---
id: CB-WP-0036
kind: product
title: "Pace and ornamentation"
status: active
state_hub_workstream_id: "698651ed-cccd-46f2-84cc-07b0bdb85ad0"
---

# Purpose

```
structural tier  M   (a driver parameter and a declared vocabulary; the
                      animation architecture that made this L has moved
                      out of this repo)
chaos            d8 = 7  → no override
declared tier    M
```

**Re-declared 2026-08-07, declaration 8 of chaos window 3.**

## Why this was rewritten, and what it used to say

Declared on 2026-08-07 as **tier L**, covering an animation layer,
Rust-computed transitions over the journal delta, and a client/server
interaction able to animate other players' moves. Chaos was d8 = 7, no
override. **No code was written**, and the tier-L adversarial review was
never run — which is the only reason this could be re-scoped rather than
unwound.

**The maintainer moved the animation out of clay-borg**, and the reasoning
is now [`specs/Ornamentation.md`](../specs/Ornamentation.md):

> the basic simulator should have the relevant concepts of simulation and
> interaction, feedback mechanisms etc. with very simple ui concepts and
> frontend, backend interactions to keep the focus on the game and
> simulation core

So movement, timing and layering belong to a later, separate
**`clay-animate`**; material behaviour to **`clay-physics`** beyond that.
**What stays here is the vocabulary, the boundary and the pace knob** —
and the invariants that keep the boundary real once something downstream
exists to test it.

**Two terms changed and the change is not cosmetic.** "Ritual" became
**ornamentation**, because half the category is material rather than
ceremonial — card stock, a typeface, the drift of a discard. And the test
is no longer *"does it have a decision in it"*: choosing who deals is a
decision and is ornamental. **The test is whether the state hash moves**,
which is executable, and which settles the open question the previous
version of this workplan left for a reviewer.

## Task: the concept, in the spec that governs structure

```task
id: CB-WP-0036-T01
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "e7602796-cdb7-44cf-a39d-697b1e8e2a7f"
```

**Controls:**
- the boundary has a **falsifier**, not just a diagram;
- ornamentation is defined by a test something can **run**, not by taste;
- it says what is deliberately **not** built and why.

**Done 2026-08-07.** [`specs/Ornamentation.md`](../specs/Ornamentation.md).

**§1.1 makes the line executable** by reusing `state_hash` — the same
instrument that binds a trial note to a position (ADR-0019 D3).

**§2 is the part that earns its place in this repo rather than a
renderer's stylesheet.** Calling something ornamentation is a claim that
it does not matter, and this project's register is a list of times that
claim was wrong — `quantity` in `Tokens.csv`, F18's four unread files,
SOLVE offered where it could not act. So a declaration carries a
falsifier, and *provisional* is a state it must be able to say out loud.

**§3.1 restates ADR-0007 D5 one level up:** downstream may read, may not
decide. **§3.2 refuses to design the port**, because no consumer exists
and an interface built against an imagined client is the same defect as a
gate that cannot go red.

**§5 gives five invariants, four of them checkable today.** I3 — the same
seed and decisions produce a byte-identical recording at any pace, through
any renderer — is the falsifier for the whole split.

## Task: the pace parameter

```task
id: CB-WP-0036-T02
status: todo
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "e978b93b-fcbd-4853-a27d-5eca00f9ca19"
```

`--pace speed | interactive`, defaulting to **speed**, and **not**
`--mode` (taken by `ScoringMode`).

**Controls:**
- **I4 measured, not asserted**: `sim`, `trials` and the benchmarks are
  unaffected — *nothing*, not *little*;
- `prefers-reduced-motion` behaves as speed;
- **the flag exists before anything reads it**, and that is deliberate:
  it is the seam `clay-animate` will attach to, and a seam is cheap while
  a retrofit is not.

## Task: declarations, once there are any to make

```task
id: CB-WP-0036-T03
status: todo
priority: low
state_hub_task_id: "bf2a68b0-5985-40ff-b4f5-33c40d92cff0"
```

Ornamentation declarations per §2.1 — what is ornamented, why it does not
bind, what would falsify it.

**Not started deliberately.** GameDesign §2's rule applies: **no kind
exists without an instance that instantiates it.** The first real
declarations are most likely to come from F18's unvendored files —
`Player_Mats` and `Glossary` are ornamentation-bearing data this engine
has never read — so **vendoring those is the trigger**, not a schema
designed in advance.

## No longer in this repo

- **the animation layer**, transitions over the journal delta, cards
  summoned larger beside a seat and shrinking toward a target, discards
  drifting — **`clay-animate`**;
- **material simulation** — **`clay-physics`**;
- **hand sorting**, which was T05 here: it is presentation of a hand whose
  *contents* are mechanism, so it goes with the renderer. The constraint
  survives the move and is now I1: sorting must not move `state_hash`,
  because a hash that moved would break every trial note's binding.