clay-borg/workplans/CB-WP-0040-what-a-statement-is-about.md

---
id: CB-WP-0040
kind: meta
title: "What a statement is about"
status: done
state_hub_workstream_id: "67f76fe2-0fd9-4ae6-a09b-1b5dc46d0e02"
---

# Purpose

```
structural tier  M   (fixes the vocabulary the loop uses to describe its
                      own defects, and states where the repo is going)
chaos            d8 = 5  → no override
declared tier    M
```

**Declaration 12 of chaos window 3 — the window's last.** Its verdict is
due, and this pass does not write it.

## The report

> *"It is hard for me to follow what you mean by error, failure, finding
> and correction because i often cant tell if we are talking about the game
> mechanics, the simulator, the telemetry, intended results,
> visualization, etc."*

**The maintainer is right and the confusion is ours.** Three review rounds
produced twenty-odd defect statements spanning five different systems, all
called "errors".

## Task: the taxonomy, grounded in canon

```task
id: CB-WP-0040-T01
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "75758aff-724a-4e25-8597-b0a5135774f8"
```

**Controls:**
- **grounded, not invented** — named sources, because a private vocabulary
  is a second thing to learn;
- **worked examples from this repo**, or the taxonomy was invented rather
  than observed (GameDesign §2);
- **a falsifier**: what would show the strata are cut wrong.

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

**Six strata** — GAME, MODEL, ENGINE, INSTRUMENT, ACCOUNT, PRESENTATION —
from **Sargent**'s problem entity / conceptual model / computerized model,
extended where a simulation-V&V frame stops (we also own an *instrument*
and an *account*).

**The two relations are the part that was missing.** GAME↔MODEL is
**validation**; MODEL↔ENGINE is **verification**. Nearly every argument we
have had about "is this our bug or their gap" was that distinction going
unnamed.

**Fault / error / failure** from **Avizienis et al.**, applied within a
stratum, plus the rule that explains the whole review history: **a failure
in one stratum is a fault in the next.**

**And it finally defines the family ADR-0018 could only point at:** a
wrong-subject error is *an ACCOUNT failure with no INSTRUMENT fault*. The
measurement is right about its own subject; the sentence is about a
different one. **That is why tests never catch these** and why the fix is
never "add a test to the engine".

**MDA** supplies the game-facing layers and one hard limit: **our panels
measure dynamics, our trial logs sample aesthetics, and neither substitutes
for the other.** A win rate does not answer "is it fun".

## Task: positioning, and the tracks

```task
id: CB-WP-0040-T02
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "bfc565ad-4eab-4933-9cc5-2581a797e48a"
```

**Controls:**
- **name the competition and be fair to it** — a differentiator that
  requires misdescribing Ludii is not one;
- **every claimed differentiator is visible in the repo already**, not
  aspired to;
- **a falsifier for the whole document.**

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

**Ludii is the closest relative and the right benchmark** — ludemes, a
game in a QR code, far broader than us. If our answer to *"why not Ludii"*
is "ours is in Rust", there is no answer.

**The four differentiators, each already built:** the measurement is under
suspicion by construction; authority is federated, so the owner rules and
we report; what is *not* mechanism is modelled too; and a hypothesis is a
package with declared criteria rather than a patch.

> **Clay-borg is a design-evidence instrument.** Its product is an
> auditable answer to *what does this rule do at the table, and how much
> should you trust that*. Anyone can produce the number.

**Three tracks named, none started** — a second game; game theory as the
lens on dynamics; assimilated knowledge about why games work.

**Track A is the falsifier for the entire positioning.** If a second game
cannot be defined without reshaping the kernel, then "GROUND is an
example" was never true and the differentiators belong to one bespoke tool
rather than to a framework. **Every abstraction in this repo currently has
exactly one instance**, which by our own rule means it may have been
invented rather than observed.

## Task: survey the field and persist it

```task
id: CB-WP-0040-T03
status: done
priority: medium
```

`simulators/`, one profile per system, comparable schema.

**Controls:**
- **every claim carries its source**, and a claim from background
  knowledge is marked `unverified` — this directory was written straight
  after three review rounds whose entire yield was claims outrunning what
  had been checked;
- **the survey is allowed to change the plan**, or it was decoration.

**Done 2026-08-08.** Eight profiles and an index.

**It changed the plan, which is the point.** Two of the three tracks in
`Positioning.md` were overclaimed:

- **Track C is not open ground.** **Browne published 57 criteria for game
  quality**, and **Ai Ai** already computes drama, lead changes, branching
  factor, completion and duration for game authors. The track becomes
  *adopt, credit, find the gap* — and the gap looks real: those measures
  presume a leader, and **SHARED GROUND has none**.
- **Track B probably adopts.** **OpenSpiel** implements CFR,
  best-response and **exploitability** across simultaneous-move,
  imperfect-information, co-operative games — all four of GROUND's awkward
  properties. *"Does ATTACK ever pay"* is a best-response question, and we
  spent three review rounds refining a two-policy sweep for it.

**The cost of not surveying earlier is therefore measurable**, and that is
recorded rather than glossed.

**Three profiles are marked `unverified` in full** — Machinations, the
play substrates, and much of RBG. They are placeholders that keep an
option from being forgotten, and they say so instead of reading as
evaluations.

## Deliberately not done

- **No game-theory implementation.** Track B is specified as a shape and
  nothing more, because a solution concept quoted without its assumptions
  is the wrong-subject error in mathematical dress — and this repo has just
  spent three review rounds on that family.
- **No second game started.** It is the largest track and wants its own
  declaration.
- **The register rows are not re-stratified.** `Taxonomy.md` §3 says a row
  should name its stratum; the existing rows do not yet, and rewriting
  twenty-five of them in the pass that invented the rule would put the rule
  beyond challenge before anyone had used it.