clay-borg/specs/FindingRegister.md

The finding register

Design findings about GROUND, with their reproductions. Governed by GameDesign.md (admissibility, kinds, states, metrics) and ADR-0012. Reported by make design.

Split out of GroundRules.md §Underdetermined on 2026-08-05 when that file crossed the ~400-line loadability limit. ADR-0012 D2 said "no new file" and this is a new file — but D2's substance was one register, not a second mechanism competing with the first, and that holds: this is §Underdetermined's register, moved, still driving off the same provisional/ruling machinery. D2 also named the awkwardness this resolves — a finding about the engine sitting in a document about the game.

The U-items themselves, with their defaults and rulings, stay in GroundRules.md §Underdetermined; this file tracks them as findings.

This section is the design-finding register (ADR-0012 D2). It was the register for dataset ambiguities already; CB-WP-0022 extended it to all five kinds rather than building a second one beside it. Admissibility, kinds, states and metrics: GameDesign.md. Reported by make design.

id	kind	state	reproduction	role	raised	owner
U1	underdetermined	applied	—	default	2026-07-31	ground-game
U2	underdetermined	applied	scenarios/ground/gr-d01-darvo-trigger.yaml	default	2026-07-31	ground-game
U3	underdetermined	applied	—	default	2026-07-31	ground-game
U4	underdetermined	applied	—	default	2026-07-31	ground-game
U5	underdetermined	applied	—	default	2026-07-31	ground-game
U6	underdetermined	applied	—	default	2026-07-31	ground-game
U7	underdetermined	applied	—	default	2026-07-31	ground-game
U8	underdetermined	applied	—	default	2026-07-31	ground-game
U9	underdetermined	applied	—	default	2026-07-31	ground-game
U10	underdetermined	applied	—	default	2026-07-31	ground-game
F11	inert	applied	scenarios/ground/gr-p05-solve-legality.yaml	counterexample	2026-08-02	clay-borg
F12	degenerate	note	—	—	2026-08-01	clay-borg
F13	inconsistent	withdrawn	scenarios/ground/gr-e01-threshold-reachable-2p.yaml	counterexample	2026-08-01	clay-borg
F14	unplayed	note	—	—	2026-08-01	clay-borg
F15	underdetermined	note	—	—	2026-08-05	clay-borg
F16	inconsistent	withdrawn	games/ground/examples/difficulty.rs	counterexample	2026-08-05	clay-borg
F17	degenerate	note	—	—	2026-08-06	ground-game
F18	inert	raised	—	—	2026-08-06	clay-borg

• F11 — SOLVE offered where it cannot act. Offered on a face-down Problem, or with no matching suit in hand; inert every time. Ruled GROUND-WP-0002 T02, implemented CB-WP-0023 as GR-P05. applied — the rule changed, not just the annotation. The case we reported was not the case that fired: validate already rejected face-down, and the maintainer's three inert SOLVEs were the hand case.
• F12 — GR-A13 "wasted SOLVE" on an already-claimed Problem. A scenario had to pick a default and did. note: no artifact isolates the degenerate line, so under GameDesign §3.1 it may not be reported until one exists.
• F13 — GR-E01 vs GR-S01, withdrawn 2026-08-05. Raised as "4/6/9 against 5/7/9, no dataset reconciles them." 2da19a4 measured 6/9/12 against 5/7/9 and the scenario was renamed -unreachable- → -reachable-. Its reproduction is green, which under GameDesign §1.3 is the alarm that forced the resolution. Withdrawn rather than deleted, and the withdrawal is reported (ADR-0012 D5).
• F16 — "the game is too easy at 5–6 seats", withdrawn the day it was raised. Claimed from GreedyPolicy winning 200/200 at those seat counts. A FirstLegal policy scores 0% on the identical deals, and at two seats it beats greedy — two unsophisticated agents span the whole range, so the measurement was about the policy. Caught by the CB-WP-0025 adversarial review (C4) before transmission; it would have been the fifth wrong premise sent to ground-game and the worst, since GROUND-WP-0005 is blocked on exactly this number. The withdrawal was reported (ADR-0012 D5). Its reproduction is difficulty.rs, whose policy panel is plural because of this finding.
• F17 — no incentive to ATTACK while holding useful Solutions. Reported from play, 2026-08-06: "there is no incentive to play attacks as long as I have positive cards." If true, ATTACK is a dead branch for most of a game, which would make GR-A06/A07/A08 and the whole Rivalry half of the relation system reachable only when a player is out of good options. note, not a finding: no artifact demonstrates it yet. One is cheap — count ATTACK selections across the policy panel and compare against hand quality — and until it exists this may not go to ground-game (GameDesign §3.1). Owner is ground-game if it survives; it would be a design finding, not an engine one.
• F18 — the engine imports one of nineteen edition files, so the cards cannot say what they do. Reported as "I don't understand the GROUND card" — which is not a design gap: Actions.csv carries that card's tagline ("Regulate. Restore the frame. Decide.") and full rules text, and clay-borg never imported it. Every other card is the same: a player sees Clarify where the card reads "Ask What Happened — Invite a concrete account before judging." inert: the data exists and cannot fire, because nothing reads it. Ours, and CB-WP-0028 fixes it.
• F15 — the rules define one game, not a series. OutcomeView gives personal (per seat), group_success (per table) and winners. Summing the first and counting the third answer different questions, and GROUND says nothing about how several games combine. CB-WP-0024 T04 shows both, labelled, rather than picking one and letting it become the score by default. note: no artifact demonstrates that this harms play — a unit test showing the two tallies point at different seats demonstrates only that they can differ, which is arithmetic, not a design defect. Under GameDesign §3.1 it may not be reported until one exists.
• F14 — GR-E03/GR-E04 never played to the end. Nineteen passes, never played out. note until a trial game exists; GROUND-WP-0003 is the playtest that would close it, and GameDesign §5's protocol makes the recording the artifact.

The register's first run found ten answers nobody had collected

U1–U10 are ruled, not reported. GROUND-WP-0002 T05 answered all ten on 2026-08-03 — every one confirmed as the default clay-borg already simulates — and GROUND-WP-0002 T03 confirmed five of the six provisional scenarios, voiding gr-e01 as a rules gap. The workplan is finished.

CB-RES-0007 reported "0 of 10 ruled" and this register was built saying reported. Both were two days stale on the day they were written. The answers had arrived and nothing propagated them — the same failure as the unread inbox, in the opposite direction.

They are ruled, not applied, and the difference is work we owe. Per ADR-0012 D5, applied means the source changed and the provisional default was deleted. The rulings confirmed our defaults, so the rules did not move — but the scenarios still carry provisional: true for choices that are now settled. Lifting those flags and recording each ruling is what closes U1–U10, and it is not done. make design shows them open until it is.

The U-item ↔ scenario mapping, measured twice

One U-item has a scenario that names it: U2. CB-RES-0007 asserted six of ten did.

CB-WP-0026 T03 tried to write the other mappings and produced two wrong ones before checking them:

claimed	why it was withdrawn
gr-a04-bond-support → U1	it asserts consent is required; U1 asks when the target accepts. Different question.
gr-d05-darvo-reverse → U5	it exercises the unrejected REVERSE; U5 is the rejected one (GROUND—ND). Different stage.

Both were plausible from the covers: list and both were wrong on reading the description. That is the third and fourth instance of this exact defect — a link that looks right, asserted without checking what the artifact actually exercises — and the first two reached ground-game.

So a scenario now declares encodes_u_item explicitly or claims nothing. Nine U-items have no reproduction and are recorded as having none. They are applied because the ruling landed and the provisional flag came off, not because anything demonstrates them.

What the backfill measured, and what it contradicted

Only U2 names its U-item in a scenario. Measured, not estimated:

for u in U1 .. U10; do grep -lE "\b$u\b" scenarios/ground/*.yaml; done

CB-RES-0007 asserted "six of the ten already have provisional scenarios." Five provisional scenarios exist and one cites the item it stands for. The other four may well encode U-item defaults — the mapping is simply not written down, so it is not checkable, and an uncheckable link is the defect this register exists to fix. The register records what is citable; the rest is debt, visible in make design.

No sixth kind was needed — the five kinds absorbed all four non-U findings. And the survey's "six provisional defaults" was not entered as a finding: C3 showed it double-counted GR-E01, and the provisional scenarios are reproductions for underdetermined items, not a finding of their own.

U1–U10 are reported while lacking reproductions, which GameDesign §3.1 would now forbid. They were reported on 2026-07-30, before the rule existed. They are grandfathered rather than rewritten, and the debt is a reported metric with a target of zero.