126539b875
isl.py's UNIT_ARG decides whether a built-in's slot-4 operand prints as a unit name or a raw number. It was inferred statistically from operand ranges and, by its own comment, listed a slot "only when the ratio stayed below 1.0" -- conservative. The vtable base makes it a lookup instead: every unit-taking built-in's implementation opens with lwz 324(phase) / lwz 4(argbase) / rlwinm 2,0,29 / lwzx / lwz 4(rec). Read directly for all 147: implementation indexes [phase+324] by an argument 55 of the statistical set's 31, confirmed 31 (zero false positives) UNIT_ARG claims a unit, implementation does not 0 implementation says unit, UNIT_ARG missed it 24 The 24 include builtin80, group_ratio_pct, is_engaged, set_unit_flags, squadron_trace, wait_units_ready and deploy_and_wait. Hand-verified by reading builtin7, 16, 80, 105, 117 and 136. Recorded because it nearly passed: my FIRST control -- whether the additions' operands resolve to a symbol-table-2 index -- is worthless. The additions score 100.0%, but so do the 31 baseline (100.0%) AND the 92 built-ins in neither set (99.3%). Symtab 2 is dense enough that almost any small integer lands in it. A control the negative class also passes is not evidence. The control that discriminates is the tag word: a symbol operand is a two-word pair whose first word is the constant 1, so slot0 == 1 exactly when slot 4 is a unit -- 100.0% (13677 calls) / 100.0% (140) / 2.5% (2903). A 40x separation. Artefacts: isl-stage02.txt and -phase-ends.txt regenerate byte-identical; -conditions changes on 28 sites, every diff line pairing, each a raw number becoming a unit name. Left unnamed on purpose: all 24. builtin80 returns a small enum (tested 0..4 in a switch) but its body past the liveness check is unread; builtin103 is a predicate over [phase+10152]/[phase+10156]; builtin105 tests a unit record's +16 against 4.
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 OBsteps4 → 8 → 12inside 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.