Files
Sylpheed/tools/re-capture
Sylpheed RE agent 1daf2d6171 re: recover the ISL interpreter's command table — 57 opcodes, committed
sub_822FE040 fills 1023 eight-byte slots at table+32 with a default and then
overwrites individual ones; slot = (N - 32) / 8 from each std r9, N(r31).
Symbolically executing it yields 57 populated slots, matching the count the
corpus recorded, now with the full opcode -> handler map committed as
docs/re/data/isl-command-table.txt and regenerable from
tools/re-capture/isl_cmdtab.py.

Nine opcodes point at 0x82391BA8, which is `li r3,1 ; blr` -- accept and
discard. 768, 769, 774, 775, 776, 791, 792, 793 and 805 are dead in this
build, which is why the built-ins posting them do nothing.

Opcodes 800-802's entries are thunks 8 bytes apart into 60-instruction
handlers that differ in exactly two words: a descriptor offset and a unit
message id.

  800  builtin 26        0xED0802DE
  801  builtin 28        0xED0803DE
  802  builtin 29, 101   0xED0804DE

That fixes the id format as 0xED08 nn DE, and the ids known from other work
fit it: opcode 514 -> 00DE, 803 -> 07DE, 999 -> 0FDE.

Stopped one link short of the semantics, and saying so: the pump's arm for
0xED0802DE does not apply an effect. It walks the unit's child list at
[unit+320]/[unit+324] and REBROADCASTS to each child as 0xED0902DE. So 0xED08
is the to-unit family and 0xED09 the to-child one, and the terminal effect is
further on. 26/28/29 remain unnamed.

The command table is the reusable part -- it answers "what does this opcode
reach" for every future built-in question, not just this family.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01PMRJjbxLqZtsb5Vb7KunPE
2026-08-26 01:44:49 +00:00
..

Runtime-capture harness (sylph-re container)

Screenshot-driven scripts for reading the running retail game's menus under Xenia Canary + lavapipe, headless. They assume the container helpers screenshot, vgamepad, pad are on $PATH and HOME=/sylph-home/re.

Script What it does
skip_intro.sh Boot → main menu, unattended. Taps A only while the intro movie is actually playing (frame-to-frame RMSE), then once at the PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON title. Static logo screens are left alone, so a stray tap can never land on NEW GAME.
wait_title.sh Older variant: wait for the title (green Ⓐ glyph at px 625,618) and tap A. Superseded by skip_intro.sh.
step.sh One Arsenal navigation step (down/up/next/prev/none) + a compact capture: weapon list stacked over the DATA SHEET.
sweep.sh Walk a whole weapon-type list, capturing only rows that show a DATA SHEET — locked rows (a "Conditions to Develop" panel) are detected by the brightness of the Range Class label box and skipped.
type.sh Change weapon-type tab N times (RB) and report the header strip.
hp.sh / cyc.sh Hangar hard-point carousel: cyc.sh steps it (d-pad down, not left/right) and captures the Name + DATA SHEET.

Input timing under lavapipe: the game polls input at its own low frame rate, so a 60 ms d-pad tap is dropped roughly half the time. 200 ms is reliable; 300 ms starts to auto-repeat (two rows per press).

Findings produced with these: docs/re/weapon-datasheet-runtime.md.

Guest-memory tools (no screenshots)

Script What it does
gmem.py Read the live guest address space out of /dev/shm/xenia_memory_* (Xenia's backing file), addressed by guest VA. find / read / words.
weapon_runtime.py Solve the Weapon/Shell struct layouts against the disc records and read the fields the disc defaults.
unit_discover.py Find which runtime class carries a set of ID strings, assuming no vtable: tallies the word at pointer_site - k across distinct IDs.
unit_runtime.py Same solver for the unit\UN_*.tbl definition objects (vtable 0x820af844). Unions several snapshots — unit definitions are per-stage.
schema_order.py Merge a sub-record's field-declaration order across all tables (topological sort); the layout check that pins fields no table ever values.
order_check.py Test offset = base + 4*index for one table's sub-record against solver output.
grab_tutorial.sh Cold-boot Canary, walk to the Nth TUTORIAL entry, wait for the stage load, snapshot guest RAM. One emulator per capture — backing out of a loaded mission wedges it.

Snapshot first — cp --sparse=always /dev/shm/xenia_memory_* snap.bin (~2 s) — and point $GMEM_FILE at the copy; the running emulator pegs every core under lavapipe.

🔴 pgrep -f / pkill -f match YOUR OWN shell

An agent driving this toolkit runs its commands through a wrapper shell whose command line contains the pattern being searched for. So

pgrep -f 'pilot\.py'        # matches the wrapper running this very command
pkill -f 'fly_session|pilot\.py'   # kills that wrapper — the script dies mid-way

This has cost four separate mistakes in one session: two scripts killed mid-execution, and twice a "is it already running?" guard that answered yes because it had found itself. The [p]ilot bracket trick does not help when the literal invocation (python3 pilot.py …) also appears on the wrapper's command line.

What works:

pgrep -x xenia_canary                       # exact NAME match, no -f
ps -eo pid,args | grep 'python3 pilot.py' | grep -v snapshot-bash
kill -9 <explicit pid>                      # look it up first, then kill by pid

The snapshot-bash filter is the reliable tell: the wrapper's command line always contains the shell-snapshot path.

🔴 The emulator does not survive the end of an agent turn

/work/.claude/settings.json defines a Stop hook that kill -9s every xenia_canary when a turn ends, printing "Stop hook killed N stale xenia process(es)".

So:

  • never launch a run intending to read it in a later turn — it will be dead;
  • an experiment has to produce its evidence within the turn that starts it;
  • prefer measurements that land in the first minutes of flight. REMAINING OB steps 4 → 8 → 12 inside the first few minutes, which is why a two-pass differential works in one turn while a 25-minute freeze watch does not.

This cost three iterations of investigating a "mysterious external SIGKILL", complete with cgroup and host memory forensics, before the hook was found. When a process dies at a session boundary, check the harness first.