---
id: CB-WP-0032
kind: product
title: "The comments in the account"
status: done
state_hub_workstream_id: "71d744f9-7e40-49c3-994e-f3fb007a1430"
---

# Purpose

```
structural tier  S   (one existing renderer gains a second input; no new
                      decision, no dependency, no budget moved)
chaos            d8 = 6  → no override
declared tier    S
```

**Declaration 3 of chaos window 3.**

## The report

> *"Commenting after the game is a good practice. We could show the
> comments in the log. I would think that as useful."*

This closes the gap [CB-WP-0031](CB-WP-0031-the-comment-box-outlives-the-game.md)
named and did not fix: notes were written to a file and **shown back
nowhere**. `trials.py`'s own docstring calls that shape *"this project's
signature failure in a new medium"* (ADR-0014 D6) — and the note channel
had it, in the interface, for as long as it has existed.

## The decision: what a comment is positioned against

A note carries `round`, `step` and `state_hash`. **None of them can order
it against the log**, because the log is a sequence of *commands* and
several commands share a step. Positioning by round would put a comment
*somewhere in* the right round — for a remark about a specific move, the
wrong position stated confidently.

So the server records **how many commands had been played** when the note
was written, which it knows exactly (`journal.len()`), and the page places
it there. `after = 0` is *before anyone moved*, which is a real thing to
have an opinion at.

## The thing that must not happen

**A comment must not be readable as something the game did.** The log is
the recorder's vocabulary — `record::to_step`, what the scenario file will
say — so a note styled as a log line would be a sentence the game never
produced, sitting in the account of what the game produced. ADR-0014 D4
turns on that distinction being visible: raw notes stay in this repo, and
only a human promotes one to a finding.

Notes render in their own `.note` block, attributed *"you — round N,
step"*, with the words in quotes. **The `.note` CSS already existed and was
never used by anything** — defined for this, and left unwired.

## What was NOT done, and why it is the interesting half

**No column was added to the trial log**, though `after` is genuinely the
anchor and persisting it would let a later reader interleave.

`trials.py` skipped any row that was not five cells — with `continue`, in
silence. A sixth column would have made `make trials` report **zero notes
for every log at once**, which is verbatim the failure the parser's own
docstring says it exists to prevent. `after` is therefore held in memory
for the session and the file format is untouched.

**The latent defect was fixed on its own terms**: a wrong column count now
raises, and the walk that wraps it reports the *real* reason instead of
blaming a missing block for every failure.

## Task: show the comments where they were made

```task
id: CB-WP-0032-T01
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "31f60440-e049-45f7-99fa-87c01c00adb7"
```

**Controls:**
- **placement is asserted, not just presence** — mutation-proven: append
  the notes at the end instead of interleaving and the test goes red;
- **a comment cannot be read as a game event** — asserted on its own
  marking and its attribution;
- **a comment past the end of the log still appears**, because a post-game
  note is written when every command has been played and a dropped comment
  is the failure the channel exists to avoid;
- **the round trip, not the write** — the `cb-play` test posts a note and
  then GETs the page, which is the path a player takes.

**Done 2026-08-07.**

`Account { lines, notes }` replaces the bare `&[LogLine]` on both pages —
a struct because `document_with_log` was already at seven arguments, and
because the two are only meaningful together, which is the point.

`trials.py` hardened as described above, with two new controls: a
wrong-shaped row raises, and the walk names the reason.

## Not done here

- **Nothing lets a player edit or delete a comment.** A note is a record
  of what they thought at the time and rewriting it would defeat that,
  but a typo is a real case and there is no answer for it yet.
- **The ending page shows the same interleaved account**, so a long game
  puts the post-game comment at the bottom of a long log. Whether that is
  where a reader looks for it is untested.