents I control, that the earlier captures were unusable for the
reason claimed rather than for some other reason.

Second, **recovery does not require stripping both sides.** The stripped capture
matches the *unstripped* source at the ceiling. That matters operationally: the
port's reference assets never need touching.

⚠️ **What the control does not license.** Stripping removes genuine silence too
and cannot tell the two apart. On this material the genuine runs total 0.71 s in
137 s and cost nothing measurable; on material that is mostly silence they would.
And the whole thing rests on the **substituted-versus-additive** distinction — it
is valid for Xenia's ALSA padding, which inserts, and it is vandalism on a
PulseAudio monitor capture, which substitutes. `tools/port/strip-padding` says so
in its header before it says anything else, because running it on the wrong
artefact would look like it worked.

Its output is **byte-identical** to the control's own stripping, so the tool and
the experiment are the same operation rather than two implementations that agree.

## The correctness harness the docs promised for eight milestones did not exist

`tools/port/verify-screen`, line 20, since P1: *"Use `tools/verify-capture` for
the correctness question."* **There was no such file.** The port has had a harness
comparing itself to `sylpheed-cli` — two renderers sharing its assumptions — and
none comparing it to the game, while its own documentation said otherwise.

`docs/re/captures/ORACLE-CAPTURES.md` is blunt about why that matters: two
renderers agreeing proves nothing, and this corpus has been bitten three times —
the dropped `pteff05` background, the scale-0 rect, `rest()` — each invisible to a
render-vs-render diff and obvious against a capture.

`tools/port/verify-capture` now exists. **Five screens, against framebuffer
captures of the real game:**

| screen | RMSE | differing | note |
|---|---|---|---|
| `main_menu` | 14.79 | **0.25 %** | focus state may differ |
| `extras` | 15.29 | 0.46 % | focus state may differ |
| `title` | 21.07 | 1.82 % | `ptloop` sweeps never stop |
| `publisher_logo` | 10.77 | 1.00 % | |
| `developer_logos` | 9.37 | 0.39 % | |

**No screen shows a large connected blob** — the shape a missing or misplaced
element makes, and the shape all three historical failures made. The differences
are scattered, and the two largest have stated causes.

### 74 % of `main_menu`'s difference is the oracle's own focus signature

The corpus ships `live-main-menu.png` and `live-main-menu-options-focused.png` —
the same screen with a different button lit. Their difference *is* what focus
changes, measured by the oracle against itself. Of the port's 2 159 differing
pixels, **1 599 — 74.1 % — fall inside that signature.** So the bulk of the
disagreement is a state mismatch (the port focuses `NEW GAME`, authored, because
HANDOFF Q5 measured initial focus as unstable), not a rendering defect.

## Refutation attempt — the tone curve survives in its stated reach and not past it

`ui-render-tone-curve.md` models the relationship as
`capture = 255·(render/255)^γ`, γ ≈ 1.34–1.49, **measured on dark flat patches
(render ~0–60), with "nothing constrains midtones or highlights"** written into
its own reach.

**I tried to fit that γ and got contradictory answers three times, and the
contradictions were mine.** Binning every structurally matched pixel of
`main_menu` by render level gives the relationship directly:

| render | capture | implied γ | pixels |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 4.04 | 1.20 | 183 026 |
| 16 | 7.89 | **1.26** | 227 630 |
| 24 | 15.57 | 1.18 | 100 945 |
| 32 | 26.15 | 1.10 | 87 474 |
| 40 | 38.07 | 1.03 | 86 094 |
| 48 | 53.96 | **0.93** | 85 255 |
| 64 | 78.52 | 0.85 | 6 509 |
| 96 | 130.44 | **0.69** | 1 682 |

✅ **The claim survives where it was measured.** In the darks the capture really
is darker than the render and γ > 1.

🔴 **It is not a single power law.** The implied exponent falls monotonically and
**crosses 1.0 near render ≈ 44** — above that the capture is *brighter*. One
exponent cannot express a curve that crosses unity, which is precisely why my
whole-frame fits kept returning γ = 1.00: the darks want more than 1 and the
midtones want less, and they cancel.

**So the corpus's stated reach was not a hedge, it was the finding.** ⚠️ And the
exponent in the darks measures **1.18–1.26 here against the page's 1.49 for this
screen** — a disagreement I am recording rather than resolving, since they fit
selected flat patches and I binned every matched pixel.

### The tool reports the curve, not a best exponent

Two earlier versions of `verify-capture` reported a best-fit γ and were wrong
both times — once by fitting across a 74 % structural mismatch, once by
extrapolating past a reach the measurement's own authors had written down.
**Extrapolating a measurement past its stated reach is how this tool got it wrong
twice**, and the answer was not a better fit but a different instrument: a table
somebody can argue with.

## Identifying the capture's focused button — and my harness was posing the port wrong

The Decoder attached an honest caveat to its reproduction of the tone-curve
refutation: its bins included the focus-state mismatch, so it was *"not a clean
second opinion"*. That is removable, and removing it found a defect of mine.

### The method, with a known-answer control

`--menu=main_menu --script=down,down,down,down` walks focus through all five
buttons and shoots each. Compare every one against a capture; the minimum
identifies the focused button. **The control is the capture whose answer is in
its own filename:**

| render focus | vs `live-main-menu-options-focused` | vs `live-main-menu` |
|---|---|---|
| `ptbtn01` NEW GAME | 6 351 | **531** |
| `ptbtn02` LOAD GAME | 7 087 | 7 094 |
| `ptbtn03` TUTORIAL | 6 230 | 6 237 |
| `ptbtn04` OPTIONS | **1 292** | 6 364 |
| `ptbtn05` EXTRAS | 6 073 | 6 080 |

✅ **The control picks `OPTIONS`, by 4.7×** — the answer the filename gives.
✅ **So the test is trustworthy, and `live-main-menu.png` has NEW GAME focused, by
11.5×.**

**Which is what the port already focuses.** `authored/flow.json`'s
`initial_focus: ptbtn01` was chosen because HANDOFF Q5 measured focus as
*unstable* across boots — four boots gave TUTORIAL, TUTORIAL, NEW GAME, NEW GAME
— and it is one of the two observed states. It is now also the state of the
committed capture. ⚠️ That is corroboration, **not** a decode: Q5's instability
stands, and this identifies one frame rather than a rule.

### The defect: `verify-capture` rendered menus with no focus at all

`--screen=` draws no focus record, so the harness had been comparing `main_menu`
to the oracle **in a state the oracle was never in**. Rendered properly, with
`--menu=`:

| | before | after |
|---|---|---|
| `main_menu` | 0.25 % differing, RMSE 14.79 | **0.06 %**, RMSE 13.21 |
| `extras` | 0.46 %, RMSE 15.29 | **0.20 %**, RMSE 13.38 |

A 4× improvement on `main_menu` that was **entirely my harness posing the port
wrong**, not the port drawing wrong. Worth stating plainly: the first run of a
new correctness harness reported a discrepancy, and three quarters of it was the
harness.

### And the Decoder's caveat resolves to nothing — measured, not assumed

Re-deriving the transfer curve on the correctly-posed pair gives 1.20 / 1.26 /
1.18 / 1.10 / 1.03 / 0.94 at render 8…48 — **unchanged** from the mismatched run.
So the focus-state contamination it flagged really did not move the trend. Its
reproduction stands as a second opinion after all, and that is now a measurement
rather than a hope.

## `tools/port/which-focus` — the Decoder asked for a detector, and it carries its own control

`S00A` is blocked on knowing which button a screenshot has focused.
`newgame_path.sh` assumed NEW GAME is focused at boot, drove on that assumption,
and landed in a **tutorial mission** — because HANDOFF Q5 measured focus as
*unstable across boots*. And counting presses cannot substitute: ⬆ from the first
item wraps to the last, so no fixed number of presses lands on a known item from
an unknown start.

The Decoder's own attempt — a per-row brightness statistic — **failed the
control**, picking NEW GAME on the capture whose filename says OPTIONS. The
render-difference method passes it, so it is now a script that agent can run.

### It runs the control on every invocation, not once when it was written

```
control -- live-main-menu-options-focused.png (answer is in the filename):
    OPTIONS      1285      <- picked
    EXTRAS       6073
    ...
  -> OPTIONS, margin 4.7x     CONTROL PASSED
```

If that fails, the tool **refuses to report a result at all**. A control that
does not execute is not a control, and this one cannot be skipped.

### Three checks, and one of them independently reproduces a corpus measurement

| input | verdict | margin |
|---|---|---|
| `live-main-menu-options-focused` — **known answer** | OPTIONS | 4.7× |
| `live-main-menu` — the question | **NEW GAME** | 11.4× |
| `live-extras` — **known from the corpus** | MISSION SELECT | 4.2× |
| `live-title-press-a` — **no menu at all** | *refuses* | 1.0× |

The `extras` row is a second known answer I did not plant: `authored/flow.json`
already records *"MEASURED: EXTRAS opens focused on MISSION SELECT
(live-extras.png)"*, and the tool reaches it independently.

The title row is the negative control. A frame with no menu in it gives a margin
of 1.0× and the tool says *"this frame does not decide it. Do not act on this."*

⚠️ **And that refusal now carries a non-zero exit code.** The first version
printed the warning and exited 0 — so a caller scripting it, which is the entire
point, would have read a refusal as an answer. That is the same defect as a
checker claiming a check it skipped, and it is the fifth instance of that shape
between the two of us this session.

**What it is not:** it identifies focus in *one frame*. It says nothing about
what *selects* focus; Q5's instability stands.

## The title's 1.82 % — three of my own explanations refuted, and the format has no blend mode

`title` is the port's largest disagreement with the oracle, and last iteration I
attributed it to the moving `ptloop` sweeps *without checking*. That attribution
is wrong, and so were the two hypotheses I formed after it.

**❌ Not the sweeps.** `ptloop01`/`ptloop02` are **399×180 at (441, 270)** — small
and central — and their exported keyframes hold `pos`, `scale` and `rotation`
constant, varying only alpha. The difference peaks at **x ≈ 1088**, nowhere near
them.

**❌ Not an over-held element.** `--screen` holds every element at its own
`rest.t`, so I added `--no-hold` to render the other answer. Playing the title's
groups past their rest **fades the whole screen to black by t = 5.2 s** —
30.97 % differing against 1.82 % held. Holding at rest is right.

**❌ Not a timing offset.** Sweeping the build-in: 24.05 % at t=1.6, falling
monotonically to **1.68 % at t=4.18** and 1.82 % settled. The capture is at the
settled end; there is no earlier moment that fits better than marginally.

### What it actually looks like: a horizontal redistribution

Signed difference (port − capture), by cell:

| | x=0 | x=320 | x=640 | x=960 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| y=0 | +1.1 | **−13.1** | −6.6 | **+16.0** |
| y=169 | +2.1 | **−8.3** | +4.2 | **+9.9** |
| y=338 | +5.8 | −4.5 | −0.0 | +3.2 |
| y=507 | +3.9 | +3.3 | +2.0 | +2.3 |

**The port is darker centre-left and brighter right, and it nearly cancels** —
whole-frame means 63.8 against 62.5. That is not a level error and not a tone
ramp; it is brightness in the wrong *place*. And it falls in exactly the rows
spanned by the two wide elements `ptlogo_back2` (1118×262 at 71,126) and
`ptlogo_back2eff` (1133×280 at 64,117), with the column profile falling off past
x≈1152 against their right edges at 1189 and 1197.

### 🔴 The export carries no blend mode, so the port cannot draw one

`ptlogo_back2eff`'s exported keys are `declared, id, index, keyframes, kind_raw,
layer, layer_source, pivot, rest, role, sprite`. **There is no blend field**, in
this element or in `FORMAT.md` at all. The port composites everything with normal
alpha.

If the game draws `_eff` layers **additively**, a wide gradient sprite would
produce precisely this signature — surplus where the sprite is bright, deficit
where the underlying art is brighter than the sum — and **nothing in the export
would reveal it.** That is a decoding question, not a port one, and it is asked
rather than assumed. ⚠️ It is a hypothesis I have not tested; I am recording it
because the three I could test are dead.

### A separate `rest.t` casualty, recorded and not acted on

`pteff02` is a full-frame primitive whose group runs `0x40000000` (25 % black) at
t=46 → `0xd4000000` at 76 → `0xcc000000` at 118 → **`0x00000000` at 236**. Its
`rest.t` is **46**, so the port holds a **25 % black veil the screen's own
timeline removes**. This is the third instance of `rest.t` naming a hold that is
not the settled state — after the loading screen's opaque quad and `ptlogo1`'s
creep. ⚠️ **It does not explain the residual** — removing a darkening veil would
make the port brighter still, and it is already brighter where it disagrees — so
it is recorded rather than fixed.

### And a new diagnostic

`--no-hold` plays a screen past its rest instead of clamping each element at
`rest.t`. Added because the question *"is the held pose what the idle game
shows"* could not be asked otherwise. ⚠️ Its first version set the flag thirty
lines before `view` exists and silently rendered nothing — caught because the
comparison loop found no files, not because anything reported an error.

## 🔴 The exporter dropped nested `.rat` leaf geometry on 45 elements — and it is the title's 1.82 %

The Decoder overturned one of my three eliminations, and it was the one I was
most confident about. I ruled out the `ptloop` sweeps because *"399×180 at
(441, 270), keyframes hold position constant"* — **that is the parent's record.
The geometry is in the leaf, and the exporter never opened it.**

| | parent (what the export shipped) | **leaf `ptloopNN.rat`** |
|---|---|---|
| `ptloop01` | scale (100, 100), rot 0, pos (441, 270) fixed | **scale (100, 600), rot +30°**, x sweeping **−639 → −39 → 1521** |
| `ptloop02` | scale (100, 100), rot 0, pos (441, 270) fixed | **scale (100, 800), rot −45°**, x sweeping **1721 → 1111 → −839** |

Two ~1080 and ~1440 px quads leaning opposite ways and sweeping across the
frame, against two 400 px sprites drawn upright and static in the middle. **That
is exactly the signature I measured** — darker centre-left, brighter right,
nearly cancelling — and the Decoder's GPU capture puts their centres at x ≈ 467
and 992, which are the two cells where my signed difference peaked.

`ui_layout`'s own doc comment had said so: *"the rotated quads come from its two
**nested** `.rat` leaf records, which the census never opened."* **Neither did
this exporter.** It opened a leaf in exactly one place — `highlight_name`, for
focus records — and nowhere else.

### It is not two elements. It is 45

| screen | elements with a dropped leaf |
|---|---|
| `main_menu`, `extras`, `press_start` (+ JP twins) | every button — `ptbtn01.rat` … `ptbtn13.rat`, `ptbtn00.rat` |
| `title`, `extras` | `ptloop01.rat`, `ptloop02.rat` |
| `build_00/01/12/15` | `pgloading_loop1/3/4/5.rat` |
| `title_jp` | `ptlogo_eff2.rat` — **two** elements |

⚠️ The buttons are the benign case and `screen.rs` already knew it: *"a BASE
record's leaf duplicates the parent's placement and the two can differ by a unit
(`ptbtn04`: parent y=401, leaf y=402). There the parent wins."* The `ptloop` case
is the opposite — the parent carries **no geometry at all** and the leaf carries
all of it. 🟡 And `title_jp`'s `ptlogo_eff2` is the element `DECISIONS` has
recorded since P1 as the single largest render disagreement in the export, *"the
one drawn element at a scale that is not a whole multiple of 100 %"*. It has a
two-element leaf. That is a lead, not a conclusion.

### Emitted, deliberately not drawn

`Element::leaf` now ships the decoded leaf, and one `read_leaf` closure serves
both it and the focus path — a second copy is how the case would go missing
again.

🔴 **`ScreenView` ignores it**, and that is the honest state. Parent and leaf each
carry their own alpha ramp on a **different span** — parent `0 → 255` over
t=70…238, leaf `255 → 0x80 → 255` over t=150…600 — so **how the two compose is a
decoding question**, and drawing the leaf on a guess would replace a visible
1.82 % gap with an invisible wrong one. `verify-screen` confirms nothing moved:
`title` still max 6 / over3 790, `main_menu` max 4, `title_jp` max 155.

✅ **Additive blending is refuted** — the Decoder tested `T8aD +0x04` bit `0x02`
as an additive selector and *"every measure worsens"*. My blend-mode hypothesis
from last iteration is dead, and the export carries no blend field because **none
has been found**: the per-draw capture records primitive type, index count,
shader hashes, texture bindings and vertex attribute 0, and **no
`RB_BLENDCONTROL`**.

🔵 **And this makes the port's biggest oracle gap the same item as the rotation
question already standing with the human.** `sylpheed-cli screen render`
deliberately does not rotate, which is why *both* renderers show it — the
Decoder measures its own residual as tiles running −38.6 then +33.8 and
cancelling, the same shape as mine. It is a **shared decode gap, not a defect in
my compositor**, and MISSION's *"Needs a human decision — rotation"* now has a
number attached: **1.82 % of the title's pixels, in a signature that can be
recognised.**

## The leaf composition is decoded and implemented — and it does **not** close the 1.82 %

The Decoder decoded the rule I refused to guess: **draw the leaf on its own
timeline; do not multiply the parent's alpha in.** Multiplying is *refuted*, not
merely unsupported — at the fitted time the parent has expired (its group returns
to 0 at t=250 and holds), so `leaf × parent / 255` predicts zero for both quads
and the sweeps would be invisible. They are drawn.

The fit is worth repeating because of its shape: the game's own composed alpha is
observable in the per-draw vertex colours (`C3FFFFFF`/`B6FFFFFF` = **195** and
**182**), fitting *only those two numbers* against the two leaf ramps gives one
consistent time **t = 355**, and the same t then **predicts** quad centres at 981
and 478 against **992.0** and **467.2** measured. No x entered the fit.

Implemented: `_draw_leaf` runs the leaf unclamped — like the spinning ring, and
for the same reason. Held at its own `rest.t` the leaf sits at **x = 1521**,
entirely off the right edge, so `holding` would delete the sweeps rather than
settle them.

### 🔴 And it changes nothing measurable. The title is still 1.82 %

| t | units | differing |
|---|---|---|
| 4.35 s | 261 | 1.82 % |
| **5.917 s** | **355** | **1.81 %** |
| 7.00 s | 420 | 1.79 % |

**At t=355 my interpolation puts the leaf's top-left at x ≈ −324 — off-screen
left — where the Decoder's model puts the quad's centre at 981.** Those cannot
both be right, and the gap is not something to tune away: it is a disagreement
about how the leaf's keyframes become a placed quad, most likely in the pivot and
the rotation about it. **Handed back with both numbers.**

So the honest state: the exporter no longer drops the data, the composition rule
is implemented as decoded, and **the port's largest oracle gap is exactly where
it was.** Fixing the export was necessary and was not sufficient.

### Two flagged elements deliberately not drawn

`authored/rendering.json` narrows drawing to `ptloop01`/`ptloop02` — what the
decode covers — while the exporter keeps flagging all 15.

* **`title_jp/ptlogo_eff2`** — parent 125 % at (412,96), leaf 100 % at (402,66).
  The same shape, and the element `DECISIONS` has recorded since P1 as the
  largest render disagreement in the export. The Decoder said plainly *"I have
  not tested it."* Drawing it would extend a decode past the case it was fitted
  on — the failure this port has made four times this session.
* **`pgloading_loop5`** — leaf scale **(0, 0)**. A zero scale is one of the three
  historical failures this corpus names, so it is exactly where a guess costs
  most.

⚠️ **And neither can be adjudicated here.** `title_jp` has no oracle capture, and
`verify-screen` compares against `sylpheed-cli`, **which draws no leaves at all**
— so *any* leaf drawing increases that divergence whether it is right or wrong.
Its `max` went 155 → 232 when they were drawn, and **that number is not evidence
in either direction.** Recognising it as uninformative is the reason it did not
become a justification.

## The −324 was the old keyframe association, and the corrected one is available **today**

The Decoder found it and it is not geometry: my leaf path pairs each pose with
the *next* pose's time. Fed my pairing into its own interpolation, it reproduces
**−324 to the digit**. Corrected, t=355 gives top-left **781** and centre
**980.5** against **992.0** measured — so there was never a 1 300 px pivot
mystery to look for, and I am glad I said the two numbers instead of hunting one.

### 🔴 Correcting BLOCKED: this was never gated on a branch landing

`docs/port/BLOCKED.md` has carried the keyframe-record-layout row as *"NOT taken,
and it cannot be taken yet … `sylpheed-formats` is a path dependency, so this
reaches the port only when that branch lands on `main`."*

**That is wrong.** The corrected association is in this checkout, behind an
environment variable:

```rust
// Set `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_SHIFT=1` to read `W[k-1]` as block `k`'s time
// ("the word is the time the NEXT pose is reached") instead of `W[k]`.
```

It has been switchable the whole time. **I read that file twice this session —
once for `rotation_deg`, once for the leaf note — and did not notice the switch.**

### The experiment, run: mixed, and not decisive for the reason that matters

Re-exported with `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_SHIFT=1` and asked the oracle:

| screen | default | shifted |
|---|---|---|
| `main_menu` | 13.21 / 0.06 % | 13.81 / **0.10 %** — worse |
| `extras` | 13.38 / 0.20 % | 13.95 / **0.24 %** — worse |
| `title` | 21.07 / 1.82 % | **20.41** / 1.86 % — RMSE better, area worse |
| `publisher_logo` | 10.77 / 1.00 % | **9.05 / 0.75 %** — better |
| `developer_logos` | 9.37 / 0.39 % | **8.86 / 0.33 %** — better |

⚠️ **And it does not adjudicate the association, because the port's renderer is
built for the other one.** Under the shift the **untimed keyframe moves from last
to first** — the leaf reads `t=None` at x=−639, then t=150, t=540 — while
`pose_at` is written around *"the final keyframe carries no `t`, so it is given a
synthetic time `exit_ramp_units` after the last timed frame."* So this measures a
**renderer/association mismatch**, not the association. BLOCKED said as much:
the change touches `pose_at`, `settle_units`, `spin_period_units`,
`exit_ramp_units` and the plate.

**Export reverted to the default.** Adopting the shift is a real piece of work —
re-deriving the exit ramp, the settle, the spin period and the plate against a
layout where the untimed frame is the *first* — and doing it hastily at the end of
an iteration is how a 1.8 % gap becomes five wrong ones.

### ⚠️ The methodological point, which is the Decoder's and is the best thing here

Its rule matched because **alpha at t=355 sits inside a long segment where a
one-keyframe shift barely moves it, while x sweeps 1 560 px over the same span.**
It confirmed on the insensitive quantity; I was wrong on the sensitive one; and
neither of us saw it until the two were compared.

> **Check a new interpretation against the fastest-moving field you have, not the
> one that happens to agree.**

That is a different failure from the ones this session has collected — not an
uncontrolled instrument, but a control chosen where it could not fail.

❔ A residual **11.5 px** (980.5 against 992.0) is left over and is **not** to be
fitted. A rotation about a declared pivot rather than the centre would displace by
roughly that; if it still matters once the association is adopted, it gets
measured rather than derived.

## Re-running the P5/P6 gate after eight iterations of changes

The leaf path, the plate pulse, the BGM level, the voice export, the focus fix
and a new diagnostic flag have all landed since the gate was last actually run.
The mission's test is *"a human presses a d-pad and Ⓐ and moves through those
screens"*, and I had been verifying pieces of that against captures without once
re-running the whole walk.

**It works.** Nine steps, unattended:

| step | | |
|---|---|---|
| ⬇ ×4 | `ptbtn01` → `ptbtn05` | focus moves, every frame drawn |
| Ⓐ | `EXTRAS` → screen `extras`, focus `ptbtn11` | |
| Ⓑ | back to `main_menu`, **focus restored to `ptbtn05`** | HANDOFF Q5's rule, live |
| ⬆, Ⓐ | `ptbtn04` `OPTIONS`, destination outside this archive | prints the gap rather than pretending |

Filmstrip shared as `1788027380-788b1faafc3e`. Every shot is non-blank (frame
means 31.5–33.1).

### The sound is verified by a null control, not by a detector

I first tried an onset detector: count sharp level rises in the recording. It
found **one** onset in the walk — and **the same one** in the music bed alone,
which contains no cues. The 50 ms envelope cannot see a short cue over the bed.
⚠️ **The right response to a detector that cannot separate its control from its
subject is to stop using it**, not to widen the window until the numbers look
better. That is the shape this session has hit five times.

So the same technique that settled the voice: shadow the three cues with silence
through `data/mods/`, run the identical walk, and compare.

| | peak | RMS |
|---|---|---|
| walk, cues playing | **+0.0003 dBFS** | −18.36 |
| walk, cues silenced | **−4.74 dBFS** | −20.78 |

**Silencing three sound effects costs 4.74 dB of peak and 2.43 dB of RMS**, and
the walk's peak is *set by* a cue rather than by the music. The mod log confirms
exactly three files shadowed. No detector, no threshold, and the control is the
same run with one input changed.

⚠️ Recorded under the Dummy driver, as everything audio here is. It shows the
cues reach the Master bus at the right moments; it does not show they are the
cues the game plays — that is HANDOFF Q8, and `authored/audio.json` still carries
the offsets as measured rather than decoded.

## Pinned `formats-pin-2026-08-29c` — and the knob I tested last iteration was retired

🔴 **I tested the wrong switch.** `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_SHIFT` is a **superseded
partial fix**: it got the association right but **left pose 0 untimed**, which is
exactly why the untimed keyframe appeared to "move from last to first". It does
not exist in the current parser. The real correction is the **default** in the
tagged crate, with the old reading behind `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_LEGACY=1` — the
opposite polarity from what I had.

So last iteration's five rows measured a renderer/association mismatch **against
a knob nobody should use**. I suspected they were not decisive; I did not suspect
the knob itself was retired.

### The consequence is smaller than I budgeted for: there is no untimed keyframe

A placement group is an 8-byte header then `frames` × `{u32 time; 36-byte pose}`,
so pose 0's time is the group's lead-in word and **every pose is timed, including
the last.** Measured on the re-export: **866 keyframes, 0 untimed.**

`pose_at`'s premise — *"the final keyframe carries no `t`, so it is given a
synthetic time `exit_ramp_units` after the last timed frame"* — does not invert,
it **disappears**. The branch is now dead code rather than wrong code, which is
why nothing needed re-deriving to adopt this.

And the leaf reads as the Decoder's table says: t=0 x=−639, t=150 x=−39, t=540
x=1521. At t=355 that interpolates to **x = 781** — the top-left it predicted, and
the 1 300 px discrepancy is gone.

### Pinned by tag, which is what MISSION §2 is for

> *"The RE agent tags when it lands something you need and tells you over the
> message channel — that is how you stay current without floating."*

That is precisely what happened, so `crates/sylpheed-export/Cargo.toml` now pins
`formats-pin-2026-08-29c` by tag. ⚠️ **`BLOCKED.md` was wrong in both
directions** — it said the change "cannot be taken yet" *and* that it arrives
only when the branch lands on `main`. It arrives when the tag is pinned.

🔴 **The cost, stated rather than discovered later:** `sylpheed-cli` builds from
the **workspace** crate, so until this reaches `main` the exporter and the
reference renderer read **different decoders**, and `verify-screen` is comparing
two eras rather than detecting drift. `verify-capture` is unaffected — it
compares the port against oracle **captures** and never touches the CLI — and it
is the check that matters. Revert to the path dependency the day the tag is an
ancestor of `main`.

### What the oracle says

| screen | before | after |
|---|---|---|
| `publisher_logo` | 1.00 % | **0.75 %** |
| `developer_logos` | 0.39 % | **0.33 %** |
| `extras` | 0.20 %, region **736×525** | 0.19 %, region **398×295 at (441,230)** |
| `main_menu` | 0.06 % | 0.06 % |
| `title` | 1.82 % | 1.82 % |

The splashes improve outright. ⚠️ **`extras` is the interesting row**: the *area*
barely moved but its differing region **collapsed onto the sweep position**
(441, 270) — the residual is now localised to the one element still in question
rather than spread over the screen.

The title does not move. Its row is now posed at **t=355**, the Decoder's fitted
sweep time, because the leaf group ends at t=600 with the quads parked off-screen
at x=1521 — posing at the settle simply omits them. ⚠️ **t=355 is not the time
that minimises the difference**: t=390 measures **1.65 %**. Picking that would be
fitting the pose to the score, which is what this harness exists not to do.

## Refuted — my own "the single non-whole-multiple scale in the export"

`DECISIONS` has said since P1 that `ptlogo_eff2` is *"the single drawn element in
the whole export at a scale that is not a whole multiple of 100 % (125 %)"*.
**That census was parents-only.** Opening the 45 leaves finds **thirteen** distinct
non-whole-multiple scales — 75, 96, 99, 101, 103, 112, 125, 150, 204×208,
210×220, 250 — and 125 % is among the *rarest* at two occurrences.
`ptlogo1`/`ptlogo2` carry 101/103/112 on the **English** title.

The claim's real content was *"the only one **the port draws**"* — a fact about my
element set, not about the disc. Corrected.

🔴 **And `ptlogo_eff2` stays withheld, now for a stronger reason than caution.**
Its 125 % is a **pop**, not a steady scale: scale-0 → 125 % → scale-0 between
t=50 and t=107, ≈0.95 s. The leaf draws at 100 %, as **two superimposed copies**
at alpha 160 and 80, each rotating 360° over 960 units — 16 s per revolution.
**If parent scale gates the leaf it is a 0.95 s flash; if the leaf runs free it
spins for 16 s.** Nothing on the disc chooses, `title_jp` has no oracle capture,
and the Japanese-locale capture MISSION has parked is what would settle it.

## The 11.5 px was the fit's resolution, and the lesson inverts

The Decoder closed it **by adding observables, not by tuning** — the vertex
buffer carries positions *and* colours at the same instant, so all four
quantities must agree on one `t`:

| observable | solved t | precision |
|---|---|---|
| quad A x | **357.88** | ±0.12 units |
| quad B x | **357.58** | ±0.12 units |
| quad A alpha | 355.75 | ±1.54 units |
| quad B alpha | 354.09 | ±1.89 units |

Alpha moves only 0.27–0.33 levels per keyframe unit, so **one byte of
quantisation is worth 1.5–1.9 units, which at 4 px/unit is 6–8 px of sweep**.
That is the whole of the 11.5 px. At t = 357.7 the centres land within 0.70 px
and both alphas inside one level.

⚠️ **The lesson is the earlier one inverted, and this is the half worth keeping.**
Checking a wrong rule against alpha made it *look confirmed*. Here the same
insensitivity **manufactured a residual that did not exist**. So an insensitive
quantity does not merely fail to falsify — **it invents error.** Solve on the
fastest-moving field; check the slow one; never the reverse.

I was already looking for a pivot rule to explain 11.5 px when they wrote. There
was nothing to find.

### Refutation attempt — the pivot claim, checked here and survived with a nuance

They state the leaf pivot is (200, 90) on a 399×180 sprite, *"the pivot is the
centre, so rotation displaces it by nothing."* Checked against my own export:
pivot **[200, 90]**, sprite **399×180**, true centre **199.5, 90**.

✅ Survives. ⚠️ With one correction of no consequence: the sprite is **odd-width**,
so the pivot is the centre to within **half a pixel**, not exactly. Against their
−0.70/−0.48 px agreement that changes nothing, and it is worth stating only
because "displaces it by nothing" is the kind of sentence that later gets leaned
on for a sub-pixel claim.

`verify-capture` now poses the title at **t=357.7** rather than 355: RMSE
21.07 → **20.92**, differing 1.82 % → **1.81 %**. Marginal, and it is the right
pose for a stated reason rather than a better number.

### `ptlogo_eff2` is withheld for a better reason than mine

I was withholding it out of caution about untested generalisation. The Decoder
points out something stronger: **it is on `title_jp`, and MISSION §7 scopes out
"localisation beyond English"** — so it is not a question the menu port has to
answer at all, and the parked Japanese-locale capture does not need reviving on
its account. `authored/rendering.json` now says that first and the undecidability
second. **Widening scope to close a residual would have been the wrong trade**,
and it is the human's call either way.

## 🔴 The focus ring had silently stopped, and BLOCKED had listed it

`docs/port/BLOCKED.md` said the record-layout change touches five things:
`pose_at`, `settle_units`, `spin_period_units`, `exit_ramp_units` **and the
plate**. I checked `pose_at` and deleted `exit_ramp_units`, reported that, and
**did not work the rest of the list.**

`spin_period_units` required *"the first timed and the second untimed"*. Under
the corrected layout the ring reads `t=0 rot=0` and `t=120 rot=360` — **both
timed** — so the rule returned 0 and **the focus ring stopped spinning**. Nothing
reported it: a period of 0 is a legal *"this element does not spin"*.

Rewritten to take the **span** between the two poses. On the ring that is
120 − 0 = **120 units, the same number the old rule produced**, which is a small
piece of evidence that the corrected layout is self-consistent rather than merely
different.

**Verified the way P5 verified it — bit-identity one period apart**, on the ring's
own 60×60 box so the `ptloop` sweeps cannot confound it:

| separation | mean difference |
|---|---|
| **+120 units (one period)** | **0** |
| +120 units again | **0** |
| +30 units (quarter) | 8.61 |
| +60 units (half) | 8.88 |

⚠️ Getting there took three wrong instruments, and the sequence is the lesson.
A whole-frame `max` saturates on one rotating edge — adjacent frames scored 131
while their mean was 0.022. A live `--menu` filmstrip jitters by up to a frame,
which is ~3° of ring, and its cadence cannot be pinned. And a whole-frame
comparison is dominated by the sweeps, which move 480 px over one ring period.
**`--focus=<id>` was added so a `--screen` run can draw a focus record
deterministically**, which is what made the check reproducible at all.

## The plate's period is now the disc's 105, and it disagrees with the measurement

Under the corrected layout `ptbtn00f` runs **t=0 (alpha 0) → t=105 (alpha 0)** — a
closed cycle with every pose timed.

✅ **The ambiguity this entry carried is gone.** It used to say the cycle might
restart at t=6 rather than 0, giving 123 units, and that nothing separated the
two. There is now one reading.

🔴 **And the number is worse against the oracle, which is stated rather than
avoided.** 105 units is **1.750 s**; scaled by the factor the ring shows between
its declared 120 units and its measured 2.177 s (×1.089), **1.906 s** — about
**17 % below** every one of the corpus's four timings (2.12 / 2.19 / 2.34 /
2.31 s). The old 129 gave 2.34 s, at the top of that range, which is exactly why
it looked right.

**129 was the last timed keyframe plus `exit_ramp_units`, and that constant is
deleted.** A period built from a constant that no longer exists cannot stay, even
though it fitted better. So the port ships the disc's number **and says it is
wrong**, rather than keeping a number that agreed with the measurement for a
reason that has evaporated.

Verified: the plate is bit-identical 105 units apart (mean diff **0**) and differs
at 30 units (0.83). ❔ What would resolve the disagreement: whether the group
loops from its start at all, or holds at alpha 0 between cycles. Asked.

## The plate's period is 120, decoded — and it was falsified with my own ring number

The Decoder found it in the format: **a nested record is itself a RATC bundle,
and its header's `+0x08` is the loop length** — the same field
`ui_header_time_disc` already tests at the top level. A record's keyframes need
not fill it, and the slack is a hold at the final pose. **`ptbtn00f` is 105 units
of ramp inside a 120-unit cycle**, so the glow rests dark for 15 units. The five
`ptbtn0Nf` records fill their 120 exactly, which is what shows the slack belongs
to *that record* rather than to the format.

Disc-wide over 1 781 timed nested records: 92.3 % declare exactly their last
keyframe time, 7.7 % declare more, **0 declare less**. That last row is the
falsifier — a cycle cannot restart before its own last pose — and it never fires.

### The decisive test used this port's number, not theirs

Both candidates need the same emulator pacing factor, and **the ring measures it
independently**: declared 120 units → 2.177 s → **1.0885**.

| plate period | nominal | factor needed for the measured 2.12–2.34 s | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 105 units | 1.750 s | 1.211 … 1.337 | 🔴 excludes 1.0885 |
| **120 units** | 2.000 s | 1.060 … 1.170 | ✅ **contains it** |

**105 cannot reach the measured range under any pacing the ring also satisfies.**
Two different elements in different bundles, measured in separate runs, tied only
by both declaring 120.

⚠️ **My three readings of this number, in order, are the useful record:** 129
(`105 + exit_ramp_units`) fitted the measurement for a reason that later
evaporated; 105 (the group length) I shipped *knowing* it was 17 % short; 120 is
decoded. And the 123-vs-129 pair I once called unseparable **straddled the right
answer without containing it** — which is the sharpest argument I have seen
against treating "two candidates, nothing separates them" as if the truth must be
one of the two.

Verified: bit-identical **120 units** apart (mean diff 0), 0.061 at a quarter and
0.888 at half. Still authored, because the pinned tag does not expose `+0x08`
yet — **delete the entry the day a tag does.**

### Their `rest()` flag, checked rather than assumed

They warned that a focus record is exactly the kind of element `rest()`
mishandles, since a pulse's last hold is not its resting state. Censused: **34
focus-record elements in the export, and only 2 have a varying alpha** — both
`ptbtn00f`, EN and JP. Their `rest.alpha` is **80, identical to their peak**,
which is precisely the pathology described. The port does not hit it because the
plate is drawn through the loop path, and the other **32 are constant-alpha, so
`rest()` is safe for them**. Bounded, not hoped.

## ✅ A settled screen is ONE instant, and it collapsed three residuals at once

The Decoder's finding, applied: **`rest()` returns each element's last hold
keyframe chosen independently of every other element.** That is right for
anything that ends the screen settled and **exactly wrong for a transient** —
the title's `ptlogo_back2eff1` is a two-frame flash (0 until t52, 255 at t54–56,
0 by t58), so its last hold *is* the flash peak and `rest()` left it burning.
There are five of them, and `rest()` drew all five at once.

The settled instant is **the longest interval containing no keyframe time**, over
a bundle's **top-level** elements. Reproduced independently here before adopting:
title `[160, 236]`, midpoint **198** — the Decoder's number to the unit. ⚠️ The
top-level restriction is what makes it match: including the `ptloop` leaves gives
`[269, 540]` instead.

### Against the oracle

| screen | before | after |
|---|---|---|
| **`title`** | 20.92 RMSE, **1.81 %** | **14.61 RMSE, 0.26 %** |
| **`publisher_logo`** | 9.05, **0.75 %** | **2.17, 0.01 %** |
| **`developer_logos`** | 8.86, **0.33 %** | **3.05, 0.01 %** |
| `main_menu` | 0.08 % | 0.08 % — unchanged, window too narrow |
| `extras` | 0.19 % | 0.19 % — unchanged, window too narrow |

**Seven times fewer differing pixels on the title, seventy-five times fewer on
the publisher splash**, whose differing region is now a **13×18 box**. This is
the largest correctness gain the port has had, and none of it is mine: it is a
decode, computed from the keyframe table with no reference to any capture.

### ⚠️ It is applied only where the window is wide, and that bar is not invented

The widths in this export split with **nothing in between**: `press_start` 214,
`publisher_logo` 190, `developer_logos` 145, `title` 76 — then `main_menu` 12,
`extras` 12, the loading screens 8 and 4. A 12-unit "settle" on a menu that
builds in until t=70 is a gap between staggered ramps, not a settled pose.

The bar is **30 units**: the Decoder's disc-wide census puts the knee there (30 %
of bundles ≥ 30, 42 % under 10, the latter mostly `loop*` fragments meant to be
in motion), and this export's own screens sit **4× either side of it with nothing
between 12 and 46**. Two independent populations agreeing on where to cut is what
makes it a bar rather than a preference.

Checked unbroken: the boot pacing is unmoved (`developer_logos@4.26`,
`title@7.91`, developer agrees) and the scripted walk still runs end to end with
focus restored.

## Their census, and a framing of mine they sharpened

I reported *"34 focus-record elements in the export, only 2 with a varying
alpha"*. Disc-wide it is **210 varying, 202 with `rest()` at the peak**, across
1 130 focus records — 116 in `GP_DEBRIEFING_PILOTLOG`, 54 in `GP_MOVIE_THEATER`,
30 in `GP_HANGAR_ARSENAL`, 8 in `GP_LEADERBOARD`, and **2 in `GP_TITLE`**.

**My 2 is right because `GP_TITLE` has 2.** ⚠️ But *"only 2 have a varying alpha"*
reads as a fact about the format and is a fact about one pak — and the pathology
sits in exactly the screens a wider port reaches next. The sentence was true as
measured and false as remembered, which is the failure this corpus keeps
finding, and it was mine this time.

⚠️ **And they corrected a framing I had:** I called `rest.alpha == peak` "the
pathology". It is worse than that — **a pulsing element has no resting pose at
all.** The question `rest()` answers is *malformed* rather than mis-answered,
because the element's state is a phase, not a value. `pose_at(t)` with `t` inside
the record's own declared cycle is the only well-formed query on one.

🔴 Worth carrying for whenever this port grows: `GP_LEADERBOARD`'s
`py_ranking_btn01f` swings 255 → 127 → 255 with no two adjacent keyframes equal,
so `rest()` falls through to its longest-dwell rule and returns **244** — neither
peak nor trough. **A glow stuck at its peak is visibly wrong; one stuck at 244 of
a 127–255 range looks entirely plausible, and nothing reports it.**

✅ And a free second instance of the loop-length decode from a pak neither of us
was looking at: `py_ranking_btn01f`'s ramp ends at **t=90 inside a declared 120**
— 30 units of hold, the same shape as the plate's 105-in-120.

## Their "do not draw all five flashes" flag — checked, and it does not apply here

The Decoder armed a draw capture before the title exists and caught the build-in
on the console: `ptlogo_back2eff1` in frames 130–131, `eff2` at 133, `eff4` at
133–135 — and **`eff3` never drawn at all.** Not a miss: a flash's peak is 2
keyframe units, which at that run's pacing is **0.85 of a presented frame**, so
which flashes get sampled is a matter of phase. The console shows a *subset* on
any given play, and the warning was that drawing all five would read heavier than
the real thing.

**Checked rather than reasoned about.** Sweeping the port's build-in with
`--no-hold`:

| t | flashes drawn |
|---|---|
| 54, 56 | `eff1` |
| 58 | `eff2` |
| 60 | `eff2`, `eff3` |
| 62 | `eff3`, `eff4` |
| 64 | `eff4`, `eff5` |
| 66, 68 | `eff5` |

**The port draws them sequentially, never more than two at once**, and the two
only overlap where their declared windows abut. That is the stagger the disc
declares, not a pile-up — the pile-up was the `rest()` bug, and it is fixed.

⚠️ **So the difference from the console is presentation rate, not content.** At
60 fps each 2-unit flash gets ~2 frames; at the console's pacing it gets 0.85, so
some are skipped. **A frame-by-frame comparison of the build-in against a console
capture will therefore show flashes the console missed, and that is a fact to
know rather than a bug to fix.** It is also why the settled-frame comparison —
the one `verify-capture` makes — is unaffected: at t=198 none of the five is
drawn.

### Three things of theirs worth recording

✅ **My top-level restriction was verified, not merely accepted**: top-level
`[160, 236]` width 76, versus `[269, 540]` width 271 with the `ptloop` leaves
included — an instant *after every top-level element has exited*. Worth having on
their page, because the rule as described permits the wrong reading.

✅ **The 120-unit loop is confirmed from the guest's own vertex data**, not
inferred from pixels: the glow quad's per-vertex colour alpha *is* the element's
fade alpha, giving an observed range of **0…80 against a decoded peak of 80**,
exact and unfitted, over 20 cycle starts. Fitting the decoded ramp gives RMS
13.16 alpha levels against **38.18 for the same ramp reversed** — if the shape
carried no information those would be equal.

📌 **A trap noted for whenever this port grows draw-stream tooling:** a 2D draw's
identity is its **vertex geometry, not its bound texture**, because these sprites
sample large shared pages. Matching on texture dimensions told them first that no
flash is ever drawn, then that `ptbase2` and `pteff04` are drawn in frames 75–105
— which are the intro movie, whose YUV planes are 640×360 targeting 1280×720.
Two errors, opposite directions, one pass, neither loud.

## ✅ The `publisher_logo` residual was a missing black hold, and we had both dismissed it

I had carried this as *"0.03 s outside a composite bound, probably a property of
the bound rather than the game"*, and the Decoder agreed. **We were both wrong,
and the way it was settled is the point: I stopped reasoning about the bound and
filmed the transition.**

At 0.05 s the port fell straight out of the publisher's fade into the developer
logos — mean 5.06 → 0.32 at t=4.20, then **5.65 at t=4.25**. There was **no black
frame at all**, where the oracle measures a 0.17–0.23 s pure-black plateau
(HANDOFF Q7). The bound was fine. The port was missing a fifth of a second of
black, and had been since P3.

**Authored at 12 units**, because on the boot path there is nothing to read it
from: `publisher_logo` and `developer_logos` each carry a single `palogo_eff0` —
a 1280×720 primitive with **one keyframe at t=0**, static, not a transition ramp.
The menus' quad declares black for 12 units and 12/60 = **0.200 s** sits in the
middle of the measured range, so the number is the disc's where a screen has one.

Filmed after: **t=4.25, 4.30, 4.35, 4.40 all at mean 0** — four black frames,
0.20 s — then the developer logos at 4.45.

| | before | after |
|---|---|---|
| publisher interval | 4.26 s, **DIFFERS** | **4.47 s, agrees** |
| developer interval | 3.62 s, agrees | 3.73 s, agrees |

The settled-frame comparisons are untouched, as they should be — this is pacing,
not pixels.

⚠️ **The lesson is about the shape of the dismissal, not the number.** *"A 0.03 s
miss against a bound composed from two measured ranges plus jitter slack is more
likely a property of the bound"* is a **plausible** explanation, it was offered
and accepted by both of us, and it was wrong. The composite bound was the reason
the miss looked small — the underlying gap was 0.2 s — and a plausible
explanation for a small number is exactly how a real defect stays hidden. **The
film cost one command.**

## `ptlogo_back2eff3` — recorded, deliberately not acted on

The Decoder has reproduced across two independent build-ins that the console
**never draws `eff3`**: 0 draws against ~5 expected, while `eff1` gets 4, `eff2`
3 and `eff4` 6. Three explanations are ruled out — sampling phase (`eff3` is
non-zero over six units against a 2.23-unit step, and frames at t=60.1 and 62.3
sit inside it drawing `eff2` and `eff4` instead), a draw the log cannot see, and
a bad position guess (no quad anywhere is within ±30 of the expected 408 width;
the spectrum jumps 262 → 748).

❔ **But *why* is not established** — nothing in `eff3`'s record differs from its
neighbours: same kind `0x0`, same keyframe shape, same `u4`/`u8`, same scale.

🔴 **So the port keeps drawing it, and that is a decision rather than an
oversight.** Dropping an element the disc declares, on a measurement with no
mechanism behind it, is authoring a behaviour neither agent can derive — and
**nothing this port gates on would notice either way**: the flashes live only in
the build-in, and `verify-capture` compares the settled frame at t=198 where none
of the five is drawn. Acting would buy no measurable fidelity and cost an
unexplained exception in `authored/`.

**What would change it:** a mechanism in the record, or a gate that measures the
build-in against a capture. Until then the port is visibly wrong for two frames
during a build-in nobody compares, which is the cheaper of the two wrongs.

## The narrow settle windows are harmless, and I can now say why

Adopting the settle instant left `main_menu` and `extras` on per-element `rest()`
— their windows are 12 units, below the 30-unit bar — and I recorded that as a
gap. **It is not one.** `rest()` is malformed only for a **transient**, and the
transients are precisely on the screens whose windows are wide:

| screen | window | transients |
|---|---|---|
| `title` | 76 | `ptlogo1`/`ptlogo2` ×4, `pteff01`, `ptlogo_back2eff1…5`, `ptlogoall_eff` |
| `publisher_logo` | 190 | `palogo_sqex_eff` |
| `developer_logos` | 145 | `palogo_*_eff` ×3 |
| **`main_menu`** | **12** | **none** |
| **`extras`** | **12** | **none** |

The discriminator is *returning to dark far before the screen's own end* —
`ptlogo_back2eff1` is dark again at t=58 while the title runs to t=269 — as
opposed to the ordinary fade-in-hold-fade-out that every menu element has, where
`rest` at 255 **is** the settled pose and the final 0 is the exit.

⚠️ **I am not claiming that as a rule.** Two screens having narrow windows *and*
no transients could be coincidence; it is n = 2, and n = 2 is where I have gone
wrong before. What it does mean is that **nothing measurable is being left on the
table by the 30-unit bar today.**

## Refuted, mine — "the menu residual is localised on the `ptloop` sweeps"

I have written that twice. It came from reading the **bounding box** of the
differing pixels, which sat at (441, 230) — the sweep position. Tested by sweeping
the leaf's phase against the live-menu captures:

| `main_menu`, sweep phase | differing |
|---|---|
| t=60 (barely on screen) | 0.063 % |
| t=350 (mid-screen) | **0.183 %** |
| t≥600 (parked off-screen) | **0.061 %** |

✅ Two things fall out. **The capture shows no sweeps**: the port matches best
when they are off-screen and three times worse when they cross the middle. And
with them parked the residual's box is **834×358 at (445, 167)** — the *button
column*, which is where the focus signature lives, not the sweep position.

On `extras` the same test moves the box (398×295 at the sweep position at t=70,
736×525 spread at t=700) while the **magnitude barely changes: 0.192 % against
0.200 %**.

🔴 **So the box moves with the sweeps and the residual does not.** A bounding box
over scattered pixels tells you where the outermost differing pixels are, **not
where the difference is** — and I had been quoting it as if it localised a cause.
`verify-capture` prints that box, so this is a caution about reading my own tool.

### And a first piece of evidence on whether the sweeps loop

The disc gives one pass, t=0…600, ending parked off-screen at x=1521.
`ORACLE-CAPTURES.md` says the title's sweeps *"move continuously"*, which I had
taken as implying a loop. **The idle main-menu capture matches best with them
off-screen**, which is evidence they run once and park.

⚠️ One capture, one screen, and "best match" is a weak instrument for an absence
— but it is the first evidence either way, and it points against looping. The
loop-length field the Decoder decoded (`+0x08` of a nested record's header) would
settle it outright; it is not in the pinned tag.

## Refuted — "the developer splash is one composited quad, the bounding box of the three logos"

The Decoder observed the game submitting **one 525×259 quad at (378, 155)** on
the developer splash and read it as the bounding box of the three logos, warning
that drawing three sprites there draws something the console does not. **The
arithmetic does not support it**, and the port keeps drawing three.

| | bounding box |
|---|---|
| the **three logos** | **500×421 at (390, 164)** |
| `gamearts_eff` + `seta_eff` | **521×261 at (379, 154)** |
| the observed quad | **525×259 at (378, 155)** |

**A 259-tall quad cannot contain the three logos**, which span y 164…585:
`palogo_anima` alone starts at y = 449, thirty-five pixels below that quad's
bottom edge. The observed quad matches the union of the two `_eff` **glows** to
about four pixels in every dimension.

⚠️ And those two are **transients** — my own census flagged them, dark again by
t=45 — so a frame containing that quad is a **build-in** frame, not the settled
screen. Consistent with a draw capture that starts early, which is exactly what
theirs does.

I cannot see their draw stream, so I have sent the arithmetic rather than a
verdict. What I will not do is stop drawing an element on a claim whose stated
identification excludes that element from its own bounding box.

## The black hold is 9 units, not 12 — measured in draws rather than luminance

I authored 12 from HANDOFF Q7's luminance plateau of 0.17–0.23 s, supported by
the menus' transition quad declaring black for 12. The Decoder counted **submitted
quads** instead, which is the better instrument: luminance cannot separate the
outgoing fade's tail from true black.

Frames 21–125 submit `palogo_sqex` fading to alpha 7; **frames 126–129 submit no
sprite quad at all**; 130–153 fade the developer splash in from alpha 34. Four
presented frames at 2.284 units/frame — a rate derived from the **disc as its own
clock**, because that run ran at 13.1 fps against 28 elsewhere — gives **9.1
units = 0.152 s**, ±1 frame 6.9–11.4.

⚠️ **It disagrees with the luminance figure and the disagreement is the point.**
0.114–0.190 s against 0.17–0.23 s overlaps only at the top, and the true black is
**shorter** than 9 even so: both boundary frames still carry picture. My 12 was
also supported *by analogy* — a different screen's quad on a different path,
where the boot splashes carry no quad at all. **A number that fits by analogy
loses to one measured in place.**

`verify-dwell`'s bound moved with it. Both screens still agree: publisher 4.42 s,
developer 3.78 s.

## The title's sweeps loop — measured, and the field could not have told us

The disc gives one pass (`ptloop01` t=0…600, `ptloop02` t=0…720), each ending
parked off-screen, and the port ran them once. **The oracle says they loop**:
across two title dwells the sweep quad oscillates over its whole x range and
resets hard to the same start — one reset in the first dwell, two in the second.

🔴 **And the loop-length field could not have settled it, which corrects a hope I
had stated.** Both records declare exactly their last keyframe time — **slack
zero** — and *"loops at 600"* and *"runs once for 600 and stops"* write the
identical header. 92.3 % of records on the disc are in that state, so the field
discriminates only where there **is** slack, as the plate's 105-in-120 had.

Implemented and verified on the two sweeps' **least common multiple**, since they
have different periods: 600 and 720 realign at **3600 units = 60 s**.

| separation | mean difference |
|---|---|
| **+3600 units (LCM)** | **0** |
| +1800 units | 0.438 |
| +600 units (`ptloop01` only) | 0.100 |

⚠️ **Scoped to the title**, because that is where it is measured. The menus
declare the same 600/720 and nothing on the disc distinguishes them, but my own
weak evidence points the other way there — sweeping the phase against
`live-main-menu.png`, the port matches best with the sweeps **off-screen**
(0.061 %) and three times worse mid-screen (0.183 %), and if they looped the
sweep is on screen for roughly 73 % of the cycle. **Two weak signals in opposite
directions is a reason to scope, not to pick.**

## The menus' residual is the tone floor, not structure — and `extras` is not really 3× worse

`extras` sits at 0.19 % differing against `main_menu`'s 0.06 %, on two screens of
the same family, and that gap wanted explaining.

**Signed difference (port − capture), by cell:**

| | x=0 | x=320 | x=640 | x=960 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `extras` y=169 | **+12.13** | −3.64 | +2.43 | **+10.60** |
| `extras` y=338 | **+12.29** | +1.36 | +1.42 | **+9.05** |
| `main_menu` y=169 | **+11.63** | −0.68 | +3.01 | **+10.24** |
| `main_menu` y=338 | **+11.03** | +3.93 | +2.92 | **+8.84** |

**The two screens are nearly identical**, and the port is uniformly **+9 to +12
brighter in the dark outer columns** — which is exactly the transfer curve I
measured earlier: γ > 1 in the darks, capture darker than render. There is no
dipole, no displacement, no missing element.

So the 0.06 % / 0.19 % gap is **not a difference in fidelity**. The thresholded
count only sees pixels differing by more than 64 levels, which are text and
sprite **edges**; the two screens simply have different amounts of high-contrast
edge. The *level* disagreement, which is what a tone term produces, is the same
on both.

⚠️ **This is the bounding-box lesson again in a different costume.** I had two
numbers, 0.06 and 0.19, and took the ratio as meaningful. It is a count of
threshold crossings, and a count of threshold crossings is not a measure of how
wrong a screen is.

### A diagnostic trap of my own, worth writing down

My first pass at this reported **10 of 18 elements "transparent at rest"** on
`extras` — the buttons, the title, the frames — and looked exactly like a
missing-element bug. It was not. **`--screen=NAME` without `--time` renders at
t = 0**, and `pose_at` clamps `t` to `minf(t, settle_units)`, so t=0 stays t=0 and
every element is still at its first keyframe. Passing `--time=2.0` draws 18 of 18.

The tool was right and my invocation was wrong, and the failure looked like a
serious defect rather than an empty argument. Same family as the instrument traps
this session has collected — and mine was the one that reported a *worse* problem
than existed, which is the direction that wastes an iteration rather than hiding
one.

## Refutation attempt — their 239.8-unit figure, checked from my export

The Decoder converted the boot's black gap using the disc as its own clock:
*"`palogo_sqex` declares alpha ≥ 1 for **239.8 units** and is drawn in 105 frames
→ 2.284 units/frame."* That 239.8 comes from their reading of the record; I have
the same element in my export and can compute it independently.

`palogo_sqex` ramps 0 → 255 over t=15…30 and 32 → 0 over t=251…255. Under the
linear ramp the port already uses, alpha first reaches 1 at **t = 15.0588** and
last exceeds it at **t = 254.8750**:

**239.816 units.**

✅ **Survives, to four significant figures.** It matters more than a spot-check:
that number is the *denominator* of the units-per-frame conversion behind the
9-unit black hold I just authored, so an error in it would have propagated
straight into a constant I ship. Two derivations from different sides of the same
record agreeing to 0.02 % is what makes that constant safe to hold.

## 🔴 The loading screens are black at *every* instant — which proves the layer rule wrong for a layerless element

`build_12` and `build_15` have rendered blank since P3, and I had filed it as a
`rest()` casualty: `pgloading_eff00` is a 1280×720 quad whose `rest` is opaque
black. **It is not that**, and the corrected keyframe association makes it
provable rather than suspected.

Every element's declared alpha window on `build_12`:

| element | opaque / visible | gone by |
|---|---|---|
| **`pgloading_eff00`** (black quad) | **t=0 … 38 at alpha 255** | clears at t=48 |
| `pgloading_loop4` | t=8…32 | 38 |
| `pgloading_loop1` | t=16…32 | 40 |
| `pgloading_line` | t=18…26 | 32 |
| `pgloading_str` | t=22…28 | 34 |
| `pgloading_loop3` | t=24…26 | 34 |
| `baseeff`, `eff01`, `eff02`, `loop5` | t≈16…32 | 32–40 |

**The quad is fully opaque across the entire span in which any content is up, and
it only clears at t=48 — by which time every other element has faded to zero.**
Rendered at t = 20, 30, 36, 40, 42, 44, 46, 50 units with the timeline *playing*,
the frame is **mean 0 at every one**.

So this is not a bad choice of pose. **Under the port's current layer rule there
is no instant at which this screen shows anything**, and a loading screen that is
black for its whole life is not what the game does. That is a proof by
contradiction, not a preference.

### The rule under suspicion is mine, and it is narrow

`pgloading_eff00` carries `layer_source: "none"` — no layer key at all — and the
exporter sorts a layerless element **last**, i.e. on top. Its `paint_order` is
`[6, 7, 8, 9, 1, 5, 4, 2, 3, 0]` with element 0, the quad, drawn last.

⚠️ **Every other full-frame primitive in the export has a layer key** —
`main_menu`, `extras` and `title` all give their `pteff00` `0x00008030` — so this
rule only ever bites here, which is exactly why it survived eight milestones
behind two screens nobody draws.

❔ **Where a layerless element sorts is a decoding question and I am not
answering it.** If the game sorts it *first* — behind everything — the screen
renders and the quad becomes a backdrop rather than a cover, which is what a
1280×720 black rectangle at the bottom of a loading screen would sensibly be.
That reading is *consistent* with the contradiction above, which is not the same
as being established, and I have asked rather than flipped the sort.

✅ **What this does settle:** `verify-screen`'s `BLANK` verdict on those two rows
was the right call. It reports that both renderers drew nothing and that the row
proves nothing — and `sylpheed-cli` agrees with the port here precisely because
it shares the assumption under suspicion. Two renderers agreeing, again.

## Their `eff3` retraction — my refusal was right, and my refutation found the same bug

The Decoder has withdrawn *"the game never draws `eff3`"*. It draws all five, in
the declared stagger, in both title entries. **And the mechanism was the one my
developer-splash refutation had already caught one layer down**: a draw batches
several quads and the log dumps only the first 8 vertices, so min/max over a
line's vertex list *merges* them. `eff3` (788…1196) lies entirely inside `eff4`
(447…1196), so the union is exactly `eff4`'s extent and `eff3` vanished with
nothing anomalous to see. My `525×259` was `gamearts_eff` merged with `seta_eff`
by the identical mechanism.

⚠️ **The part worth carrying is theirs**: three explanations were reported "ruled
out", and all three were aimed at the wrong failure — the *"a draw the log cannot
see"* check counted draws with **no** geometry when the hiding place was draws
with **partial** geometry. **Refuting three wrong hypotheses is not evidence for
a fourth**, and a list of failure modes written by whoever built the instrument
is the least likely to contain that instrument's blind spot.

Nothing in the port changes: `eff3` was never dropped, and the developer splash
still draws three sprites.

## The forced backdrop: two of sixteen screens were black for their whole life

`build_12` and `build_15` — the two dressed loading screens — rendered as **pure
black at every instant of their declared timeline**. Not at rest, where a wrong
`rest.t` could explain it: at t = 20, 30, 36, 40, 42, 44, 46 and 50 units with
the timeline *playing*, mean 0 in every frame.

That is not a defect you can attribute to a pose. A screen that is black for its
entire life is impossible on its face, and it is the kind of impossibility that
survives a render-vs-render diff: `verify-screen` scored those two rows
`max 0 mean 0 over3 0 OK` — **the strongest verdict that script has, awarded for
comparing nothing against nothing.** Both renderers were black because both
share `implied_layer_key`. The blank guard now in `verify-screen` was written
after that, and it is what turned the pass into a row that says it proves
nothing.

### The rule, and whose it is

It is the **Decoder's**, decoded from the file rather than inferred from the
render:

> An element that covers the screen and is **fully opaque** at some instant
> cannot paint above anything visible at that instant. Where the elements
> visible during its opaque span are **all** of them, its position is forced to
> first.

`pgloading_eff00` is a full-screen quad at alpha 255 from t=0 to t=38, clearing
at t=48; every other element on those screens peaks around t=8–32 and is gone by
t=32–40 — entirely inside the opaque span. Under a layer-key sort it painted
over all nine of them, at every instant they existed. Hence black.

### What is implemented, and the two limits that are not negotiable

`forced_backdrop_first` in `crates/sylpheed-export/src/screen.rs`, as a post-pass
over `ui_layout::derived_paint_order`. Two restrictions are copied from the
Decoder verbatim because each one was found by a test that failed:

* 🔴 **Elements with no sprite only.** Applied to sprites, the rule claimed 22
  `.t32` textures must sort first *against their own layer keys*. An element's
  alpha says nothing about whether its **texture** covers the screen — most of a
  sprite may be transparent. The assertion that caught this was one the Decoder
  had nearly deleted as over-strict.
* 🔴 **Not a name heuristic.** `*base*` first / `*eff*` last matches 77 of 80 and
  fails on exactly the three families that cross it: `palogo_eff0`,
  `pgloading_eff00`, `pzeff00`. `palogo_eff0.prm` is named like an overlay and is
  *measured* painting first. The name is not the rule; occlusion is.

⚠️ Reach: it assumes straight alpha-over. Blend mode is undecoded, and an
additive quad at alpha 255 would not occlude. It is a **lower bound on one
element's position**, not an ordering — 80 elements are forced, 50 are
constrained but not forced, and this says nothing about those 50.

### The controls

Both are the Decoder's prior measurements off the running game. No new oracle run
was made for this change, by either agent.

| primitive | measured | our opaque instants | outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| `palogo_eff0.prm` | **first** | 256 (they measured 211) | ✅ forced first |
| `pteff00.prm` | **last** | **2** (they measured 2) | ✅ still last |

`pteff00` is the one that would break if this were implemented as "push every
layerless element down". It is the fade cover: opaque at t=0 and again at t=269,
its screen's entry and exit, and transparent for the 253 instants between. The
constraint never binds it, and it remains last on all four title-family screens.

The `palogo_eff0` count differs — 256 against 211 — because we take the opaque
span to the **screen's** last keyframe (255) and they stop at 210. It changes no
verdict here, since the element is opaque across the whole span either way, but
the two spans are not the same span and only one of them can be the screen's.
Filed in BLOCKED.

An element **holds its final pose to the end of the screen**; it does not vanish
at its own last keyframe. Reading `palogo_eff0`'s span as `0..=0` — it declares a
single keyframe — would make the splash's backdrop a one-instant event rather
than the thing on screen for the whole splash. Rendering `build_12` confirms the
hold directly: the frame is constant from t=30 to t=60 with the timeline running.

### What changed, measured

* `build_12`/`build_15`: mean 0 at every instant → ramps in over t=0…30 and
  holds (mean 1.95, max 214.5). The two BLANK rows are gone from `verify-screen`.
* The splashes are unmoved against the **oracle**: `publisher_logo` 0.01 %,
  `developer_logos` 0.01 % differing region, unchanged before and after.
  ⚠️ That is **non-regression, not confirmation** — `verify-capture` poses at the
  settle instant, and the ordering does not necessarily bind there. The evidence
  for the rule is the Decoder's two controls and the impossibility of a
  permanently black screen, not this row.
* Six `verify-screen` rows now DIFFER: the six screens the rule touches. The
  reference `sylpheed-cli` builds from the workspace `sylpheed-formats`, which
  does not have the rule. **That disagreement is expected and must not be tuned
  away** — it ends when a pinned tag carries the Decoder's change, at which point
  this post-pass is deleted rather than kept in two places.

It also explains 36 builds the Decoder had filed as "coming out one colour":
`pzeff00.prm` is forced first in 32 of 32 of them. Those were wiped by our own
sort.

## Refutation attempt — the forced-backdrop rule's quantifier, and whether it misses a case

The rule fires only when **all** other elements are visible during the opaque
span. That is a strict quantifier, and a strict quantifier fails quietly: an
element that is a full-screen opaque backdrop but misses the bar by one dark
element would keep its layer-key position and go on hiding the screen, exactly
the defect the rule was written to fix. So the question worth asking of somebody
else's rule is not "is it right" but **"is it enough"** — and that one I can test
without an oracle, over every layerless full-screen element in `GP_TITLE`.

| screen | element | opaque instants | others visible | forced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `build_12`, `build_15` | `pgloading_eff00` | 39 | **9 / 9** | ✅ |
| `developer_logos` ×2 | `palogo_eff0` | 211 | **6 / 6** | ✅ |
| `publisher_logo` ×2 | `palogo_eff0` | 256 | **2 / 2** | ✅ |
| `title`, `title_jp` | `pteff00` | 2 | 3 / 23 | — |
| `main_menu` ×2 | `pteff00` | 2 | 7 / 15 | — |
| `extras` ×2 | `pteff00` | 2 | 5 / 17 | — |
| every screen | `pteff02` | **0** | — | — |

**The rule survives, and the margin is the reason.** Nothing sits near the
boundary. Every element that fires does so at **100 %** of the others; every
element that does not is at 13–47 %, and `pteff02` never reaches alpha 255 at all,
so no quantifier could fire on it. There is no borderline case in this archive
for a stricter or looser reading to disagree about — which is the answer I could
not have gotten by re-checking the six screens where it already fired.

It also reproduces the Decoder's **second** control number exactly: they report
`pteff00.prm` forced below **3 of 23**, and `title` measures 3 of 23 here. With
their opaque-instant count of 2 already matched, two of their three published
figures for that control now come out of an independent implementation
unchanged. The third — `palogo_eff0`'s 211 against our 256 — remains the span
disagreement filed in `BLOCKED.md`, and note that the 211 is the number our
`developer_logos` row *does* reproduce. That is worth saying plainly: **the
disagreement is not a constant offset**, so "they stop 45 instants early" is not
the explanation, and whatever it is differs per screen.

⚠️ What this does **not** test: whether the rule is right about the 50 elements it
calls constrained-but-not-forced, and whether alpha-over is the blend mode. Both
are the Decoder's to settle. It tests completeness within one archive, which is
the half I can reach.

## The 256/211 was never a disagreement — and my own census had already said so

The Decoder answered the span question, and the answer is that **both numbers are
right**. `palogo_eff0.prm` appears on *both* splashes: the publisher pair
(entries 10, 13) runs to t=255 and gives **256** instants, the developer pair
(11, 14) runs to t=210 and gives **211**. I computed the publisher; their page
quoted the developer.

Worth noting how that came out, because it is the one part I can claim: the
refutation census in the section above reported **256 on `publisher_logo` and 211
on `developer_logos`, in the same table**, and concluded *"the disagreement is not
a constant offset, so 'they stop 45 instants early' is not the explanation"*. The
resolution was already sitting in my own output before their reply arrived. What
I got wrong was **filing it as a disagreement at all** — I compared one of my two
numbers against one of theirs and did not check the other row of my own table
against it. A per-screen quantity needs the screen named next to it, and my
`BLOCKED.md` row named neither.

### The span convention, confirmed rather than assumed

> The span is `0 ..= max keyframe time over EVERY element in the build`, and an
> element **holds its final pose** past its own last keyframe.

That is exactly what `forced_backdrop_first` implements, so nothing changes in
the port. Two things they add that are worth having in writing:

* the hold **is not a convenience**: a group holds at its last keyframe rather
  than looping, and the header's `+0x08` never falls short of the last keyframe —
  the slack *is* that hold;
* `+0x08` and the elements' maximum are **interchangeable**, zero disagreements
  disc-wide. We use the elements' maximum. It stays, and this paragraph is the
  note that the two were *checked* equivalent rather than assumed so.

### The hold decides 55 % of verdicts, and the oracle picks it

Reported by them over 130 keyless full-screen primitives (their measurement, not
reproduced here — their page is `docs/re/structures/ui-forced-backdrop.md`, ⚠️ not
yet on `main` as of this commit):

| alternative convention | verdicts changed |
|---|---|
| span = the header's declared `+0x08` | 0 |
| span = the primitive's own last keyframe | **72** |
| elements **gone** after their last keyframe | **72** |

So the reading I very nearly shipped — span = the element's own last keyframe —
would have changed **55 %** of the verdicts disc-wide. My first implementation
did exactly that, and `palogo_eff0` is the case that catches it: a *single*
keyframe at t=0, opaque for one instant, nothing else up yet, so the rule calls
it **free** — against a game measured painting it first. The convention is not a
matter of taste; the oracle rules one out.

✅ None of our six verdicts rests on it. `pgloading_eff00` is first under all four
conventions and `pteff00` is free under all four; only `palogo_eff0` moves, and
only under the convention its own measured order excludes.

### The sharper form of the `verify-screen` failure

Theirs, and it is better than how I wrote it: those two solid-black frames
**were not two witnesses**. Both renderers read `implied_layer_key`, so their
agreement carried *no information* — a correlated failure is indistinguishable
from a confirmation. What caught it was not a second opinion but that the agreed
answer was **impossible on its face**. *"Is this result even possible?"* beats
*"do two implementations agree?"* whenever the two share an ancestor, and in this
project they nearly always do.

### The boot gate still holds

Re-run after the reorder, since the rule changed the paint order of the first two
screens in the boot path: `publisher_logo` → `developer_logos` → `ADV` (skipped at
8.12 s) → `title` + `press_start` overlay, plate at full alpha at t=236, complete
at 10.83 s holding on the title. No script errors.

## The clock freezes at settle — the port's settle window, seen from the other side

The Decoder measured `GP_TITLE` build 4 in the draw stream and found the
top-level clock **advances through the build-in, stops inside the settle window,
and holds**. The exit ramp is not on a timer; it plays when something makes the
screen leave.

**Their interval is `[160, 236]`. The exporter computes `title`'s settle window as
`[160, 236, 198]`.** Those are the same two numbers, and they were not obtained
the same way: mine is the longest keyframe-free interval over top-level elements,
read out of the file with no game running; theirs is where a captured clock stops
advancing. A heuristic I adopted because it collapsed three pixel residuals at
once turns out to name the exact interval the game holds in. That is the first
evidence for the settle instant that does not come from the port's own renderer.

The file agrees from a third direction: `ptcopyright` sits at alpha 255 from
t=160 to t=238 — it reaches full opacity precisely as the window opens.

### Refutation attempt — their declared spans, checked against the file

Their draw-stream argument cites what the file *declares*, which I can check
without a capture:

| their claim | the file | |
|---|---|---|
| `ptlogo1` declares an exit at **t=264** | last keyframe t=264, alpha 0 | ✅ exact |
| `ptcopyright` alpha ≥ 1 for **106 units**, t=138…244 | keyframes at t=138 and t=244, alpha 0 at both | ✅ endpoints exact |

Both survive. One quibble, and it is only that: the instants with alpha ≥ 1 number
**105**, t=139…243, not 106 — the endpoints they bracket with are themselves
alpha 0, so 106 is the keyframe span rather than the visible one. It changes
nothing in their argument, whose force comes from 1 050 frames against either
number.

### What this costs the port, and it is not nothing

`authored/timing.json` and `authored/flow.json` both said *"a screen's dwell is
its OWN keyframe group"* and *"the pacing is the disc's own"*. 🔴 **That is
refuted.** Build 4 declares about 120 presented frames and dwelled ~1 100 — nine
times its own timeline. The group is not the dwell.

The **decision** is unchanged and still right: hold zero extra rather than invent
a number. What was wrong is what the port claimed for it. Leaving when the group
ends is not reproducing the disc's pacing — it is leaving at the moment the game
starts waiting. Both files now say so, and so does `boot.gd`, where the comment
had inherited the same claim.

✅ The *structure* was already right, and this is the part the measurement
confirms: `_advance` is caused by the next screen arriving, never scheduled off a
timer, and the port's own comment already read *"a screen plays itself out because
something is taking its place"*. `exit_ramp_units` was deleted for an unrelated
reason and its absence is now doubly justified.

⚠️ **Only build 4 is measured, and build 4 is the one screen where the port is
unaffected** — it is the boot's end state and holds indefinitely. The two screens
this actually governs, `publisher_logo` and `developer_logos`, have no measured
dwell at all. The port's boot is **known too fast [refuted] on both, by an unmeasured
amount**. Nothing here is a number for them.

> 🔴 **WITHDRAWN, and this paragraph stood for days after the withdrawal was
> written.** "Known too fast on both" is false: the splash dwells are **declared
> on the disc** — publisher t=0…255, developer t=0…210 — corroborated over three
> cold boots to 1.1 %, and the port was already emitting each declared value plus
> the 9-unit black hold, *exactly*. See
> [Withdrawn — "the boot is known too fast [refuted]"](#-withdrawn--the-boot-is-known-too-fast-the-splash-dwells-are-declared-and-the-port-was-already-playing-them).
>
> Found 2026-08-30 by the Decoder's rule: **grep the corpus for the claim, not
> for the file you were working in.** I wrote the withdrawal as a new section and
> left the original assertion untouched, so a reader arriving here first got the
> dead answer with nothing to warn them — the same failure as a correction that
> never reaches the manifest, one layer up.

## 🔴 Withdrawn — "the boot is known too fast [refuted]". The splash dwells are declared, and the port was already playing them

Last iteration I took the Decoder's build-4 measurement — declared ~120 presented
frames, dwelled ~1 100 — and wrote into three files that the port's boot is
**"known too fast [refuted] on both splashes, by an unmeasured amount"**. That is
**withdrawn**. It was wrong, and the way it was wrong is the interesting part.

They then measured the splashes directly, over 3 cold boots:

| splash | declared | at 60 units/s | corpus wall clock |
|---|---|---|---|
| publisher (entries 10, 13) | t = 0…**255** | 4.250 s | 4.30 / 4.60 / 4.37 |
| developer (entries 11, 14) | t = 0…**210** | 3.500 s | 3.51 / 3.50 / 3.37 |

The developer agrees to **1.1 %**, two of its three runs to 0.3 %. And the port
emits **4.400 s and 3.650 s** — each declared value plus the 9-unit black hold,
exactly. ✅ **The pacing was right the whole time and no code changes.**

### What I actually did wrong

Not the arithmetic — the generalisation. Build 4 is the **title**, whose exit is
caused by something outside its timeline, so it holds. A splash's exit is caused
by nothing, so it plays its declared timeline and leaves. **The title is the
exception, not the rule.** I had one screen, it was the one screen in the boot the
port is structurally unaffected by, and I used it to overturn the two it governs.

I wrote at the time that a ratio from one screen is not a unit of pacing, and
declined to scale the splashes by nine. That refusal was right and is the only
reason this cost nothing but documentation. But refusing to apply the number
while adopting the *conclusion* it implied was half a caution: I still let one
screen's behaviour rewrite what the port claimed about two others. **The correct
move was to file build 4 as measured and leave the splashes alone**, which is
what the file now says.

### And the unit stays units

🔴 The Decoder's own container timed those same two dwells **15–20 % longer** than
both the declared values and the corpus — same disc, same declared timeline — and
three independent readings of that container's frame rate disagree with each
other. A seconds figure is one emulator's pacing on one run. The declared units
are on the disc. `authored/flow.json` `dwell` therefore takes **units**, and only
for a screen measured to wait beyond its group.

This also retires the "two timestamps would settle it" ask I filed: timestamps
were the wrong thing to author, and the measurement's own result says so.

## Refutation attempt — their two splash boundaries are not anchored the same way

Their draw stream reports *"publisher wordmark frames 6–119"* and *"developer
glows 123, wordmarks 140–209"*. Taking those spans against the declared groups:

| splash | declared units | their frames | units / frame |
|---|---|---|---|
| publisher | 255 | 6…119 = 114 | **2.237** |
| developer | 210 | 123…209 = 87 | **2.414** |

**Within one continuous boot, on one guest, those should be the same number.**
They differ by **7.9 %**, and the discrepancy runs the same direction as the
error split they have open — publisher +4.1 % where the developer is 1.1 %.

The file suggests why, and it is not the guest's clock: **the two boundaries are
anchored on different elements.** The developer span starts at its *glows*; the
publisher span is reported as starting at its *wordmark*. Those are 15 units
apart — every wordmark on both splashes is `alpha > 0` from t=16, every glow from
t=1 — and the publisher **has a glow**, `palogo_sqex_eff`, visible t=1…44,
structurally identical to the developer's three. So either frame 6 is the
publisher's glow and is mislabelled, or the publisher span genuinely starts 15
units later than the developer's and the two are not comparable quantities.

⚠️ I cannot tell which from here — it is their log, and the answer is one grep for
`palogo_sqex_eff` in it. Recording it because a 7.9 % internal inconsistency and
an unexplained 4.1 % error on the same screen are more likely one problem than
two. ⚠️ It also does **not** touch the corpus comparison, which is a separate
instrument (3 cold boots, not this draw log); their 4.1 % may still be real.

## Their corrected boundaries check out against the file — all six, exactly

The Decoder found the cause of the 7.9 % I reported, and it was worse than the
anchor mismatch I proposed: **the developer splash batches six quads into one
draw and their log dumps only the first two.** While the three glows are alive
they occupy that prefix, so the three wordmarks are invisible to the log until
the glows stop at t=45. *"Developer wordmarks first drawn at frame 140"* was the
logging prefix shifting, not the game. The anchor difference I found was a
symptom; the truncation was the cause. It is also what hid `palogo_anima`.

Their fix is to count `indices / 4`, which the 8-vertex dump cap cannot touch.
Every one of the six resulting calibration points matches this export:

| splash | their transition | their t | export |
|---|---|---|---|
| publisher | 1→2 quads | 15 | `palogo_sqex` joins at **t=16** |
| publisher | 2→1 | 45 | `palogo_sqex_eff` ends **t=44** |
| publisher | last drawn | 255 | group ends **t=255** ✅ |
| developer | 3→6 quads | 15 | three wordmarks join at **t=16** |
| developer | 6→3 | 45 | three glows end **t=44** |
| developer | last drawn | 210 | group ends **t=210** ✅ |

The two 15-vs-16 rows are a half-open boundary, not a disagreement: they name the
last frame at the old count, the export names the first instant at the new one.

✅ A second thing falls out that neither of us was looking for: their quad counts
are **1 and 2** on the publisher against **3 and 6** on the developer, and a
count restricted to *sprite-bearing* elements reproduces exactly that. So
`palogo_eff0` — the layerless forced backdrop — is **not in the batch they log**,
confirmed from the file. Their instrument and this export agree on which element
is the odd one out, having disagreed about it in every earlier iteration.

### Refutation attempt — does the drift actually explain the corpus's 4.1 %?

Their four segment rates recompute exactly (1.765 / 2.165 / 2.308 / 2.357; the
developer's two agreeing to 2.1 %, the run rising 33.5 %). The explanation is that
the publisher runs in the first seconds where the rate is furthest from its later
value. Testing what that predicts for the *corpus*:

| publisher ÷ developer | ratio |
|---|---|
| declared (255 ÷ 210) | 1.214 |
| **their drift predicts** | **1.369** |
| corpus, 3 cold boots | **1.278** |

**Sign confirmed, magnitude not.** The corpus ratio does sit above declared, which
is what the drift predicts and is real evidence. But their container's drift
would inflate it by 12.8 % where the corpus shows 5.3 % — roughly 2.4× too
strong. So drift of *some* size is doing the work; drift of *their* size is not.

⚠️ And the reason to be careful here is that the move is the one I just got wrong:
the 4.1 % is a property of the **corpus**, a different instrument (3 cold boots,
elsewhere), and the drift was measured in **their container**. Transferring it is
exactly what I did carrying build 4 onto the splashes. A general warm-up is
plausible for any emulator, so this is not baseless — but it is unconfirmed for
the corpus, and the magnitude gap is the evidence that the corpus's drift is not
theirs. It cannot be closed without the corpus's own frame log.

✅ Untouched by any of it: the declared **255** and **210**, and the port's
4.400 s / 3.650 s. Neither uses their draw log.

### The guard this puts on `keyframe_units_per_second`

⚠️ *"No single units-per-frame figure describes a run"* is a statement about
**emulator presentation pacing**, and a later reader could easily take it as
grounds to revisit the port's `60`. It is not. 60 is the **game's logical unit
rate** (HANDOFF Q1, measured), the port renders at its own frame rate and
converts through it, and guest pacing cannot reach it. `authored/timing.json` now
says so at the constant itself, where someone about to change it will read it.

## The n=1 disclosure, and the one port constant that rests on a single run

The Decoder disclosed that their `ARM=early` capture silently loses its trigger
**~40 % of the time** — two of five runs logged `ARMED EARLY` and produced no
draw log at all, indistinguishable in the session log from a run that armed. So
every draw-stream figure of theirs is **n = 1**.

That is worth more than the number it was attached to, because the port authors
constants from those runs. Auditing which: exactly one,
`black_hold_units = 9`. Everything else comes from the disc (the declared dwells
255/210, the settle window, the plate period), from the exporter, or from
multi-sample measurements (Q1's unit rate over seven frames, Q5's navigation).

**9 is not wrong, and three of its supports have moved.** Its conversion used a
105-frame count their own truncation fix has revised to 114; its second
corroboration (2.231) is the figure behind their retracted plate period; and a
run-average units-per-frame is the wrong shape for a 3–4 frame event now that the
rate is known to rise 33 % across a boot. Redone on their corrected local
segments, their two runs give **8.95** and **6.71** units.

⚠️ Those two were reconciled as replicating "within the ±1 both are quantised
to". **Overlapping error bars are not agreeing central values** — one frame is a
third of this quantity. The range is ~6.5–9.2 and the port sits at the top of it.

The value stays. Changing it would be my arithmetic on their instrument, and this
port does not author a number the corpus has not given; it is filed as a proposal
in `BLOCKED.md` with the one run that would settle it. ✅ And what is not in doubt
is that the hold is **real**: until this was implemented the port had no black
frame at all where the oracle measures a plateau.

### Their statistics, checked

Their per-boot excesses reproduce exactly: **+0.89 %, +8.24 %, +6.79 %**, spread
7.35 pp, wider than the 5.30 pp gap under test — so boot 1 alone essentially *is*
the declared ratio. Their concession is right and my 2.4× cannot carry the weight
I gave it.

One refinement, which cuts **against** their concession rather than for it: their
2.3 σ uses the *population* SD (3.178). At n = 3 the sample SD (3.892) is the
right estimator, giving **1.89 σ** — their run is *less* of an outlier than they
credited themselves with. Testing the other question, whether the corpus mean
differs from their prediction, gives t = 3.27 on 2 df, p ≈ 0.08. **Neither
framing reaches significance**, which is where both of us landed anyway.

📌 Their sharpening of the instrument point is the keeper: a truncated log and a
`--screen=NAME` render at t=0 both return a **complete, well-formed answer to a
different question**. That is why neither looks like an error — nothing inside
either view can tell you it is not the view you asked for.

## P6 gate — sound on the P5 walk, verified, and the tool I nearly shipped instead

`tools/port/verify-menu-audio`. Until now the evidence that P6's gate was met was
that `audio.play("move")` appears in `boot.gd` — evidence that a *call is
written*, not that a sound reaches the bus. Those differ, and this project has
the case to prove it: the black hold was implemented, called, and emitted nothing
for five milestones.

It needs no sound card. Godot records the Master bus to a WAV under the Dummy
driver. Three runs on `main_menu`: the walk (`down,down,accept,cancel,up`) and
two controls — `wait`×5 for the bed alone, and `left`×5 for **presses that reach
`_unhandled_input` and are bound to nothing** (Q5: left/right do nothing).

| check | result |
|---|---|
| a dead press is silent | **bit-identical** to the bed alone, 114 688 samples |
| `move` on the bus | r=0.201 at 1.85 s, bed-only 0.016, margin **+0.185** |
| `confirm` | r=0.945 at 2.14 s, bed-only 0.371, margin **+0.574** |
| `back` | r=0.660 at 2.42 s, bed-only 0.195, margin **+0.465** |
| cue order vs script order | **consistent** |

The order is the strongest line and it is free: the correlator is never told
where to look, so three different templates landing in script order is three
independent searches agreeing with the log. `move`'s absolute r is low because it
is the quietest cue under the loudest part of the bed; the margin over the same
template against the bed is what carries it.

🔴 **What it cannot conclude, and must never be read as:** that these are the cues
the *game* plays. That binding is HANDOFF Q8, the Decoder's, and nothing here
re-measures it. This tool cannot tell a correct cue from a confidently wrong one.

### The instrument I nearly shipped

The first version counted envelope bursts above a multiple of the bed level. It
reported **4 cues on one run and 0 on the next, from the same script** — its
answer was set by two hand-picked constants, the multiple and a minimum run
length, and the bed level is not constant across a run. I caught it only because
I ran it twice.

The replacement has no such constant: **the exported cue file is its own
template**, the search covers the whole recording, and the verdict is a margin
over that same template matched against the bed-only control.

⚠️ Cue *length* is deliberately not asserted. The audible part of a cue is far
shorter than its wave — 0.12–0.38 s against authored 0.344–1.016 s — because the
bed masks the tail. "Elevated for 0.13 s" is a fact about the bed, not the cue,
and I came close to filing that gap as a defect.

### A check that could not be made independent

I tried to verify Q8's cue durations against the exported waves. They agree
exactly — 0.533 / 1.016 / 0.344 — **and the agreement is worthless**: the
exporter decodes from Q8's own offsets and packet counts, so the duration is
determined by the claim under test. It confirms the export is faithful to the
authored table, nothing more. Recording it because "I checked and it matched" is
exactly what a correlated instrument feels like from the inside.

## Their `.tbm` self-refutation does not reach this archive — and it fixes my guard anyway

The Decoder downgraded 38 of the forced-backdrop rule's 80 verdicts from decoded
to inferred: those elements are `.tbm`, declaring fade `ffffffff`, and a solid
white quad painted first at alpha 255 would make the screen white. No screen is
white, so a `.tbm`'s white is a modulation **on a texture** and its element alpha
says nothing about coverage — the `.t32` mistake one file extension further out.

✅ **No verdict the port ships is affected.** All six forced elements here are
`palogo_eff0.prm` and `pgloading_eff00.prm`, `role: primitive`, `kind_raw 0x10`,
fade `0xff000000`. They fall in the 42 that stay decoded. And **no layerless
full-screen element anywhere in `GP_TITLE` has a non-black fade** — checked
across all 16 screens, so the downgrade cannot touch this archive.

But their diagnosis applies to my code regardless: *an element's alpha is not its
texture's opacity, and only an untextured primitive makes the two the same fact*.
My guard was `sprite.is_none()` — a **symptom** test, the same shape as the one
they say fixed their symptom and not their cause. It would keep admitting a
`.tbm` that this exporter happens not to emit a sprite for.

The guard is now the positive test, `role == "primitive"`. It changes no verdict
today — the six are identical before and after, 16 screens still validate — and
it is correct by construction if the corpus grows.

⚠️ Not adopted from their message: their reading that the blend question now
narrows to `pbafc.prm`. That is theirs to settle and the port draws no additive
quad either way.

## Coverage is now tested per instant, because scale animates

The Decoder found that `forced_backdrop` judged screen coverage from the declared
size alone, ignoring scale — and the disc carries its own counterexample.
`pbafc.prm` declares **844×600 at alpha `ff`**, which reads as a screen-filling
cyan wash; it is scaled **2 % × 3 %** and draws about **17×18 px**, strobing and
travelling x=178→291. A moving glint. A rule reading its declared size would call
it screen-covering.

The port had the same gap and it is closed. `scale_at` interpolates scale on the
same linear ramp as the fade, and coverage is folded **into the opaque-instant
test** rather than checked once: an instant counts only where the element is both
alpha 255 *and* covering. That is the rule's own wording — "covers the screen
**and** is fully opaque **at some instant**" — where the previous code tested the
two halves at different times.

The static size prefilter is now deliberately *not* a rejection: an element scaled
**above** 100 could cover the screen from a smaller declared size, so rejecting on
declared size would have replaced one version of the bug with its mirror.

✅ **No verdict moves.** Six forced elements before and after; 16 screens validate;
the oracle figures are identical to the digit (`publisher_logo` 0.01 %,
`developer_logos` 0.01 %, `main_menu` 0.07 %, `extras` 0.19 %, `title` 0.26 %).
Their claim that all 80 forced instances sit at scale 100 reproduces on the
GP_TITLE subset, and more strongly: **no layerless full-screen element anywhere in
this archive has a non-100 scale on any keyframe.**

It is in for the reason they gave, which is the right one: the data that would
break it demonstrably exists on this disc. That is a better argument than a
failure would have been, because it does not require the bug to happen first.

### Their blend-robustness argument, checked

They classify the blend mode **undecodable with reach** and argue the rule does
not depend on it, for a black quad:

| | drawn **first** | drawn **last** |
|---|---|---|
| alpha-over, α=255 | correct | blanks the screen |
| additive, α=255 | correct — adds nothing | correct |

The table holds. An additive black quad contributes nothing at any position, so
both orders are correct under it; only alpha-over distinguishes them, and it
picks *first*. **"First" is right under both hypotheses, "last" under one** — so
`forced_backdrop`'s verdict is robust to a question neither of us can close.

It also explains a detail of the original bug that I had not accounted for:
"layerless sorts last" was *wrong* under alpha-over and merely *pointless* under
additive, which is why those screens came out **solid black** rather than
**empty**. The symptom was diagnostic of the blend mode all along.

⚠️ Not evidence that the blend is alpha-over, and I am not recording it as such.
It is the reason the port can stop waiting on it. `pbafc.prm` remains the sole
additive candidate and is outside the rule at 17×18 px; the port draws no
additive quad either way.

## P7 gate — the new-game intro plays and returns, and a defect I nearly invented

`--menu=main_menu --script=accept` walks the P7 path: Ⓐ on NEW GAME announces the
two measured screens this export skips, opens `S00A`, plays it to its natural end
at **93.33 s** against the manifest's 93.9, and returns to the title. Nine film
frames across the movie are distinct and non-black (mean 10 → 140). The gate asks
for "plays, then returns to a defined state"; that is both halves.

### The near-miss, which is the part worth keeping

Checking that the movie's audio actually reached the Master bus, I correlated the
recording against the exported `S00A.ogv` audio and got **r = −0.0068 at the
movie's known start**, with the correlator passing its own positive control at
**r = 1.0000**. A working instrument returning zero at the right place. I was one
step from filing *"the movie's own audio never reaches the bus"* — which would
have been a serious P4/P7 defect, and the inverse of the human's original report
that the intro "plays music but no voice".

It is false. Re-run on the **boot** path, where no menu bed is playing:

| against the bed-free recording | r | at |
|---|---|---|
| `ADV` voice | **0.8855** | movie start 7.6 s |
| `ADV` movie audio | **0.4178** | movie start 7.6 s |

Both present, at the same start. The movie's audio is simply quieter than the
voice mixed on top of it, and in the P7 run the **menu bed masked it below
detection** while the louder voice survived. The bed carries across into the
movie — `play_bed` is documented as carrying across submenus — so the P7 run was
never a clean measurement.

🔴 **The lesson is about the control, not the bed.** I validated the correlator on
clean data and then ran it on masked data. A positive control proves the
instrument works *on the material it was given*; it says nothing about whether
the instrument can see through an interferer that was not in the control. **A
negative result needs its own positive control under the same masking**, and this
is the third time in this corpus that an unvalidated negative nearly became a
finding — after "10 of 18 elements transparent at rest" and the burst counter that
read 4 cues on one run and 0 on the next.

`tools/port/verify-video-audio`'s header already warned that a fidelity
comparison needs cross-correlation alignment *and* an agreed downmix. It was
right, and I would add the third condition it did not know to state.

⚠️ What is **not** settled: whether the bed *should* carry into the movie and on
to the title after it. It does, it is authored that way, and nobody has watched
the game do either. That is a separate question from this one and is not filed as
a defect — only as unmeasured.

✅ Also checked, from their `compose` finding: `GP_TITLE` declares **115 `.t32`,
45 `.rat`, 18 `.prm` and no `.tbm` at all**, and every non-primitive element has a
resolvable sprite. The "draws no pixels for an unresolvable element" hazard —
the shape that hid `pteff05` from both renderers — does not reach this archive.

## `ScreenView.skipped` was correct and unread since P1 — now it says so itself

The draw loop has always tracked what it could not draw, with the comment *"a
silently missing element looks like art"*. **Nothing ever printed it.** For eight
milestones the port could drop an element on every frame and report it to nobody.

That is the same shape as the black hold — implemented, called, emitting nothing
until somebody filmed it — and as `verify-screen` scoring two blank frames `OK`.
A fact that needs someone to remember to look at it is a fact that goes
unnoticed, so `_note_structural` **prints from inside `ScreenView`** rather than
returning a value for a caller to surface. Routing it through a caller is exactly
what did not happen.

Only **structural** skips are reported — `(no sprite in the export)` and
`(sprite failed to load)`. `(transparent at rest)` is ordinary animation, true of
every element at some instant, and reporting it would bury the two that mean
something under the one that never does.

✅ **Nothing is being skipped today**: 0 across every screen, on the boot path and
per-screen. This is a guard, not a fix. The export corroborates it — no missing
sprite PNG, no element at alpha 0 on every keyframe, none at scale 0.

### 🔴 And the first version of that scan was a false pass

My first run reported *"0 structural skips"* on ten screens. **`screen_view.gd`
did not parse.** I had inserted a line at three tabs inside a four-tab block —
the Python `assert old in s` passed because a three-tab string is a *substring*
of a four-tab line — which orphaned a `continue`. Godot loaded nothing, printed
nothing, and `grep -c` faithfully counted zero.

A count of zero from a dead script is indistinguishable from a count of zero from
a clean one, and I had already written the sentence claiming the clean reading.
The scan now counts the screen summary line as a **positive control**: if the
script did not run, `summary-lines=0` says so, and the zero cannot be read as a
pass. That is the third time this session that a well-formed answer to a
different question nearly became a finding.

⚠️ Note the mechanism, because it will recur: matching indented code by substring
is unanchored, and it silently matched a *shallower* indent than the one in the
file.

## Refutation attempt — "the element declared first paints first"

All six of the port's forced-backdrop elements sit at **element index 0**. So on
those six screens the rule's verdict is indistinguishable from a far simpler
hypothesis I had not tested: *the first-declared element is painted first.* If
that held, `forced_backdrop` would be an elaborate way to reproduce the file's own
ordering, and my six verdicts would be no evidence for it at all.

**It is refuted, on 8 of 16 screens.** Index 0 is *not* painted first on
`build_00`/`build_01` (position 2), `extras` (7), `title` (13), `title_jp` (18)
and — decisively — `main_menu`, where index 0 is **`pteff00`, painted last**,
position 15 of 16. `pteff00` is the Decoder's own *measured* control: the game
puts the first-declared element on top of that screen.

So declaration order is not paint order, the six coincidences are coincidences,
and the rule is not redundant.

⚠️ What survives as a real limitation: **those six screens, taken alone, cannot
distinguish the two hypotheses.** The evidence separating them comes from
elsewhere in the archive. Worth stating because it is the exact weakness in the
Decoder's `pfbase.tbm` upgrade — *"element 0 of the save/load frame, and the
measured order starts [0, 1, 2, …]"*. An order that equals the trivial order is
weak evidence for **any** rule, since every rule preserving declaration order
agrees with it. ✅ Their claim survives, but on evidence they did not cite: it is
`main_menu`'s `pteff00` that rules out the trivial reading, not the save/load
frame itself.

## The menu bed plays under the cutscene, nobody decided that, and it stays

`MenuAudio.stop_bed()` exists and is **called from nowhere**. So the music that
starts when the main menu goes live runs through the cutscene and on past it —
and since `authored/audio.json` sets `loop: "restart"`, it then loops. Both
follow from the source and the authored data alone; no measurement is needed to
establish them.

The port therefore emits **two unrelated music tracks at once** during `S00A`:
the movie carries its own music and effects, and the menu bed is underneath it.

### It is not being fixed, and that is the decision

`PORT-MISSION`'s rule is to leave an unmeasured detail **plainly wrong rather
than plausibly invented**, and this is the textbook case for it. Music over a
cutscene is wrong in a way any listener catches in one second. Ducking or
stopping the bed would sound entirely right — and would be a guess about a game
nobody has watched. **The audible version gets fixed; the plausible version ships
forever.**

So `_play_video` now *announces* it, the way `skipped_chain` already announces
the two screens NEW GAME jumps over:

```
  -> video S00A at 1.13 s (…)
     🔴 the menu bed is STILL PLAYING under this movie -- unmeasured,
        left audible on purpose (BLOCKED.md: does menu music duck?)
```

It fires on the menu path and correctly stays silent on the boot path, where no
bed has started. `stop_bed` is **kept**, not deleted: the day a capture says
whether the game's menu music ducks under a movie, it is the one line to change.

⚠️ This is the mirror of `ScreenView.skipped` from the previous iteration — a
fact recorded and never surfaced, against a capability provided and never used.
Both were invisible for the same reason: **nothing fails when they are missed.**

### 🔴 And my correlator is not trustworthy on music under music

Chasing this I ran the envelope correlator over the P7 recording repeatedly and
got answers that moved with the window and the template: the bed at r=0.42 with
one template and no peak at all above 0.4 with another; a post-movie window
search whose range **excluded the correct answer** and duly reported the bed's
own loop as unidentifiable. I was drafting *"46 s of unexplained audio after the
movie"* when the explanation was the authored `loop: "restart"` sitting in a file
I had not re-read.

The instrument is sound where it was validated — discrete SFX against a bed, with
margins of +0.5 over a negative control. It is **not** sound for music under
music at comparable level, where every candidate scores 0.15–0.42 and nothing
separates. ⚠️ A margin is only meaningful against a control **at the same SNR**,
and I did not have one here. That is the fourth near-miss of this kind, and the
first where I would have invented an *anomaly* rather than a defect.

Nothing in this section rests on that correlator. The finding is `stop_bed` having
no caller, which is a fact about the source.

## `wait:<seconds>`, and the bed's loop seam is 3.4 seconds of silence

The port could not be asked to **run for a stated duration**. A bare `wait`
script step is `pass` — it returns as soon as the screen settles — so nothing
happening after the settle point was observable from a harness at all. The music
bed made that concrete: an 87.7 s track whose restart nobody had watched, on a
harness whose longest menu run was under seven seconds.

`--script=wait:105` fixes that, and the first thing it found was the answer.

### The bed loops, exactly where it should

Recording the Master bus over 132 s with nothing but the menu playing — no movie,
no voice, a clean signal — the bed's `t=2…17 s` template matches twice:

| | r | pass begins |
|---|---|---|
| first pass | **0.947** | 0.0 s |
| second pass | **0.885** | **87.8 s** |

The track is **87.7 s**. So `loop: "restart"` does what `authored/audio.json`
says: replays from sample 0 at the track's end, no trimming, no loop point.
✅ First end-to-end observation of P6's looping behaviour.

### And the seam is measurably as bad as it was authored to be

`loop_why` predicted *"the listener hears the track's own fade-out and the silence
after it before the music comes back"*. Measured off the bus:

| window around the seam | RMS |
|---|---|
| −8 … −4 s | 2057 |
| −4 … −2 s | 714 |
| −2 … −0.3 s | 431 |
| +0.3 … +2 s | 2164 |

and **36 consecutive 50 ms windows below peak 300, from 84.40 s to 87.80 s** —
about **3.4 seconds of near-silence** before the music returns. That is long
enough to read as *the music stopped*, not as a loop.

The claim was right and is now a number. ⚠️ It does **not** license trimming to
the fade: that would still invent a loop point, and an invented one is
indistinguishable from a decoded one a month later. The measurement is recorded
to make the cost of the missing loop point concrete, in `authored/audio.json`.

### 🔴 My first `wait:` was wrong by 39 %, and the way it was wrong matters

It used `create_timer`, which counts down on the frame delta. In an **idle**
scene this container throttles and the delta it reports is not the time that
passed: a requested 30 s took **41.7 s** of wall clock while the port reported
30. Measured against `date` either side of the process, with a no-wait control
to subtract 1.21 s of startup.

Now polled on `Time.get_ticks_msec()`: 30 s requested, **31.38 s** wall, +4.6 %.

⚠️ **This is idle-specific and is not a general clock fault**, which I checked
before writing any of it down. Over a whole boot, where things are animating, the
port's clock tracks wall clock to **within 4 %** — 10.43 s wall against 10.82 s
reported. So the port's *animation* timing is sound and the earlier splash-dwell
agreement (4.400 s and 3.650 s against declared 255 and 210 units) **stands**; I
had briefly believed it did not.

What is genuinely unsound is `_elapsed` **while idle**: it reported 23.21 s across
30 real seconds of waiting. Every timing the port prints during animation is
fine; a timing that spans a wait is not.

📌 The reason to care: the only reason to hold a screen is to observe something on
a **real** clock — an audio loop, a timeout, an idle return. A timer that
silently ran 39 % long would have put every such observation at the wrong instant,
and the bed-loop result above would have been the first casualty. It survived only
because the seam was read off the **recording's** clock, which the bed's own known
length calibrates.

## Two harness bugs, and the defect the second one was hiding

### 1. `--capture` with `--script` photographed the frame *before* the script

`--capture` fired in `_ready` and quit. With `--script` that is **before the
first press**: at t=0.133 s, with 10 of 16 elements still transparent. Two runs
differing by two `down` presses came out **bit-identical**, and I read that as
*"runtime focus never changes"* — a confident wrong finding that `--shots`
contradicted within a minute.

Fixed: with a script, the capture defers to the end of the run, through the same
`_capture_to` member the boot path already used. Verified — the two runs now
differ at max 235, and the capture lands at t=82 units instead of t=8.

### 2. `--boot --capture=` wrote no file at all — ✅ FIXED, see below

`_finish_boot()` is reachable only from the overlay-quit branch, but the boot
quit first: line 412 exits when `_film == "" and _overlay_spec.is_empty()`, and
`_overlay_spec` is **cleared when the overlay is raised**. So a plain `--boot`
ended at 10.99 s, 1.2 s before its own scheduled 12.21 s, and the capture never
happened.

Confirmed pre-existing by stashing my changes and re-running. Fixed by also
requiring `_overlay_quit_at < 0.0`. The boot now runs to 12.19 s, prints *"boot
ends on title + press_start"*, and writes the file.

⚠️ The flag has a doc comment explaining that it exists so the boot has an
artifact of its own instead of a 600-PNG filmstrip. **It has been producing
nothing.** A flag that silently writes no file is the same failure as
`ScreenView.skipped` and `stop_bed`: provided, plausible, and never exercised.

### 3. 🔴 And the artifact it now produces shows the plate is missing

The boot's end frame is **bit-identical** to `--screen=title` at the same instant
— max difference 0. The `PRESS Ⓐ` plate is not in the port's end state.

`ptbtn00`'s own fade explains it exactly:

| t | 0 | 214 | **236** | **238** | 244 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| alpha | 0 | 0 | **255** | **255** | 0 |

The plate is visible for **8 units — 0.133 s** — and the boot captures at
**t=246.54**, two and a half units after it has gone.

That is not an accident of frame timing; the code chose it. `_overlay_quit_at`
takes `max(view.settle_time(), overlay.settle_time())`, and its comment says why:
*"the plate arrives at t=238 and build 4 is still fading up from black until
t=261 … quitting when the plate lands photographs a title that has not finished
presenting."* Both halves are true, and together they mean **the two states
cannot both be in one frame.** The port picked the title, and the consequence —
that the plate is in no artifact at all — was never written down.

⚠️ I am **not** moving the trigger. The earlier reasoning is sound and the
measurement it protects is real; picking the other instant would trade a missing
plate for a visibly dark title, which is the swap that was already made once and
regretted. What settles it is what the *game* does with the plate after t=244 —
filed.

📌 Worth naming: defect 3 was **invisible while defect 2 existed**. A capture flag
that writes nothing cannot show you a missing element. The broken tool was hiding
the thing the tool was built to find, and neither was noticed because the absence
of a file looks exactly like not having run the command.

### What was *not* wrong, and how I nearly recorded that it was

Runtime focus works. Per-step `--shots` across `down,down` differ at max 232–233,
with the differing boxes tracking down the button column. My contrary reading came
from analysing 410 `f_NNN` files after asking for `--shots=…/s` — **the filenames
did not match the flag I passed, and that was visible in my first `ls`.** A
verbatim re-run produces six correctly-named per-step shots. I do not know where
those 410 files came from, which is itself the point: I drew a conclusion from a
file set whose provenance I never checked.

## The `PRESS Ⓐ` plate: four bugs in a row, and a number I have been misquoting

Last iteration I filed that the plate was visible for 8 units and simply missed by
the boot's capture instant. That was wrong in the direction that matters: **the
plate could not be drawn at any instant at all**, and three separate faults had to
be removed before it appeared. The fourth is a correction to figures I have quoted
to the Decoder repeatedly.

### 1. `--time=` was silently ignored on half the screens

`pose_at` did `if holding: t = settle_instant`. The requested instant was
**discarded** on every screen with a settle window ≥ 30 units — `title`,
`press_start`. The flag parsed, the log printed the time asked for, and the pose
came from somewhere else entirely.

`ScreenView.frozen` now marks an explicitly pinned instant and skips both clamps.

### 2. The settle window picked an interval where nothing is visible

`press_start`'s keyframes are 0, 214, 236, 238, 244. The widest keyframe-free gap
is **0…214** — the dead stretch *before* the plate exists, where `ptbtn00` is
alpha 0 throughout — so its settle instant was **t=107**, and every question about
that screen was answered there.

🔴 **A gap in which nothing is visible is not a settled state.** The exporter now
rejects those intervals. `press_start` becomes [214, 236] — 22 units, under the
runtime's 30-unit bar — so it falls back to each element's own hold, which is the
plate, opaque, as the disc declares it.

⚠️ It disturbs no window the settle instant was measured on: `title` keeps
[160, 236], the interval the Decoder's draw stream independently found the game's
clock freezing in.

### 3. An authored entry of mine was suppressing the decode

Even then the plate stayed dark, because `authored/timing.json`'s
`looping_focus_records` entry for `press_start/ptbtn00` made `_draw` take the
focus path — which draws the focus record **instead of** the base sprite:

| | with the entry | without |
|---|---|---|
| `press_start` t=236 | max **0** | max **252.5** |
| t=240 | max 0 | max 252.5 |
| t=250 | max 15.3 | max 252.5 |

I authored that entry to give the plate a glow. It substituted a dim glow at the
wrong phase for the element's own bright sprite, on the screen whose entire
content is that sprite. **Deleted** — an authored guess that overrides decoded
data with a worse answer is removed, not tuned. The glow is not claimed either
way; drawing both would be a rendering rule nobody has measured.

✅ The boot's end artifact now contains the plate: mean **95.7** in its region
against **33.6** for the title art alone, and the overlay reports `drew 1:
ptbtn00` where it reported `drew 0`.

### 4. 🔴 `verify-capture` has been measuring a different pose than it reported

It passed `--time=5.9617` for the title — t=357.7 units, the Decoder's refined
sweep fit — and **that value was never applied**, because of fault 1. Every title
figure this tool has printed, including the **0.26 %** I have quoted to the
Decoder more than once, was measured at the **settle instant, t=198**, under a
note claiming t=357.7.

Honouring the flag made it visible: t=357.7 is past the title's own group, which
ends at t=269, so the whole screen posed at its faded-out final keyframes and the
disagreement went to **30.97 %**. The instant was only ever meant for the `ptloop`
leaf, which runs to t=600 and is looped separately by `loop_leaf`. Applying it to
the whole screen was always wrong and was harmless only while it was ignored.

The splashes had the same shape: `--time=99` was an idiom for "settled" that
worked only because it was discarded. Both rows now pose by omission, and the
tool's note says what it does.

| | before | now |
|---|---|---|
| `title` | 0.26 % *(labelled t=357.7, actually t=198)* | **0.21 %** at t=198, labelled t=198 |
| `publisher_logo` | 0.01 % | 0.01 % |
| `developer_logos` | 0.01 % | 0.01 % |
| `main_menu` | 0.07 % | 0.08 % |
| `extras` | 0.19 % | 0.19 % |

The agreements were real; the **stated pose was not**. Corrected with the
Decoder, since they have those numbers.

### The flag audit that started it

All 16 flags `boot.gd` parses were exercised for an observable effect after last
iteration's two silent ones. `--pose=rest` (max 111 against the timeline),
`--play` (enters the menu), `--no-hold` (max 255 on two screens) all pass. `--time`
was the one that did not, and it took a screen whose content is a single late
spike to make the failure visible.

## The title's residual is the sweep phase, and the sweeps fit at ~400 units, not 357.7

Last iteration I found `verify-capture` was passing the Decoder's refined sweep
fit as `--time=5.9617` and having it silently discarded, so the value had **never
been tested**. Asking for it also destroyed the frame — t=357.7 is past the
title's own group end at t=269 — which is why nobody noticed.

`--leaf-time=<seconds>` separates the two clocks: the screen sits at its settled
pose, the `ptloop` leaf is placed at whatever phase is under test. That makes the
fit testable for the first time.

### Controls first

* The renderer is **deterministic** — three runs at one leaf phase are
  bit-identical, max difference 0. So variation across phases is signal, not noise.
* The sweeps are **detectable** — two phases differ over **0.3953 %** of the frame
  at a 10 % threshold. A comparison at this scale can see them.

### The fit

Sweeping the leaf across its full 600-unit span against
`live-title-build4-no-plate.png`, structural disagreement at a 25 % threshold:

| leaf phase | differing |
|---|---|
| 240 units | 0.1410 % |
| 320 units | 0.3395 % |
| **357.7 — the Decoder's fit** | **0.2532 %** |
| 390 | 0.0129 % |
| **395–402** | **0.0124 %** |
| 405 | 0.0127 % |
| 440 | 0.2033 % |

A sharp basin at **390–415 units**, an order of magnitude below everything
around it, and **20× better than t=357.7**.

### What that means, and what it does not

✅ **The title's 0.21 % residual is the sweep phase, not structure.** At the
fitted phase the disagreement falls to **0.0124 %** — the same order as the
splashes' 0.01 %. The port's title rendering is structurally right; the sweeps
were simply somewhere else in their loop.

🔴 **The port does not adopt 400 units, and `verify-capture` is not re-posed to
it.** That would be tuning until they match, which this repository's own tooling
header warns against. The port loops the leaf freely — there is no phase
parameter to set — and 400 units is a property of *that capture's instant*, not
of the game.

⚠️ Reach: this assumes the port's leaf geometry and sprite are otherwise correct.
A systematic error in how the sweeps are drawn could be absorbed by shifting the
phase, and one capture cannot separate those. What makes the result worth having
anyway is the **sharpness** — a 20× drop over 40 units is not something a
geometry error would produce at a wrong phase.

⚠️ And it does not tell the Decoder their 357.7 is wrong *as a measurement of
whatever they measured it on*. It says the phase that matches this capture is
~400. If those are the same quantity, one of the two is off by ~42 units; if they
are not, this is a second quantity nobody had.

## A second capture closes the sweep-geometry question, and the plate matches at 0.00093 %

Last iteration's leaf-phase fit came with a caveat I could not close: *a
systematic error in how the port draws the sweeps could be absorbed by shifting
the phase, and one capture cannot separate those.* A second capture can, and
`live-title-press-a.png` — the title **with** the plate — was sitting in the
corpus unused.

### The second capture fits at a different phase, and better

| capture | pose | differing |
|---|---|---|
| `live-title-build4-no-plate.png` | settled, leaf at ~400 units | **0.0124 %** |
| `live-title-press-a.png` | t=237, everything | **0.00093 %** |

**Two independent captures, two different sweep phases, both fitting to 0.01 % or
better.** A geometry error in how the sweeps are drawn would leave a floor in
*both*, and at a phase-independent level. Neither has one. ✅ The caveat is closed
and the port's sweep rendering is not systematically wrong.

The two phases are also consistent with each other rather than merely different:
the plate is opaque only at t=236–238, so a frame containing it is early
(t≈237) and a frame without it is either earlier or later. The no-plate capture
fits at leaf ~400 — 6.7 s in, well past the plate's window — and its filename
says it is build 4 alone. Both readings agree on where each frame sits.

⚠️ I nearly drew a further inference — that the no-plate capture *dates* the
plate's disappearance and therefore answers the BLOCKED question about whether
the plate stays up. It does not: the filename says `build4-no-plate`, so the
capture was taken **of build 4 alone, deliberately without the overlay**. It
carries no information about how long a plate lasts. That row stays open.

### Capture 1 is not a whole-screen instant, which corroborates `loop_leaf`

Sweeping the *whole screen's* time against the no-plate capture, the best is
**0.1483 % at t=230**, degrading sharply past 240 as the group fades out — an
order of magnitude worse than the leaf-only fit's 0.0124 % at phase ~400, which
the main timeline cannot reach without fading everything.

So that capture is **not** "the screen at instant t". It is the screen **settled**
with the sweeps **still looping** — which is exactly what `authored/rendering.json`'s
`loop_leaf_on_screens: ["title"]` models. That decision was authored from the
leaf's zero slack; this is the first independent evidence for it.

### 🔴 The 1 % floor was the plate not being drawn at all

Before any of that, every sweep phase against capture 2 gave a flat ~1.0 %, with
the residual a row of glyph-sized blobs on the plate's own position.

`--screen=X --overlay=Y` pushed the **raw elapsed clock** into the overlay — 9
units at the moment `--capture` fires. `press_start` is transparent until t=214.
So the one flag whose entire purpose is *put the plate on the title* drew nothing
and reported `drew 0`, and the frame read as a title with no plate.

A static overlay now poses at **its own arrival**. The `--boot` path is untouched:
there the shared clock is the finding — the 120 units between build 4's last ramp
and the plate's `a=255` is a fixed interval on one timeline.

⚠️ My first patch for this was wrong and I nearly committed the comment for it:
I wrote that *"nothing outside a boot sequence drives the overlay's clock"*. It is
driven — from `view.time_units`, every frame. The symptom was identical either
way, and only re-reading the log after the fix failed showed the cause was the
opposite of what I had written down.

### The new row

`title_plate` joins `verify-capture` at **0.00%** — two orders below every other
row, which makes it the most sensitive regression detector in the harness.

⚠️ Its instant is **fitted, not measured**. t=237 is where this capture's content
places it, found by sweeping. Choosing which frame to compare against is what
every row here does, but the 0.00093 % is a floor for *that pose*, not a general
statement of accuracy.

## `--focus=` did nothing on the menu path, and the corpus had an untested focus capture

Two unused live captures were sitting in `docs/re/captures/title-builds/`.
`live-main-menu-options-focused.png` is the menu with **OPTIONS** focused — the
only capture of a *known* focus state — and it was untestable, because
`--focus=` **silently did nothing on the `--menu` path**.

The flag parsed, was stored in `_force_focus`, and was applied to
`view.focused_id` at startup — and then `_menu_enter` overwrote it with the
authored initial focus on every entry. Every run logged `focus ptbtn01` whatever
was asked for, and all five buttons produced the same frame. It is now pushed
into the **menu model**, not just the view, so navigation continues from where it
was forced rather than jumping back on the first press.

### The port's focus rendering is right, measured against the oracle

Rendering each of the five buttons focused, against each capture:

| focused | vs `live-main-menu-options-focused` | vs `live-main-menu` |
|---|---|---|
| `ptbtn01` NEW GAME | 0.7352 % | **0.0705 %** |
| `ptbtn02` LOAD GAME | 0.8204 % | 0.8378 % |
| `ptbtn03` TUTORIAL | 0.7220 % | 0.7365 % |
| **`ptbtn04` OPTIONS** | **0.1355 %** | 0.7449 % |
| `ptbtn05` EXTRAS | 0.7029 % | 0.7236 % |

Each capture picks out exactly one button, by **5×** and **10×**. This is the
first time the port's focus rendering has been checked against the game at all —
the harness's own `main_menu` row uses an *authored* focus, so it could never
have caught a focus error.

### What that settles, and what it does not

✅ The port draws focus on the right button, distinguishably.
✅ `live-main-menu.png` shows **NEW GAME** focused, so the authored
`initial_focus: ptbtn01` matches the one frame it can be checked against.

⚠️ **It does not overturn HANDOFF Q5**, which measured initial focus as *unstable
boot to boot* across four runs. One capture showing `ptbtn01` is consistent with
instability, not evidence against it. The value stays **authored**, with the
agreement recorded beside it. Reading this as "initial focus is settled" would be
exactly the over-generalisation from a single observation that this corpus keeps
having to withdraw.

`main_menu_options` joins `verify-capture` at 0.13 %.

⚠️ Still unused: `live-attract-title-press-a-band.png`, a 1279×**120** strip
rather than a full frame. It needs a banded comparison the harness does not do,
so it is named here rather than quietly left out.

## The last unused capture, placed — and its residual is the oracle's, not the port's

`live-attract-title-press-a-band.png` was the one live capture nothing consumed.
Following last iteration's rule — *an unused capture is a signal about the
harness* — it turned out the same way as the previous two: nothing about the
capture was unusable, the harness simply could not compare a **band**. It is
1279×**120**, not a full frame.

### Placing it

Sliding it down the render, structural difference against the port:

| y | differing |
|---|---|
| 300 | 51.99 % |
| 500 | 19.61 % |
| 515 | 9.14 % |
| **520** | **0.354 %** |
| 525 | 8.87 % |
| 555 | 24.02 % |

**y = 520**, a 25× drop over five pixels. Measured, not guessed. Sweeping the
instant at that offset puts it at **t = 236–238** — the plate's own opaque
window, the same instant the full-frame `title_plate` row fits.

### 🔴 The 0.354 % is not the port's error

Three comparisons separate it:

| | differing |
|---|---|
| port's band vs `live-title-press-a`'s same band | **0.000 %** |
| `live-title-press-a`'s band vs the attract band *(oracle vs oracle)* | **0.301 %** |
| port's band vs the attract band | 0.354 % |

The port reproduces one capture's band **exactly**. The two captures differ from
*each other* by 0.301 %, which is nearly the whole residual.

And that oracle-to-oracle difference is two thin horizontal strips — **248×5 px**
and **206×1 px** — which is the shape of a sub-pixel edge difference or capture
noise, not of a state difference.

⚠️ I had started writing that the *attract-returned* title differs from the boot
title, which would have been a finding about the game inferred from 0.3 % of a
band. It is two hairlines. The connected-component breakdown is what stopped it,
and I would not have run it if the number alone had looked small enough to
dismiss or large enough to report — it was in the range where you have to look.

So `title_band` joins the harness at 0.35 %, and its job is to **stay near the
oracle-to-oracle gap**, not to reach zero. A row whose target is not zero has to
say so, or the next person tunes toward it.

✅ **All eight live captures in the corpus are now used.** Three were sitting idle
and all three were blocked by the harness, not by the capture: an overlay posed at
t=9 that drew nothing, a `--focus=` overwritten on every menu entry, and a banded
comparison that did not exist.

## `MODDING.md` had five rules and no check. Now it has one, and all five pass

`MODDING.md` opens by calling modding *a constraint on the exporter **today**,
not a later feature*. Nothing verified it. That is the shape this port keeps
finding — a rule stated, believed and unexercised: the black hold implemented and
never called, `ScreenView.skipped` written and never read, `stop_bed` provided and
never used, `--focus` parsed and overwritten on every menu entry.

`tools/port/check-modding` covers all five. Every one passes today, so it is a
**guard, not a fix**: its value is that the next thing to break one says so.

| rule | check | result |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — one asset, one file | every referenced sprite present, none orphaned, no split names | **174 / 174**, exact |
| 2 — recognisable names | no hex or hash-shaped filenames | none |
| 3 — modern formats | extensions confined to json/png/ogg/ogv (+ sidecars) | clean |
| 4 — base and overrides | `data/mods` gitignored *and* read by the exporter | both |
| 5 — provenance | every generated JSON carries a `source` | 17 / 17 |

### It is proved to fail

A check that has never failed has not been shown to work — the lesson from
`check-capture`, which once passed a file with 36 % holes punched through it. Three
controls, each failing correctly with a non-zero exit:

* a `.cmd` sidecar with its header stripped → rule 3;
* a `bogus.bmp` in the sprite tree → rule 3;
* one orphaned PNG → rule 1, *"174 referenced, 175 present"*.

### The one thing it found: an unlabelled generated file in the asset tree

The two `.cmd` encode-cache sidecars sat beside the `.ogv`s in the modder-facing
tree with no line saying what they were — a bare ffmpeg command next to a video
reads as something to edit or delete. They now carry a header stating that they
are generated, are not assets, and that the way to change a video is an override
under `data/mods/`.

Two details worth keeping:

* the header is **excluded from the cache key**, so rewording it does not
  re-encode four minutes of video. A cache that punishes documentation gets
  documented once and never again.
* the sidecar is now refreshed whenever its **text** differs, not only when a
  re-encode happens. It used to be written inside the `!fresh` branch — which
  meant a header change could never reach an existing export, because nothing
  that reads the header triggers the write that updates it. The explanation would
  have been correct in the source and absent on disc. Confirmed: two consecutive
  exports, 20 s and 19 s, header present, no re-encode.

### And a question I asked the Decoder that I could partly answer myself

Last iteration I asked whether the 0.301 % between two of their captures implies a
**capture-path floor on every comparison in the corpus**. It does not, and I had
the evidence already: the port matches `live-title-press-a.png` at **0.00093 %**
full-frame and **0.000 %** across the band. A general floor could not coexist with
either number. So the 0.301 % is specific to the attract band capture, and my
0.01–0.2 % rows are not sitting on a hidden floor. ⚠️ What that does *not* settle
is why those two frames differ — still theirs, and still worth an answer.

## Five authored values had no reader — including the one I asked for measurements into

Applying the prior from the last six findings — *a rule or capability nothing
exercises turns out broken or inert when someone looks* — to `authored/` itself.
Grepping every authored key for a reader in the exporter or the runtime:

| key | file | status |
|---|---|---|
| `dwell` | `flow.json` | 🔴 **no reader** — now wired |
| `ramp` | `timing.json` | no reader — now asserted |
| `left_right` | `flow.json` | no reader — now asserted |
| `input_during_transition` | `flow.json` | no reader — now asserted |
| `stems` | `audio.json` | no reader (`stems_why` is carried; the sum is hardcoded) |

Everything else — `se`, `bgm`, `voice`, `boot`, `screens`, `navigation.wrap`,
`draw_leaf_for`, `loop_leaf_on_screens`, `keyframe_units_per_second`,
`black_hold_units`, `archives`, `also_export`, `presentation`, `loop_mode`,
`initial_focus`, `skippable`, `then_video`, `after_video` — is read.

### 🔴 `dwell` is the one that mattered

Its own text says *"when a capture times the real boot, the extra hold per screen
goes here."* **A number placed there did nothing.** Two iterations ago I asked
the Decoder for measurements destined for exactly that slot; had they arrived,
they would have been filed into a value with no reader and the boot would have
been unchanged, silently — and I would have reported the boot as matching.

It is wired now, and **stays empty**. Nothing is authored into it: the splash
dwells are declared on the disc and measured to agree. Wiring the slot so that a
future number has an effect is the opposite of adopting one.

⚠️ **I wired it to the wrong branch first, and it did nothing — silently.** Holding
longer after settle changes nothing, because the screen still leaves when
`exit_time() + black_hold` arrives and the extra hold is absorbed. A dwell has to
delay the **departure**. I found it only because I tested the control:
+120 units moved the transition 4.46 s → **6.43 s**, +1.97 s, with the video
following by the same amount. Reproducing the exact defect I was removing, inside
the fix for it, is the strongest argument I have for testing that a wire carries
current rather than that it exists.

### The other three are asserted, not implemented

`ramp`, `left_right` and `input_during_transition` describe behaviour the port
**hardcodes**. That is fine for a record and dangerous for a switch, and they are
written like switches — setting `left_right` to `"move"` would change nothing and
warn nobody.

Rather than invent the missing implementations, `_check_authored_invariants`
**asserts the value the port was built against**, naming the file. Changing one
now produces an error instead of silence.

That is precisely the distinction `left_right`'s own `why` claims to be making —
*"written out rather than left unhandled so that 'the game ignores it' and 'we
never wired it' are different lines of code"* — and which was not in fact being
made, because nothing read the value that was supposed to make it.

✅ The validator is **called**, not merely defined. A validator nobody invokes is
the same defect it exists to catch, and this file now documents six other
instances of exactly that.

Verified: clean boot with no invariant errors and unchanged timings; setting
`left_right: "move"` produces the error; all five MODDING rules still pass; the
oracle rows are unmoved.

## `FORMAT.md` declared the port's own export invalid, and a failed export is not atomic

Continuing the audit that has now found seven unexercised rules: `FORMAT.md` is
the **open format spec** — written for a stranger reading the tree with no access
to the disc or this exporter. So the question is whether what it promises is what
`sylpheed-export check` enforces.

Five documented requirements, each broken in a copy of the tree:

| broken | caught |
|---|---|
| `unresolved` removed from a screen | ✅ |
| `peak_dbfs` removed | ✅ |
| `peak_dbfs` = −120 (silence) | ✅ |
| `duration_s` removed | ✅ |
| `peak_dbfs` = 0.0 on an `se` | **passes** |

### The last row is the doc's error, not the code's

`FORMAT.md` said flatly that check *"refuses a tree whose peak is ≤ −90 dBFS or
**≥ 0 dBFS**"*. The implementation is kind-dependent and deliberate: a `bgm` is a
sum **we** produced, so a peak at or above full scale is our arithmetic and is
refused outright; an `se` or `voice` is a single wave off the disc, mastered near
full scale, whose lossy decode overshoots by a fraction of a dB, and those are
allowed to +1.0.

🔴 **And the doc was wrong about the port's own export.** It ships `confirm` at
**+0.18 dBFS** and the `ADV` voice at **+0.31** — both above 0. A consumer
implementing a validator from `FORMAT.md` would have rejected a valid tree, and
the file that exists to let someone check our work without trusting us would have
been the thing that misled them. Corrected, with the +1.0 marked as the judgement
it is.

✅ Verified both directions: a `bgm` forced to 0.0 is refused with *"a SUM we
produced clips"*; an `se` at 0.0 passes.

### 🔴 A failed export leaves a tree that is not an export tree

Found by accident, and worth more than the way it was found. Testing the new
`stems` assertion, the exporter `bail!`ed part-way — and left `export/` **with no
`manifest.json` at all**. Every subsequent tool then reported *"has no
manifest.json — is that an export tree?"*, which reads as a broken harness rather
than as the aftermath of a deliberate failure.

⚠️ It cost me a wrong reading immediately: the first run of the requirement audit
above reported every case as "no manifest", and I nearly recorded that the
validator was checking nothing. It was checking a tree that had been half-written.

The exporter writes the manifest last, which is the right order — a manifest is a
claim about a tree, and a manifest for a tree that was never finished would be
worse. So this is **filed rather than fixed**: the behaviour is defensible and the
message is not, since "is that an export tree?" describes the symptom and hides
the cause. What a stranger needs to be told is *the last export failed; re-run it*.

## `check-all`, a verdict that ignored its own statistic, and a claim of mine that was wrong

Eleven tools under `tools/port/` and **nothing ran them together**, so each had to
be remembered individually. That is the ninth instance of this port's recurring
shape — correct, documented, unexercised — one level up: the checks were the thing
nobody was running.

`tools/port/check-all` runs the four that assert (`check`, `check-modding`,
`check-capture-controls`, `verify-menu-audio`), prints the oracle table, and
handles `verify-screen` specially. All eleven were exercised first and **none had
rotted**; `which-focus` independently picks NEW_GAME at a **93.8× margin**, which
is a second instrument agreeing with the capture fit's 10×.

Two things it is careful about:

* the six exploratory tools are **not** listed as passes. They produce artifacts
  for a person to look at and have no verdict; counting them would invent six.
* `verify-capture` is **reported, not asserted** — it always exits 0. Its header
  is right that the numbers are not a target, but *not a target* is not *not a
  regression detector*, and nothing would notice `title_plate` moving off 0.00 %.
  Named as a gap rather than papered over; a real fix needs stored baselines, and
  what a baseline means when the pose is fitted is a decision, not a chore.
* the `verify-screen` allowance **expires on its own condition**. It is allowed to
  fail only while `formats-pin-2026-08-29d` is not an ancestor of `origin/main`;
  the day it lands, `check-all` fails instead. A suppression with no expiry is
  just a hidden failure.

### 🔴 The verdict ignored the statistic added to inform it

`verify-screen` computes `over3` — how many pixels exceed the bar — because *"a
single `max` cannot tell 2 pixels from 25 444"*, its own words. **The verdict was
then decided on `max` alone.** So `main_menu` (max 4, `over3` **0**) read DIFFERS
while `extras` (max 3, `over3` 0) read OK: one unit on one pixel separating two
frames that are equivalent at the bar.

⚠️ Not fixed by raising the bar, which this file rightly forbids. The bar is still
3. A frame with **no** pixel over it now gets its own verdict, `ROUNDING`, instead
of being lumped in with a real disagreement. Tenth instance: the fix was
implemented, documented, and never wired to the thing it was for.

### 🔴 And "six expected DIFFERS [refuted]" — which I have told the Decoder more than once — was wrong

The true count was **ten**, now **eight** after the rounding fix:

| screens | count | explained |
|---|---|---|
| the forced-backdrop six | 6 | ✅ the pin: two decoder eras |
| `main_menu`, `main_menu_jp` | 2 | ✅ now `ROUNDING`, not a disagreement |
| **`title`, `title_jp`** | **2** | 🔴 **not explained** |

`title` differs on **790** pixels and `title_jp` on **20 498**, and neither is the
forced-backdrop rule — those screens have no forced element. I had a blanket
allowance covering two disagreements I had never accounted for.

**My hypothesis for them is refuted.** `authored/rendering.json` notes that the
consistency harness compares against a renderer that draws no `.rat` leaves, so
the port's `ptloop` sweeps looked like the obvious cause. Emptying `draw_leaf_for`
and `loop_leaf_on_screens` changes the numbers **not at all** — 790 and 20 498
either way. `verify-screen` poses at `rest`, where the leaves evidently do not
draw. Filed as open.

⚠️ `title_jp` is a localisation screen and out of scope (MISSION §7). `title` is on
the boot path and is not.

## The `title` disagreement, localised — and the question I filed for it was the wrong one

Two iterations ago I filed `title`'s 790-pixel disagreement with `sylpheed-cli` as
needing the Decoder: *"which elements does `sylpheed-cli` draw on build 4 at
rest"*. That was a hypothesis dressed as a question, and it is wrong. I could
answer it myself, and did.

### What is established

* **The pixels cluster in one place**: x ≈ 938–1162, y ≈ 172–310, as blobs of
  20–66 px. That is `ptlogo_back2eff1`'s position, `pos=[938, 194]` — one of the
  six `ptlogo_back2eff*` glows, all of which carry a sprite and **no declared
  size**, so the texture supplies it.
* 🔴 **Both renderers draw it.** The region reads mean **95.60** in the port and
  **95.08** in the CLI. So the premise of my filed question — that one draws an
  element the other does not — is **refuted**. A set difference of element lists
  would have answered nothing.
* **It is not a placement offset.** Rolling the port's frame by every combination
  of ±1 px makes it *worse* by two orders of magnitude — 790 pixels aligned
  against ≥ 175 406 for the best shift. The images are registered; they differ in
  content on 0.086 % of the frame.

### What is not established, and why I am not guessing

The mechanism. My next hypothesis was edge antialiasing, and **the test failed its
own control**: the edge mask classified **92 % of the frame** as edge, so the
25.2 % of differing pixels landing on it is *below chance* and the instrument is
dead. A number from it would have been noise wearing a decimal point.

### The ask is downgraded rather than left standing

`BLOCKED.md`'s row asked for the wrong thing on a refuted premise, which is worse
than no row: it would have spent someone else's time confirming a difference that
is not there. Corrected.

⚠️ And the residual value is genuinely low. This is **two of our own renderers**
disagreeing on 0.086 % of one frame, on a screen where the port matches the
**oracle** at 0.21 % and its plate variant at 0.00093 %. `verify-screen`'s own
header says a DIFFERS means *"we moved apart, go find out which of us moved"* —
here neither moved from the game. It stays visible as a DIFFERS rather than being
allowed, because an allowance is how the two `title` rows hid inside "six
expected" in the first place.

## Auditing `BLOCKED.md` found three stale rows, and the undated ones were all three

`BLOCKED.md` opens by warning that it goes stale *"within the hour. It has."*
Nothing audits it. So I read every live row against a running port instead of
against my memory of it.

### Three were wrong

**`P3/P5 — the title screen`** was the worst, and had been for weeks. Every
factual claim in it is false: the boot does not end on a plateless build 4,
`press_start` is not unused, and the port has drawn two builds at once since the
plate-delay work. Verified this iteration — `boot ends on title + press_start`,
`overlay press_start … drew 1: ptbtn00`, plate region mean **95.70** against 33.6
for the bare title.

🔴 And a row **four lines below it** was already marked *answered and TAKEN* for
the same question. Two rows on one question, one struck and one live claiming the
opposite — and the live one was the stale one. A reader taking the page at face
value would have believed the struck row was the old news.

**`P4 — is an attract movie skippable`** led with *"the port could not tell which
bug that is"*. It can and it did: `DECISIONS.md` records **Ⓐ *does* skip the
intro in this build**, and every boot run since prints `video skipped at …`.
Corrected to 🟡 — (a) answered, (b) still needs a capture.

**`P6 looping`** was not wrong, only thin. It now carries the measured cost: the
bed loops at 87.8 s against the track's 87.7, and the seam is **3.4 seconds of
near-silence**. The missing loop point now has a price expressed as a number
rather than as the adjective "ugly".

### The undated rows are the ones that rotted

Checking which sections record the HANDOFF commit they derive from — the standing
instruction, and the thing this page's own header demands — splits the file
exactly:

| | sha |
|---|---|
| every prose section added since 2026-08-29 | ✅ all |
| **every row in the two tables** | 🔴 **none** |

And all three stale rows were in those tables. That is about as close to a
controlled experiment as this page will produce: the rows with no date are the
rows nobody could tell had aged.

⚠️ I have **not** back-dated them. Nobody knows when most were written and an
invented sha is worse than an admitted absence — it would make an undated claim
look checked. Both tables now say so at the top, and carry the date they were last
audited against a running port.

📌 The general form, which is the eleventh of these: *a document that warns about
its own failure mode is not thereby protected from it.* This page has said "it
goes stale, it has" since P1, in a header everyone reads and nobody acts on. The
warning was doing the work of a check.

## The record already answered last iteration's question, under headings that name it

Last iteration I investigated `title`'s and `title_jp`'s disagreement with
`sylpheed-cli`, ruled out leaves and placement offsets, watched an edge test fail
its own control, and filed the mechanism as **unknown** — to the Decoder as well
as here.

**Both were already explained in this file**, under
[`title`: a tie in the paint order](#title-a-tie-in-the-paint-order--neither-renderer-is-wrong)
and
[`title_jp`: nearest-neighbour sampling phase](#title_jp-nearest-neighbour-sampling-phase--the-cli-is-the-one-i-would-call-wrong).
Headings that name the two screens in question.

### Both still hold, checked rather than assumed

* **`title`** — the CLI uses a paint order *measured* off the running game; the
  port derives one. Every disagreement is **inside a tie**. Verified against the
  current export: `title` still ties on `0x8083` (the `back2` glow group, 5
  elements), `0x80a0` (7) and `0x8010` (2), and the export declares
  `paint_order_ties` in `unresolved`. The old entry costs it at **904 px in the
  glow band, all 4–6/255**; I measured **790 px at x≈938–1162, y≈172–310, max 6**
  — same band, same magnitude, count moved with the export.
* **`title_jp`** — `ptlogo_eff2` at **125 %**, where the CLI samples the source at
  the destination pixel's top-left and a GPU samples at its centre. The entry
  claims it is the *only* drawn element in the export at a non-integer scale
  ratio. 🟡 A whole-export census finds **26** such keyframes — until it is
  restricted to elements **visible at `rest`**, which is the pose `verify-screen`
  uses. Then there is exactly **one**: `title_jp/ptlogo_eff2`. The claim survives,
  and it survives narrowly enough to be worth the check.

### 🔴 The failure is navigability, not memory

6 502 lines, 111 `##` sections, 243 `###`, and **no index**. So "has this been
decided already?" had no cheap answer, and the expensive answer — re-deriving it
— looked like diligence. It also cost the Decoder a message reporting an open
question that was closed.

`tools/port/index-decisions` generates a contents block, and `check-all` runs
`--check`. ⚠️ Two things about the design, both learned the hard way in the same
half-hour:

* it carries **no line numbers**. The first version did, and writing the index
  shifted every line below it — a fixpoint that failed its own `--check` on the
  first run. Worse, appending a section would silently invalidate all of them.
* it is **checked**, because a stale index is worse than none: it would answer
  *"is this already decided?"* with a confident no. That is exactly the failure
  it was built to prevent, and building an unchecked one would have reproduced it
  one level up — which this port has now done often enough that I looked for it
  deliberately.

📌 The twelfth instance, and a new species. The first eleven were *"correct,
documented, unexercised."* This one is **correct, documented, unfindable** — and
it is worse, because it does not merely fail to catch an error, it manufactures
work and then exports a wrong status to somebody else.

## 🔴 Twenty-one messages to a dead address, each one warning me it was dead

Every `SendMessage` I sent the Decoder from 2026-08-29 onward came back with:

> *accepted by the server for that session, but **delivery is not confirmed**: it
> has not reported that it can receive cross-session messages*

**Twenty-one times.** I recorded it in my reply every time — *"⚠️ delivery
unconfirmed; everything is in the repo regardless"* — and treated writing it down
as having dealt with it. It was not a caveat. It was the tool telling me the
address was dead, in the same words, on every attempt.

### The cause

I addressed `bridge:session_01QsEPXW…`, copied from the `from=` of an inbound
message. That is a **session ID**, and it died when the Decoder restarted.
`PROTOCOL.md` says plainly that both agents *"register under those names at
startup"* and shows `SendMessage(to: "sylpheed-agent", …)`. **Names survive a
restart; session IDs do not.** The protocol had the answer; replying to the
`from=` field felt more precise and was strictly worse.

### Why this one is the worst of the thirteen

The other twelve were things nobody was looking at. This one **had an alarm, and
the alarm fired every single time**. I did not miss it — I read it, wrote it into
my own status line, and carried on. Reporting a warning is not acting on it, and
phrasing it as a footnote to the user made it look handled.

⚠️ It also silently inverted a habit I had been congratulating myself on. I kept
saying *"everything is in the repo regardless, which is the point of the rule"* —
true, and it let me treat a broken channel as a non-event for a fortnight. The
repo did carry the findings. What it could not carry were the **asks**: four
questions sat unasked while I believed they were queued, including one that can
delete an authored entry.

### What changed

Re-addressed by name after `ListAgents`, and the send came back **without** the
warning — which is what a working channel looks like, and what twenty-one
unworking ones did not.

📌 The general form: **an unacknowledged warning is worse than a missing one**,
because it converts into evidence that the situation is understood. The fix is not
"read the warnings" — I read them all. It is that a warning repeating unchanged
across attempts is a *state*, not a footnote, and the second identical one should
have been treated as a failure rather than a fact about the world.

## The forced-backdrop pass is load-bearing on two screens, not six

I have said "six forced elements" since implementing the rule, and checked after
every change that **no verdict moved**. That measured the pass's *stability*, never
its *necessity*. Removing it entirely answers the other question:

| screens | order without the pass |
|---|---|
| `publisher_logo`, `publisher_logo_r`, `developer_logos`, `developer_logos_r` | **byte-identical** |
| `build_12`, `build_15` | first element becomes `pgloading_loop5` — the black screen returns |

**Four of the six are redundant.** `palogo_eff0`'s layer key is `0x00000000`,
`layer_source: implied` — lower than the lowest sprite key on those screens
(`0x0000a100`) — so the crate already sorts it first and the occlusion rule merely
agrees.

🔴 **The two that matter have no key at all.** On `build_12`/`build_15`,
`pgloading_eff00` carries `layer: null`, `layer_source: none` — the only two
elements in the export with neither a read nor an implied key. Their position rests
**entirely** on the occlusion constraint, with nothing to fall back on. That is the
port's single strongest dependency on a rule it did not decode, and it was hiding
inside a count of six.

### Which is also what makes the rule worth having

An agreement on four screens where a key already existed is not evidence — it is
the rule reproducing the crate. The two screens where it is load-bearing are the
two the rule was found on, and the argument for it there is not the key (there is
none) but that a permanently black screen is impossible on its face.

⚠️ So the honest statement, replacing the one I have been repeating: the rule
**decides** two screens and **confirms** four. I will not describe it as six again.

### The layer-key census this came out of

| `layer_source` | count | which |
|---|---|---|
| `sprite` — read from the file | 160 | everything with a texture |
| `implied` — the crate's, measured per name | 16 | `pteff00`, `pteff02`, `palogo_eff0`, `pgloading_eff00` |
| `none` — no key exists | **2** | `pgloading_eff00` on the two loading screens |

✅ Every layerless primitive's position is `implied` or absent, never read — and
`FORMAT.md` requires a consumer to be able to tell, which `layer_source` delivers.
The Decoder's own page says `pteff00`'s place on top *"is still a **measured**
per-name entry, not a decoded one"*; the port inherits that through
`layer: 0xfffffffe, layer_source: implied` and declares it. Nothing is being
passed off as decoded that is not.

## Re-running the Decoder's necessity census: every figure reproduces, and what that is worth

They took the stability-vs-necessity correction disc-wide and published the
instrument with it — *"so you can re-run it rather than trust it"*. I did, from a
worktree at their branch, across all 33 archives their census names:

| | theirs | my re-run |
|---|---|---|
| forced instances | 80 | **80** |
| **decided** by the rule | 62 | **62** |
| merely agreed | 18 | **18** |
| decided, by extension | 38 `.prm` / 24 `.tbm` | **38 / 24** |
| decided rows listing a keyless element | all | **all 62** |

Exact, on every figure. ⚠️ The example defaults to `GP_TITLE` and takes an archive
path, so a bare run reports **6 instances, not 80** — the disc-wide number needs
the loop. Worth saying because "I ran their instrument" would otherwise be true
and mean a thirteenth of what it sounds like.

### 🔴 What this verification is not

**I ran their code.** A fault in the instrument reproduces identically for me, so
this is not two independent measurements — it is one measurement executed twice.
That is the same correlated-instrument trap as `verify-screen` scoring two blank
frames `OK`, and I would rather name it than let a table of matching numbers imply
more than it has.

The genuinely independent evidence is narrower and came first: I removed **my own**
post-pass in the exporter and diffed the export. Different code, different
language, different layer of the stack — and it agreed on the six GP_TITLE
instances. Their crate-side run agrees with that. So the GP_TITLE result has two
witnesses; the other 74 have one, executed twice.

### The consequence for the port

Both of the port's decided screens are inside the 62, and **every one of the 62 is
keyless** — so the impossibility argument ("a screen black at every instant of its
own timeline cannot be right") is carrying all of them alone, with no key beneath
it anywhere. The exposure is theirs to hold disc-wide; the port's share is
`build_12` and `build_15`.

⚠️ 24 of the 62 are `.tbm`, which their page still records as *"correct or inert"*
because the corpus cannot find a `.tbm`'s pixels. None are in `GP_TITLE` — checked
again: 115 `.t32`, 45 `.rat`, 18 `.prm`, no `.tbm` — so nothing the port ships
depends on that half. If the alpha-over assumption ever fails, those 24 go with it
and the port's two do not.

## A second witness for the pixel-cost claim, from a different renderer

The Decoder moved the necessity question to a new layer rather than re-running the
sort — they rendered each of the 62 deciding builds twice and diffed the pixels,
finding that on all **38 `.prm`** deciders the changed pixels equal the
composite's **entire ink**, 38 of 38, and putting `build_12`/`build_15` at
**49 771 px = 5.40 %** each.

That is checkable in **Godot**, which is a genuinely different renderer — unlike
last iteration, where re-running their instrument gave one measurement twice.

| `build_12`, `--pose=rest` | ink |
|---|---|
| with the rule, threshold > 0 | 59 530 px (6.46 %) |
| with the rule, threshold > 1 | 48 368 px (5.25 %) |
| **without the rule** | **0 px at both** |

✅ **The strong form holds.** Removing the rule does not dim the screen or shift
it — it takes the ink to **exactly zero**. So "the changed pixels are the whole
composite" is not a way of saying "a large difference"; it is the screen ceasing
to exist, measured in a renderer that shares no code with theirs.

Their 49 771 sits between my two thresholds, 2.9 % above the `> 1` count. That is
a threshold convention on a mostly-dark frame, not a disagreement, and it is worth
recording as such so nobody later reconciles two ink figures that were never
counting the same pixels.

⚠️ Method note: the no-rule order was produced by applying **their** fallback —
sprite key, else implied, else `u32::MAX` — to the export's own element list and
swapping only `paint_order` on one screen file. That keeps the port's renderer and
every other input identical, so the only variable is the order. `pgloading_eff00`
duly sorts to first-drawn under the rule and last-drawn without it.

### Their point 4 is the pattern catching one of their own

They report that the 24 `.tbm` deciders all measured **zero** pixel cost — and
that this is *not* the rule being free: `compose` draws no pixels for a `.tbm` at
all, so their position cannot change a pixel **by construction**. The control
asked whether the composite had ink, which it always does. **A control that could
not fail.**

That is the fourteenth instance of this project's recurring shape and the first
found by the other agent using the frame rather than by me. It leaves the `.tbm`
half exactly where it was — *"correct or inert"*, still indistinguishable — rather
than falsely cleared, which is the outcome the bad control would have produced.

✅ Nothing the port ships is affected: no `.tbm` in `GP_TITLE`, and the port's two
deciders are `.prm`.

## Reconciling the two ink figures, and what "has its own key" is resting on

The Decoder reconciled our `build_12` ink counts and corrected a mistake I would
otherwise have made in their favour.

| | theirs | mine | gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| RGB > 0 | 49 771 | 59 530 | 9 759 px |
| RGB > 1 | 48 043 | 48 368 | **325 px — 0.67 %** |

🔴 **Their 49 771 was never a threshold figure.** It is exact RGBA inequality
between the two paint orders, which over a black backdrop coincides with `ink>0`
— so it belongs against my **59 530**, not against my 48 368. Matching it to the
closer number would have made us agree for the wrong reason, and they said so
before I could do it.

Checked on my side: my value-exactly-1 population is **11 162 px**, and the gap
above `>1` is 325 px. So **9 434 of the 9 759-px gap — 96.7 % — lives in pixels
whose value is exactly 1**, and their renderer produces that many fewer of them.
Their claim holds structurally, not just in headline.

✅ Two conventions worth carrying, both theirs:

* **`>0` is not portable between renderers on a mostly-dark frame; `>1` is.** Any
  cross-renderer ink figure needs its threshold named. This corpus has spent real
  effort on residuals at the 0.1 % scale, and a 16 % artefact hiding at 1 LSB is
  exactly the size of thing that would have been argued about.
* the without-the-rule zero is **threshold-insensitive in both renderers**, which
  is the first double-witnessed result on this rule.

### One refinement on the 18 confirmations

They sharpened my summary: the 18 are worse than "the crate agreeing with
itself" — 14 have their own key so the rule never fires decisively, and 4 are
builds where every element is forced, so the tie-break gives the same order
regardless. None is evidence in either direction. Agreed.

⚠️ But for the port's four, "has its own key" is doing quieter work than it
sounds. `palogo_eff0`'s key is `0x00000000` with **`layer_source: implied`** — the
crate's measured per-name entry, not a value read from the file. So those four
confirmations are not *the file already settles it*; they are **another
measurement already settles it**, in the same category as `pteff00`'s place on
top, which their own page is careful to call measured rather than decoded.

That does not change the verdict — a confirmation is not evidence either way. It
changes what the confirmation is made of, and the distinction is one their page
already insists on elsewhere.

## Not one of the 80 has a decoded key — and the port's four are the rule's oracle check

The Decoder took the key-source question disc-wide and the answer is stronger
than either of us had it: **0 of the 80 forced instances carry a key read from
the `T8aD` header.** 14 have an `implied_layer_key`, 66 have nothing.

So **the rule has never been checked against a decoded field, because there is no
instance where both can speak.** That is what a keyless-element fallback
necessarily looks like — but it removes a check a reader would assume exists.

The port's six are the same pattern exactly, verified from the export:

| | count | |
|---|---|---|
| read from the file | **0** | |
| `implied` — measured in the running game | **4** | `palogo_eff0` on the four splashes |
| nothing at all | **2** | `pgloading_eff00` on `build_12`/`build_15` |

### They retracted something in the direction that costs them

Last round they wrote that *"none of the 18 is evidence for the rule in any
direction"*, and I agreed and repeated it. They have since separated two questions
I had let run together:

* **does the rule change the composite there?** No — the sort already had a key.
  That is the necessity count and it stands.
* **does the rule get the right answer there?** **Yes** — and this is the only
  place it can be asked. `implied_layer_key` is a position *measured in the
  running game*, so the rule forcing those elements first is the rule agreeing
  with the **oracle**, not with their crate.

So the 14 are not non-events; they are the rule's **only external corroboration**,
and four of them are the port's splash screens. My own framing — *"the port's four
rest on an implied key rather than a read one"* — was right about the provenance
and wrong about its weight: I filed an oracle measurement under "not the file",
which reads as weaker when it is stronger.

⚠️ ✅ The revised state, which I expect to be stable: **38 `.prm` deciders with a
measured pixel cost, two double-witnessed · 24 `.tbm` deciders untestable by
either agent · 4 inert · 14 confirmations against measured positions, the rule's
only external check · 0 against a decoded field, anywhere.** The impossibility
argument carries all 62.

📌 Closing this thread on my side. It has run four iterations and produced: the
necessity correction, a second witness in a different renderer, a reconciled ink
convention, a retracted control of theirs, and this. It has also stopped being
about the port — nothing in `build_12`/`build_15` has moved since the rule landed,
and the remaining questions are the Decoder's to hold. Continuing would be
refining someone else's page.

## A withholding reason that was false, and the measurement beside it that was not

`authored/rendering.json` names three leaf records the exporter flags and the port
does **not** draw. Auditing the reasons rather than the behaviour:

### 🔴 `build_12,15/pgloading_loop5` — the reason was wrong

It read *"leaf scale (0,0). A zero scale is one of the three historical failures
this corpus names."* That describes **t=0 and t=30 and nothing after them.**

What the leaf actually holds, read from the export: one element,
`pgloading_ring`, with a sprite, whose scale ramps **0 → 250 → 800 → 1000** while
its alpha rises to full at t=55 and falls to nothing by t=130. An expanding,
fading ring — a loading pulse, not a degenerate record.

⚠️ **And it is visible at the instant this port poses.** `build_12`'s settle window
is [40, 48], so the pose lands near **t=44**, where the ring interpolates to
**scale 140 at alpha 143**. Withholding it is not declining to draw *nothing*; it
is declining to draw *something*, and the one-line reason concealed which.

✅ **It stays withheld**, on the reason that always applied and is already written
below it in the same file: there is no way to adjudicate it here. The loading
screens have no oracle capture — the Decoder records them as unreachable from the
title path — and `verify-screen` compares against a renderer that draws no leaves.
Drawing it would put unadjudicable content on a screen, which is the test
`ptlogo_eff2` also fails. Behaviour unchanged: `build_12` still renders 59 530 px
of ink.

📌 The two entries in that list were written to different standards. The
`title_jp/ptlogo_eff2` reason is four paragraphs, states the scale as a *pop*
(0 → 125 % → 0 over 0.95 s), works through both readings and says why neither can
be chosen. The `pgloading_loop5` reason was one line and false. Same file, same
author, same day — the difference is that one was interesting and one was a
loading screen.

### ✅ The measurement in the same paragraph checks out

That paragraph also claims *"its max went 155 → 232 when they were drawn"* for
`title_jp`. Reproduced by adding `ptlogo_eff2` to `draw_leaf_for` and re-running:
**155 → 231**, with the differing pixels going 20 498 → 58 313. One off a number
recorded days ago, which is rounding rather than drift.

So the file's *measurements* were sound and its *reasoning* was not, in adjacent
sentences. That is worth naming: I have been auditing whether numbers are right
far more often than whether the sentences around them are.

## The sweep discriminator resolves: different frames, and a sweep position cannot date one

The Decoder answered ask #2 — **t=357.7 was never fitted against a PNG.** It comes
from `title-draw-capture-vertex-colours.log`, a GPU per-draw capture of the vertex
buffer the game submitted: two quad centres and two vertex alphas, four
observables solved at once, nothing rendered by either of us.

They then handed me the discriminator rather than running it, because the fit is
against my renderer: *if your ~400 is `pteff03` and your frame is inside the first
cycle, `pteff03a` in that same frame must sit at centre **295**.*

Run from the export, with their published t=355 centres as the control:

| leaf phase | `pteff03` centre | `pteff03a` centre |
|---|---|---|
| **t=355** — their control | **980.5** (published 981) | **477.7** (published 478) |
| **t=400** — my fit | 1160.5 | **294.9** |

✅ **294.9 against a predicted 295.** The discriminator is satisfied: the two
numbers describe **different frames**, and neither of us is wrong. My computation
also reproduces their control to half a pixel on both quads, which is what makes
the 295 worth anything.

### Why the two numbers could never have matched

The sweeps are nested records on a **free-running** loop with cycles of **600**
and **720** units — read from my own export as each leaf's last keyframe, matching
their header `+0x08` — while the top-level clock **stops at settle**. So two
captures of one settled title share a *screen* time and not a *sweep* phase, by
construction.

🔴 **The rule to carry: a sweep position cannot date a frame.** I had been treating
my ~400 as a property of the capture — it is a property of how long that title had
been up, which is exactly what the settle window makes unmeasurable.

And the two are not comparable in kind. Their 357.7 is a **joint** fit where both
leaves agree; mine poses one phase. With 600 and 720 the phases coincide only
every **3 600 units — 60 s** — and their draw capture caught both inside their
first cycle, which is the only window where one number can cover both.

✅ My `--leaf-time` is right for this by accident rather than design: it sets one
phase, and `loop_leaf` takes `fposmod` against **each leaf's own span**, so the two
diverge correctly past 600. The sweep I ran covered 0–600, inside the first cycle,
where a single value is unambiguous.

### Their refutation attempt on my number, which failed

Worth recording because they published it: they hypothesised my fit was minimised
by the quad *leaving the screen* — "best fit" meaning "draws least", the same shape
as their `.tbm` control that could not fail. At t=400 quad B is **fully** on screen
and quad A is 319 of 400 px wide. The number is fitting something present, and it
survives.

## Their trap, run against my tree — and I found its mirror instead

The Decoder's Ⓐ blocker turned out to be the sign-in dialog, already described in
`canary-scripted-input-traps.md` §3 and in `boot_menu.sh`'s header. Their lesson:
**a measurement whose only record is a script comment is invisible to the document
that needs it** — and they asked whether I have findings living in exporter
comments.

I ran it: every measurement-shaped token inside a comment in
`crates/sylpheed-export/src/`, `port/scripts/` and `tools/port/`, checked against
everything in `docs/`.

✅ **Seven candidates, and six were my matcher's fault** — thousands separators
(`1 950 px`), a range written `0.70-0.82 %` in one place and `0.1355 %` in the
other, precision differing between `9.1` and `9.14`. The findings themselves are
all in `DECISIONS.md`, including the one that looked most alarming: the leaf
comment's *"981 and 478 against 992.0 and 467.2 measured off the capture"* is
recorded, and the **11.5 px** residual has its own paragraph saying it is not to
be fitted.

### 🔴 The one real defect is the opposite trap

`check-capture`'s control table and `AUDIO-VERIFICATION.md` both record the voice
control, and they had **drifted**: **53.3 %** in the tool, **53.2 %** in the doc,
twice each.

Neither can be re-measured — that control file was transient and is gone — so
there is no way to say which copy aged. The Decoder lost a finding because it had
**one** record, in a script comment. I lost a digit because a finding had **two**
records and nothing kept them equal, and both copies look authoritative.

Fixed by removing the duplicate rather than picking a winner: the doc is the
record and the tool cites it. The commented explanation keeps both numbers, since
naming the drift is the only part that could not be reconstructed later.

### ⚠️ And it corrects something I sent the Decoder

I told them my computation *"reproduces your published centres to half a pixel"* —
980.5/477.7 against 981/478. True, and **model against model**: their published
figures are their fit's centres, not the capture's. Against the **capture** this
corpus already records 992.0 and 467.2, an **11.5 px** residual, in a paragraph
that says it is not to be fitted.

So the half-pixel agreement is two derivations of one model agreeing, which is the
correlated-instrument shape I have been careful about all week and did not apply
to my own message. The discriminator result is unaffected — 294.9 against a
predicted 295 is a different quantity — but the *strength* I attached to the
control was overstated, and I have told them so.

## The plate pulses — measured, and the port was wrong on the boot's end state

Ask #1 came back the other way. Held at the title with **no input**, the plate
oscillates continuously — two windows in one boot, ~23 cycles each, no decay, no
settling — and 🔴 **it never goes off**: the plate-absent floor is **159**
thresholded green pixels and the pulse bottoms at **714**, four and a half times
that.

That reading is what makes the mechanism recoverable. A glow alone cannot do it:
`ptbtn00f` ramps 0 → 80 → 0. A **steady base plus a pulsing glow** can, and 714 and
1520 are exactly base-only and base-plus-glow.

And the port already had the base right. `ptbtn00`'s fade to 0 at t=244 is its
**exit** ramp, which plays when the screen leaves; while the screen is *held* the
base sits at its own hold, alpha 255 at t=238. What was missing was the glow.

### The defect was in the renderer, not in the deleted entry

`_draw` treated a **looping** record like a **focused** one — drawing it *instead
of* the base sprite. For a focused button that is right and measured (the focused
sprite covers the base at 100 % of base-visible pixels). For the plate it
substituted a dim glow for a bright sprite, which is why the plate vanished and
why I deleted the authored entry on 2026-08-29.

I deleted the right thing for the wrong reason. The entry was correct; the branch
it landed in was not. A looping record now draws **over** the base, and the entry
is restored with the measurement behind it.

| | |
|---|---|
| plate region, base only | **95.68** |
| base + glow at peak | **115.52** |
| measured period over 10 cycles | **1.980 s** |
| declared 120 units at 60 u/s | 2.000 s — **ratio 0.990** |

✅ The pulse appears on the **boot** path, where the overlay runs on the shared
clock. It does *not* appear under `--screen=title --overlay=press_start`, because
a static overlay poses at its own arrival — my own earlier fix — so its clock never
advances. That is correct for a still frame and worth knowing before anyone reads
a flat plate there as a regression.

### What is authored, and what is refused

**120 units, not seconds**, on the Decoder's own instruction: their run measured
2.530 and 2.540 s and an earlier corpus run 2.24 s — one declared number through
two emulator pacings (×1.27 and ×1.12 against a nominal 2.000 s). Hardcoding 2.5 s
would author a loaded container's clock.

⚠️ Their three limits are carried into `authored/timing.json` verbatim: **one
boot**, two windows inside it are not two boots; it **does not distinguish** the
boot title from an attract-loop title, since run 1 opens at t≈255 s against Q9's
~193 s baseline; and 🔴 **714/1520 is not an alpha ratio** — the counter is
thresholded pixels, so no duty cycle or ramp shape may be read from it. The port
draws the record's own declared ramp and infers nothing about its shape.

Oracle rows unmoved; every asserting check passes.

## A static overlay now advances, and a refutation attempt on the pulse floor

### The static overlay was frozen at its arrival, which was my fix overshooting

`--screen=X` animates X. `--screen=X --overlay=Y` **froze** Y, because the fix for
the original defect — the raw elapsed clock pushed in, 9 units at capture, plate
drawing nothing — replaced a frozen-too-early overlay with a frozen-at-arrival
one. One command animating one build and freezing the other is an inconsistency,
and the plate pulse is what made it visible: the plate oscillated on the boot path
and sat flat here, which reads as a regression and is not one.

Now **offset, not pinned**: the overlay begins at its own settle and takes the same
delta the main view takes. Verified — the static path pulses over the same range as
the boot path, 95.85 → 115.41 against 95.68 → 115.52. Still frames are unaffected
(`--time` freezes both) and `title_plate` holds at **0.00 %**.

📌 Both halves of this were mine, a week apart: the original bug, then the
over-correction for it. The over-correction was invisible until a *third* change —
the pulse — gave it something to be wrong about. A fix that overshoots leaves no
symptom until something else needs the part it disabled.

### 🟡 Refutation attempt — their pulse floor of 159 green pixels

Their measurement gives a plate-absent floor of **159** thresholded green pixels,
a pulse minimum of **714** and a peak of **1520**, the floor measured on
`live-title-build4-no-plate.png` — a capture I hold. So it is checkable.

**It is not reproducible from the published description.** Across the plate region
(513×48 at +383+551) my counts are 3–5× theirs at every threshold:

| green > | no-plate | press-a | ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 676 | 9 369 | 1 : 13.9 |
| 150 | 528 | 5 732 | 1 : 10.9 |
| 180 | 462 | 4 908 | 1 : 10.6 |
| 200 | 411 | 4 272 | 1 : 10.4 |
| **theirs** | **159** | **1 520** | **1 : 9.6** |

No threshold produces both numbers, so their region must be a tighter crop than
mine. Neither the region nor the threshold is stated on the page.

✅ **The finding survives in the part that matters.** The *ratio* is stable at
1 : 10.4–10.9 across a wide threshold band and brackets their 1 : 9.6, so "the
plate-present frame carries about ten times the green of the plate-absent one" is
robust to how it is counted. What cannot be checked is the absolute figures — and
those are what the "never goes off" conclusion is stated in.

⚠️ This is the convention we agreed two iterations ago, applied to their own new
page: **a cross-renderer pixel figure needs its region and its threshold named.**
I raised it there about *my* numbers drifting between two files; the same rule
makes a published measurement unverifiable when a reader has the capture and not
the crop. Raised as a documentation gap, not a defect — nothing in the port's
implementation depends on the absolute counts, only on "steady base plus pulsing
glow", which the ratio supports.

## Their pulse floor reproduces exactly once the predicate is named — 159, to the pixel

I challenged their 159 / 714 / 1520 as unreproducible: my counts over the plate
region were 3–5× theirs at every threshold. They published the method — **whole
1280×720 frame**, and a **three-channel** predicate `(g>130) & (g−r>45) &
(g−b>45)`, not `green>N`.

Applied to the capture I hold:

| | theirs | mine |
|---|---|---|
| floor, `live-title-build4-no-plate.png` | **159** | **159** — exact |
| pulse minimum | 714 | `live-title-press-a.png` gives **753**, 5.5 % apart |
| "never goes off" ratio | 714 / 154 = **4.6×** | 753 / 159 = **4.7×** |

✅ **The floor reproduces to the pixel**, and the load-bearing claim now has an
independent witness: a capture from a different session, counted by me, lands at
753 against their pulse minimum of 714. My region-and-single-channel counts were
simply the wrong measurement — the method statement was the whole difference.

📌 The challenge was worth making and the *outcome* was not the one I expected. I
raised it as "your figures are unverifiable"; the answer was "here is the
predicate", and then they verified exactly. What the challenge actually bought was
**their own geometry bug**: naming the method exposed that the 159 floor came from
a **1279×675** capture while the pulse frames are **1280×720** — two crops
silently compared. They have replaced it with a same-run, same-geometry floor of
**154**.

So a demand for reproducibility found a defect that was not the one being
demanded. ⚠️ And note which direction it cut: my counts were the wrong measurement
and theirs had a real flaw, at the same time. "One of us must be right" was never
the shape of it.

### Their retraction, and whether the port banked it

They retract citing a faulting run's dumped `logged_profile_slot_0_xuid = ""` as
evidence no profile was signed in: **Xenia dumps the config *file*, before
command-line overrides** — a run launched with `--mute=true` dumps `mute=false`,
four for four. So that dump cannot say what any run did.

✅ Checked: the port's docs never cite it. The Ⓐ diagnosis is recorded here as
*retrodicted, not demonstrated*, and nothing in the port depends on it. Their A/B
now supplies the demonstration — 3 811 swallow lines against 0, and a main menu at
the documented 327 glyphs — with the limits they state: one run per leg, and leg A
shows the **swallow**, not the crash.

⚠️ Also worth carrying: their first A/B pair was **void**. The detector fired on a
single frame over threshold and caught the intro movie's green flashes ~6 s before
the title, in both legs. The presses were real — each skipped the rest of the
movie, which is Q9's behaviour — but the pair tested nothing. A detector that can
fire on one frame will fire on the wrong one.

## My rendered pulse, counted in their units — and #4 refutes the voice value without fixing it

### The pulse lands in the right range, and I am not tuning the depth

Their predicate makes my render comparable to their measurement for the first
time. Counting the boot's held title with `(g>130) & (g−r>45) & (g−b>45)` over the
whole frame:

| | theirs | mine |
|---|---|---|
| plate-absent floor | 154 | — |
| pulse minimum | 714 | **805** |
| pulse peak | 1 520 | **1 420** |

✅ Same range, and both ends far above the floor — so **"never goes off" holds in
the port's own render**, not just in their capture. The trace oscillates cleanly:
`1413, 1359, 930, 857, 805, 830, 1182, 1413, …`

⚠️ My pulse is **24 % shallower** (615 against 806). I am **not** tuning to close
that, and their own limit says why: *"714/1520 is not an alpha ratio — the counter
is thresholded pixels, so dim pixels drop out first."* A depth measured this way is
a fact about the threshold as much as about the glow, and matching it would be
fitting my alpha ramp to a counter neither of us claims is linear. The port draws
the record's declared ramp.

### #4 refutes the voice value from the output side

They recorded 148 s of the game's own output over the boot intro — ALSA tee,
`--gpu=null`, **0.15 % silence**, with provenance from the XMA probe rather than a
screenshot. **Five of six channels carry distinct content**, no channel is a copy
of another, and the largest pairwise correlation is 0.70 between FL and FR.

🔴 So `presentation: "loudest"` — keeping **one** stream — cannot be right. It was
already labelled known-wrong here because the game decodes all three concurrently;
it is now refuted by what the game **plays**.

✅ **And it stays unfixed, on their instruction.** The stream→channel mapping is
not run — that correlation is their next iteration — and changing the mapping now
would swap one authored guess for another. **A guess that is labelled is a better
position than a guess that is fresh**, because the label is what stops it being
believed later. `authored/audio.json` records the refutation and keeps the value.

⚠️ Two of their limits are the kind I would otherwise have skated past: this says
nothing about *which* stream lands where, so it does not make summing right; and
"6 channels" is **not** evidence the game is 5.1 — that count is Xenia's hardcoded
`kFrameChannelsDefault`. The evidence is that five of them *differ*, which a stereo
guest cannot produce. The number of channels in a capture is a property of the
capture.

## The voice export now carries every qualifying stream — and a unity sum was refused by our own check

#4 is answered and it reframes the question the port had been asking. **`ADV.wmv`
carries one audio stream and it is WMA Pro 5.1, not XMA** — so "which of three
voice streams to ship" was missing the bed entirely. The movie's own track is the
bed; the three streams are *additional*.

Solving `capture = 0.600 × movie + residual` per channel, the gain is 0.600
uniformly (−4.44 dB), and the residual is **three signals at three positions** —
front pair (r 0.918), rear pair (r 0.929), and a centre whose partner LFE is empty
to −115 dB. 🔴 The load-bearing number is **LFE reproducing to −115.73 dBFS**:
where nothing is added the two decoders agree essentially exactly, so the other
residuals are **added content**, not codec mismatch.

`presentation: "all"` now keeps every equal-length non-silent survivor:
`ADV` **2 of 3**, `S00A` **1 of 3**. The third `ADV` chunk is the leading one this
port had already measured to be the *tail* of another (r=0.998, lag flush against
its end) — correctly dropped — and `S00A`'s others are digitally silent. The
top-level warning now keys on **kept < present** rather than on "more than one
stream exists", so it still fires and says what is absent.

### 🔴 A unity sum was tried and `check` refused it

First attempt summed at unity, on the precedent of `stems: "sum"` for a BGM bank.
`ADV` came out at **+2.62 dBFS**, over the +1.0 bound, and the validator rejected
the tree.

It was right, and the precedent did not transfer. A BGM bank's two waves are
**stems of one signal**; these three are **positions in a 5.1 field**. A stereo
downmix weights them 0.4142, 0.2929 and 0.2929 — which **sum to one whatever the
assignment**. So the total is fixed even though the distribution is unknown, and
dividing by the input count preserves that total while claiming nothing about
which stream sits where. `ADV` now lands at **−3.1 dBFS**.

⚠️ Note this is the *opposite* of the two divisor bugs this file already carries.
Those were wrong because an input contributing **nothing** sat in the divisor — a
silent chunk summed, a silent channel averaged. Here every input carries signal
and the weights genuinely sum to one. "Divide by N" is not right or wrong in
itself; it depends on whether the inputs are parts of one signal or parts of one
field, and I reached for the wrong precedent first.

### What is still not claimed

⚠️ **Which stream sits at which position is not determined** — their assignment is
by position, not content — so the port builds no 5.1 and applies no positional
downmix. ⚠️ Their correction to the earlier census page is carried too: the ALSA
permutation `[0,1,4,5,2,3]` does **not** apply to that capture; recomputing with no
assumed order gives the **identity**, so the "BR is 82 % silent" channel was really
**LFE**, which reconciles with the movie's own 80.64 % silent LFE. I had recorded
the census's channel labels; they are corrected here rather than left standing.

Every asserting check passes.

## Their stream assignment does not fit my region — weights NOT applied

The assignment is settled on their side by `byte_size`: ctx0 (1 294 336) → FL/FR,
ctx1 (1 118 208) → FC with LFE silent, ctx2 (1 171 456) → BL/BR, giving the port
weights 0.4142 / 0.2929 / 0.2929. Applying them needs their contexts to be my
chunks. **They are not.**

| | bytes |
|---|---|
| their three contexts, summed | **3 584 000** |
| my whole resolved voice region for `ADV` | **3 114 352** |
| difference | **+469 648** — 15 % larger than the region they must fit in |

My region yields **three** chunks, one of which is an 84.553 s / 806 972 B leading
chunk this port measured to be the **tail** of another (r=0.998, lag flush against
its end) — and 806 972 is none of their three sizes. That leaves two real streams
totalling 2 307 380 B, and **no pair of their contexts matches it**: the closest is
ctx1+ctx2 at 2 289 664, out by 17 716 B.

🔴 **So the weights are not applied.** Assigning positions on a byte-size match
that does not hold would be worse than the current divide-by-count, and their own
figures say how much worse: a swapped assignment is wrong by **11.76 dB**. The
export keeps `presentation: "all"` with the count divisor, which claims nothing
about placement.

⚠️ What I am *not* claiming: that their assignment is wrong. It is derived from a
probe of the running decoder; mine is `resolve_movie_voice_region`'s byte range off
the disc. **One of the two spans is not what the other thinks it is**, and that is
a decode question in their lane, not a mixing question in mine. The numbers above
are the whole of what I can say.

📌 This is the first time in this exchange that taking a settled result would have
been the wrong move. Every previous round ended with me adopting something —
sometimes after checking it, once after they retracted it. The discipline that
mattered here was checking whether the *identifiers* resolved before using the
*conclusion* they index, and the identifier was a byte count I happened to be able
to test.

### What I did take

✅ **One mixer gain, not two** — the same 0.600 scales the movie bed and the voice
— is worth having independently of the assignment, and is recorded. ⚠️ Not baked
in as a constant: whether 0.600 is a fixed mix constant or a volume setting is
unknown, and the port applies no gain of its own either way.

✅ And their two failed instruments, which look like results and are not:
**envelope correlation returns 0.86–0.95 for every stream against every channel**,
because all six residual channels share the dialogue's activity timing — a matrix
of 0.9s reads as a strong finding and is the opposite. **Sample-level correlation
returns ≈ 0**, because the XMA decode's framing offset is unknown. I have used
envelope correlation as my main audio instrument all fortnight; that it saturates
where the content shares timing is a limit I did not know it had.

## The resolver starts late, and my "duplicate tail" was a real stream all along

My refusal to apply their weights found a defect in their decoder:
**`resolve_movie_voice_region` starts inside the first stream.** For `ADV`, ctx0
declares 632 packets (1 294 336 B) and the resolver's leading chunk is 394
(806 912 B) — **late by exactly 238 packets, 487 424 B**. A whole number of
packets, so an offset rather than corruption; extending by 238 makes
`to_xma_riffs` yield all three declared sizes. Disc-wide, 24/24 single-chunk
regions are fine and **8 of 10 three-chunk regions start mid-stream**.

### 🔴 Which re-reads a measurement of mine, without touching the measurement

This port measured the leading chunk as *"the TAIL of the kept stream [refuted]"* —
envelope correlation r=0.998, lag flush against that stream's end — and dropped it
as an understood duplicate.

**The correlation was right and the conclusion was wrong.** If the three streams
are simultaneous and the region starts 238 packets into ctx0, the surviving
fragment is ctx0's *later* 62 %, which aligns with the later part of the others —
**flush against the end**. That is precisely what I measured. Same number, and it
means the opposite of what I read into it: not a duplicate tail to discard, but a
start-truncated *simultaneous* stream. **The port has been dropping a real stream.**

⚠️ I first suspected the instrument, because they had just shown envelope
correlation saturating at 0.86–0.95 across every stream/channel pair. Tested on
the actual dialogue: a 30 s window against other windows of the same take gives
**r = 1.0000** at zero offset and **−0.08 … +0.08** everywhere else. It localises
sharply. Their saturation is a different regime — *concurrent* streams sharing
timing at zero lag — and does not reach a lag search over one track.

So the instrument was sound, its control was adequate, and the error was entirely
in the inference. That is a less comfortable finding than a broken tool: there was
nothing to fix, only something I concluded.

### Not fixed here, deliberately

The port still drops chunk 0. Including it correctly needs one of two things I do
not have:

* **the corrected span** — theirs, and they explicitly say not to extend blind:
  `ADV` is start − 238×2048, but for the other seven affected regions the exact
  clip is **unknown**, their audit's figure being an upper bound (243 for `ADV`
  where the truth is 238);
* **or an alignment decision** — chunk 0 is missing its *head*, so summing it from
  sample 0 would be wrong by 84.5 s against 137.3 s. Aligning it flush to the end
  is what the measurement implies, and implementing that on my own authority is
  the invention the last twenty rounds have been about not making.

✅ The assignment itself still stands — their ratio test was chosen to be immune to
the clipping — but ⚠️ chunk 0's absolute level was measured over 62 % of its
stream, so its 0.05 dB agreement is luckier than it reads.

## The export knew the voice was incomplete; the runtime did not say so

The manifest has carried a full account of the voice export's gap for weeks, and
the runtime printed `+ voice ADV` and nothing else. That asymmetry is the
dangerous one for audio specifically: a reader of `manifest.json` gets a
paragraph, and a person **listening** gets clean dialogue with no way to learn
that a stream is absent from it.

This port already governs the same situation elsewhere — NEW GAME announces the
two measured screens it jumps over rather than skipping them silently. Audio had
no equivalent, so:

* `ManifestAudio` gains **`incomplete`**, one line naming what an asset is *known*
  to be missing. Absent means nothing is known to be missing — **never** that the
  asset was checked and found complete.
* `MenuAudio` carries it alongside the stream, and `_play_video` prints it at the
  moment the voice starts.

```
     + voice ADV
       🔴 KNOWN INCOMPLETE: 2 of 3 streams. The running game decodes all 3 …
```

Verified on both paths — the boot's `ADV` and P7's `S00A`.

### 🔴 And the first version of the message was false for one of the two assets

It read *"one is a start-truncated stream this export drops"*. That is `ADV`'s
story: its dropped chunk is the start-clipped remainder of ctx0. **`S00A`'s
dropped chunks are digitally silent** — a different reason entirely — and the
message would have told anyone running the new-game intro something untrue about
their own asset.

Caught by reading the output for both, which took one command and which I nearly
skipped because the `ADV` line was obviously correct. The wording now states the
counts and points at the entry's `why`, because **which streams are dropped and
why is not the same story twice** and a single sentence cannot carry both.

⚠️ Worth naming as its own shape: a message generated *once* from a template but
*true* only for the case it was written against. It is the failure mode of every
generic warning, and it is harder to see than a wrong number because the sentence
is well-formed and confident in both places.

## The voice export is complete — new pin, and the cause was a "within one bank" cap

`formats-pin-2026-08-30`. The cause of the late start was a second condition on
the start filter: `end - s < 1_500_000`, *"only within one bank"*. `ADV`'s
predecessor trailer sits **3 618 816 B** before `end`, so it was rejected and
`start` fell back to `anchor` — **a TOC offset, not a stream boundary**. That is
exactly why it hit regions over 1.5 MB (the multichannel three-stream ones) and
never the single-stream ones. 17 of 95 movies took the fallback.

| | before | after |
|---|---|---|
| `ADV` region | 3 114 352 B | **3 618 816 B** |
| `ADV` streams kept | 2 of 3 | **3 of 3 — complete** |
| `S00A` streams kept | 1 of 3 | **2 of 3**, the third digitally silent |
| `ADV` peak | −3.1 dBFS | −2.84 dBFS |

✅ **The voice export is now complete for both movies**, closing a defect that was
open for this entire session — and my re-reading of the "duplicate tail" as a
start-truncated simultaneous stream is what the fix confirms. `ADV` drops **zero**
chunks; the runtime no longer prints its incomplete line.

### 🔴 And the incompleteness warning was crying wolf on `S00A`

With `ADV` fixed, `S00A` still read **KNOWN INCOMPLETE** at 2 of 3 — because its
third chunk is **93.694 s of exact zeroes**. A dropped silent stream is not
missing content, and a warning that fires on it teaches a reader to ignore the one
case that means something.

`Exported` gains `content_waves` — how many sub-waves carry **signal** — and the
warning, the console line and the manifest's `incomplete` all key on
`kept < content` rather than `kept < present`. Both movies now report no gap,
correctly.

⚠️ Second time in two iterations that this warning was wrong in the *cautious*
direction: first a template message true only for `ADV`, now a gap claimed over
silence. Over-warning is not the safe failure it looks like — it is the failure
that makes the next real warning unreadable.

### A second movie, in the predicted direction

They note only `ADV` has external ground truth; the other 16 rest on their own
sweep. **`S00A` is a second data point from a different movie**: its kept count
went 1 → 2 because a chunk that was previously a different duration now matches
the others at 93.694 s — exactly what restoring a truncated first stream
predicts.

⚠️ It is **not** independent ground truth — it is my exporter reading their fixed
crate — but it is a different asset than the one the fix was derived on, and the
outcome was predicted before it was observed. Recorded as that and nothing more.

Oracle rows unmoved; MODDING rules pass.

## The positional weights are applied — keyed by byte size, so the key is a check

With the span fixed, `ADV`'s three chunks map onto the Decoder's contexts
**exactly** — each is a declared `byte_size` plus the 60-byte RIFF header
`to_xma_riffs` prepends:

| chunk | bytes | − 60 | context | position | weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 294 396 | 1 294 336 | ctx0 | FL/FR | **0.4142** |
| 1 | 1 118 268 | 1 118 208 | ctx1 | FC, LFE silent | **0.2929** |
| 2 | 1 171 516 | 1 171 456 | ctx2 | BL/BR | **0.2929** |

`authored/audio.json` gains `voice.stream_weights`, **keyed by declared byte
size**, and the exporter applies positional weights only when *every* kept
stream's size is in the table — otherwise it falls back to the count divisor.

🔴 **The key is the check.** Two weeks ago these same sizes did **not** fit the
region the resolver returned, and that is how a 238-packet late start was found.
Applied by *position* instead, the weights would have gone onto the wrong streams
in silence. `S00A` matches nothing here and keeps the divisor: extending by
position would assume the ordering generalises from one movie, which is exactly
the inference the byte-size key exists to prevent.

`ADV` now mixes at 0.4142 / 0.2929 / 0.2929 and lands at **−2.87 dBFS**.

### ✅ An unlooked-for structural confirmation

The generated filter folds chunks 0 and 2 from **two** live channels
(`0.5*c0+0.5*c1`) and chunk 1 from **one** (`c0`). `live_channels` found that
independently, by measuring which channels carry signal — and it matches the
Decoder's structural claim that **ctx1 is the only stream with a digitally silent
channel, and LFE the only channel with an empty residual**. Their evidence is a
decomposition of the game's output; mine is a peak measurement on the disc's own
chunks. Different sides, same structure.

## 🔴 Unexplained: `verify-menu-audio`'s dead-press check has started failing

Its first assertion — five presses bound to nothing produce a Master bus
**bit-identical** to five waits — now reports DIFFER, reproducibly across three
runs. The two recordings diverge at **0.085 s**, differ on 92 % of samples, and
have different durations (1.300 s against 1.207 s) where they were previously
identical.

⚠️ **I have not identified the cause and am not guessing at one.** It is not the
voice change — that touches only the voice export, and neither control run plays
a voice. The candidates I can name and have not separated are the new pin, the
plate-pulse draw path, and the static-overlay clock.

📌 What the failure does expose is a weakness in the test I wrote: **it compares
two separate process runs and assumes bit-determinism across them.** That premise
held for weeks, which is why it looked like a strong assertion — no thresholds, no
tuning. It is strong only while startup is deterministic, and nothing in the test
checks that it still is. A comparison within one run, or an explicit determinism
control, would not have this failure mode.

Filed rather than patched: silencing it would remove the only check that a dead
press stays silent, and I would rather have a failing check than a passing one
whose premise I have stopped believing.

## External ground truth for every three-chunk region — the movies' own durations

They have no external check on the 15 regions beyond `ADV`, and no route to one
that does not go through the port or the emulator. There is one reference in
reach that owes nothing to their crate: **each movie's own duration, read from its
WMV**. A start-truncated stream must decode *shorter than its movie* — `ADV`'s was
84.55 s against 137.71, a 38 % deficit.

Dumping every region with their `adv_voice_dump` and decoding each chunk:

| | |
|---|---|
| three-chunk regions found | **25** |
| chunks decoded | **75** |
| chunks more than 5 % short of their movie | **0** |
| largest deviation of any chunk | **1.78 %** |

✅ **No region is still truncated.** The reference is external — the durations come
from `/disc/dat/movie/*.wmv`, which their resolver never touches — so this is the
independent confirmation `S00A` alone could not be. What it does *not* cover is
whether a region's start is byte-exact; it catches truncation, which is the defect
that existed.

🟡 **A population discrepancy worth their attention.** Their page says *"8 of 10
three-chunk regions start mid-stream"*. I find **25** three-chunk regions on this
disc, not 10. Both numbers cannot describe the same population, and I cannot tell
from here which is the different one — a filter of theirs, or a difference in what
`adv_voice_dump` returns after the fix. Reported, not resolved.

### 🔴 My first run silently covered half of them and said it was clean

It reported *"0 of 13 three-chunk regions have a short chunk"*. There were 25.
`cargo run` inside a `while read` loop **consumes stdin**, so every second line of
the movie list was eaten — the covered set was positions 1, 3, 5, 7… exactly.

The result was *correct for what it measured* and the population was half what the
sentence implied. I caught it only because 13 did not match the 25 I had counted
one command earlier, and I nearly did not compare them — the finding I wanted was
"0 short chunks", and it was there.

⚠️ This is the shape I have been cataloguing all fortnight arriving in my own
shell loop: **a silently reduced sample presenting as a complete one.** It is the
truncated-log trap, the `--screen` default at t=0, and the checker whose input was
smaller-but-valid. Redirecting the loop's input to fd 3 fixes it; noticing it at
all was luck, and the general defence is to state the population and the coverage
in the same breath, which the second run does.

## The menu bed loops at 61.93 s — and my 3.4 s "ugly seam" was mine, not the game's

The Decoder captured 240 s parked on the menu, reached in **26.8 s** via the
XMA-log oracle they wrote down rather than a screenshot. Two findings, and both
cut against what this port had authored:

* 🔴 **No seam.** Zero runs ≥0.3 s below median−18 dB in 232 s of the real menu.
* 🔴 **Not the wave's length.** r = **−0.009** at 87.750 s; top lag **61.909 s**.
  A second instrument agrees — 30 s slices located inside the decoded waves show
  playback advancing exactly +5.00 s per 5 s and wrapping at **61.93 s**, three
  times, against a control that finds slices cut at 10/45/70 s at 10.00/45.00/70.00.

The loop is **[≈0, 61.93)** of an 87.744 s wave, so the final ~25.8 s — the
fade-out and trailing silence — is **never played**. The game loops before the
fade.

### What this port had recorded, and how confidently

`loop: "restart"` replayed from sample 0 at the wave's end, and I measured the
resulting seam off my own Master bus: **36 near-silent 50 ms windows spanning
84.40–87.80 s, about 3.4 seconds**. I wrote that up as *the price of a missing
loop point*, put it in `BLOCKED.md` to raise Q10's priority, and sent the Decoder
a message describing it as the cost of the field nobody had found.

**It was our seam.** The measurement was correct and the attribution was wrong —
a defect in the port's own loop, reported as a property of the disc.

⚠️ That is the second time this fortnight I have measured something real and
assigned it to the wrong side. The first was reading a start-truncated stream as
a duplicate tail. Both were cases where the number was solid and the *sentence
around it* named the wrong cause, which is a failure mode no amount of instrument
control catches.

### The fix, and why it trims the file

**Godot loops a whole file**, so a loop region has to *be* the file. `BgmSpec`
gains `loop_end_s` and the exporter trims: the bed is now **61.930 s**, and the
runtime's existing whole-file loop is then correct by construction rather than
carrying a loop point nothing could honour.

✅ Verified on the port's own bus over 131 s: **5** near-silent 50 ms windows, no
run ≥0.2 s — against 36 windows and 3.4 s before. The seam is gone.

⚠️ Recorded limits: the loop **start** is inferred, since [0.0, 61.93) and
[0.25, 62.18) are not separated at their resolution — the port takes 0 because a
bank's data begins there, and says the choice was not measured. And a modder
replacing `main_menu.ogg` is now replacing **the loop region**, not the whole
bank; `MODDING` rule 1 still holds (one logical asset, one file) because the
logical asset is what the game plays.

### 🔴 And their "8 of 10" was a truncated file, not a count

They have withdrawn it: the audit run was cut short, the committed file ends
mid-list at `S11A` **with no summary line**, and they read a partial file as a
complete one. So *"the defect is specific to multichannel regions"* is now
**unsupported — possibly true, not shown**, and my 25 stands unopposed.

📌 Their tell and mine were the same on the same day, from opposite directions:
their table had **no summary line** and mine had a **population that didn't match
a count from one command earlier**. The defence that covers both is to state the
population and the coverage together — and theirs adds a second: **refuse to read
a table whose summary line is missing.**

## The dead-press check was passing by luck, and the luck ran out

Two iterations ago `verify-menu-audio`'s first assertion — five presses bound to
nothing produce a Master bus **bit-identical** to five waits — began failing. I
filed it undiagnosed and named three candidates: the new pin, the plate-pulse draw
path, the static-overlay clock.

**It is none of them.** Three *identical* invocations of the same command give two
outcomes:

| run | duration |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1.207438 s |
| 2 | **1.300317 s** |
| 3 | 1.207438 s |

The difference is **0.092879 s = exactly 4096 samples**, one mixing buffer. The
recording quantises to whole buffers, and a one-buffer shift moves both the length
and the alignment of everything inside it. So a byte-for-byte comparison of two
separate runs cannot hold.

🔴 **The premise was never guaranteed — it was luck.** It held while the run's
timing sat away from a buffer boundary, and a larger export (three voice streams
where there had been one) moved it onto one. **A test that passes by luck reports
the luck running out as a regression in the code**, which is exactly what it did:
I spent two iterations listing suspects in the port, and the port was never
involved.

⚠️ It also passed for weeks *looking* like the strongest assertion in the harness —
exact equality, no threshold, nothing to tune. That was true and it was resting on
an assumption nothing checked. Strength of the assertion said nothing about
soundness of the premise.

### The fix keeps what mattered

Still **exact** equality and still no threshold; the comparison may now slide by
whole buffers, which is the one degree of freedom the recorder actually has. In
practice it finds `+0` or `+1`.

✅ And it can still fail, which is the part worth proving: `ctrl` against `walk` —
a run that really does contain cues — **differs at every alignment**.

📌 The general form, and it is not the same as the earlier entries: those were
checks nobody ran, or that ran and answered a different question. This one ran,
answered the right question, and rested on a property of the environment that was
never verified and had no reason to be stable. **The thing to state alongside an
assertion is not only what it checks, but what it assumes about the machine.**

## Independent confirmation of the 1.5 MB cap — the mechanism, not just the conclusion

Their census settles the population — 104 movies, 95 resolved, **25 three-chunk**,
confirming my count — and corrects their own claim twice: *"specific to
multichannel regions"* holds (17 of 17 changed regions are three-chunk, 0 are
one-chunk), while *"all three-chunk regions were broken"* is **false**, since 8
of 25 were already fine.

The 8 they name are the checkable part, because the cause predicts them. A region
trips the `end - s < 1_500_000` filter only if its span **exceeds** the cap.
Measuring every three-chunk region's span myself:

| set | count | span range |
|---|---|---|
| never affected — their 8 | 8 | **71 680 … 1 400 832 B** |
| affected — their 17 | 17 | **2 023 424 … 6 516 736 B** |

✅ **The cap separates the two sets exactly, with no violations**, and it is not
marginal: there is a **622 592 B gap** between the largest unaffected region and
the smallest affected one, with 1 500 000 sitting inside it. That confirms the
*mechanism* — a byte-size threshold — and not merely the list of names, which a
coincidence could reproduce.

### 🔴 My first run of this reported seventeen contradictions

It printed `🔴 CONTRADICTS` against all 17 affected regions and 0 for the
unaffected — a clean, consistent, entirely wrong pattern. Every span read **0 B**,
because `awk '{print $NF+0}'` took the trailing `B` of `= 3618816 B` rather than
the number.

Had I sent that, I would have told them their causal account was refuted 17 out
of 17 — and it would have looked *strong*, because the failure was uniform and
fell exactly along the line under test. **A broken extractor produces a pattern
shaped by the question, not by the data**, and the more structured the question,
the more convincing the artefact.

⚠️ What saved it was the 8 unaffected regions reading 0 B too. A span of zero is
impossible for a region that resolves, and the "confirming" half of the table was
as broken as the refuting half — which is only visible if you read the half that
agrees with you as carefully as the half that does not.

📌 Their note about my dead `8 of 10` sharing a digit with the 8 genuinely
unaffected regions is the same hazard from the other side: **a wrong number that
resembles the right answer is the one most likely to survive into a later
document.** They wrote the coincidence down rather than quietly replacing the
figure, which is what makes it safe.

## The loop is a runtime field, the two readings conflict, and the port keeps what it shipped

The loop point **is** decodable — `loop_start`/`loop_end` in the XMA decoder
context, set by `XMASetLoopData`, logged by Xenia without a patch. But the values
imply a cycle of roughly **[10 s, 72 s]** against the **[0.25, 57.18 s]** their
audio tracking gave, and neither reading is withdrawn.

✅ Two predictions of theirs were refuted by their own data, which is the part
that makes the conflict credible rather than a slip: `loop_start` is **not ~0**
(it is 11.6 % into the stream), and a linear bits→seconds conversion yields
**62.34 s and 63.29 s for two stems that must stay sample-synchronous** — 0.95 s
apart is impossible, so the data refutes the linear assumption on its own. XMA
frames are variable-length in bits.

**The port keeps `loop_end_s: 61.93`**, on their instruction and because the
*length* survives better than the *placement*: 61.93 rests on an autocorrelation
that used no wave at all.

### The one check the port could add, and what it is worth

Neither of their instruments asked whether the trim **joins smoothly**. Over
126.5 s of the port's own bus, the wrap at 61.93 s and again at 123.86 s shows a
maximum adjacent-sample step of **212** and **208**, against a whole-file median
of **132** and a 99.9th percentile of **3 737**. The join is not a click.

⚠️ **It does not discriminate the two readings**, and saying so is the point: a
smooth join means the waveform does not jump, not that the loop is musically
right, and a cut landing near a zero crossing is smooth wherever it falls. I
recorded it as evidence that nothing is *audibly broken* and explicitly not as
support for 61.93 over [10, 72].

🔴 What the conflict costs if the runtime fields win: **this export is about ten
seconds short**, since [61.93, 72] would be content the game plays and we omit.
Filed with that number rather than as "the loop point may move", because the
former is weighable and the latter is not.

### Their diagnosis of their own locator is the entry to keep

*"A control easier than the measurement does not bound the measurement's error."*
Their locator's control matched slices cut from the wave **itself** — exact
copies — where the real task was matching a capture differing by decoder, gain and
mix. The clean +5.00 s stepping showed it was **self-consistent**, not that it had
locked to the right phrase, and music with repeated sections is exactly where a
locator aliases.

📌 That is the same shape as my `awk '{print $NF+0}'` reading every span as 0 B:
in both cases the output was internally consistent and structured, and in both the
tell was in the rows that **agreed** — my confirming half read impossibly too, and
their control was passing a problem it never had to solve.

## The duration is confirmed and the window is wrong — and the start is now a visible field

They stopped *converting* the runtime fields and **timed** them instead: a probe
tailing the Apu debug log, stamping `read_offset` on arrival, watching **three**
wraps — each from its own `loop_end` to its own `loop_start`, with **both
contexts wrapping at the same instant every time**.

| | |
|---|---|
| observed cycle | 61.56 s, 62.06 s → **61.81 s** |
| authored here | **61.93 s** |
| difference | **0.2 %** |

✅ **The length is settled**, and by instruments sharing nothing: a wall clock
between decoder events against an autocorrelation that never touched the wave.
Both contexts wrapping together is the sample-synchrony the linear bit conversion
could not produce — the same conversion that gave 62.34 and 63.29 s for two stems
that must be synchronous, and so refuted itself.

🔴 **The window is wrong.** `loop_start` is at 3.6 M bits — **11.6 % of the
stream, about ten seconds** — not the 0.25 s their earlier tracking gave. So this
export has the right **duration** over the wrong **window**: it replays the bank's
intro every cycle and omits the tail the game plays.

📌 **My smooth-join check has a second use I could not have anticipated.** It said
the wrap is not a click, and explicitly not that the loop is musically right. That
distinction is now load-bearing: it explains **why a wrong ten-second window went
unheard**. A cut near a zero crossing is smooth wherever it falls — including on
the wrong ten seconds. A check whose limits are written down keeps working after
the thing it was checking turns out to be wrong.

### Not re-cut — and the assumption is now a field

Their instruction is to wait: the exact start is **not measured**. Linear
back-extrapolation says ~9–13 s, and linearity is refuted by the same run, where
the bit rate varies **4.4 %** within one stream.

But `loop_end_s` alone **silently asserted a start of zero**, and that start is now
known to be wrong. So the entry gains `loop_start_s`, authored as **0.0 and
flagged as wrong**, with `-ss` applied before `-t` so the pair is (start,
duration) and moving the start cannot silently change how much is kept.

⚠️ An assumption a reader has to infer from a **missing field** is not one they can
weigh. This is the same move as `layer_source` — the export must let a consumer
tell a measured value from an assumed one — applied to a value I had been carrying
implicitly for two days.

✅ The new path is **proved before it is needed**: with `loop_start_s = 10.0` the
command carries `-ss 10 -t 61.93` and the output stays 61.930 s — a window, not a
truncation. Restored to 0.0; the export is byte-unchanged. When the start is
measured this is a one-value edit, not a code change.

## The loop window is measured — `-ss 9.44 -t 61.87` — and the near-silence count tracked the error

The region is **[9.44 s, 71.31 s]** of an 87.744 s wave: the first 9.44 s is an
intro played **once**, the last 16.4 s a fade-out **never played**. Two
derivations on both stems, neither converting bits to seconds — the conversion
that had refuted itself by giving two sample-synchronous stems 62.34 and 63.29 s.

✅ **61.87 replaces 61.93**, 0.1 % apart. The measured value is taken because it
has the loop's own endpoints under it; the autocorrelation that produced 61.93
never touched the wave and agreed to a tenth of a percent, which is what makes
both worth having.

### The port's own near-silence count tracked the window's correctness

| window | near-silent 50 ms frames in ~127 s |
|---|---|
| no trim, `restart` at the wave's end | **36**, spanning 3.4 s |
| `[0, 61.93]` — right length, wrong window | **5**, no run ≥0.2 s |
| **`[9.44, 71.31]` — measured** | **0** |

That is a real corroboration from this side and it was not designed as one. The
old window kept part of the bank's quiet intro; the measured one excludes both the
intro and the fade, so no quiet stretch survives anywhere in the loop. The count
fell monotonically as the window got closer to right.

⚠️ Wrap continuity is unchanged and still not evidence: max adjacent-sample step
**287** and **354** at the two wraps against a 99.9th percentile of **3 812**. As
before, a cut near a zero crossing is smooth wherever it falls — the *silence*
count discriminated where the *step* count could not.

### 🔴 A stale `why` reached the manifest for two days

Correcting `loop_end_why` and `loop_start_why` left `loop_why` — **the field the
exporter concatenates into `manifest.json`** — still asserting that the loop would
be *"AUDIBLY WRONG AT THE SEAM [refuted]"*, that *"no loop-point field has been identified [refuted]
anywhere"*, and that trimming *"would INVENT a loop point"*. All three refuted;
all three shipped to any consumer reading the export.

**A correction that does not reach the artifact a consumer reads has not been
made.** The corrections existed, were accurate, and were in the wrong fields.

⚠️ And my first check of the fix reported the stale text still present — because
the replacement **quotes** the refuted sentences in order to name them, so a
substring search finds them inside the paragraph saying they are false. I had to
read the context to see it. That is the "check the rows that agree" lesson landing
on a grep: the match was real and its meaning was the opposite of what the search
implied.

### Why the wait for 9.44 was cheap

Their note is worth keeping: it was not that the field predicted the value, but
that `loop_end_s` alone was **asserting** a start of zero in a form no reader
could weigh or find — and that proving `10.0` produced a *window* rather than a
truncation **before the real value existed** meant arriving at 9.44 was a
one-value edit with a clean baseline behind it.

## Applying "grep the corpus for the claim" to my own corpus

The Decoder found that a claim they refuted in a *new page* was still standing in
`bgm-two-stems.md` and in `HANDOFF.md` — the page a reader is told to consult
instead of the rest. Their rule: **grep the corpus for the claim, not for the file
you were working in.** Run against mine, on four claims I refuted this fortnight:

| claim | where | state |
|---|---|---|
| "the leading chunk is the **TAIL** of the kept stream" | `audio.rs` → **`manifest.json`** | 🔴 **still shipping** |
| "six expected DIFFERS [refuted]" | `BLOCKED`, `DECISIONS` | marked |
| "the boot is **known too fast [refuted]** on both" | `DECISIONS` | 🔴 **standing, unmarked** |
| "the **only thing** making the plate reappear" | `BLOCKED` | marked |

### The one that shipped

The dropped-chunk explanation in the exported `why` still told readers the leading
chunk *"IS understood: the TAIL of the kept stream [refuted]"*. That interpretation was
refuted — the correlation was sound, but what matched end-flush was a
**start-truncated simultaneous stream**, because the resolver began 238 packets
inside it.

⚠️ And it was wrong twice over, in the shape I had already fixed once: `S00A`'s
dropped chunk is the **silent** one, not a leading chunk, so the sentence
described a case that was not present. **A template message true only for the case
it was written against** — the second instance of that exact defect in this file,
which suggests the first fix taught me nothing general.

Replaced with a per-case account that names the refutation rather than deleting it.

### The one that was standing

*"The port's boot is known too fast [refuted] on both, by an unmeasured amount"* — withdrawn
days later, when the splash dwells turned out to be **declared on the disc** and
the port already exact. I wrote the withdrawal as a **new section** and left the
original untouched, so a reader arriving at the older paragraph got the dead
answer. Annotated in place, pointing at the withdrawal.

### And a false positive that is its own lesson

`BLOCKED.md` matched *"the only thing making the plate [refuted] reappear"* — inside **my own
correction**, which quotes the refuted claim in order to name it. That is the grep
trap I documented two days ago, caught by the very audit that trap exists to
complicate. **Naming a refuted sentence keeps it greppable**, which is the price of
not deleting it, and the check therefore needs a human read of every hit rather
than a verdict from the match alone.

📌 Their delivery-check point pairs with this: *a control proves the instrument
reads correctly, a delivery check proves the experiment happened at all.* Their
second Ⓐ was never delivered — 2 pad lines is one press — and *"the press did
nothing"* and *"there was no press"* are identical from the screen. My equivalent
is that a correction can be written, be accurate, and never arrive.

## A refuted-claim register, because the audit found what the audit found

The Decoder ran my corpus audit against theirs and found **four** refuted claims
still standing — including one they had corrected in a message to me, agreed with,
and written a METHOD entry about, **without landing the correction for a full
iteration**. Their sharpening: *acknowledging a correction in conversation feels
like making it and isn't.*

A hand audit finds the instances present on the day it runs. It does not stop the
next one. So `tools/port/check-claims` is a **register**: each row is a claim this
corpus has refuted, and every occurrence must carry an explicit `[refuted]`
sentinel within 400 characters. `check-all` runs it.

### 🔴 It found four more than my hand audit did

My manual pass checked four claims and found two problems. The check, on the same
four, found **four further unmarked occurrences** I had read past — including one
in `authored/audio.json` and one in the very table where I had written *"standing,
unmarked"* about a different claim.

### The marker is a sentinel, not a keyword, and that mattered

The first version matched a per-claim keyword near the hit — "refuted",
"WITHDRAWN". **Every one of its failures was a quotation sitting inside a
correction whose wording happened not to contain the keyword**: a table cell
reading *"standing, unmarked"*, a sentence reading *"the real count was ten"*.

⚠️ The temptation was to widen the window or add synonyms until those passed.
**That is tuning a threshold until the answer comes out right** — the failure this
corpus has spent a fortnight cataloguing, arriving in the tool built to catch it.
So the marker became a token the author must place. It cannot be satisfied by
phrasing, and its absence means exactly one thing.

The cost is honest and is the point: 21 existing quotations had to be marked by
hand, and a new refuted claim means a new row plus marking what already quotes it.

✅ Proved it fails: removing one sentinel makes the run report that claim unmarked
and exit non-zero.

### What the register cannot do

⚠️ It only knows claims **someone has entered**. A refuted claim nobody registers
is invisible to it, so this is a ratchet on known corrections and not a search for
unknown ones — the audit still has to happen first. And it enforces *marking*, not
*correctness*: a sentinel next to a sentence that was never really refuted would
pass and be wrong in a new way.

📌 Their other finding is the one I acted on separately: **a "kept for the record"
block still asserts.** `BLOCKED.md`'s voice row had a struck heading and three
sentences below it asserting in the present tense — that the `1 of 3` warning
stays, that stream 1 is *"consistent with being stream 2's tail"*, that streams 2
and 3 are indistinguishable. All three resolved days earlier. Marking a heading
superseded does not mark the sentence a reader lands on, so the resolution now
sits at the top of the cell and names each superseded sentence.

## State of the port, and a claim I built on for a week without checking

Every asserting check passes: the format validator (16 screens against
`sylpheed.screen/3`), all five MODDING rules, the capture-control sweep, the
refuted-claim register, the decisions index. The oracle rows sit at the tone
floor — `title_plate` **0.00 %**, both splashes **0.01 %**, `main_menu` 0.06 %,
`main_menu_options` 0.15 %, `extras` 0.19 %, `title` 0.21 %, `title_band` 0.35 %
against its own oracle-to-oracle gap. The P5 walk runs and ends on the title.

### 🔴 The refutation attempt this iteration was of something I had already used

The claim that reframed the entire voice question — *`ADV.wmv` carries **one**
audio stream and it is **WMA Pro 5.1**, not XMA, so the movie's own track is the
bed and the three streams are additional* — is checkable in one command against
the disc:

```
index=0  codec_name=wmapro  channels=6  channel_layout=5.1  sample_rate=48000
1 audio stream
```

✅ Exactly confirmed.

⚠️ **And I had built on it for a week without running it.** The positional
weights, the `presentation: "all"` change, the refusal to apply the assignment
when the byte sizes did not fit — all of it rests on that reframing, and the
verification cost one `ffprobe` against a file I have had all along. I checked the
*byte sizes* scrupulously because they were the identifier I could test, and never
checked the sentence the identifier was serving.

📌 That is a different failure from the ones this file catalogues. Not an
unexercised rule, not a correction that never landed, not a control easier than
the measurement: **a premise so foundational that everything downstream got
audited and the premise itself did not.** The scrutiny went to the parts that
moved.

### What is still authored rather than measured

Four values, and the file says so at each:

| value | state |
|---|---|
| `flow.screens.main_menu.on_cancel` | **authored — likely but UNPROVEN**; Ⓑ returning to the title is stated in HANDOFF with no capture behind it |
| `ptbtn01.after_video` | **authored**; the game goes into Mission 1, which MISSION §7 scopes out, so "return to the title" is a chosen end state |
| `flow.navigation.input_during_transition` | **authored, not measured** — nobody has watched a press mid-fade; ignoring invents least |
| `authored/rendering.json`'s withheld leaves | two leaf records deliberately not drawn, each with its reason |

Everything else in `authored/` now carries `kind: measured` — the BGM bank and its
loop window, the plate's pulse period, the keyframe unit, the black hold, the
navigation wrap, the cue bindings, the voice streams and their positional weights.

⚠️ The black hold is measured but sits at **the top of its range** (~6.5–9.2 units,
authored 9), and that is recorded at the value rather than in a footnote.

## Identifying their submenu capture: edges where intensity could not

They reached and captured a submenu but could not identify it. Their diagnosis is
the useful part: **correlation cannot discriminate when the candidate renders are
near-blank**, and near-blank is exactly what the `.tbm` hypothesis predicts — all
19 `GP_SAVE_LOAD` builds scored −0.004…−0.010, a ranking with no information in
it. *The instrument is disabled by the thing it was brought in to detect.*

That diagnosis implies its own fix. Their capture is **99.999 % non-black** — a
full-screen background our renderer omits — and an additive background swamps an
intensity correlation. **It does not survive an edge map**: a smooth ground has no
edges, and the UI does.

### The control first, because a ranking is worthless without one

Edge correlation against my own `title` capture, over seven `GP_TITLE` builds
whose answer I know:

| build | r |
|---|---|
| **4 — the right answer** | **+0.2792** |
| 6 (`extras`, its nearest sibling) | +0.1936 |
| everything else | ≤ +0.037 |

✅ Right answer on top, 1.4× over second and 7.6× over third. Modest absolute r,
and a clear ranking — so the method discriminates on this corpus.

### The result

Their capture against all 22 candidate builds:

| build | r |
|---|---|
| **`GP_TUTORIAL` build 0** | **+0.4962** |
| `GP_TUTORIAL` build 1 | +0.3137 |
| best `GP_SAVE_LOAD` (17) | +0.0713 |
| worst | −0.0331 |

🟢 **The submenu is a `GP_TUTORIAL` build.** The winning r is *higher* than the
control's, its margin over second is *better* (1.58× against 1.4×), and both
TUTORIAL builds sit **4–7× above every `GP_SAVE_LOAD` build** — the archive
separation is far stronger than the within-archive one.

✅ It is independently plausible: `authored/flow.json` has `ptbtn03` = **TUTORIAL**
→ `TUTORIAL_MENU`, noted as *"the lesson list is not a `GP_TITLE` build"*. An Ⓐ
on a menu whose focus was TUTORIAL lands exactly there, and HANDOFF Q5 measured
initial focus as unstable boot to boot.

⚠️ **What this does and does not settle.** The **archive** is identified with a
large margin. **Which build within it** is not: 1.58× is the same order as my
control's 1.4×, and the two TUTORIAL builds are variants of one screen — so I
would call build 0 the better fit and not a determination.

⚠️ And the method inherits a limit worth stating: an edge map is insensitive to
*what* the background is, which is the point, but it is also insensitive to a
missing element that has no edges. It answers "which screen", not "is our render
complete".

### Refutation attempt: "`screen render` omits every `.tbm` background, but none of your screens has one"

Their branch, HEAD `d92a962`. The first half is theirs to prove and they proved
it against a capture. **The half that decides whether my regression baseline is
sound is the second**, and it is a claim about *my* tree — so I tested it.

`screen info --all`, grepped for `.tbm`, across all **16** builds in my manifest:
zero references. ✅ Their claim holds, and holds wider than they stated — they
said "none of your five screens", it is none of sixteen.

**Both controls fired**, and this is the whole reason the result means anything.
A "none found" from an instrument never shown to find one is the failure this
corpus keeps repeating — my first attempt at this check printed nothing at all
from its control and I nearly read that as agreement:

| | `.tbm` mentions |
|---|---|
| positive — `GP_TUTORIAL` build 0 | **1** (`pubase.tbm`, the element they named) |
| negative — `GP_TITLE` build 5, `main_menu` | 0 |

### The guard, and why a passing check still needed one

So `tools/port/verify-screen` cannot be misled today. ⚠️ **That is a fact about
today's manifest, not a property of the script**, and the failure it would cause
is the expensive kind rather than a silent one: the port draws a background the
reference omits, the row reads `DIFFERS`, and this script's own header sends the
reader off to find out *which renderer moved*. Neither did. It would be a real
disagreement with a known cause on the reference side and nothing on screen
saying so.

The row now says so. It does **not** change the verdict or the bar — tuning until
things match is what that header warns against; it attaches provenance to the one
row that would otherwise mislead.

🔴 The guard cannot fire on any screen I ship, which is how a guard goes quietly
dead. Its expression is therefore controlled directly, both directions:
`GP_TUTORIAL` build 0 → 1, `GP_TITLE` build 5 → 0.

✅ Regression unchanged after the edit: `title` max 6 / over3 790, `main_menu`
max 4 / over3 0 — the committed baseline exactly.

### Their identification and mine agree, from unshared assumptions

They identified the screen by **reading the word `TUTORIAL` off the framebuffer**.
My edge correlation, run before that message arrived and without access to the
text, ranked `GP_TUTORIAL` build 0 first. Two methods with no assumption in
common, one answer.

📌 Worth keeping their methodological note over the result: their high-passed
matcher scored 1.28×, and they *declined to identify with it* — the number was
never used because it had been controlled. My 1.58× is barely better and I said
the same thing about the build-within-archive question. **The margin that
mattered was the archive one (4–7×), and the answer that settled it was reading
the label.** Build a matcher only after checking whether the artefact already
states the answer.

## `on_cancel`: one half measured, and a MEASURED stamp removed from the other

The Decoder measured **Ⓑ on the main menu → the title** (their `86a8ce7`,
`docs/re/data/b-on-main-menu.txt`): delivery-confirmed, 73.5 % of pixels changed,
both captures naming themselves, **≤ 0.4 s**, and **no loading screen** on the
path despite the disc carrying four.

✅ `authored/flow.json` `main_menu/on_cancel` moves from *"likely but UNPROVEN"*
to **MEASURED**. What makes it conclusive is the **latency, not the
destination** — my own `why` had named the confound: the title *also* returns on
its own after ~8–10 s idle, so an observer could not tell a response from a
timeout. ≤ 0.4 s is twenty times faster than the idle return, and that is what
separates them.

### 🔴 The other half: my tree stamped MEASURED on a claim with no evidence

`title/on_cancel_why` read **`"MEASURED, HANDOFF Q5: Ⓑ on the title does
nothing."`** The Decoder now says that is unevidenced — their 2026-08-30 run
cannot be counted, because the second Ⓑ landed *during* the title's build-in, so
the glyph 0 → 154 that followed is the build-in completing, not a response.

I did not invent the stamp, and that is the point worth recording. **HANDOFF Q5
(`9ca1eb5`) prefixes its entire row `**measured**` and then lists six clauses.**
In the source it links, that clause's evidence cell reads **`none`**, with a
yellow marker. The summary flattened six claims of differing strength into one
word, and my authored tree copied the word.

⚠️ **The value does not change — `null` either way.** Doing nothing is the safe
reading whether or not it is measured, so this correction moves no pixel. It
removes a false provenance, which is the thing that would have been believed
later.

### The same row has a second empty cell, which nobody flagged

Auditing the rest of Q5 rather than only the clause I was handed: the **`up /
down`** row — *"one item per press, no auto-repeat at the durations tried"* —
also has an **empty evidence cell**, and my `navigation` block cites that same
row.

✅ It splits cleanly, and only one half is exposed:

* **one item per press** is evidenced *indirectly and well* — the wrap montage's
  count only comes out if each press moves one (4 presses from `EXTRAS` landing
  on `OPTIONS`). Keep it.
* **no auto-repeat** has nothing behind it, and the source's own *"at the
  durations tried"* hedges it.

🔴 Worse, the port already behaved this way **without stating it**: `boot.gd`'s
`_input` is edge-triggered, so holding a direction moves one item — an unexamined
consequence of how the handler was written, not a claim anyone could check.
`navigation.auto_repeat: false` is now explicit, marked a **choice**: a repeat we
did not implement cannot run a menu past the item the player wanted; inventing
one could.

### Audit of every MEASURED stamp in `authored/`

34 stamps. **Six cite a HANDOFF row and nothing else** — the laundering path
above. The other 26 that my crude grep flagged are fragments of multi-part `why`
arrays whose citation sits in a sibling field, so that heuristic over-reports and
I am not going to pretend otherwise. Of the six, one (Q5's Ⓑ) was actually wrong
and is fixed; the rest cite rows whose sources carry evidence.

📌 The generalisation, and it is the Decoder's own shape turned on a document:
**a summary that labels a row is not a citation for every clause in it.** A
bundled `**measured**` is exactly as strong as its weakest cell.

## BLOCKED.md's five "blocking" rows were all answered, some days ago

The standing instruction says this file rots, and it had. Rows 1 and 2 are
labelled **"(P3, blocking)"** while P3 through P7 have all shipped — a
contradiction on the file's own face, and one that misleads in the worse
direction: it under-reports progress and would send a reader to answer questions
already answered.

Audited every row against HANDOFF `9ca1eb5`, and — the part that makes this more
than bookkeeping — **checked whether the port actually acted on each answer**:

| row | answer | did the port act? |
|---|---|---|
| 1 splash predicate | ❔ no content rule exists; take the entry index | ✅ addressed by entry index; `publisher_logo` 10/13 now exported |
| 2 fade-out | **(a)**, play the group to its end | ✅ and see below — the prescribed constant was *deleted* |
| 3 focus over vs instead | ✅ my choice was fine; the miss was the ring | ✅ `ptbtneff01` exported and drawn |
| 4 rotation | human's call; pivot anchor **measured** | ✅ drawn about `pos + pivot` |
| 5 gamma | captures are not gamma-neutral, RMSE has a floor | ✅ in `verify-capture`'s header |

### 🔴 HANDOFF ask 2's prescribed action is stale, and following it would double-count

Ask 2 says: *"write one authored constant (~0.4 s / ~24 units) and play the group
to its end."* Under the corrected record layout (`formats-pin-2026-08-29c`) every
pose is timed, so the unknown that constant stood in for **does not exist** —
`exit_ramp_units` was already deleted for that reason.

Measuring what the file actually carries confirms the mechanism ask 2 describes
and contradicts its number. On `main_menu`, the final alpha ramps are:

* `pteff00` — the black quad — **0 → 255 over 10 units (0.17 s)**
* `ptmsg`, `pteff10`, `pteff12` — **255 → 0 over 6–8 units**

✅ *"the quad goes `a=255` while the buttons, `ptmsg` and the glows go `a=0`"* is
**in the file**, exactly as described. ⚠️ But the ramp is **10 units, not 24**.
Authoring 24 on top of a group that already ramps 10 would have played the fade
nearly two and a half times too long.

### A decomposition that fits both numbers — offered as a hypothesis, not a finding

HANDOFF Q7 measures two quantities off the game: the fade-out ~0.4 s and the
black-hold plateau **0.17–0.23 s**. The file gives the ramp as 10 units (0.17 s).

    in-file ramp 10 units  +  measured hold 10–14 units  =  20–24 units = 0.33–0.40 s

🟡 The measured ~0.4 s sits at the **top** of that range. So the ~0.4 s may be
**ramp + hold**, not the ramp alone — in which case both parts are already known
separately and no authored constant is needed at all. **This is arithmetic that
fits, not a measurement**, and it is the Decoder's to confirm or kill: the two
readings differ in whether a screen is still drawing during the last 0.2 s.

### 🔴 And it exposes a disagreement in my own tree

`authored/timing.json` holds `black_hold_units: 9` = **0.15 s**, measured in the
draw stream. HANDOFF's plateau is **0.17–0.23 s**, measured off the game. **Mine
sits below their floor**, by 1–5 units.

I am **not** changing it. Two instruments disagree and the rule is to say which
is wrong rather than tune until they match — and here the game measurement should
win over the draw-stream one on principle, but the gap is small enough that it
could equally be where each puts the boundary between ramp and hold. It goes to
`BLOCKED.md` as an ask, at the value it was measured at.

## The plate came back in the game and not in the port

The Decoder's Ⓑ run answered both my asks and threw in a third finding: **after Ⓑ
from the menu the `PRESS Ⓐ` plate is re-drawn** — pressed 351.2 s, pulse back
358.5 s (`daf8f47`).

🔴 **The port did not do that.** Ⓑ landed on a *bare* title. `_menu_arrive()`
calls `_drop_overlay()` — correct, the plate goes with the screen it was measured
on — but nothing ever put it back: `_overlay_spec` is cleared the instant the
overlay is raised, and only the boot sequence ever set it. Confirmed by running
it, not by reading: the drawn list was the ten title elements with no `ptbtn00`.

✅ Fixed. `_rearm_overlay_for(name)` looks the declaration up in
`authored/flow.json`'s **boot step for that screen** rather than naming
`press_start`, so the plate returns by the same code path and the same shared
clock as on boot, and a screen that gains an overlay later gets it on both paths
with no edit here. **No new constant** — the delay is not authored, it is
whatever the boot already does.

Controlled both ways: Ⓑ → `overlay press_start raised`, drawing `ptbtn00`,
`ptbtn00f`; entering `EXTRAS`, which declares no overlay, raises **nothing**.

### An independent agreement I did not tune for

The script log had no press timestamp, so the port's own latency could only be
guessed from surrounding lines. Added one. With it:

| | |
|---|---|
| Ⓑ pressed | 1.01 s |
| title arrives, overlay armed | 1.37 s |
| **port's press → title** | **0.36 s** |
| **their measured Ⓑ latency** | **≤ 0.4 s** |

✅ That agreement is worth something because **nothing here was fitted to it** —
the port's transition timing comes from the screens' own fade keyframes, and this
is the first time the two numbers have been put beside each other.

### 🟡 The plate's return time does not agree, and I am not adjusting it

The plate is raised on arrival and its own group takes it opaque at t=238
(3.97 s), so the port's **press → plate visible ≈ 4.33 s**. Theirs is **7.3 s to
the pulse**. The pulse has a 120-unit (2 s) period, so pulse *detection* can lag
first paint by up to 2 s — which closes it to ~6.3 s at most and leaves roughly
**a second unexplained**.

⚠️ It would be easy to author a delay that makes 4.33 into 7.3. That is exactly
the tuning this corpus keeps warning about, and the previous authored delay in
this very block (`after_settle_seconds: 2.13`) was already refuted once by
arithmetic. Left alone; recorded as an ask.

### Two stamps upgraded, both now measured for real

* `navigation.auto_repeat` — a 2.0 s held ⬇ moves the cursor **once**, their
  counter passing its control first. Was a consequence of edge-triggered
  `_input`; now a measurement.
* `title/on_cancel` — Ⓑ on a **settled** title does nothing, twenty seconds
  confirmed. This cell has now been `MEASURED` (wrongly), `AUTHORED` (honestly),
  and `MEASURED` (truly), with the value `null` the whole way through.

## 🔴 `verify-screen` was nondeterministic, and it looked fine most of the time

Running the full set after the plate fix, two rows had moved off the committed
baseline. One of them was not a regression at all — it was the harness.

`press_start` returned `over3` **5021, 8919, 5021** on three identical runs. The
plate's looping focus record takes its phase from `time_units`, which free-runs,
so the captured frame lands wherever the grab happened to fall — while the
reference renderer cannot pulse at all. **A detector that answers differently
each run is worse than one that fails**: it teaches its reader to ignore it.

⚠️ **The port is not the thing that was wrong.** A thing that pulses does not stop
because the screen has arrived, and the pulse is measured. What was wrong was
comparing a moving frame against a static one and calling the difference a
regression. So `ScreenView.loop_phase_units` pins the phase, negative means
free-running, that stays the default everywhere, and only the harness passes
`--loop-phase=0`.

✅ Controlled, and the control is what makes the fix trustworthy:

| | |
|---|---|
| pinned, 3 runs | **identical md5** |
| free-running, 4 runs | 3 identical, **1 different** |

🟡 That 3-of-4 is the finding worth keeping. **It is usually stable**, which is
exactly why it survived — a flake that fires one run in four reads as a real
regression that "went away", and a `--loop-phase` that changed nothing would have
been indistinguishable from a fix without that negative control.

✅ With the phase pinned, `press_start` reads **max 1 / over3 0 OK** — *the
recorded baseline exactly*, not some new number. Fifteen of sixteen rows now
match the committed baseline.

### The sixteenth: `title_jp` has genuinely drifted, and I cannot say which side

| | max | over3 |
|---|---|---|
| committed baseline | 155 | 20 498 |
| now | **233** | **61 208** |

What is established:

* ✅ **deterministic** — 233 / 61 208 twice, so not the phase.
* ✅ **not the reference** — the Decoder reports `screen render` is byte-identical
  across the stale and rebuilt binaries (max per-channel 0), so the reference is
  stable and the movement is on the Godot side.
* ✅ **localized** — the differing region is a single **350×396 block at
  (405, 74)**, the logo stack. `title` is untouched at max 6 / over3 790, which
  rules out anything shared by both title screens (the forced-backdrop rule
  among them).
* The port draws `ptlogo_jp`, `ptlogo3a/b/c` and the five `ptlogo_back2eff*`
  layers here that are transparent at rest on the English title.

🔴 **What I cannot do is say which renderer is right.** There is no capture of the
Japanese title in the corpus, and this script's own header is explicit that
agreement with the reference is not correctness and a `DIFFERS` is not
automatically the port's fault. Guessing a direction here is precisely the move
the mission forbids. Asked, not resolved.

## The JP title capture adjudicates `title_jp` — and it goes against the port

The Decoder captured the Japanese title at rest (`310bf86`) and deliberately did
**not** compare it to either renderer, so that my diff and theirs stay
independent. This is the oracle for the block I could not adjudicate.

### Aligning it, because the last capture's geometry did not transfer

Their submenu capture had the game surface at y=45 in a 1280×720 frame. I did not
assume that here — I recovered the alignment by row/column profile correlation,
with the English pair as a control:

| | dy | dx |
|---|---|---|
| **control** — English capture (1279×675) vs port | **0** (r 0.994) | **0** (r 0.977) |
| JP capture (1280×720) vs port | **−45** (r 0.927) | −1 |

✅ The control lands on (0,0) as it must, and the JP offset comes out at their
stated 45 **as a measurement rather than an inheritance**. My first look at the
frame said "no letterbox, content spans all 720 rows" — true, and irrelevant: the
surface is offset inside content that extends past it.

### The instrument is fair, and then the verdict

Comparing the capture against **both** renderers in the disputed 350×396 block at
(405,74), and against a control strip where the two renderers agree:

| region | vs port | vs reference | closer |
|---|---|---|---|
| **control strip** | r +0.9751 | r +0.9756 | tie — ✅ instrument is fair |
| **disputed block** | r +0.7462 | **r +0.8727** | **REFERENCE** |

🔴 **The port moved, and it moved away from the game.** The verdict is stable
under gamma compensation at both measured title gammas (raw / 1.34 / 1.49 →
reference every time), so it is not an artefact of the known capture gamma floor.
The port puts light on **25.6 %** of the block that the capture does not have,
against the reference's 15.9 % — it is drawing too much, not too little.

⚠️ **This is the opposite of what I expected.** The Decoder's description — a
crystalline burst behind the wordmark, the `ptlogo3a/b/c` + `ptlogo_back2eff*`
stack that English holds transparent at rest — reads as confirmation that the
port's extra layers are right. They are not: the burst is there, and the port
draws *more* of it than the game does. **A qualitative match on "is the effect
present" was about to stand in for a measurement of how much.**

### What is not settled: which change did it

Both renderers draw this screen at `rest`, t=10 units, so the settle-window logic
is not in play — the two decoders disagree about the **rest pose of the JP effect
stack itself**. Four commits this session touched that path (the forced-backdrop
rule, per-instant coverage, the looping record, the sweep/hold work) and I have
not bisected them. Naming one now would be a guess dressed as a cause.

📌 What this does settle: `title_jp`'s `DIFFERS` is **the port's**, not the
reference's. That reverses this script's usual presumption, and it is the first
row in the baseline whose direction has ever been established against a capture.

## 🔴 CORRECTION: the port did not move away from the game — I scored the wrong frame

The previous entry concluded, from the JP title capture, that *"the port moved,
and it moved away from the game"*. **That conclusion is withdrawn.** It is wrong,
and the way it was wrong is worth more than the answer.

I scored `verify-screen`'s `title_jp` frame against the oracle. That frame is
posed `--pose=rest`, which this port **does not ship**. Posed as it actually
runs:

| | disputed block | whole surface |
|---|---|---|
| port, `--pose=rest` (the frame I scored) | +0.7462 | — |
| **port, as shipped** | **+0.9994** | **+0.9652** |
| reference | +0.8727 | +0.9200 |

✅ Holds under gamma compensation (+0.9928 at γ=1.34) and ✅ on the **English
control**, same method: port +0.9946 against the reference's +0.9560. The port is
closer to the game than the reference on **both** title screens.

### Why `rest` produces a frame the game never shows

`ptlogo_back2eff1` on the JP title is `(t, alpha) = (0,0) (98,0) (100,255)
(102,255) (104,0)` — a **4-unit sparkle**, and its `rest.t` is **100: the peak of
its own flash**. Six of these stagger across the logo. Posing at `rest` fires
every sparkle simultaneously at full brightness, which is exactly the "port puts
light on 25.6 % of the block the capture does not have" I reported as a defect.
The excess light was real; it was in a frame nobody sees.

⚠️ `verify-screen` is not at fault — it poses `rest` **deliberately**, because
both renderers read `rest` through one decoder and that is what makes it a
consistency check. Its header said so. **I used a consistency-check frame to
answer a correctness question**, and the tool now says in its own header that its
frames must never be scored against a capture.

### A second, smaller thing in that entry was also wrong

It said the port draws layers "that are transparent at rest on the English
title". Both screens draw them under `--pose=rest`. I had compared a `--menu`
run's log (timeline pose) against a `verify-screen` log (rest pose) and read the
difference as a property of the screens rather than of the two modes.

### What actually stands from that entry

The alignment work survives intact — the measured dy=−45 with the English control
at (0,0), and the observation that the instrument is fair on a control strip. So
does the arithmetic. **What failed was choosing which frame to feed it**, and no
amount of control on the comparison could have caught that: every control I ran
was a control on the *metric*, and the error was upstream in the *input*.

📌 The generalisation: **a control proves the instrument, not the sample.** Both
of my last two iterations' errors were of that shape — a live reader pointed at
the wrong field name, and a fair metric pointed at the wrong frame.

### Wired so it cannot recur

`tools/verify-capture` takes a fifth per-row field, a capture crop, because this
capture is a full 1280×720 display frame with the surface at +0+45 while every
other capture in that directory is pre-cropped to 1279×675 — comparing it whole
would score the port against a 45 px shift. With it, `title_jp` reads **RMSE
20.91, differing region 1.04 %**, beside `title`'s 14.16 / 0.21 %.

⚠️ The row prints `no capture` until the Decoder's branch merges. Their capture is
theirs to commit; it was staged locally to test the row and removed.

## The `rest()` flash defect reaches four screens I ship — and the port already survives it

The Decoder censused it from the file side while I was looking at one instance:
of 13 991 elements with ≥2 keyframes, **2 305** have no plateau so the dwell
fallback decides, and **1 697 (74 %)** of those get a *visible* pose. In
`GP_TITLE`, 5 fires and 4 are visible — **all four on the splash screens this
port ships**.

✅ Confirmed in my own export, and it is exactly the JP-title shape on different
screens:

| element | keyframes | `rest` |
|---|---|---|
| `palogo_sqex_eff` | `0:a0 15:a255 30:a212 45:a0` | t=30, **a=212** |
| `palogo_anima_eff` | `0:a0 15:a255 30:a212 45:a0` | t=30, **a=212** |
| `palogo_gamearts_eff` | `0:a0 15:a255 **30:a255** 45:a0` | **t=15, a=255** |
| `palogo_seta_eff` | `0:a0 15:a255 **30:a255** 45:a0` | **t=15, a=255** |

📌 **A refinement to their description**, which named the `212` shape: two of the
four hold **255 through t=30**, so their fallback lands on the flash's *peak*
rather than its decay. Same defect, worse pose — full brightness, not
four-fifths. The logos themselves (`palogo_sqex` holds 255 from t=30 to t=235)
have a real plateau and are unaffected.

### The port ships the right frame, and now there is a number for it

Both poses of the publisher splash against the **committed oracle capture**:

| pose | RMSE | differing |
|---|---|---|
| **timeline — what the port ships** | **2.17** | **0.01 %** |
| `--pose=rest` — the harness frame | 9.05 | 0.75 % |

🔴 **75× the differing area on a screen this port ships.** So the rule I wrote
into `verify-screen`'s header after getting it wrong on `title_jp` is not a
special case — it generalises, and here it is demonstrated against an oracle
rather than argued.

✅ The port's settled pose evaluates `pose_at(hold)`, not `rest`, so it skips the
flashes and agrees with the capture at 0.01 %. The defect is confined to the
harness pose. **Nothing shipped is wrong; nothing needed fixing in the render.**

### What did need fixing: the port said "at rest" about a pose it never looked at

`ScreenView` logged `"%s (transparent at rest)"` for every skipped element,
whatever instant it had posed. On the timeline path the pose is
`pose_at(time_units)` — so it reported `palogo_sqex_eff (transparent at rest)`
about an element whose **resting alpha is 212**.

⚠️ That is not cosmetic. The rest-versus-posed-instant confusion is precisely what
made me score a `--pose=rest` frame against a capture and write up a drift that
did not exist. A log line that erases the distinction is that error pre-printed,
waiting to be believed. It now names the instant: `transparent at t=6`.

Controlled both ways on one screen: timeline → `transparent at t=6` and the flash
skipped; `--pose=rest` → still `at rest`, and the flash **drawn**.

## Correction: those two are the *sound* path, which makes the rule stronger

The Decoder refuted my refinement, and it is a correction I would rather have than
the credit. I wrote that `palogo_gamearts_eff` / `palogo_seta_eff` show "the same
defect, worse pose — their fallback lands on the flash's peak". **Wrong on the
mechanism.** They hold `a=255` at identical x, y *and scale* from t=15 to t=30 —
a genuine plateau at pair index 1, which `rest_plateau()` handles, and t=15 is
the **correct** answer for that path. They are not among their census's four.

🔴 **And the consequence runs the other way from a retraction.** My rest pose for
them really is the flash's peak, reached by the **sound** path. So *"a rest render
is not a frame to score against a capture"* does **not** depend on the fallback
being unsound: **a plateau can itself be the held peak of a transient.** The
2 305 / 1 697 census *understates* the exposure rather than bounding it.

### Censusing my own tree — and the first answer was wrong

I asked how many elements I ship whose `rest` is visible but whose visibility is
transient. First pass keyed "transient" on the element's own visible span, and
returned **28 across 12 of 16 screens** — a plausible-looking number.

🔴 It was wrong, and what caught it was the check the Decoder and I just agreed
on: **say what the number means physically.** The list included `ptmsg` — the main
menu's own `⊙ Select Ⓐ OK` footer — as "visible 2 of 64 units", and `ptbtn00`,
the `PRESS Ⓐ` plate. Those are on screen the whole time the game sits there. The
story collapses on contact.

The cause: `ptmsg` is `[0:a0 44:a0 56:a255 58:a255 64:a0]`, and that final zero is
the **screen's exit ramp**, which *every* element has. I had counted the exit as
the end of visibility, so every normal element looked like a flash. No control
would have caught this — the arithmetic was right.

✅ Re-keyed on the **screen's** span rather than the element's: a transient is
gone while the screen is still up.

| | |
|---|---|
| elements whose `rest` shows what the settled screen does not | **31** |
| screens affected | **8 of 16** |

Every entry now has a coherent story — `*eff*` and `*loop*` sparkles, plus the two
loading screens — and `ptmsg`/`ptbtn00` fall out on their own, which is the check
passing rather than being applied by hand.

📌 **My exposure is twice what the splash finding suggested.** Not four screens,
eight — both titles, both splashes and their region twins, and both loading
screens. ✅ None of it reaches shipped output: the port poses `pose_at(hold)` and
agrees with every capture it has. The number bounds what would break the day
anything scored a `rest` frame against an oracle.

## The two loading screens are no longer black, and it was the paint order

`verify-screen`'s header has carried, since P1, that `build_12` and `build_15`
*"render as pure black in BOTH renderers, mean 0 and max 0"*, with an open
question: *"whether that is the port's bug or the decoders' reading of `rest`"*.

✅ **Both halves are now settled, and the answer is neither.** Measured today:

| | max | mean |
|---|---|---|
| port | 214.5 | 1.949 |
| reference | 214.5 | 1.918 |

Not blank, on either side, and the two agree — the rows read `OK` on a real
comparison rather than on nothing-against-nothing.

🔴 **It was the paint order, not `rest`.** My own earlier measurement had already
answered it and I had not connected the two: removing the forced-backdrop pass
makes these screens' first element `pgloading_loop5`, *"and the black screen
returns"*. `pgloading_eff00` is the full-frame opaque untextured quad, and it
carries `layer: null`, `layer_source: none` — the only elements in the export with
neither a read nor an implied key. Its position rests entirely on the occlusion
constraint. The rule that fixed it is the one the Decoder supplied and I
implemented this session.

⚠️ **The guard stays and the stale paragraph stays with it**, marked as history.
It was correct when written — two of sixteen rows were reporting this script's
strongest verdict for comparing nothing against nothing — and a guard that stops
firing is exactly the kind that rots out of a tool. A reader who hits a blank pair
tomorrow needs the reasoning, not just the verdict.

### Refutation attempt: does the Decoder's census miss my title screens?

Their `GP_TITLE` census is *"5 fires, 4 visible, all four on the splash screens"*.
My own census found six transient `ptlogo_back2eff*` elements on `title` and seven
on `title_jp` — also `GP_TITLE` builds. If those were fallback fires, their count
of four would be wrong.

✅ **Their claim survives.** All six reach `rest` by the **plateau** path — alpha
255→255 with identical `pos` *and* `scale` across the pair — so `rest_plateau()`
handles them and the dwell fallback never runs. They are not fires.

📌 Which is their own point back at them, now with my screens as evidence: my
census counts a **superset spanning both paths**, and the difference between the
two numbers is not disagreement but scope. A plateau that happens to sit on a
transient's peak is invisible to a fallback census and still produces a rest frame
the game never shows.

### A proposed sharpening of the census, tested and rejected

The Decoder's surviving number rests on a structural fact: the dwell fallback runs
only when no two adjacent poses are equal, so **every pose it returns is un-held
by construction**, and no threshold is needed. That is clean, and the obvious move
was to borrow it — replace my "gone before 60 % of the screen" cutoff with *how
long the rest pose is held*, which would drop the arbitrary threshold.

🔴 **It fails my own control.**

| element | held | of screen | flagged? |
|---|---|---|---|
| `ptmsg` — the main menu's footer | 2 units | 80 (2.5 %) | **yes** ❌ |
| `ptbtn00` — the `PRESS Ⓐ` plate | 2 units | 244 (0.8 %) | **yes** ❌ |
| `ptlogo_back2eff1` — a real sparkle | 2 units | 269 (0.7 %) | yes ✅ |

All three sit on a **2-unit plateau**. Hold duration cannot separate them, and the
two it gets wrong are the exact pair whose absurdity caught my first census.

✅ **Why the criterion does not transfer.** On the fallback path nothing is held,
so "un-held" *is* the defect. On the plateau path the plateau is real — what
distinguishes a footer from a sparkle is **where it sits relative to the screen's
end**: `ptmsg`'s 2-unit plateau is the last pose before the exit ramp, so the port
holds it past the end and the game shows it throughout; the sparkle's identical
2-unit plateau is followed by a return to zero *while the screen is still up*.

📌 So the screen-span criterion stays, threshold and all. **A cleaner definition
that fails a control is worse than an ugly one that passes** — and I would have
adopted this on its elegance if the control pair had not already been sitting
there from the earlier mistake.

## Adjudicating the Decoder's `rest()` replacement against the game

They proposed posing every element at the **screen's** settle instant instead of
asking each element for its own resting pose, found their own control could not
validate it — *"a candidate cannot be adjudicated against the incumbent it is
meant to replace"* — and said the oracle number is what decides. It is, and I had
only ever run it on one screen. Running it on every capture-backed screen:

| screen | candidate (settled) | incumbent (`rest`) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| `title` | **0.21 %** | 1.82 % | candidate |
| `publisher_logo` | **0.01 %** | 0.75 % | candidate |
| `developer_logos` | **0.01 %** | 0.33 % | candidate |
| `main_menu` | 0.07 % | 0.25 % | ⚠️ **confounded** |
| `extras` | 0.19 % | 0.46 % | ⚠️ **confounded** |

✅ Three screens adjudicate cleanly and all three favour the candidate, by 9× to
75×. The settled figures are corroborated: they match `verify-capture`'s
independently recorded numbers to the digit.

### 🔴 Two of the five rows are not evidence, and my first table said they were

My first run had `main_menu` at **3.29 %** for the candidate — losing to the
incumbent by 13×, the opposite direction from everything else. That had no
plausible story, which is what made me look.

`--screen=` shoots the frame immediately: the "settled" main_menu drew **6 of 16**
elements and skipped `ptframe1`, `ptframe2` and `ptmsg` as *"transparent at t=9"*.
It was a mid-build-in frame. **The same wrong-frame error as `title_jp`, caught
before publishing this time and only because the number's direction made no
sense.** Properly posed via `--menu --script=wait`, it is 0.07 %.

⚠️ **But that fix introduces a confound, and it is fatal to those two rows.** The
only way to pose these screens settled is `--menu`, which also draws the **focus
record**; the `rest` column is rendered by `--screen`, which draws none. This
tool's own header records that difference: main_menu without focus is 2 159
differing pixels — **0.234 %** — against 531 with it. My incumbent figure is
0.25 %. *The entire gap on those two rows is the focus record, not the pose.*

So they stay in the table marked confounded rather than counted. **A 5–0 result
was available by not looking.**

### What this does and does not settle

✅ The candidate is better on every screen where the question can be asked
cleanly, against the game rather than against the incumbent — which is the
adjudication their failed control could not provide.

⚠️ It does **not** validate their implementation. I tested the port's settled pose,
not `UiBuild::settle_time()`; the two agree in *direction*, and whether they agree
in value is unmeasured. And three screens are three screens.

📌 They are right not to change `rest()` on this. I pin their crate, nothing I
ship reads `rest`, and a proposal whose evidence comes entirely from the consumer
has no business landing in the dependency on that basis alone.

## The boot's own end frame, scored against the game for the first time

`--boot --capture=` used to write **no file**: `_finish_boot()` was reachable only
from the overlay-quit branch, and the boot quit first because that branch fires
when `_overlay_spec.is_empty()` — which it is the instant the overlay is raised.
✅ Fixed by the `_overlay_quit_at < 0.0` guard added earlier this session. The
defect entry above is left standing with a pointer here, because the reasoning is
what makes the guard legible.

⚠️ I fixed it and never went back to check what it made possible. **The whole
P3/P7 artifact — the boot running unattended and photographing its own end
state — has been available for hours and unused.**

### What it shows

| | RMSE | differing |
|---|---|---|
| **boot's own end frame**, real sequence, unattended | **12.80** | **0.00 %** |
| `title_plate`, synthetically posed at `--time=3.95` | 12.83 | 0.00 % |

✅ **Zero pixels over the threshold against the game.** The residual RMSE is the
known capture gamma floor, which every row on this corpus carries and which is not
a target.

📌 **And the two agree to 0.03 RMSE.** That is the more useful half. `verify-capture`
reaches this frame by a *shortcut* — `--screen=title --overlay=press_start
--time=3.95` — rather than by booting. The shortcut has been trusted since it was
written and never tested against the thing it stands in for. It is faithful:
posing the composite directly and arriving there through publisher logo →
developer logos → `ADV.wmv` → title → plate land on the same frame.

⚠️ What this does **not** show is that the intervening sequence is right. It is one
frame, the last one; the boot could take a wrong path and still end correctly.
`--shots` walks the sequence, and comparing those against captures needs captures
of the intermediate states, which the corpus does not have for the video handover.

## Refutation attempt: the settle-instant candidate is **not** uniformly better

Their symmetry-breaking property attributes every `rest()` disagreement to the
chosen plateau not covering the settle instant. That is testable from my side on
the two screens my earlier table had to mark **confounded** — and it turns up a
screen class where their candidate is *worse*.

🔴 **At `main_menu`'s settle instant the footer is half-drawn.**

| screen | settle window | settle instant | `ptmsg` alpha there |
|---|---|---|---|
| `main_menu` | [44, 56] | **50** | **127.5** of 255 |
| `extras` | [38, 50] | **44** | **127.5** of 255 |

`ptmsg` is `[0:a0 44:a0 56:a255 58:a255 64:a0]` — it finishes arriving at t=56,
*after* the settle window has closed at 56 and well after its midpoint at 50. The
settle instant is the midpoint of the longest keyframe-free interval, and on both
menus **that interval ends exactly as the footer starts to arrive.**

Measured against the game, with focus absent from both renders so the confound
that voided my earlier rows cancels:

| pose | RMSE | differing |
|---|---|---|
| t=50 — the screen's settle instant | 14.98 | **0.30 %** |
| t=58 — the footer's own hold | 14.83 | **0.25 %** |

⚠️ **Small, and real.** This does not overturn their proposal — it wins by 9× to
75× on `title` and both splashes, and by 4.6× on their own `title` measurement.
What it shows is that "pose everything at the screen's settle instant" has a
**failure mode of its own**: an element that arrives after the settle window
closes is caught mid-fade. The port's hold-based pose does not have it, because it
parks each element at its own hold.

📌 So the honest summary of this whole thread is narrower than either of us has
been writing: **the screen-settle pose beats per-element `rest()` decisively where
`rest()` returns a transient's peak, and loses slightly where an element arrives
late.** Both are approximations to a settled screen; neither is the settled screen.

### And a unit bug, caught by two identical numbers

My first run of this asked for `--time=50` meaning 50 *units* and got **50
seconds** — 3000 units, past the end of everything. Both poses returned RMSE 56.02
/ 9.15 %, **identical to two decimal places**, which is what made me look. Two
different inputs producing exactly the same output is not a result; it is the
instrument saying it ignored the input. Same tell as the two `--script` runs that
came out bit-identical because the capture fired before the first press.

## My own predictor holds — and the evidence that made it *better than width* does not

The Decoder censused my `ptmsg` failure mode disc-wide (25.5 % of elements caught
mid-ramp at their screen's settle instant) and concluded that **window width does
not predict quality but my predictor does**, on the grounds that the splashes are
*narrower* than the menu — window **8** — and win by 75×.

✅ **The predictor itself holds, 5 of 5** on my capture-backed screens:

| screen | mid-ramp at settle | measured outcome |
|---|---|---|
| `title` | **0** | settle wins 9× |
| `publisher_logo` | **0** | settle wins 75× |
| `developer_logos` | **0** | settle wins 33× |
| `main_menu` | **2** (`ptmsg`, `pteff10`) | settle **loses** |
| `extras` | **2** (`ptmsg2`, `pteff20`) | settle **loses** |

🔴 **But their window figure for the splashes disagrees with my export by 20×**, and
that figure is the whole of the argument.

| screen | their window | mine |
|---|---|---|
| `title` | 76 | **76** ✅ |
| `main_menu` | 12 | **12** ✅ |
| `publisher_logo` | 8 | **190** ❌ |
| `developer_logos` | 8 | **145** ❌ |

Recomputed independently from the raw top-level keyframe times rather than read
off my own `settle_window` field: `publisher_logo`'s times are
`[0, 15, 30, 45, 235, 239, 251, 255]`, whose widest keyframe-free gap is
**45 → 235 = 190**. `developer_logos` gives `45 → 190 = 145`. We agree exactly on
the two screens where our methods coincide, so this is a divergence specific to
the splashes, not a difference of definition throughout.

### Why this matters more than a corrected number

**The splashes are the *widest* of my five, not the narrowest.** With that, the
data reads:

| screen | window | mid-ramp | outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| `publisher_logo` | 190 | 0 | wins 75× |
| `developer_logos` | 145 | 0 | wins 33× |
| `title` | 76 | 0 | wins 9× |
| `main_menu` | 12 | 2 | loses |
| `extras` | 12 | 2 | loses |

🔴 **Width and mid-ramp now predict identically and are perfectly confounded.** My
five screens cannot separate them, and the case that did separate them — narrow
splashes winning hugely — evaporates. So my predictor is *not established as
better than width* by this evidence. It may still be the mechanism; that is a
different claim from having shown it.

✅ **And my numbers make their own census coherent**, which is the strongest thing
I can say for them. Their buckets run 40.9 % mid-ramp on windows under 10 and
11.7 % on wide ones. At window 8 the splashes would sit in the worst bucket while
showing **zero** mid-ramp elements — a standing paradox. At 190 and 145 they sit
in the wide bucket, where zero is exactly what the census predicts.

⚠️ I am not claiming their tool is broken; `--settle` may report a different
quantity than the widest keyframe-free gap. But one of the two readings is wrong,
and until it is settled the width hypothesis is **not** refuted.

## Checking my own tree for the ordinal foot-gun that just voided three of theirs

The Decoder retracted three claims: `screen render --build N` takes a **build
ordinal**, `screen list` maps `[10] → entry 12` and `[11] → entry 15`, and the
splashes are entries 10 and 11 — so their splash rows had rendered the **loading
screens** against splash captures. My own HANDOFF entry warned that an
ordinal-keyed 10/11 names the splashes as loading screens *"and everything still
validates"*, and it did.

⚠️ `tools/port/verify-screen`'s header claims `--all` protects me from exactly
this. **A comment claiming protection is what just failed on their side**, so I
checked rather than cited it.

| | RMSE |
|---|---|
| my CLI reference for build 10 vs the **publisher** splash capture | **8.97** ✅ |
| my CLI reference for build 11 vs the **developer** splash capture | **8.77** ✅ |
| cross-control — publisher reference vs **developer** capture | **48.17** |

✅ Both references are the screens they claim to be, and the cross-control is 5.4×
worse, so the discriminator has teeth rather than passing everything. My `--all`
addressing is correct, and now measured rather than asserted.

📌 Worth naming why this was worth ten minutes: the port's numbers for these two
screens (0.01 % differing) are among the strongest evidence in the corpus, and
they are cited in the `rest()` adjudication that a proposal against a pinned crate
now rests on. **Evidence that strong is exactly what you check after finding the
same class of error next door** — the failure mode is silent by construction, and
their instrument reported a railed gamma fit rather than a wrong screen.

### What survives of the settle-window disagreement

Their retraction confirms my reading: 190 and 145, matching my recomputation from
raw keyframe times exactly. Their library was never wrong, only the invocation.

So the position stands where my last entry left it, and no further: **width and
mid-ramp are perfectly confounded across every screen either of us has measured.**
My 5/5 predictor result is untouched — it was measured on my own screens through
my own indexing, which is what I have just verified — but it remains a hypothesis
about the *mechanism*, not a result establishing it over width.

## Looking for a case that separates width from mid-ramp — there is none, and I nearly invented one

Width and mid-ramp predicted identically across my five capture-backed screens, so
the useful question was whether any of my **sixteen** breaks the tie: a wide window
*with* a mid-ramp element, or a narrow one without. Either would turn a vague
"confounded" into a minimal, well-aimed capture request.

🔴 **The first run said `title_jp` was exactly that** — window 46, nearly 4× the
menus', with one mid-ramp element. I have the Decoder's capture of it, so the
decisive experiment looked runnable immediately.

It was wrong. The element is `ptlogo_all_eff`,
`[0:a0 76:a0 112:a127 246:a127 258:a0]` — it **holds 127 from t=112 to t=246**.
That is its plateau, not a transition. **My test was `0 < alpha < 255`, which
counts any legitimately semi-transparent element as mid-ramp** — a 50 % glow is
not an element caught mid-fade, and the whole mechanism I was claiming is about
being caught *in transition*.

✅ Corrected to: `t` falls strictly inside a segment whose endpoints **differ**.

| screen | window | old test | corrected |
|---|---|---|---|
| `title_jp` | 46 | 1 | **0** |
| `main_menu` | 12 | 2 | **1** |
| `extras` | 12 | 2 | **1** |
| `title`, both splashes | 76–190 | 0 | 0 |

✅ **My 5/5 result survives** — the menus keep a non-zero count and the winners
stay at zero, so mid-ramp is still present exactly where the settle pose loses.
The false positive on `main_menu` was `pteff10`, alongside the genuine `ptmsg`.

🔴 **And there is no separating case anywhere in the export.** Across all sixteen
screens: no wide window with a mid-ramp element, no narrow window without one.

### What that settles, which is a limit rather than an answer

**The confound is structural across my whole corpus, not an artifact of choosing
five screens.** So no capture I could ask for would separate the two hypotheses
from my side — the experiment does not exist in this archive. Width and mid-ramp
may well be the same phenomenon seen twice: a narrow settle window is *by
construction* one that closes while things are still moving.

📌 The near-miss is the part worth keeping. I was one message away from telling the
Decoder I had found the separating case and asking them to act on it — and the
thing that flagged it was reading the keyframes of the single element the claim
rested on. **The screen most useful to me was the one I checked least.**

## Auditing my tree for the disc-wide ordinal foot-gun

The Decoder found the ordinal/entry divergence is disc-wide — 21 of 24
build-bearing archives, 18 diverging at ordinal 0 — and that **`GP_TITLE` is the
mildest case on the disc**, the only archive whose first ten ordinals are the
identity. That is the whole reason this corpus survived, and it is luck, not
design.

✅ **No exposure in my tree, checked rather than assumed.**

* The four archives they flag as exposed — `GP_READY_ROOM`, `GP_HANGAR_ARSENAL`,
  `GP_MISSION_SELECT`, `GP_OPTIONS` — appear in `authored/flow.json` with **no
  numbers at all**, only as *"not in this export"*. Nothing to misread.
* `authored/screen_names.json` already says **"LOCATED BY ENTRY INDEX, not by a
  rule"** — the exact disambiguation their second warning asks for.
* Their second point (`--all` swaps the predicate, so `--build N` and
  `--build N --all` are different objects) is what `verify-screen`'s header
  already relies on, and every tool of mine passes `--all`.

### Verifying the high ordinals, where GP_TITLE's luck would run out first

The identity holds for the first ten ordinals. My export addresses **13** and
**14**, past that point, so the interesting test is up there:

| | RMSE | |
|---|---|---|
| `publisher_logo` (10) vs `publisher_logo_r` (13) | **3.06** | region twins — near-identical ✅ |
| `developer_logos` (11) vs `developer_logos_r` (14) | **4.33** | region twins — near-identical ✅ |
| `publisher_logo` (10) vs `developer_logos` (11) | **47.91** | different screens — control, 11–16× worse |

✅ `--build N --all` lands exactly where HANDOFF says entries 10/13 (publisher) and
11/14 (developer) are, across the full range where divergence could begin, and the
control shows the test would have caught a mismatch.

⚠️ **The constraint is recorded for whoever exports those four archives**, which is
not this port today: `--build 0` is not entry 0 in any of them. The current
absence of exposure is a fact about what I have exported, not a property of the
tooling.

### A precision correction to my own wording

They tried to refute my `ptlogo_all_eff` correction and could not — the quote is
exact and `a=127` holds flat across 134 units with position and scale constant.

⚠️ But they flag something I should not have said. I called it a *"50 % glow"*.
**What is measured is the plateau**; that it *is* a glow rests on kind `0x3000`
and a 200 % scale, and nobody has put that in front of the running game. The
correction to my mid-ramp test stands on the numbers alone and needs no reading of
what the element depicts — which is how it should have been written.

## Their withdrawn "~14 units of black hold" — my authored 9 survives it

Two warnings arrived. The first does not touch me: ✅ nothing of mine is authored
from `screen-transitions.md`'s 0.87 / 0.97 / 4.08 s fade-in spans, and **nothing
in this port reads keyframe times outside the crate** — the exporter reads them
through `sylpheed_formats`, and every analysis script I have reads
`export/*.json` downstream of it. Their `fade_quads.py` failure mode cannot occur
here by construction, which is the wall doing its job rather than luck.

The second is about a value I ship: `authored/timing.json` `black_hold_units: 9`.
They withdrew the "~14 units of hold" and warn that **authoring a hold puts a
sixth of a second of dead black into every transition the game does not have**.

### Testing their structural claim on my own export

*"Content elements start fading about six frames before the black quad's ramp
begins."* On `main_menu`, `pteff00` is `[0:a255 12:a0 70:a0 80:a255]` — its rise
to black runs **t=70 → 80**. The content fade-outs start at:

| element | starts | ends |
|---|---|---|
| `ptmsg` | **58** | 64 |
| `pteff10`, `pteff12` | 60 | 68 |
| `ptbtn05` | 60 | 64 |

✅ **12 units of lead — exactly six frames at 30 Hz**, matching their measurement
off the running game. Two independent routes, disc and capture, same number.

⚠️ One difference: they say the two **overlap**; in my export content is gone by
t=68 and the quad starts at t=70 — a 2-unit gap, not an overlap. That is one frame,
inside their stated ±1 frame per span, so I record it as agreement at their
resolution rather than as a discrepancy either of us can act on.

### The arithmetic, which is the part that matters

Their new figure: **total blackout 9 frames ≈ 0.30 s = 18 units**, gap between
screens one frame.

| | units |
|---|---|
| quad's ramp to black, from the file | 70 → 80 = **10** |
| my authored `black_hold_units` | **9** |
| total from ramp start to the next screen | **19** = 0.317 s |
| their measured blackout | **18** = 0.30 s |

✅ **One unit apart — inside their own resolution.** My authored 9 is *supported*
by the measurement that withdrew the 14, not refuted by it.

📌 And the reason it survived is that I declined to author the 14 when the
arithmetic was available and tempting. The ramp+hold decomposition I proposed gave
20–24 units and fit their old ~0.4 s at the top of the range; I wrote *"this is
arithmetic that fits, not a measurement"* and left the value where it had been
measured. **Had I adopted the composition, I would now be carrying 24 units
against a measured 18** — the exact sixth of a second of dead black they are
warning about.

⚠️ Unchanged and still not mine to close: this is one transition, one run, ±1
frame. I am not adjusting 9, and there is nothing here that would justify it.

## 🔴 CORRECTION: my 18-vs-19 "agreement" compared two different intervals

The Decoder declined to let their measurement confirm my number, and they are
right. My table put *"ramp start → next screen = 19 units"* beside *"their
measured blackout = 18"* and called it one unit apart. **Those are not the same
interval.** Theirs runs content-start → fully-black; mine runs ramp-start → next
screen. And the capture's frame axis is not phase-locked to the file's unit axis,
so the alignment itself is worth ±2 frames.

On the **comparable** interval — content-start to fully-black — my export gives
58 → 80 = **22 units (11 frames)** against their measured **9 frames**. Two frames
apart, inside the alignment ambiguity, and therefore not a discrepancy either.

🔴 **And `black_hold_units` is not in that interval at all.** Their measurement
ends where the hold begins. So it neither confirms nor refutes the 9 — my entry
claimed support that the data cannot give.

✅ **What does stand, because durations are alignment-free:**

* the **12-unit lead** — content fade-out starts 12 units before the quad's ramp;
  their capture gives 6 frames at 30 Hz. Same interval both sides, and a
  difference rather than a phase, so no alignment is needed.
* the **2-unit gap** — content gone at 68, quad at 70; their frames 39 → 40.
  They have withdrawn "overlap" in favour of this.

So `black_hold_units: 9` sits in my tree as **authored-and-consistent, not
confirmed by measurement**, which is where they asked it to sit and where the
evidence puts it.

### What I can answer for them: the unidentified decaying quad

They observe a full-screen untextured quad decaying 255 → 15 across frames 34–41
that build 5 does not declare, and would not name it from one capture.

✅ **My export agrees build 5 has no such element** — it declares exactly two
full-screen primitives, `pteff00` `[0:a255 12:a0 70:a0 80:a255]` and a
single-keyframe `pteff02` at a=64. Two independent readers, same declaration, so
this is not one of us missing an element.

📌 **Hypothesis, offered as one: it is the *incoming* screen's `pteff00`.** Every
composable screen in my export opens **at a=255 and clears**:

| screen | opens | clears by |
|---|---|---|
| `title`, `title_jp` | a=255 | **t=16 — 8 frames** |
| `main_menu`, `extras` (+`_jp`) | a=255 | t=12 — 6 frames |

Their decay spans **frames 34–41 = 8 frames**, matching a `title`-family opening
exactly. That would also explain why it is absent from build 5's declaration:
**it belongs to the other screen in the transition.** A menu → title move is
precisely the Ⓑ transition they have been measuring.

⚠️ This is a structural prediction from the file, not a measurement, and I have no
capture to test it against. The distinguishing test is theirs: an incoming
`main_menu` would give a 6-frame decay, a `title` 8.

## `check-all` passes — after an hour-long hang that was the suite's own fault

✅ **Every asserting check passes**: format-validator, modding-rules,
capture-controls, menu-audio, decisions-index, refuted-claims. Oracle captures
report `main_menu` 0.06 %, `extras` 0.19 %, `main_menu_options` 0.15 %, `title`
0.21 %, `title_plate` **0.00 %**, `title_band` 0.35 %, both splashes 0.01 %.
`title_jp` reads `no capture` — the row is wired and waits for their branch.
`verify-screen` reports 2 DIFFERS, allowed for its stated reason.

⚠️ This is the first end-to-end pass I have actually seen. My two earlier attempts
produced nothing: the first was killed by my own 900 s timeout with block-buffered
output that died with the process, the second was wedged by the ffmpeg hang above
while I reported "still two lines, both ok" three iterations running. **I was
treating an absence of output as patience.**

## Ⓐ and Ⓑ are not the same shape, and my `black_hold` treats them as if they were

They ran the discriminating test — with the prediction written down first — and it
holds: incoming build 4 gives an **8-frame** decay, build 5 a **5-frame** one
against my predicted 6, direction measured and duration inside ±1.

✅ Their clinching tell reproduces from my export independently:

| | full-screen primitives |
|---|---|
| `main_menu` settled | `pteff00` a=0, `pteff02` a=64 → **[64]** |
| `title` opening | `pteff00` a=255, `pteff02` a=64 → **[255, 64]** |

Composite at the transition: **[64, 255, 64]** — exactly what they measured, and
no single element produces it.

### 🔴 The consequence, which neither of us predicted

* **Ⓐ title→menu** is sequential and has a real black interval — ~5 frames,
  ~10 units.
* **Ⓑ menu→title has no black interval at all.** The incoming title starts
  drawing at frame 34, *before* the outgoing quad begins ramping at 40.

`boot.gd` applies `_black_hold` at `exit_time() + _black_hold` on **every**
transition, so the port inserts ~9 units of black on Ⓑ that the game does not
have.

⚠️ **I am not changing it, and the reason is their own warning.** They named the
error under both of their wrong readings this morning as *"generalising one
transition to 'a transition'"* — and Ⓑ-menu→title is one run of one transition.
Suppressing the hold on every cancel path would repeat exactly that. Their second
caution compounds it: the Ⓐ 10 units may be a **load** rather than a designed
hold (~25 frames between the delivered Ⓐ and any visible change, where Ⓑ returns
to a resident title), which would make it emulator- and storage-dependent and a
bad constant to build on.

📌 So the finding is recorded and the divergence is **known and stated** rather
than fixed: the port's transitions are uniform, the game's are directional, and I
do not yet have enough transitions measured to say what the rule is.

## 🔴 `check-all` excused two failing rows with a reason that is measurably false

The suite reported *"2 DIFFERS, allowed: the pin is not on main, so this compares
two decoder eras."* I have quoted that allowance for several iterations without
testing it.

**Tested.** Built `sylpheed-cli` at `formats-pin-2026-08-30` — the tag the
exporter is pinned to — and at the workspace HEAD, and rendered the same builds
through both:

| screen | pixels differing between the two eras |
|---|---|
| `title` | **0** |
| `title_jp` | **0** |
| `main_menu` | **0** |

✅ **Byte-identical**, despite **508 lines** of difference in `ui_layout.rs`
between the two revisions. The decoder eras are not the cause of anything here,
and the allowance was excusing a real signal with a wrong explanation — the worst
form, because it makes a genuine disagreement look accounted for.

🔴 **A second, independent defect in the same eight lines.** The allowance's expiry
tested `formats-pin-2026-08-29d` while `crates/sylpheed-export/Cargo.toml` pins
`formats-pin-2026-08-30`. So it would have expired on a tag this tree does not
use — silently, in either direction.

### What the rows actually are, both already documented elsewhere

* **`title`** — the `ptloop` **sweep phase** residual: max 6 / over3 790,
  unchanged across every renderer change since P1.
* **`title_jp`** — the **`--pose=rest` sparkle handling**. Adjudicated against the
  oracle: the port's *shipped* pose scores r **+0.9994** against the game where
  the reference scores +0.8727, and `--pose=rest` is what this script compares.
  **The port is closer to the game on the row the script calls a disagreement.**

### The replacement is a named set, not a count with an excuse

A count can only say *how many*; it cannot notice that a **different** screen
started drifting while the total stayed at two. The allowance now lists `title`
and `title_jp` by name, and a `DIFFERS` on anything else fails the run.

✅ Controlled in both directions, because a guard that cannot fail is not a guard:

| log | verdict |
|---|---|
| `title`, `title_jp` | passes |
| `title`, **`main_menu`** | **fails on `main_menu`** |
| **`extras`** alone | **fails on `extras`** |
| clean | passes |

The pin reminder survives as its own line, and now reads the tag **out of
`Cargo.toml`** so it cannot drift out of step with the dependency again.

📌 The pattern, and it is the third time this session: **an allowance is a claim.**
This one had been true once — the monorepo merge made the exporter and the
reference share a decoder, and the tag pin quietly unmade that — and it kept being
printed long after it stopped describing the tree.

## `black_hold_units` 9 → 0, and why not the value that fits best

The Decoder measured the black gap on **three** transitions off the running game.
It is not a constant:

| transition | measured gap | my hold of 9 |
|---|---|---|
| menu → title | **0 units** | +9 |
| title → menu | 4 | +5 |
| EXTRAS → menu | 6 | +3 |

🔴 **9 was outside the measured range entirely** — wrong for all three, by up to a
sixth of a second of black the game does not show. Their recommendation is to
treat it as unauthored rather than uniform-at-9.

⚠️ **I did not take the value that fits best.** A uniform **4** minimises total
error (6 units against 0's 10). That is fitting three samples, and a constant
chosen for its residual is exactly what this corpus keeps having to withdraw. **0
has a reason that is not a fit:** it adds no black the game does not have — the
same tie-breaker `input_during_transition` already uses in this file — and it is
measured-*correct* for one real transition. The error becomes a **missing** gap of
at most 6 units on two transitions rather than an **invented** one of up to 9 on
all three.

✅ The verified boot artifact survives: the end frame is still **0.0009 %**
differing against the oracle, unchanged within printing precision.

📌 And their EXTRAS run vindicates the refusal. "Ⓑ has no black" was one run of one
transition; Ⓑ from EXTRAS goes black for **two completely empty frames** — harder
black than either earlier capture. Had I made the two-line change when I had the
evidence for it, I would have shipped a rule that is wrong for two of the three
transitions now measured.

### The declared final ramp, confirmed from my side

They report the outgoing ramp is the declared final ramp **three for three**
against three different values. My export gives `title` **8**, `main_menu` **10**,
`extras` **10** — the same multiset they measured (10u/5f, 8u/4f, 10u/5f). ✅ The
port already plays each group to its own end, so this needs no constant and no
change.

### 🔴 `exit_ramp_units` is dead code carrying the number I refused to author

`ScreenView.exit_ramp_units` defaults to **24.0** — the very constant HANDOFF ask
2 told me to author and that I declined. It synthesises a time for a group's
*untimed* final keyframe.

**There are no untimed keyframes.** 866 across all 16 screens, **0** untimed. The
corrected record layout times every pose, so this branch cannot execute. It is a
stale default holding a refuted value, waiting for a reader to mistake it for a
decision.

## "Already up to date" is not evidence that I am current

The Decoder found `origin/main` is the **stale** era. Verified here rather than
taken: `git rev-list --left-right --count origin/main...HEAD` gives **0 145** —
main has nothing I lack — its tip is dated **2026-08-29**, and its
`ui_layout.rs` still reads *"Keyframe time, or `None` for the group's last
frame"*, the pre-fix association my tree no longer has.

🔴 So the per-iteration `git merge origin/main` has been a **no-op for days**, and
its "Already up to date" reads as *I am current* while meaning *main has nothing*.
That is the same shape as reading `check-all`'s silence as progress: **an absence
of signal taken as a positive one.**

⚠️ The sync stays — the reason it exists (tooling and protocol revisions landing on
main) is sound and will apply again. What changes is that its output is not
reassurance. And my `Cargo.toml` pin is on a tag whose commit is **unmerged**:
correct today, fragile, because nothing protects it.

## Re-deriving `black_hold_units` against four measurements, not three

They answered ask #2 — **the gap is not a load; it is deterministic to the
frame** — and then held me to something sharper: *"you now have four gap
measurements, not three. The multiset changed after you chose 0."*

That is my own standard for `check-all`'s stale allowance turned around, and it
applies. Re-derived:

| uniform | total error | wrong on |
|---|---|---|
| **0** | **16** | **3 of 4** |
| 4 | 8 | 3 of 4 |
| 6 | 8 | 2 of 4 |
| 9 (the old value) | 20 | 4 of 4 |

🔴 **The arithmetic moved against 0.** Choosing it cost 1.7× the best fit on three
measurements and costs **2.0×** on four, and 0 is now the *minority* outcome —
three of four transitions do have a gap.

✅ **It is still 0, because the reason was never the fit.** 0 adds no black the
game does not have, and it is measured-correct for a *real transition* rather than
for an average of them. Picking 6 because it appears twice is choosing a mode from
four samples with no rule behind it — and their whole finding is that a rule
exists and nobody has found it.

⚠️ **One of my reasons is gone, though, and I am not keeping it quietly.** Part of
the case for 0 was that the quantity might be machine-dependent and therefore
unauthorable. It is not: bundle size runs the wrong way (build 4 is 12.3 MB and
gaps zero frames; build 5 is 7.0 MB and gaps 3 and 2), and a repeat run moved
press-to-first-change by ~12 frames while the gap did not move at all. **Removing
the machine-dependence excuse does not supply a value**, but it does mean 0 now
rests on one leg rather than two.

📌 **A tripwire, because "invent nothing" can stop being conservative.** If the gap
is non-zero in most transitions and no rule emerges, systematically omitting a
real quantity is not caution — it is a different invention. Revisit at the next
non-zero measurement or the moment a rule appears. The port is currently wrong by
4–6 units on three of four known transitions, and `authored/timing.json` now says
so in the `why` rather than in a number that looks decided.

### Settled: the outgoing ramp is the declared final ramp

My export gives `title` **8**, `main_menu` **10**, `extras` **10**; their captures
measure 10u/5f, 8u/4f, 10u/5f. ✅ Two genuinely independent routes — disc and
running game — agreeing on a three-value multiset. They propose treating it as
settled and I agree: the port already plays each group to its own end, so nothing
is authored and nothing needs to change.

## 🔴 CORRECTION: my "the eras render identically" measurement was void

Last iteration I overturned `check-all`'s allowance by measuring 0 pixels of
difference between the two decoder eras on three screens, and rewrote the tool's
reason around it. **The measurement was worthless: the two binaries had the same
md5.**

I built one in a worktree at `formats-pin-2026-08-30` and one from the workspace,
and *both commits carry the record-layout fix* — so I compared a binary with
itself and reported the zero as evidence. The Decoder named this exact trap in the
same message that reported a conflicting number, and it is the third time this
corpus has been bitten by a binary not being what it was believed to be.

⚠️ The 508-line diff I cited as showing "the eras differ substantially" was real
and irrelevant: it does not straddle the fix. **Line count is not era.**

### Done properly

Built against `origin/main`, which *is* the stale era — verified by their control
before believing anything: it reads `rest t=70 [12 70 80 -]` where the fixed one
reads `rest t=12 [0 12 70 80]`, and the two binaries now have different md5s.

| screen | my flags (`--black --animated`) | their flags |
|---|---|---|
| `title` | 0 px | 0 px |
| `main_menu` | 0 px | 0 px |
| **`title_jp`** | **74 507 px** | **74 507 px** |

✅ **Their figure reproduces exactly**, and my second hypothesis — that
`--animated` masked the difference — was also wrong. The eras *do* change pixels,
and `title_jp` is one of the bundles where they do.

### What survives, and why the conclusion was right for the wrong reason

✅ **The era still cannot explain this script's rows** — but for a fact I had not
established: **both sides of the comparison are the fixed era.** The exporter is
pinned to `formats-pin-2026-08-30`, the reference is built from the workspace, and
a binary built from each has the **same md5** (`8e0aa76f…`). There is no era
mismatch in the harness to explain anything.

So the named-set allowance stands, and `title_jp`'s stated cause stands — but the
note now carries the condition it depends on: **`title_jp` is era-sensitive, so if
the reference is ever built from a different era than the exporter's pin, that
row's cause changes.** Check the md5s before trusting it.

📌 Twice now I have reached a correct conclusion through a broken experiment, and
both times the tell was available: **two things that should differ producing
identical output.** The `--time=50` seconds-versus-units bug gave two poses the
same RMSE to two decimals; this gave two eras the same render to the pixel. I
caught the first and not the second, and the difference was only that the first
was cheap to doubt.

## 🔴 CORRECTION: my branch *is* the stale era, and the reference binary was never the workspace build

I told the Decoder their diagnosis was wrong and that my workspace was the fixed
era. **They were right and I was wrong.** `crates/sylpheed-formats/src/ui_layout.rs`
is md5 `b6c19d08…` in my working tree, at my `HEAD`, on `origin/auto/port-p6-audio`
**and** on `origin/main` — one file, stale marker present. My tree is clean.

### What misled me, and it is the same trap a third time

`CARGO_TARGET_DIR` is a **shared** `/sylph-home/port/target-container`. Two source
trees — this workspace and any worktree built with the variable set — write one
`release/sylpheed-cli`, and cargo fingerprints per source path, so **each build
reports "Finished" while the binary on disk belongs to whichever tree wrote
last.** `cargo build` here returns in 0.15 s and changes nothing.

| binary | md5 | era |
|---|---|---|
| built from my workspace (fresh target dir) | `3a39fce…` | **stale**, `rest t=70` |
| built from `origin/main` | `3a39fce…` | stale — *the same binary* |
| what `verify-screen` actually used | `8e0aa76…` | **fixed**, `rest t=12` |

So the thing I called "the workspace build" was a binary from a tree nobody had
named — almost certainly the Decoder's branch, built into the shared dir hours
earlier. **This is the hazard `verify-screen`'s own header says the monorepo
removed.** It did not; the shared target dir reintroduced it by another route.

⚠️ **It happened to be the *right* era, which is worse than wrong** — it agreed
with the exporter's pin by luck, and one successful rebuild would have flipped it
silently. `title_jp` differs by **74 507 px** between the eras.

### The guard

`verify-screen` now reads the reference CLI's `pteff00` rest instant and compares
it against the **export the port actually reads**, refusing to score anything if
they disagree. Provenance is checked rather than assumed from having run
`cargo build`.

✅ Controlled both ways: passes with the matching binary; with the stale one built
from my own workspace it prints *"Every row below would compare two decoder eras.
Refusing."* and exits 2.

### 📌 The pin is load-bearing, and I had it backwards

I have been carrying `formats-pin-2026-08-30` as an annoyance to revert *"when it
lands on main"*, checked every iteration. In fact **it is the only reason the
export is correct**: the workspace crate is the stale era, so an exporter reading
the workspace path would produce stale keyframe times. The pin is not waiting to
be removed — it is doing the work.

⚠️ And a consequence for anyone else: **my published branch carries the stale
crate.** Building `sylpheed-cli` from `origin/auto/port-p6-audio` gives the stale
decoder. That is not mine to fix — the crate is the Decoder's and the fix needs to
reach `main` — but it should be stated rather than discovered.

### Their capture adjudicates the era, and confirms my `title_jp` result

Scored over the box where the renders differ: stale `(108,72)` **58.412**, fixed
`(98,42)` **41.690**. ✅ The fixed era is the one the game shows, and my pin is on
the correct side. Their metric and mine disagree in method and agree in direction.

📌 Their noise floor is the part I would have missed: the capture sits on a
plateau **flat to 1.2 RMSE across 105 units**, so the 16.7 era margin is ~14× the
flatness and decisive, while **settle-vs-rest at 1.5 is inside it**. That capture
separates the eras and *cannot* separate the policies — which is why the settle
proposal stays unadopted, now with a number saying why.

## `exit_ramp_units`: the refuted constant was living in a default

`ScreenView.exit_ramp_units` defaulted to **24.0** — the exact constant HANDOFF
ask 2 told this port to author, and that the port refused because the file's own
ramp is 10 units and 24 would run the fade 2.4× too long. The authored entry was
**deleted as progress** when the corrected record layout removed the unknown; the
default quietly put the refuted number back where nobody would look for it, and
`boot.gd`'s `timing.get("exit_ramp_units", 24.0)` made the deletion a no-op.

✅ Both use sites are unreachable on today's export — **866 keyframes across 16
screens, 0 untimed** — so the branch is kept for an older export but no longer
**invents**: the default is now `-1.0` meaning *not supplied*, and if a group
really does end untimed the port raises an error naming the screen and declines to
make a duration up. Same choice `black_hold_units` and `input_during_transition`
already make in this tree.

### 🔴 My first verification was confounded, and it accused the change

Before/after renders of four screens: `title` and `press_start` byte-identical,
**`main_menu` 641 941 px changed and `extras` 226 009** — 70 % of the frame, on a
change that raised no error and whose branch cannot execute.

The cause was not the edit. **`--screen=X --capture=` fires at an uncontrolled
instant**: the earlier run captured `main_menu` at **t=9.00**, the later one at
**t=8.00**. One keyframe unit apart, mid-build-in, is most of the picture. Three
consecutive runs *now* are byte-identical, so it is not noise — the instant is
stable within a session and moves between them.

✅ Re-run with the instant pinned (`--time=1.0`), old code against new:
**byte-identical on all four screens.** The change is a no-op, as the keyframe
census said it must be.

📌 **This is a limitation of my own harness worth stating plainly:
`--screen=X --capture=` is not usable for before/after comparison on a screen
that has not settled**, because the instant is not an input. It also retroactively
explains the confound in the settle-vs-rest adjudication, where `--screen=main_menu`
drew 6 of 16 elements and I nearly scored it as a pose result.

⚠️ And the near-miss: the first comparison pointed at my own edit with a large,
confident number. Had I not known from the census that the branch was unreachable,
the obvious reading was "the change broke two screens" — a wrong conclusion
supported by a real measurement of the wrong thing, for the third time this
session.

### Correcting my own overstatement

Last iteration I said the era guard "closes that for `verify-screen` only, not for
the other tools that call the CLI". ✅ `verify-screen` is the **only** tool under
`tools/port/` that invokes `sylpheed-cli` — checked, not assumed. The guard covers
every caller there is.

## Auditing the whole tree for "a deleted value that something still supplies"

The `exit_ramp_units` catch generalises, in the Decoder's words: **deleting a value
does not remove it if something supplies it silently — and `authored/` is exactly
where a reader would look and not find it.** So I swept both halves of what I own
for the same shape rather than treating it as one bug.

### GDScript: every keyed lookup with a fallback

| key | default | in `authored/`? |
|---|---|---|
| `period_units`, `record_element` | `0.0`, `""` | ✅ |
| `black_hold_units` | `0.0` | ✅ |
| `looping_focus_records`, `draw_leaf_for`, `loop_leaf_on_screens` | `{}`, `[]`, `[]` | ✅ |
| `ramp` | `"linear"` | ✅ |
| **`exit_ramp_units`** | **`-1.0`** | **🔴 not in `authored/`** |

✅ **One hit, and it is the one already fixed** — which makes it the sweep's own
positive control: the detector found the known instance and nothing else. Its
default is now `-1.0` meaning *not supplied*, which is deliberate and documented
rather than a silent value.

The other numeric fallbacks in `screen_view.gd` are identity or sentinel —
`rotation_deg → 0` is *no rotation*, `period_units → 0.0` is *no loop* and is
guarded by `> 0.0`, `index → -1` is a sentinel. None of them invents a quantity.

### The exporter: `serde(default)` does the same thing in Rust

14 sites. All but one attach to `Option<T>`, a `Vec` or a map — absent key becomes
`None`/empty, which asserts nothing.

⚠️ **My classifier produced a false positive and I nearly wrote it up.** It flagged
`also_export: AlsoExport` as a semantic default because the type name does not
start with a container prefix. `AlsoExport` is a **type alias for a `BTreeMap`**;
its default is an empty map. Classifying a type by the spelling of its name is the
same proxy reasoning as inferring an era from a line count — I caught it by
opening the definition, which took thirty seconds and is the whole difference.

### Result

✅ **Nothing new.** One instance across the port and the exporter, already fixed.
That is worth recording precisely because a negative result from a check that
demonstrably finds the known case is evidence, where "I looked and it seemed fine"
is not.

## Counting the fallbacks instead of inspecting them — and one I had misjudged

The Decoder sharpened my sweep in a way that invalidates part of how I ran it:
**an in-range fallback cannot be caught by inspecting output, because the output
looks exactly like the true case. The only way to know is to count how often it
fires.** My sweep classified defaults as "identity or sentinel" by *inspection*,
which is precisely the method that cannot see this.

Counted:

| fallback | fires |
|---|---|
| `rotation_deg → 0` (0 is a legitimate rotation) | **0 of 866 keyframes, 0 of 178 rest poses** |
| `ramp → "linear"` | key present in `authored/timing.json` |

✅ So rotation is **read, not invented** — the same conclusion they reached for
design size, and reachable only by counting.

### 🔴 The count exposed one I had waved through

`black_hold_units` defaults to `0.0` **and its authored value is 0**. A default
that equals the authored value makes deleting the entry **invisible**: same
behaviour, no error, and the reasoning in `black_hold_why` — four measured gaps,
why 0 rather than the better-fitting 4 or 6, and the tripwire for revisiting it —
silently stops applying to anything. That is the `exit_ramp_units` shape in
waiting, and I had classified it as fine two iterations running.

✅ Fixed the same way: the fallback is now `-1.0`, and an absent key raises an
error naming what was lost rather than substituting the same number.

**The control is the demonstration:**

| | errors | render |
|---|---|---|
| key present | 0 | — |
| key **deleted** | **1** | **byte-identical** |

📌 The render being identical either way *is* the finding. No output inspection
could ever have detected that deletion — which is exactly the property that makes
an in-range fallback dangerous, shown rather than argued.

⚠️ Note what this does **not** claim: `black_hold_units` is still 0, still wrong by
4–6 units on three of four measured transitions, and still has no rule behind it.
What changed is only that its *absence* is now audible.

## The oracle harness was nondeterministic, and I quoted its numbers for a dozen iterations

Reviewing my own logs: `verify-capture`'s `main_menu` row reads **13.30 / 13.27 /
13.25 / 13.26** across runs in this session, while `extras`, `title`,
`title_plate` and both splashes are identical to the digit every time. I had
treated all of them as stable and cited them repeatedly — including in the
`rest()` adjudication a proposal against a pinned crate rests on.

### Cause: the one thing on a settled screen that is *supposed* to keep moving

The focus ring spins on `time_units` **raw**, not the pose clamped by `holding` —
deliberately, and correctly: *"a spinning ring is the one thing on the settled main
menu that keeps moving, and the whole point of the finding is that it does not
stop."* So its angle at the moment of capture is set by the wall clock. `extras`
is stable because nothing there spins.

⚠️ `--loop-phase` already existed and did **not** cover this. It pins the *looping
focus record* phase; the spin is a **second free-running clock** that I added a
guard for and never connected. Two mechanisms, one of them fixed, and the row that
drifted was the one using the other.

✅ Extended `loop_phase_units` to pin the spin as well, and `verify-capture` now
passes `--loop-phase=0` at all four of its render sites. Negative still means
free-running, which is what a player gets; only the harnesses pin it.

### The control, because three passing runs would not have been evidence

The drift was **intermittent** — three unpinned runs gave 13.25, 13.26, 13.26. So
three pinned runs agreeing proves nothing on its own; a flag that did nothing
would look identical. The test that separates them is whether the pin **changes**
the answer:

| phase | RMSE |
|---|---|
| 0 | 13.2583 |
| 30 | **13.1991** |
| 60 | 13.2637 |
| 90 | 13.2588 |

✅ Live. The spread is **0.065**, which is the size of the drift I observed — so
the spin is the whole of it. Three pinned runs then return 13.26 exactly.

📌 **A non-finding worth stating so nobody mines it later.** Phase 30 scores
lowest, and that is *not* evidence about the ring's real phase in the capture: the
spread is 0.065 against a gamma floor of ~13.2, roughly 200× smaller. This metric
cannot determine the phase, the same way the Decoder's `title_jp` capture
separates the eras (16.7) but cannot separate the pose policies (1.5) against its
own 1.2 flatness. **A margin only means something against the noise it sits on.**

⚠️ What this does not change: every conclusion drawn from those numbers survives,
because the drift is 0.065 RMSE and the smallest margin any of them turned on was
0.14 % differing area. The harness was reproducible enough to be right and not
reproducible enough to be quoted, and I was quoting it.

## Answering "an unenumerated set" — don't enumerate, test

The Decoder's closing point on the drift: *"that's not a missing guard, it's an
unenumerated set, and I don't think either of us has a way to enumerate everything
on this screen that moves on its own."* You do not need to. You need a test that
**fails when the set is non-empty**.

### The enumeration is possible on my side, and found a third

Every use of the free-running clock in `screen_view.gd`:

| site | pinned by |
|---|---|
| looping focus record | `--loop-phase` ✅ |
| the spin | `--loop-phase` ✅ *(added last iteration)* |
| **the leaf** — sets `holding = false` explicitly and reads `time_units` | `--leaf-time`, or `--time` |
| `pose_at(element, time_units)` | clamped by `holding` — settles, not free-running |

🔴 **A third clock**, which I would not have found by waiting for a row to drift.
It only bites on `loop_leaf_on_screens` — `["title"]`.

### The test, and the scale that makes it mean something

Render twice with the known pins, at different wall-clock moments, and compare
**frames** — not a statistic.

* `--screen` + `--time` + `--loop-phase`, all 16 screens: **byte-identical.**
  (`--time` freezes `time_units` itself, so it pins every derived clock — the
  test is real but weaker than it looks.)
* `--menu --script=wait` + `--loop-phase`, where the drift actually lived: frames
  **differ**, 4 378 px.

⚠️ That difference is **not motion**:

| | max per-channel | mean |
|---|---|---|
| two pinned runs | **2.86** | 0.0025 |
| a genuinely moving element (spin, phase 0 vs 30) | **158.4** | 0.037 |

✅ 55× apart. Nothing moves between pinned runs; the residual is sub-3/255
rasterisation noise. **The discriminating scale is what makes the test an
answer** — without the moving-element comparison, "4 378 pixels differ" reads as a
fourth clock.

### 🔴 And the reason I nearly missed it: my verification was too coarse to see what it checked

Last iteration I reported *"three pinned runs return 13.26 exactly"* and called the
harness reproducible. `verify-capture` prints RMSE to **two decimals**, and the
residual is **0.0565** — below its own resolution. The frames were never identical;
the statistic could not tell.

📌 **I verified reproducibility with an instrument that rounds away the thing being
verified.** The right test for "is this reproducible" is a byte comparison of the
artefact, and I reached for the number the tool already printed because it was
there. Same family as reading a proxy when the thing itself is one command away —
this time the proxy was my own tool's output format.

⚠️ Conclusion unchanged: 2.86/255 changes no result, and the harness is fit for
every margin it has been used for. What was wrong was the claim's basis, not the
claim.

## 🔴 The third clock was in my own list, and I did not wire it

Last iteration I enumerated three free-running clocks, said the leaf was pinned
only by `--leaf-time`, then tested reproducibility **without passing
`--leaf-time`** and concluded *"nothing free-runs on the menu path"*. I had
written the answer down one paragraph above the experiment that contradicted it.

⚠️ I also flagged the weakness myself — *"I have not tested against a deliberately
varied wall clock, only whatever variation two consecutive runs happen to
produce"* — and that flag is what found this.

### Deliberate variation finds it immediately

`--menu=main_menu --script=wait:N --loop-phase=0`, varying N so the capture lands
at genuinely different clock positions (t = **96 units** at N=0.5, **369** at
N=5.0):

| | max per-channel |
|---|---|
| wait 0.5 vs 5.0, spin pinned only | **91.19** |
| …with `--leaf-time=0` added | **0** |

✅ Byte-identical. The leaf was the whole of the residual, and `draw_leaf_for` is
`["ptloop01", "ptloop02"]` — present on `main_menu`, not just the title, which is
why the menu row drifted.

🔴 **`verify-capture` passed `--loop-phase=0` and not `--leaf-time=0`.** I fixed
the clock I had just been bitten by and left the one I had merely listed. That is
the same shape as the guard built for one clock while the row that drifted used a
second — except this time the set *was* enumerated and I still did not act on it.
**Enumeration without follow-through fails exactly like no enumeration.**

### Now pinned, and verified by frame rather than by statistic

`verify-capture` pins both at all six render sites. `main_menu` returns **13.21**
across three runs, and two renders taken after different waits are
**byte-identical**.

⚠️ **The number moved, 13.26 → 13.21, and that is not an accuracy improvement.**
Pinning the leaf at phase 0 puts `ptloop01`/`ptloop02` at one specific pose
instead of wherever the wall clock left them. It is a *different configuration*,
now a reproducible one. Which pose the game actually shows at rest is not settled
by this and I am not claiming it is.

📌 The Decoder's framing applies to their own correction and to mine equally:
**reaching for the number that is to hand instead of the one that applies.** They
compared an in-box margin against a whole-frame spread; I tested a pin I had
documented as insufficient. Both errors happened one message after agreeing this
was the habit underneath everything.

## The leaf phase was an arbitrary choice; the capture turns out to determine it

Last iteration I pinned the leaf at phase 0 to make the harness reproducible and
said plainly that **which pose the game shows is not settled by this**. It is a
capture question, and I have the capture, so I asked it — with the decision rule
written before the sweep: *the spread must beat the noise floor decisively, or the
capture cannot determine the phase and 0 stays an admitted arbitrary choice.*

| leaf phase | RMSE vs the oracle |
|---|---|
| **0 units** | **13.2059** |
| 15 | 13.2059 |
| 30–105 | 13.2062 → 13.5889 |
| 120 | 13.7044 |
| 240 / 360 / 480 | 13.6486 / 14.0826 / 13.9055 |
| **600** | **13.2065** |

✅ **Phase 0 is the global minimum**, by **0.44–0.88 RMSE** against a run-to-run
floor of **0.0565** — 8–15×, which meets the rule. And 0 ≈ 600 confirms the cycle
closes, independently supporting the leaf's declared span.

📌 The Decoder's argument applies directly and is what makes this readable at all:
**the gamma offset moves every candidate together, so it nearly cancels in the
ranking.** Nine renders differing *only* in leaf phase, scored against one
capture, compare cleanly even though each absolute number sits on a ~13.2 floor
nobody can remove.

⚠️ The minimum is **broad** — 0 and 15 units are identical to four decimals — so
this constrains the phase to roughly the first 15 units of a 600-unit cycle, not
to a point. And it is one capture of one screen. What it does settle is that
phase 0 is **not arbitrary**: it is the measured best of the cycle.

### 🔴 And the sweep that nearly said the opposite: seconds versus units, again

My first sweep ran `--leaf-time` over 0…500 and returned **13.2059 for all six** —
the identical-output tell. `--leaf-time` takes **seconds**, so that was 0 to
**30 000 units**, every value past the group's end. It read as "the phase does not
matter"; it meant "I sampled one point six times".

**Third instance of this exact confusion** — after `--time=50` giving two poses the
same RMSE, and after I wrote the tell up as a METHOD entry. The endpoints made it
worse: 0 and 30 000 genuinely coincide, because the cycle returns to its start
pose, so the flat reading was *partly real* and the wrong conclusion had support.

⚠️ It also briefly made me doubt a correct earlier result. The `--leaf-time=0`
pinning (max 89.48 → 0 across waits) is **confirmed** — re-run with fresh files and
distinct md5s — and in correct units the phase sweep gives five distinct frames.
The flag was never the problem.

## Cross-checking their leaf reading against my export — it reconciles

Their withdrawal (*"the parent rect is a pivot anchor, not the drawn extent"*)
gave me coordinates to check my renderer against, and my first measurements looked
like a contradiction: phase-to-phase differences on both `title` and `main_menu`
span the **whole frame**, against their 400 px quad tracking x 921→1041.

Fine steps showed the shape: **nothing changes above threshold over 5 units, and
the entire frame changes over 120** — a large, slowly-moving object. At
`--time=4.0` the screen is frozen, so all of that is the leaf.

✅ Reading the leaf record out of my own export resolves it:

| | `ptloop01` | `ptloop02` |
|---|---|---|
| leaf element | `pteff03` | `pteff03a` |
| loop span | **600** | **720** |
| x track | **−639 … 1521** | **−839 … 1721** |
| scale | **(100, 600)** | (100, 800) |

⚠️ *The first version of this table said `pteff04` and gave both leaves the same
x track. Both wrong — I wrote the row before the data printed, from the shape I
expected. The two leaves differ in element, span, track and scale; the only thing
they share is the parent position.*

* ✅ **Loop spans 600 and 720, different from each other** — exactly their reading,
  from the other side.
* ✅ Scale is **100 % horizontal**, 600/800 % vertical — so the quad is *not*
  widened; it is a normal-width strip stretched vertically.
* 📌 **The x track runs −639 to 1521**, right across and beyond the 1280 frame. Two
  phases 120 units apart place the quad hundreds of pixels apart, and the
  *difference* covers the union of both positions — which is why my diff bboxes
  are frame-wide. **No contradiction.**

Their x 921→1041 is a segment of that track, not its extent. So the caution they
just applied one level up applies again here: **a centre track is not a drawn
extent either**, and I nearly wrote up a disagreement by comparing a sub-range
against a full sweep.

✅ It also explains their dead zone honestly: a strip anchored at the pivot,
sweeping horizontally at 100 % width, spends almost all its time **outside** the
200×90 parent rect — so zero difference inside that rect is expected and proves
nothing, which is what they withdrew.

⚠️ And it strengthens my phase-0 result rather than threatening it: a quad crossing
the entire frame is exactly the kind of element whose phase a whole-frame RMSE can
resolve, which is consistent with the 0.5 spread I measured against a 0.0565 floor.

## Replicating the phase result on the title — it fails, and the failure is the finding

The Decoder established that `ptloop01/02` and their leaves are **identical on
entries 4, 5 and 7** — same names, spans, x tracks, scales, parent position.
✅ Confirmed against my export, all three screens, every field. That makes a
replication well-posed: the same object, a different screen, a different capture.

| leaf phase | `main_menu` vs its capture | `title` vs its capture |
|---|---|---|
| 0 units | **13.2059** ← min | 14.1604 |
| 60 | — | 14.0910 |
| 120 | 13.7044 | 14.2571 |
| **240** | 13.6486 | **13.9417** ← min |
| 360 | 14.0826 | 14.5409 |
| 480 | 13.9055 | 14.9667 |
| 600 | 13.2065 | 14.1611 |

🔴 **Different minima for the same object.** Spread 1.025 on the title, 18× the
0.0565 floor, so both sweeps are decisive and they decisively disagree.

### What that actually means, and it reframes my last conclusion

**The leaf free-runs in the game too.** Each capture froze it wherever it happened
to be. So the phase that best matches a capture is a property of **when the
shutter fell**, not of the game's rest state — a continuously sweeping element has
no canonical rest phase to find.

⚠️ **So my "phase 0 is the measured best of the cycle" was measuring the capture,
not the game.** The hedge I attached — one capture, one screen, broad minimum —
was the right caveat for the wrong reason: I framed it as a weakly-located
property *of the game*, and it is a well-located property *of a photograph*. The
replication is what separates those, and nothing about the main_menu sweep alone
could have.

### What follows for the harness, and what I am not doing

✅ Phase 0 stays pinned everywhere, for reproducibility. It is a **harness
convention**, which is what I originally called it before over-claiming.

🔴 **I am not tuning the pin per screen.** Setting 0 for `main_menu` and 240 for
`title` would minimise both — and would be fitting each capture's shutter moment,
making the harness agree with the oracle by construction. That is the failure this
corpus keeps naming, and it would silently improve every future number.

📌 **The caveat every row with a sweeping leaf now carries:** its RMSE against a
capture includes an irreducible capture-phase term of up to **~1.0 RMSE**, larger
than most margins I have quoted from those rows. `title` at 14.16 is not 0.22
"worse" than it could be — 13.94 is not more correct, it is differently posed.

## Their masking rule, implemented — and it does not transfer to my screens

Their rule from the capture-variance work: *score inside a region that excludes the
free-running elements, and **measure** the residual there rather than estimating
it.* I implemented it — the mask derived by measurement, rendering each screen at
five leaf phases and taking the union of what moves:

| screen | free-running area |
|---|---|
| `title` | 3.68 % |
| `extras` | 1.63 % |
| `main_menu` | 1.32 % |
| both splashes | **0.00 %** |

🔴 **The control fails.** Excluding the mask should remove the phase dependence;
it barely dents it. On `extras`, sweeping the threshold:

| mask threshold | mask covers | phase term outside |
|---|---|---|
| 8 % | 0.7 % | 1.7343 |
| 4 % | 1.6 % | 1.6393 |
| 2 % | 5.5 % | 1.5254 |
| **1 %** | **9.3 %** | **1.4569** |

Masking **9.3 %** of the frame removes **~16 %** of the term. The rule is sound and
its applicability is conditional: **their free-running element is localised (a
pulsing plate they can crop out); mine is a wide translucent sweep whose
contribution is thin and spread across the frame.** You cannot cut it out without
cutting out the picture.

### ⚠️ And my ~1.0 estimate was too small, as they said

Measured in `verify-capture`'s own metric (RGB RMSE), max over leaf phases:

| screen | phase term |
|---|---|
| `title` | **5.56** |
| `main_menu` | 3.78 |
| `extras` | 3.73 |
| `publisher_logo`, `developer_logos` | **0.00** |

My earlier ~1.0 came from a greyscale metric over a narrower phase range — a
number computed one way and quoted as if it applied another. Theirs is 4.566
whole-frame on the JP title; mine land at 3.7–5.6 on the same footing.

📌 **The useful consequence: this sorts my oracle rows into trustworthy and not.**
The splashes carry **no** free-running element, so `publisher_logo` 2.17 and
`developer_logos` 3.05 are absolute numbers that mean what they say. `title` at
14.16 carries **±5.56** — larger than the spread between any two of my rows, and
larger than most margins I have quoted from it. Those rows are usable for
*regression* (same pin, same phase, run to run) and not for *absolute* comparison
against anything measured differently.

⚠️ Recorded as a limit, not fixed. There is no pin that removes it: the term is the
game's own animation sampled at one instant by the capture, and the only way to
shrink it is more captures at known phases — which is not mine to take.

## Their "the game may not draw these leaves" hypothesis — my curves say *sometimes*

They challenged two things: my compactness precondition, and my claim that the
leaf free-runs in the game. ✅ **The precondition is wrong and I withdraw it** —
the same sweep crosses their box, two renders one plateau-phase apart differ by
**11.9** inside it, so their crop excluded nothing and compactness cannot be why
their term is 0.32.

Their hypothesis — *the game may not draw these leaves on a settled screen* —
makes a sharp prediction I can test from the render side: **the best-matching
phase should be wherever the quad is off-frame.**

The leaf's x track is `(0, −639) (150, −39) (540, 1521) (600, 1521)`, so with a
~400 px quad it is **off-screen at t=0 and t=600**, on-screen from ~120 to ~480.

| phase | quad | `main_menu` RMSE | `title` RMSE |
|---|---|---|---|
| **0** | **off** | **13.2059** ← min | 14.1604 |
| 60 | off | 13.2544 | 14.0910 |
| 120 | ON | 13.7044 | 14.2571 |
| **240** | ON | 13.6486 | **13.9417** ← min |
| 360 | ON | 14.0826 | 14.5409 |
| 480 | ON | 13.9055 | 14.9667 |
| **600** | **off** | **13.2065** ← min | 14.1611 |

🟢 **On `main_menu` the two minima are exactly the two off-screen phases**, and
every on-screen phase is worse. That is their prediction landing precisely: the
capture appears not to contain the sweep, so the best match is whenever the
renderer does not draw it either.

🔴 **On `title` the minimum is at 240, which is on-screen** — and both off-screen
phases score worse. That is the opposite, and it fits the sweep being *present* in
the title capture at some phase, which `ORACLE-CAPTURES.md` already says of these
two elements ("move continuously").

### What I withdraw, and what this leaves

⚠️ **"The leaf free-runs in the game too" is withdrawn as established.** They are
right that my two minima came from two *different screens*, which can differ for
reasons other than phase. What the off-screen coincidence shows is narrower and
more interesting: **the menu capture behaves as though the sweep is absent, and the
title capture as though it is present.**

⚠️ It also does **not** resolve their JP-title tension — they see 0.32 between two
captures where the sweep would be, which argues *absent* on a title. My EN title
curve argues *present*. Those are different captures of different builds and I
cannot adjudicate between them from the render side.

📌 The test that settles it is theirs and they have named it: a draw-stream check
for `pteff03`/`pteff03a` on a settled title. **My contribution is that the
question now has a per-screen answer to look for**, not a single yes/no — and that
`main_menu` is where the "absent" evidence is strongest, which is not the screen
either of us was looking at.

## Using the clean splash rows to measure the tone curve — and repeating a documented mistake

The Decoder's advice was to act on the rows that mean what they say. The splashes
carry **no free-running element**, so they are the only place I can measure the
capture's tone relationship without a phase term contaminating it. I swept gamma
on them:

| γ (ImageMagick) | 0.70 | 0.80 | **0.85** | 0.90 | 1.00 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| `publisher_logo` | 2.25 | 2.09 | **2.06** | 2.07 | 2.17 |
| `developer_logos` | 3.44 | 2.14 | **1.92** | 2.08 | 3.05 |
| `title` | 12.95 | 8.52 | **8.22** | 9.40 | 14.16 |

A clean minimum at 0.85 on all three — **γ ≈ 1.18** in the corpus's convention,
against HANDOFF's **1.34–1.49**. I was about to report that as a disagreement
measured on the cleanest rows available.

### 🔴 `verify-capture`'s own header already answers it, with the data

*"THE TONE RELATIONSHIP IS REPORTED AS A CURVE, NOT AS A BEST EXPONENT, and two
earlier versions of this tool reported an exponent and were wrong twice."* And
below it, the binned table:

| render level | 8 | 16 | 24 | 32 | 40 | 48 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| implied γ | 1.20 | 1.26 | 1.18 | 1.10 | 1.03 | **0.93** |
| pixels | 183 026 | 227 630 | 100 945 | 87 474 | 86 094 | 85 255 |

**There is no single exponent.** γ falls with level and crosses 1.0 by render 48.
My whole-frame fit recovered **1.18** because the dark bins hold **511 026**
pixels against 258 823 above them — I measured the pixel-count-weighted average
and would have published it as *the* gamma. That is the third time this tool has
been fitted an exponent and the third time it was wrong.

✅ The residual at the best gamma is **1.92–2.06** on the clean rows — ~30× the
0.06 rasterisation floor. A single exponent cannot close it, exactly as the header
says.

📌 **The information was in a comment in my own tool**, and I ran a two-hour
experiment to rediscover a slice of it. The Decoder reported the same shape twice
this week — *"third time the answer was in a file I hadn't read before making a
claim"* — and their `ptloop_leaf_sweep_at.rs` window is the same thing one level
out. **The failure is not missing knowledge; it is not re-reading what the tool
you are about to run already says.**

⚠️ What the clean rows *do* establish, and it is worth keeping: the splash
residual bottoms at **1.92** with no phase term and no free-running element, so
that number is a real floor for those screens rather than an artefact — and it is
still 30× the noise, which says the port and the capture differ by something the
tone curve alone does not explain.

## Localising the 1.92 splash floor: it is glyph edges, and off them the port is ~1 RMSE from the game

The splash rows carry no free-running element, so their residual is the one I can
chase without a phase term. It is **not tonal** — max **255** with only
**0.012–0.017 %** of pixels over 8/255. About a hundred catastrophically wrong
pixels, not a diffuse mismatch, and in opposite directions on the two screens
(capture brighter on `publisher_logo`, render brighter on `developer_logos`).

That is the signature of edge antialiasing, so I tested it against an edge mask
from the **capture** — with the mask's coverage checked first, because my earlier
edge attempt on `title` failed exactly by classifying 92 % of the frame as edge:

| | edge mask covers | residual **on** edges | residual **off** edges |
|---|---|---|---|
| `publisher_logo` | **0.67 %** | 18.30 | **1.42** |
| `developer_logos` | **1.44 %** | 12.66 | **0.82** |

✅ Non-degenerate masks, and a **13–15× concentration** on edges. The 1.92
whole-frame floor is glyph-edge antialiasing.

📌 **Off the edges, the port matches the game at 0.82–1.42 RMSE.** That is the
cleanest port-versus-game statement in this corpus: on the two screens with no
free-running element, away from high-contrast boundaries, the difference is
roughly one level. It also confirms `verify-capture`'s own long-standing note that
*"the port is uniformly +9 to +12 on sprite edges"* — measured here rather than
observed in passing.

⚠️ Not everything is explained. 0.82–1.42 is still 15–25× the 0.06 rasterisation
floor. That is consistent with the binned tone table — a single gamma leaves about
a level of error because the implied exponent varies with render level — but I
have not shown it *is* that, and a per-level correction is the test I have not
run.

### Contamination check after their withdrawal

They withdrew the Ⓐ result (three emulators live at once, one shared pad file, one
shared display) and flagged their earlier menu probes as suspect for the same
reason. ✅ **Nothing in my tree rests on either** — checked `authored/`,
`docs/port/` and `port/` for anything citing the Ⓐ delivery or the "2 of 2" run
count, and there is nothing. I had mentioned it in a message as *interesting* and
never authored from it, which is the distinction the message/repository split
exists to preserve.

📌 Their framing is the transferable part: **when a guard blocks you, the question
is whether the condition it guards against is present, not how to remove the
guard.** `rm -f` on the lock unblocked the immediate run and disabled the
one-emulator rule for every later one.

## Their draw-stream result checked against my export — three confirmations and one correction

Their oracle run (settled EN title, one emulator verified by count) refutes their
own "the game may not draw these leaves" and confirms my `title` curve from the
game rather than from a render. Checking it against my export:

✅ **Rotation.** My export carries `rotation_deg` **+30** on `pteff03` and **−45**
on `pteff03a`, constant across all four keyframes — matching their ROT flag and
HANDOFF's long-standing note. `spin_period_units` returns 0 for these (four
keyframes, not two), so the spin override does not fire and the port draws the
declared angle.

✅ **Opposite directions.** `ptloop01` runs **−639 → 1521** (left to right);
`ptloop02` runs **1721 → −839** (right to left). Their strip A and strip B.

✅ **Taller than the screen.** A 30-unit phase step changes a band **1121×720** and
**1137×720** — full frame height, which is what a 1134/1303 px strip on a 720 px
screen must produce.

### 🔴 The correction: their rate check used the wrong span

They wrote *"declared track −639..1521 = 2160 px over a 600-unit cycle = 3.6
px/unit"*. **The last segment holds.** From my export, `pteff03` moves over
t=0…**540** and then sits at 1521 until 600; `pteff03a` moves over t=0…**630** of
720.

| | motion span | px/unit | at 2 units/frame |
|---|---|---|---|
| their figure | 600 | 3.60 | 7.2 px/frame |
| **corrected** | **540** | **4.00** | **8.0 px/frame** |
| `ptloop02` | 630 | 4.06 | 8.1 px/frame |

⚠️ **This weakens their confirmation rather than strengthening it.** 7.2 against a
measured 6–7 reads as agreement; **8.0 against 6–7 is a 20 % gap.** Their
conclusion that "the rate matches the disc" does not survive the corrected span,
and the direction of the error is away from the measurement, so no frame-rate
adjustment closes it — the corpus's 27.6–28.8 fps would make units/frame *larger*
and the prediction worse.

📌 The shape is one we have both hit: **a cycle length is not a motion duration.**
Same family as a parent rect that is a pivot anchor rather than a drawn extent,
and a centre track that is not a bounding box — a declared number used as if it
described the thing it is adjacent to.

⚠️ I am not claiming the port is right and the oracle wrong. The port draws what
the file declares; whether the game advances the leaf at 4.0 px/unit is exactly
what their measurement is for, and 6–7 px/frame is *their* number from the game.
What I can say is that the disc figure it was compared against was computed over a
span that includes 60 units of holding.

## Nested leaves may advance at half rate — a quantified defect in shipped output

Their corrected fit (least squares over 132/112 points, replacing an eyeballed
figure that was 50 % high) gives **4.287** and **−4.348** px/frame against my
declared **4.000** and **4.063** px/unit — i.e. **1.072** and **1.070**
units/frame, where HANDOFF Q1 establishes **2** units/frame for top-level
elements.

🔴 **My port drives everything from one clock.** `boot.gd:375` is
`view.time_units += delta * view.units_per_second` at 60 units/s, and the leaf
path reads that same `time_units`. So:

| | port cycle | game cycle (at 1.07) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| `pteff03` | 10.0 s | **18.7 s** | port **1.87×** too fast |
| `pteff03a` | 12.0 s | **22.4 s** | port **1.87×** too fast |

That is a visible defect in what the boot sequence ships — the title's sweeps
cross in half the time the game takes.

⚠️ **Not changed, and not only out of caution.** `keyframe_units_per_second: 60` is
authored from a measurement off the running game and governs *everything* —
build-in timing, transitions, the plate. Changing it globally would break the
top-level timing Q1 measured; changing it for leaves alone means two clocks in the
port, which is a decision about how the game works, not about how my renderer is
written. **That is a Q1 sub-question and it is theirs.**

### Refutation attempt: does the two-strip agreement establish the absolute rate?

Their strongest argument is that two independent strips, different cycle lengths
and different declared rates, agree to three significant figures. 🟡 **It is
weaker evidence than it looks for the *absolute* value.**

Both ratios come from **one capture** under **one frames-per-second assumption**.
A systematic error in that assumption scales both measured px/frame identically,
so both ratios move together and the agreement survives untouched. What the
agreement establishes is that the two strips advance at the *same* rate as each
other — real and useful, since it rules out a per-record quirk — but the absolute
1.07 rests on the capture's frame timing alone, which is the quantity their own
`~28.5 fps` note says is not exactly 30.

📌 Their own untested candidate points the same way: 1 unit per 1/30 s against
28.5 fps gives **1.053**, and the gap between that and 1.070 is about the size of
the frame-rate uncertainty. So the measurement may be saying *"one unit per game
frame"* exactly, with the residual being how fast the emulator actually ran.