docs(track-a): design monster spawn and mechanics research

[blakinio]

Terminal source disposition — superseded by clean coordinator promotion #594

Status: CLOSED UNMERGED AS SUPERSEDED. Source head 3fea6bb6c674b36fb66e3b07de9f85f50b3fa562.

Fresh coordinator review 4971768519 = ACCEPT_WITH_EDITS; open material findings after repair 0.

The design/contract/schema/inference logic is accepted. Source current dependency paragraphs are retained as a 2026-08-18 checkpoint only; coordinator current-state overlay records the later exact client fence and terminal #528/#539/#536 state. Final promoted schema is exact source-head blob ac7df1cef80c417af6b74d79102c8da074032bed; the source task's earlier 2b54ceb... fixture-validation blob is not mislabeled as the final schema identity.

Clean promotion #594 used current main 238b3698447db3a208b7f2b21feffb3d0ec77401, head d4460801692c32f8370f4fda45d3cf37bb0957d6, ahead_by=3, behind_by=0, exactly 11 documentation/contracts/programs/prompts/evidence/archive paths, CI 32249997448=SUCCESS, promotion review 4971797253, zero threads, and squash-merged as f48c58ad1c06de1c95b630acabd8d0dd6939d0bd.

The source active task was not promoted. No runtime/client/login/credential/GUI/gameplay/transaction work occurred during coordinator audit or promotion.

Canonical scope remains DESIGN ONLY: live recorder NOT IMPLEMENTED, physical spawn sampling NOT IMPLEMENTED, authoritative current player XYZ NOT PROVEN, server spawn/home/radius UNKNOWN, server AI algorithm UNKNOWN. Future physical work requires a new separately valid Track A runtime admission from then-current main.

[blakinio]

Fresh independent audit requested

Exact implementation head to audit: 5e66b9b4b20f75a3f779b14cce189eab660d6472
Base: main@ebbb36f50076ff4072c7218e302614c1dfea00b1
Task: OTC-20260818-track-a-monster-spawn-mechanics-design

This request is intentionally independent of the implementer summary. Auditor: inspect the exact final diff and repository state directly; do not trust completion claims in this comment or task prose.

Falsify the acceptance inventory and report stable findings with severity/evidence/impact/disposition. At minimum inspect:

• all 10 changed paths and exact scope/path ownership;
• MONSTER_OBSERVATION_V1.md and its JSON Schema for provenance, epochs, sequence loss, coverage continuity, creature-ID reuse, world-position uncertainty, privacy/secret boundaries and schema/document contradictions;
• spawn rules for initial-sync/visibility false positives, disconnect/relog/floor/cache censoring, death-vs-delete separation, repeatability/negative controls, contradictory intervals and observed-tile vs inferred-region vs unknown server-rule separation;
• mechanics rules for render-vs-world timing, controls/counterexamples/holdout validation and empirical-behavior vs server-algorithm overclaiming;
• coordinator/observer/spawn/mechanics prompts for trust-boundary, current-build fencing, runtime admission, second-session prohibition, protected-data handling and lack of unauthorized AI/runtime authority;
• additive-only integration in OTCLIENT_TIBIA_RE_EXPERIMENT_SWEEP.md;
• task lifecycle/admission metadata, related PR hygiene, reviews/threads and exact-head required checks.

Current exact-head checks to independently verify rather than assume:

• CI run 32149384193
• Track A governance run 32149385111

Physical E2E is claimed NOT_APPLICABLE_WITH_REASON only because this PR changes documentation/contracts/prompts and performs no live-client behavior. Reject that classification if the diff actually introduces executable/runtime behavior.

Required audit outcome before readiness: PASS with findings_open_material: 0, or concrete findings requiring remediation. Central Spark advisory pre-review does not satisfy this independent audit gate.

[blakinio]

Implementer falsification finding + remediation

Self-falsification on the post-validation design found material schema gaps that the original fixture matrix did not cover. This is not the required independent audit and does not satisfy that gate.

F-SELF-001 — continuous-create evidence could be overstated

Severity: medium/material
Evidence: pre-fix MONSTER_OBSERVATION_V1.schema.json allowed appearance_context=CONTINUOUS_COVERAGE_CREATE without requiring coverage.mode=CONTINUOUS_CONFIRMED, and allowed tile_observed=false/null for that appearance class.
Impact: a producer bug could serialize a record that looked eligible for exact respawn inference despite weak/non-tile coverage.
Disposition: fixed in 3fea6bb6c674b36fb66e3b07de9f85f50b3fa562.

F-SELF-002 — semantic record/provenance underconstraint

Severity: medium/material
Evidence: pre-fix schema allowed PLAYER_POSITION with an empty player object; source.evidence=DERIVED without source records; and source.layer=INFERENCE paired with DIRECT.
Impact: semantically empty position records and provenance/evidence laundering could pass machine validation.
Disposition: fixed in the same commit.

Focused post-fix behavior

The hardened schema now rejects:

• CONTINUOUS_COVERAGE_CREATE with non-continuous coverage;
• CONTINUOUS_COVERAGE_CREATE with tile_observed=false;
• PLAYER_POSITION without player.position;
• DERIVED evidence without non-empty source_record_ids;
• INFERENCE + DIRECT even when source IDs are present;
• empty source_record_ids.

It accepts corresponding valid continuous-create, player-position and derived/inference fixtures. Draft 2020-12 schema structure was rechecked in focused validation.

Required next gates remain unchanged: fresh independent falsification audit, remediation of any resulting finding, and green required checks on the exact final head before readiness/merge.

[blakinio]

Exact-head validation after remediation

Remediation head: 3fea6bb6c674b36fb66e3b07de9f85f50b3fa562

Required checks on that exact head:

• CI run 32151427685: SUCCESS
• Track A agent runtime governance run 32151427300: SUCCESS

Schema blob on this head: ac7df1cef80c417af6b74d79102c8da074032bed.

Implementer self-falsification findings F-SELF-001/F-SELF-002 are fixed and focused positive/negative schema behavior was rechecked. This remains a Draft because the task's stricter acceptance inventory requires the fresh independent documentation falsification audit before readiness/merge.

[blakinio]

Fresh coordinator documentation audit: ACCEPT_WITH_EDITS.

The design is materially sound: MONSTER_OBSERVATION_V1 keeps observed appearance separate from respawn claims, uses observation/process epochs, explicit coverage continuity, gap reasons, local observation-instance identity, censoring classes, negative controls and empirical-vs-server-internal separation. The exact final schema blob at source head is ac7df1cef80c417af6b74d79102c8da074032bed; independent re-read confirms CONTINUOUS_CONFIRMED forces non-null monotonic continuity with last_gap_reason=NONE, CONTINUOUS_COVERAGE_CREATE requires confirmed continuous coverage, delete requires disappearance/death context, derived/inference records require source IDs, and monster semantic names remain constrained by creature-class conditions.

Material closeout edits:

1. MON-AUD-001 — stale current-state prose. Source programme/task still describes #528/#539/#536 as active and current official-client identity / IN_GAME as unresolved. Those were true only at the 2026-08-18 design checkpoint. Current main now has exact official client 15.32 / 52109920 / ed5469..., #528 terminal causal login-to-world proof (with separate post-handoff retention failure), #539 terminal S10 blocker, #536 terminal current coverage registry, and current-build creature/combat static G0 from #558. Clean promotion must add a coordinator current-state overlay and explicitly classify source current paragraphs as historical checkpoint text. Future physical collection still requires fresh then-current Track A admission; no old PID/address/session becomes authority.
2. MON-AUD-002 — schema validation provenance stale in task metadata. The task narrative names earlier validated schema blob 2b54ceb..., while exact source head contains later blob ac7df1ce.... Do not repeat the old blob as final provenance. Canonical closeout must identify ac7df1ce... as the promoted schema and preserve the exact-head CI/governance + coordinator structural re-read boundary rather than claiming an automated fixture run on the wrong blob.
3. The source branch is behind_by=35; do not merge it directly. The parent experiment sweep file on current main is still byte-identical to source base (24c41a2b...), so the source's additive 15-line sweep integration can be safely carried as exact source blob without overwriting later sweep work.

No runtime evidence is promoted by this design package. runtime_status=DESIGN_ONLY, recorder/physical sampling remain NOT IMPLEMENTED, and no spawn table/server algorithm/current ABI is claimed. Open material findings after these edits: 0.