# `pilot.py` never pulls the trigger — the proximal cause, measured

**Status: ✅ the gate that blocks it is identified and measured; 🔴 the root cause
is not, and one attempt to find it was invalidated by a freeze.**

## The observation

Over a 900 s Stage 02 run, `fire=1` appears in **0 of 13 521** logged samples.
The loop flies, chases, evades and retires; the guns are never fired. Every
"kill something and watch X" experiment in this corpus has therefore been leaning
entirely on the wingmen.

## Which gate closes

`pilot.py`'s trigger needs all of: mode `ENGAGE`/`DEFEND`, a target, the aim error
inside the firing cone, range < `FIRE_RANGE` (`SHELL_MAX_RANGE` = 4 000), and a
small avoidance push. Over the 3 004 samples that had a target:

| quantity | median | min | inside its gate |
|---|---|---|---|
| `\|aim yaw\|` | **90.0°** | **90.0°** | 0 of 3 004 below 25° |
| `\|aim pitch\|` | 179.2° | 166.4° | 0 of 3 004 below 25° |
| range | 49 634 | 45 078 | 0 below 4 000, 0 below 10 000 |

`|aim yaw|` being **exactly** 90.0 in every sample is not a coincidence, it is a
branch: `sticks()` contains

```python
if ez < 0:                        # target behind: commit to a full turn
    yaw = math.copysign(math.pi / 2, ex if ex else 1.0)
```

So the committed target was **behind the ship in 100 % of samples**, with a pitch
error near 180° — directly astern — and the range to it grew monotonically:

```
t=  0 s   22 265        t= 231 s   33 632
t=510 s   49 475        t= 884 s   48 200   (plateau)
```

The craft flies *away* from the thing it is chasing for fifteen minutes and the
turn never completes. Nothing else needs to be wrong for the trigger to stay
cold.

## What is NOT established

Three explanations fit that shape and this pass did not separate them:

1. the attitude matrix the pilot reads is **stale**, so the ship turns and the
   controller cannot see it;
2. the matrix is live but `fwd_row`/`fwd_sign` name the wrong axis;
3. both are fine and the **yaw stick sign** is inverted, so the loop turns away
   from the error it is nulling.

🔴 **An attempt to separate them was invalidated and is withdrawn.** `aim_probe.py`
watched the forward vector under neutral, full-left and full-right stick and
reported it pinned at `[-1, 0, 0]` with `|turn| = 0.00 °/s` in every phase — which
looks like explanation (1). It is not evidence: **the guest had frozen** partway
through, confirmed immediately afterwards by `frozen.py` (max pixel delta 0) and
by the player's position being byte-identical across 3 s. A dead world holds every
matrix still. The probe is committed because it is the right experiment; its
result is not.

## One confusion resolved on the way

Today's repeated `entities2.py self` failures — `# 0 moving triples`, "player
entity not found" — are **the freeze**, not a tool defect. `moving()` types
entities by their position *changing* between two samples, so a frozen world
yields nothing by construction. Runs where the bind failed were runs that had
already stopped.

## Next step

Re-run `aim_probe.py` on a run confirmed to be animating **at the end of the
probe as well as the start** — the tool should check `frozen.py` itself and
discard the phase otherwise. If the matrix does move under stick, the question
becomes the sign; if it does not, the binding is what to chase.