clay-borg/workplans/CB-WP-0041-the-extensive-form-foundation.md

---
id: CB-WP-0041
kind: product
title: "The extensive-form foundation"
status: active
---

# Purpose

```
structural tier  M   (states what the kernel claims about itself as a
                      game-theoretic object, and prepares — but does not
                      build — a capability port)
chaos            d8 = 5  → no override
declared tier    M
```

**Declaration 1 of chaos window 4.** Window 3 closed at 12 declarations
with one override that changed nothing, and **its verdict is still owed**
([`ChaosRollHistory.md`](../specs/ChaosRollHistory.md)).

## Why

[CB-RES-0009](../research/CB-RES-0009-extensive-form-is-the-lingua-franca.md)
found that the **extensive-form game is the interchange format** between
describing a game and analysing it — Ludii's universality result grounds
its language in EFGs, and OpenSpiel's CFR, best-response and
exploitability consume them.

**And that we already have most of one**, under other names:

| EFG component | ours |
|---|---|
| histories | the journal — `Applied { actor, command, events }` in order |
| actions | `bot::legal_commands(state, seat)` |
| **information sets** | **`state.project(Viewer::Player(seat))`** |
| payoffs | `Outcome` / `score()` |
| terminal | `outcome.is_some()` |

**This workplan does not build the port.** It answers what is true of the
engine today, because a port built on an unchecked assumption is worse
than no port — and one of the three gaps invalidates every equilibrium
concept if it turns out badly.

## Task: does the engine satisfy perfect recall?

```task
id: CB-WP-0041-T01
status: done
priority: high
```

**Perfect recall** — every player remembers their own past actions and
observations — is the assumption **CFR and exploitability both rest on**.
Nobody has checked whether ours holds.

Formally, for a seat `i` and any two histories `h`, `h'` in the same
information set of `i`: the *sequence of `i`'s own actions and
information sets* along `h` and `h'` must be identical.

**Controls:**
- **derived from the journal and the projection**, not asserted — the
  check must be able to say NO;
- **a positive control**: a deliberately forgetful projection must fail
  it, or the check proves nothing;
- **stated per seat count**, since the partition depends on how many
  seats there are to hide from;
- **the answer may be that we do NOT have perfect recall**, and that is
  reported as plainly as the other outcome. It would be a real finding
  and would make Track B's adoption unsound as it stands.

**Done 2026-08-08. The answer is "it depends what you call an information
set", and the distinction is the result.** 44,938 decision points, random
play, 2/3/4/6 seats.

| reading | information set is… | violations |
|---|---|---|
| **A** | the seat's **current projection** — what `project(Viewer::Player(seat))` returns and the page renders | **22** |
| **B** | the seat's **observation history** — every view seen and action taken, in order | **0** |

**Reading A fails, and the witness is concrete**: two histories reach a
byte-identical view — round 3, Select, same hand, same claimed Problem —
where the seat had played `SOLVE, GROUND—OU(protect)` in one and
`SUPPORT, SOLVE` in the other. **The view does not tell the seat what it
did.**

**The mechanism is that our state is a snapshot, not a history.**
Selections clear each round and effects coincide, so a player cannot
reconstruct their own past from the present. In a real game the player's
memory supplies it; in the state, nothing does.

**This is precisely OpenSpiel's `ObservationString` vs
`InformationStateString` split**, arrived at here by measurement rather
than by reading it off. `project()` is an *observation*.

**So Track B is not closed — it is constrained**, and usefully:

> **An extensive-form game built from this engine must key information
> sets on observation histories, never on `project()`.**

**Both directions are asserted.** Reading B empty, *and* Reading A
non-empty — because if the sample stops finding Reading A violations the
conclusion is unsupported and must be re-derived, not quietly kept.

**What this cannot say.** It samples; it can falsify perfect recall and
cannot establish it. Reading B's zero means *no counterexample was
drawn*, which is weaker than "the property holds" and is printed as such.

## Task: say precisely what our chance is

```task
id: CB-WP-0041-T02
status: todo
priority: high
```

`setup` shuffles, deals and draws Lead from a seeded RNG, and the
mid-game reshuffle derives from seed and round. **So a clay-borg game is
one chance realisation, not a game with chance nodes**, and the panels
approximate the distribution by sampling seeds.

**Controls:**
- **state it, do not fix it.** Monte Carlo over seeds is legitimate and
  is what we do; the defect would be calling it an EFG;
- **name every point where chance enters**, from the code, not from
  memory;
- **say what an explicit chance player would cost** — that is the input to
  T04's decision, and guessing it is how a port gets built on a hope.

## Task: state the simultaneity encoding, and check it

```task
id: CB-WP-0041-T03
status: todo
priority: medium
```

Commit/reveal **is** the textbook EFG encoding of simultaneous moves:
sequence them, and hide the earlier move in an information set.

**Control:** it is not enough to say so. **The projection must actually
hide another seat's selection before Reveal**, and a test must fail if it
stops doing that. That property is load-bearing for every claim in §1 of
the research note and is currently only implied by
`SelectionView::Hidden`.

## Task: decide whether to build the port at all

```task
id: CB-WP-0041-T04
status: todo
priority: medium
```

`decisions/ADR-*.md`, written **after** T01–T03 and not before.

**It must be able to conclude "no".** Options include exporting an EFG,
adopting OpenSpiel's API directly for analysis only, or deciding the gaps
are too expensive and Track B borrows vocabulary rather than machinery.

**Controls:**
- **the decision cites T01's answer**, because if perfect recall fails,
  most of the option space closes;
- **it states what it would cost to be wrong**;
- **a port is declared separately, at its own tier.** Creating a capability
  port is a tier-L trigger and this workplan is M — it may not smuggle one
  in.

## Not in this workplan

- **No EFG export, no OpenSpiel integration, no equilibrium computation.**
- **No answer to "is exploitability meaningful for a co-operative game
  with a shared threshold"** — that is the other open question from
  CB-RES-0009 §6, it is a question about game theory rather than about our
  engine, and it wants its own pass.