clay-borg/evidence/CB-EV-0012-execute-the-javascript.md

CB-EV-0012 — the loop is closed, and the budget is blind

CB-WP-0014 T03. Measured 2026-08-02 at 55212d7+. Pass kind product, tier M (chaos d4=2, no override). Declaration 9 of 12.

Applying CB-EV-0011 §4's proposed rule, and hereby adopting it: the cost table below quotes the previous pass's final figure and marks this pass's own as provisional. See §5.

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1. What was actually blocking stage 1, and what it cost to find out

CB-EV-0010 §4 said the emitted JavaScript had never run. That sentence was carried for a pass on an assumption nobody checked. node v24.11.1 was on the machine the whole time.

That is the fourth consecutive pass whose central finding was a claim carried because nobody ran the command that settles it — after the 3,750 headroom figure, the "empty" sub-100k dependency region, and SH-3's 0.0%. The pattern is stable enough now to name: this project's characteristic error is not faulty reasoning, it is unexecuted verification. Every one was cheap to check and none had been checked.

2. The loop, closed

The real server serves the real page → QuickJS runs that page's own two <script> blocks → the gesture goes over a real socket → the seat's Choice comes back.

Before this, every link was tested and the chain was not. The page was asserted against as a parsed document; the socket was driven by synthetic HTTP this test suite wrote itself. A page whose JavaScript sent something else entirely would have passed everything.

Control 5 — the page may not construct commands — was held up by a test that grepped the emitted script for game vocabulary. It is now asserted on what the script actually puts on the wire, and the mutation that makes the JS post command=SelectAction&target=… turns it red.

A wrong assertion worth keeping. The first draft required the body not to contain "attack". It legitimately does — the body is down=action-attack&up=seat-1, and action-attack is the id of an element a finger landed on. An element may name an action; that is not the page deciding anything. What distinguishes reporting from deciding is the shape: exactly two fields, down and up, carrying two ids and nothing derived from them.

3. AM-4b is blind to more source than its own target

ADR-0009's first draft priced quick-js at "35% of AM-4b's remaining headroom." After it landed, make dep-weight reported AM-4b unchanged.

	crates	lines
AM-4b as instrumented (games-ground, --edges normal)	29	317,021
the whole workspace, including dev edges	57	725,258
uncounted	28	408,237

AM-4b measures one package and no dev edges. criterion, clap, ciborium and now quick-js are invisible to it.

This is the same defect the ADR refuses node for — a real acquisition scoring zero because the instrument does not look there. The decision still stands, because quick-js is pinned and auditable and node is neither, but it stands on the acquisition rule alone. The affordability argument is withdrawn: there is none to be had until AM-4b can see what it is buying.

Third defect in the AM-4 family, and the second found by a pass that was using the instrument rather than auditing it:

defect	status
shipped-runtime counted proc-macro crates (89,048 lines)	fixed, ADR-0008 D2
AM-4b's own proc-macro share	unmeasured, owed
AM-4b's scope: one package, no dev edges (408,237 lines)	found here, owed

4. INTENT stage 1, deliverable by deliverable

deliverable	status
card/token/hand/relationship-graph visualization	emitted and gated — 41 of 42 leaf paths asserted present in the parsed document. Never seen.
drag-to-propose	evidenced end to end — JS gesture → socket → Choice
debug inspector	evidenced (CB-WP-0011) — walks bundles and scenarios, hash-verified
hot-seat play	evidenced — two seats, one listener, the projection follows the seat

The last one was the closest to being claimed on the strength of the code path existing. SeatPolicy hands every human seat a handle on one shared Server, so turn-taking "obviously" worked — and nothing drove more than one seat until this pass. The property that matters is not that two turns happen but that the same tab, asked twice, shows two different hands; mutating the projection to serve P1's view to every seat turns it red.

The stage stays open, on one named blocker

Three of four deliverables are evidenced by executing code. The first is evidenced only as correctly emitted: QuickJS has no layout engine, no browser is available here, and no test in this repo can establish that an SVG table is legible or that a drag feels like a drag.

Everything testable from here has been tested. What remains is one human action: run cb-play --serve 0, open the printed URL, and confirm the table reads and a drag works. That is the whole of the remaining blocker, it is the maintainer's to do, and it is named here so the stage is no longer carried on a vague reservation.

Closing it unilaterally would be the failure mode stage 0 avoided. Carrying it vaguely was the failure mode this pass found.

5. Cost, shape, and the rule now adopted

pass	kind	responses	cost	$/response
CB-WP-0012	product	97	$14.52	0.150
CB-WP-0013 (final)	meta	47	$8.26	0.176
CB-WP-0014	product	provisional — see below

The rule is adopted. CB-EV-0011 proposed that an evidence file quote the previous pass's final cost and never its own. CB-WP-0013 reported itself at $5.78/34 responses mid-flight; final is $8.26/47 — under by 43%. Four for four, always low. This file quotes CB-WP-0013 and declines to quote itself, and future evidence files should do the same.

Meta budget: 29% [OVER] the soft 25%, driven by CB-WP-0013's $8.26 sitting in a trailing three with two cheap product passes. Reported under the rule that requires reporting it; no product work was displaced, and CB-WP-0013 was an instrument repair, which ADR-0006 D2 exempts anyway.

SH-1 is at 347,720 [HARD] against a 300,000 ceiling. The remedy is a compaction and it is free, and it is not something this session can do for itself. CB-EV-0009's standing prediction is now live and testable: if the next pass opens above the SH-1 hard line, it should cost more per response than 0.123. It has been unfalsified for three passes because every one of them opened below the line.

6. Open

• AM-4b's scope defect (408,237 uncounted lines) and its unmeasured proc-macro share. §3.
• python3 as a toolchain dependency was never argued. ADR-0009 declined to lean on it as precedent and left it owed.
• INTENT stage 1: one human verification. §4.
• AM-4a still cannot survive stage 2 — 1,741,979 against 161,000, 10.8×. Reserved for the maintainer since ADR-0007.
• ADR-0007 D3's acquisition rule remains unratified — and it has now decided two dependency questions, which raises rather than lowers the cost of leaving it unratified.
• Chaos: 9 of 12 declarations, 1 override.