CB-WP-0027: the commentary track — declare and register
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The maintainer's ask: game interface left, meta and commentary right, with
comments bound to game state so a test player's perception, confusion and
reasoning become reviewable signal.

Declared M (chaos d8=7, no override, declaration 10 of window 2). It
touches two canonical interfaces: ADR-0007 D5's input contract, which
currently admits only raw pointer facts, and the recorded-session format,
which is deny_unknown_fields -- CB-WP-0026 just proved that bites.

FRAMED AS GameDesign §5's TRIAL PROTOCOL MADE ERGONOMIC, because that is
what it is. The protocol already exists and nobody would use it as
written: it asks the player to reconstruct their reasoning afterwards,
from memory, in a sibling file. A comment typed while the position is on
screen is contemporaneous, bound to something replayable, and captures the
one class of signal no gate in this project can see -- confusion and
frustration.

The reason it is worth more than a comment box: GameDesign §3.1 makes a
note unreportable until it has a reproduction, and three findings are
stuck there now (F12, F14, F15). A comment bound to a recorded state, plus
the recording, is the cheapest reproduction a play-derived observation can
have. So the pass closes the register's input path for findings that come
from playing rather than from building.

The failure it must not reproduce is named up front: a pile of prose
nobody reads is this project's signature defect -- the four-day unread
message, the ten uncollected rulings. Storage is not the deliverable,
surfacing is, and T04 carries it.

T01 (ADR-0014) must decide where comments live, what the page may send
(D5's transport widens from two ids to arbitrary user text -- amended or
merely scoped?), what binds a comment to a position, and the retention
question this project has not faced: these are the maintainer's own words
about his own game, one will eventually be unflattering, and whether they
travel to ground-game needs deciding before any are written.

T03 notes that esc() is about to face its first hostile input -- until now
it has escaped suit names.

loop-lint: no findings.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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---
id: CB-WP-0027
kind: product
title: "The commentary track: the meta view beside the table, and what the player says while playing"
status: ready
---
# Purpose
```
structural tier M (touches two canonical interfaces — ADR-0007 D5's
input contract, which currently admits only pointer
facts, and the recorded-session format, which is
`deny_unknown_fields`)
chaos d8 = 7 → no override
declared tier M
```
Declaration 10 of chaos window 2. Tier M: survey and decision merged into
one document; adversarial review optional.
## The maintainer's ask
> *"Extend the UI to provide the evaluation meta view to the game. Game
> interface to the left, meta and commentary to the right. As a test
> player I can provide comments about how I perceive the game or why I am
> playing a move — signal about unclear situations, frustration etc. —
> bound to the game state, reviewable for potential optimizations."*
## This is `GameDesign.md` §5's trial protocol, made ergonomic
**The protocol already exists and nobody would use it as written.** A
trial game is a `--record`ed session plus a sibling `trials/<date>.md`
written *afterwards*, from memory. The spec says it "must cost almost
nothing or it will not be done" — and then asks the player to reconstruct
their own reasoning after the fact.
A comment typed **while the position is on screen** is better in three
ways that matter to this project:
1. **It is contemporaneous.** *"Why am I playing this"* is available for
about ten seconds and then it is gone.
2. **It is bound to a position**, so it points at something replayable
rather than at a memory.
3. **It captures the class of signal nothing else here can.** Confusion,
frustration, and *"I don't understand what this does"* are invisible to
every gate in the project, and they are the observations that produce
design findings rather than engine findings.
## Why this is worth more than a comment box
**GameDesign §3.1 makes a note unreportable until it has a reproduction.**
Three findings are stuck there right now: F12 (GR-A13 wasted SOLVE), F14
(GR-E03/E04 never played) and F15 (the series question). Each is real and
none can go to `ground-game`.
**A comment bound to a recorded state, plus the recording, is the cheapest
reproduction a play-derived observation can have.** *"This felt pointless"*
attached to a replayable position is a different artifact from *"this felt
pointless"* in a file — the reader can go and look.
So the pass is not "add a text box". It is **closing the register's input
path for findings that come from playing rather than from building.**
## The failure this must not reproduce
**A pile of prose nobody reads is this project's signature defect.** The
message that sat unread for four days; the ten rulings that arrived and
were never collected. A commentary feature that stores comments and
surfaces them nowhere is that failure in a new medium, and it would be the
third instance.
> **Storage is not the deliverable. Surfacing is.**
T04 carries this and no task may be called done while comments are
write-only.
## Task: decide where comments live and what the page may send
```task
id: CB-WP-0027-T01
status: todo
priority: high
```
`decisions/ADR-0014-*.md` (tier M merges survey and decision).
**Three questions, and the second is the one that bites.**
**(a) Where does a comment live?** Candidates: inside the recorded
`ScenarioFile`; in the `trials/<date>-<slug>.md` sibling `GameDesign.md`
§5 already specifies; or a third file keyed to the recording. Note
CB-WP-0026 added four fields to `ScenarioFile` and the schema is
`deny_unknown_fields` — **a scenario is a game record, and mixing a
player's prose into it may be the wrong shape.** Say which and why.
**(b) What may the page send?** ADR-0007 **Decision 5** currently binds
the browser to *raw pointer facts*`down on id`, `up on id` — and
forbids JavaScript from constructing commands. **A comment is not a
command**, so D5 is arguably untouched; but the transport widens from two
ids to arbitrary user text, and that must be *decided* rather than
assumed. State whether D5 is amended or merely scoped, and what stops the
new channel from becoming a command channel later.
**(c) What binds a comment to the game?** Round and step are readable but
weak. **The end-state hash is the strong binding** — it is what makes a
session comparable to its replay (`Summary::end_state_hash`), so a comment
keyed to a hash points at a position a reader can reach. Decide whether
the binding is the hash, the command index, or both, and what happens to a
comment whose position no longer replays.
**Also decide the retention question**, because it is a boundary this
project has not faced: these comments are **the maintainer's own words
about his own game**, and one of them will eventually be unflattering
about the design or about the engine. State whether they are private to
the repo, whether they travel to `ground-game`, and who decides.
## Task: the table on the left, the meta on the right
```task
id: CB-WP-0027-T02
status: todo
priority: high
```
Two columns: the game as it is today on the left, a meta panel on the
right. The log moves into the right column — it is commentary on the game,
not part of the table.
**What goes in the meta panel**, beyond the log and the comment box:
- the **session tally** (CB-WP-0024 T04), which currently only appears at
the end;
- the **register's open notes** for this game, if any — the point of the
panel is that the player can see what has already been observed;
- whatever CB-WP-0025's witness produces, **when it is wired** — it is not
yet, and this task does not wire it.
**Controls:**
- the layout must survive a narrow viewport — a two-column desktop layout
that unreadably overlaps on a laptop is a regression, and the existing
page is responsive by accident rather than by design, so this is the
moment it becomes deliberate;
- **every existing coverage probe must still pass.** `RENDERED` in
`lib.rs` asserts each view field appears in the *parsed* document; a
reflow that drops one fails the build, and that is the gate working;
- the game column must be usable with the meta column collapsed. A player
who does not want to write anything must not be worse off.
## Task: capture what the player says, bound to where they said it
```task
id: CB-WP-0027-T03
status: todo
priority: high
```
A comment box in the meta panel, posting to the existing guarded endpoint.
**The escaping is not incidental.** `esc()` exists and every interpolated
value goes through it, with a comment in the source saying *"cannot
currently carry a `<`" is how injection bugs are written*. This is the
first user-authored free text the page has ever handled, so it is the
first time that comment is load-bearing rather than precautionary.
**Controls:**
- **a comment containing `<script>` renders as text**, asserted on the
emitted document — the first real test of `esc()` against hostile input
rather than against suit names;
- a comment is bound to the position per T01's decision, and a test
asserts the binding **resolves**: a stored comment names a state that
the recording can reach;
- the empty comment is not stored — a blank note is noise in the register;
- **the game is playable with comments disabled**, and a test says so. The
commentary track must not become a dependency of playing.
## Task: surface them, or this pass has failed
```task
id: CB-WP-0027-T04
status: todo
priority: high
```
**The load-bearing task.** Comments must be readable *outside* the
session that produced them, by a command, without opening a file by hand.
- `make design` (or a sibling) reports comments **with their positions**,
because a comment without its position is prose again;
- a comment can be **promoted to a register note** — that is the input
path this pass exists to close, and it should cost one step;
- **age is reported.** GameDesign §3.1 expires notes at 30 days on the
existing `PROVISIONAL_WARN_DAYS` machinery; comments should not get a
private mechanism.
**Controls:**
- a comment written in a session is visible from a command in a *later*
session — the whole failure mode is signal that only exists while
someone is looking at it;
- **the reporting path is exercised by the self-test**, not only the
parsing. `design-baseline.py` had a self-test and a reporting path with
no CI, and the reporting path was where it rotted (ADR-0012 D8);
- promoting a comment to a note produces a register row that
`tools/design.py` accepts — if the register cannot express it, the shape
is wrong and that is a finding about ADR-0012, not a bug.
## Task: evidence
```task
id: CB-WP-0027-T05
status: todo
priority: medium
```
`evidence/CB-EV-0025-*.md`.
- **Whether a comment actually got written during play**, by the
maintainer, unprompted. The protocol's own test is whether it costs
little enough to use; anything else is a claim about a feature nobody
exercised.
- **Whether any stuck note moved.** F12, F14 and F15 are unreportable for
want of a reproduction; if the commentary path unblocks even one, that
is the pass's real result.
- **What the escaping test found**, since it is the first hostile input
this renderer has seen.
- **Whether the two-column layout cost any coverage probe**, and what that
says about how tightly the gate is coupled to the document's shape.
- **Quote CB-WP-0025's cost by re-running the instrument** — and note that
CB-EV-0019 §4's unbounded chain is still unbounded.