CB-WP-0020: the table you can read

Six of seven perceptual defects fixed; item 1 already passed.

T01, at the maintainer's instruction: a legal target restyles its
EXISTING border rather than drawing a new box. outline + outline-offset
drew a second rectangle, which an SVG viewport clips (the missing top and
left edges) and which made a seat's highlight card-sized. A border
already in the layout cannot move the layout.

T02: the ghost was a textContent copy of the card, which is why the line
break collapsed and it read as a second card, and why showing the
explanation destroyed the label. It is now a pill, the explanation is
appended beside the label, and the left-behind element is dimmed and
dashed. The stub grew innerHTML so a test can assert BOTH are present --
it could previously only see that something was displayed.

T03: NOT reproduced and recorded as not reproduced. The likeliest cause
is which element the browser reports -- for touch and pen the pointer is
captured to the pointerdown target, making every drop look like a
drop-on-itself, which is the other half of the report. elementFromPoint
is correct under both explanations. Separately the refusal was written in
element ids on the one surface a player reads when something goes wrong;
it now speaks the game's words and a test forbids id leakage.

T04: seat selections rendered as Debug. The coverage gate then failed my
first fix for dropping a field when target and problem were both set --
the aggregate does not produce that shape and the gate was right not to
care.

T05: the headline reads from group_success. 'Play again' is real, and its
first version was useless: run_game bound a fresh listener per game, so a
second game moved to a new port and left the tab pointing at a dead one.
One listener per session now, and the test asserts the second game is a
DIFFERENT deal.

Chaos d8=8 fired the first override at the new rate and drew S, changing
nothing -- one half of window 2's retirement condition.

CB-WP-0019 settled at $38.54/117 against $34.80/107. Eight for eight,
and the first under 20%.

make all exits 0.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

evidence/CB-EV-0018-the-table-you-can-read.md

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+# CB-EV-0018 — four human checks, four sets of defects no test could reach
+
+CB-WP-0020 T06. Measured 2026-08-03 at `5e06a7d`+. Pass kind `product`,
+tier **S** (structural S; **chaos d8 = 8 → OVERRIDE, drawn S**).
+Declaration 3 of chaos window 2.
+
+---
+
+## 1. What the check found, and what the suite said about it
+
+Seven items. **Item 1 passed** — the resting affordance reads without
+touching anything. Every other one was a defect, and `make all` was green
+for all of them.
+
+| # | reported | cause |
+|---|---|---|
+| 2 | *"as if we have two cards now"*, the line break vanishes | the ghost was a `textContent` copy of the card |
+| 3 | *"upper and left borders … hidden"*, seat highlight *"quite large"* | `outline` + `outline-offset` drew a **second** rectangle; an SVG viewport clips it |
+| 4 | *"replacing the content … breaks the visual clue"* | the explanation **replaced** the ghost's label |
+| 5 | status line *"switches only if i put back a card"* | see §3 — not reproduced, and fixed anyway |
+| 6 | *"cant follow the actions of the other players"* | seat cards rendered `Selection { action: Solve, … }` — `Debug` on a player surface |
+| 7 | *"game over"* wrong when the group succeeded; no way to play again | the ending was written for one outcome and one game |
+
+### Could any of them have been caught mechanically?
+
+Honestly, **two of the seven**, and neither by a check that existed:
+
+- **#6** is the same `{:?}`-on-a-player-surface defect the log fixed in
+  CB-WP-0018, in a place that pass did not look. A grep for `{:?}` in
+  emitted output would find it, and that check does not exist. **Worth
+  building.**
+- **#7's headline** is a branch nobody wrote a case for; a test asserting
+  the ending page differs on `group_success` would have caught it.
+
+**The other five cannot be caught here and saying otherwise would be the
+error this project keeps naming.** #2, #3 and #4 are about what a layout
+*looks like*; #5 is about which element a browser reports under a pointer.
+QuickJS has no layout engine and no hit-testing, and a stub that grew one
+would be asserting against my model of a browser rather than a browser.
+
+## 2. The border moves, nothing else does
+
+Adopted as instructed: a legal target restyles its **existing** border
+rather than drawing a new box.
+
+```
+.dropok{border-style:dashed;border-color:#9cf;background:#1d2a33}
+.dropok circle,.dropok rect{stroke:#9cf;stroke-dasharray:5 3}
+```
+
+That is the whole fix for the missing top and left edges — an `outline` on
+an SVG `<g>` is clipped by the viewport, and on a card it collided with
+the neighbour's margin. It also removes the oversized seat highlight,
+because the border was always the right size. **A border already in the
+layout cannot move the layout**, which is what *"more stable and less
+complicated"* was asking for.
+
+## 3. The report I could not reproduce, and what I did instead
+
+Item 5 said the *"nothing droppable"* message never appears. The harness
+test for it passes, the page has real gaps to drop into, and I have no
+browser — so I could not reproduce it, and **the task said not to fix a
+message that already works.**
+
+The likeliest explanation is not the message but **which element the
+browser reports**: for touch and pen a browser implicitly captures the
+pointer to the `pointerdown` target, so `e.target` on `pointerup` is the
+element you *started* on wherever you release. That would make every drop
+look like a drop-on-itself — which is exactly the other half of the
+report, *"switches only if i put back a card, then showing `action-attack
+-> action-attack`"*.
+
+So the fix is to stop asking the event and ask the document:
+`document.elementFromPoint(clientX, clientY)`. **That is correct under
+both explanations** — with a mouse it returns the same element `e.target`
+would; with capture it returns the truth instead of the capture target.
+
+**Recorded as unreproduced, not as diagnosed.** If item 5 still misbehaves
+after this, the cause is something else and this note is the starting
+point.
+
+**And the refusal was written in element ids.** `action-attack ->
+action-attack is not a legal move here` is the vocabulary of the DOM on
+the one surface a player reads when something goes wrong. It now says
+*"Attack needs to be dropped on something"* or *"Attack on P2 is not a
+move you can make right now"*, and a test asserts no `action-` id leaks
+into it.
+
+## 4. Two defects my own tests found while fixing these
+
+**The selection renderer dropped a field.** `selection_words` matched on
+`(target, problem)` and showed only the target when both were set. The
+42-path coverage gate failed the build: *"claimed rendered, but absent
+from the emitted document: selections.\*.problem"*. The aggregate does not
+currently produce both — but a renderer that silently drops one is the
+omission class this crate exists to guard against, and the gate does not
+care whether the case is reachable today.
+
+**"Play again" moved the game to a new port.** The first version worked
+end to end and would have been useless: `run_game` bound a fresh listener
+per game, so dealing a second game left the player's tab pointing at a
+dead port — the CB-WP-0018 defect returning by a different route. The
+listener is now bound once per **session**.
+
+`play_again_deals_a_second_game` catches it, and it asserts the second
+game is a **different deal**, not merely that a second game happened — a
+seed that did not advance would have satisfied a naive count.
+
+## 5. Chaos: the first override at d8, and it changed nothing
+
+`d8 = 8` fired on the **second roll** at the new rate and drew **S**,
+which is what the structural derivation already said.
+
+**That is one half of window 2's retirement condition** — *retire if an
+override changes nothing twice running*. **One.** If the next override
+also changes nothing, the mechanism goes.
+
+Worth stating plainly so it is not mistaken for evidence either way: an
+override firing on roll 2 of 12 at a 1-in-8 rate is unremarkable luck, and
+drawing the structural tier is a 1-in-3 outcome. Neither number says
+anything about whether d8 was the right rate. **The window needs its
+twelve.**
+
+## 6. Cost
+
+| pass | kind | responses | cost | $/response |
+|---|---|---|---|---|
+| **CB-WP-0019** | meta | 117 | **$38.54** | 0.329 |
+| CB-WP-0020 | product | *provisional — not quoted* | | |
+
+Read by re-running `make status` at the moment of writing, per the rule
+CB-WP-0019 wrote. CB-WP-0019 was last reported at $34.80/107 and has
+settled at **$38.54/117** — **eight for eight**, and the first one under
+20%, which is what re-running at quote time is supposed to do.
+
+**Meta budget: back under the line** — CB-WP-0020 is product work, which
+is what the 27% breach called for.
+
+## 7. Open
+
+- **The human check is four for four.** Every run has found something the
+  suite called green. Its cost is one maintainer session per pass; its
+  yield so far is a broken drag, a lying affordance list, an invisible
+  ending, and this set. **It should stay a gate on stage 1.**
+- **A `{:?}`-in-emitted-output check** would have caught item 6 and does
+  not exist. Cheap; owed.
+- **The engine still has not imported the edition data**, now that
+  GROUND-WP-0002 T01 has ruled it authoritative. That is the next product
+  pass, and it is what makes the ending's `0` scores and `winners nobody`
+  meaningful — **confirmed as the stand-in's doing, not a scoring bug**.
+- **`ground-game` owes ten rulings** (U1–U10) and SOLVE's legality.
+- **Chaos: 3 of 12 in window 2, one override, changed nothing.**