clay-borg/workplans/CB-WP-0046-the-rule-the-placement-encodes.md

---
id: CB-WP-0046
kind: product
title: "The rule the placement encodes"
status: done
state_hub_workstream_id: "169242ac-024d-4001-aae2-d9bbf710fe2a"
---

# Purpose

```
structural tier  S   (one new edition reader, one rendered passage, one
                      marker attribute -- no rule, no dependency moved)
declared tier    S
```

Closes the two gaps [CB-WP-0045](CB-WP-0045-the-table-names-what-it-shows.md)
named as *not done*.

## The gap, and the wrong reason given for it

CB-WP-0045 recorded:

> *"Nothing explains what a scope does … it is a `ground-game` question
> first: the scope rule is ours (Variant), not the edition's, so there is
> no vendored sentence to render."*

**The premise was false.** `editions/experiments/h2-scoped-problem-stress/`
ships `Rules_Text.csv`, and its `Problems / Stress scope` passage is the
rule verbatim:

> *"Each Problem has stress_scope. global: every seat. personal: the
> assigned owner only. bond: the owner and every seat connected to the
> owner through one or more Bonds (the Bond network). If the owner has no
> Bonds, bond scope behaves as personal. Rivalries do not expand bond
> scope. Multiple unclaimed Problems stack (+1 each) for seats in their
> scopes."*

**Nothing in clay-borg had ever read the file.** Twenty-two passages of
player-facing rules, in the repo, unreachable by a player — a whole
rulebook, where CB-WP-0045 found single columns.

**Third instance of F18's shape in two passes**, and the largest. The
pattern is now specific enough to name: *when a package adds a file rather
than a column, nothing notices.* `edition-check` verifies the digest and
freshness of files it knows; a file no reader mentions is not stale, it is
invisible. Recorded as a finding for `ground-game` rather than fixed here.

**The escalation is the part worth keeping.** CB-WP-0045 did not just
leave a gap; it *explained* the gap with an argument that would have
stopped the next reader from looking. A wrong reason for an open item is
worse than an open item, because it retires the question.

## The log said nothing about which rules were played

`2026-08-08-1734`: *"Well, i did not notice any difference, maybe i did
not start the H2 variation?"* **The log cannot answer that** — and neither
could we, a week later, from the file.

The variant rides the **begin marker**, not an eighth column:

```
<!-- trial-log:begin variant=h2-scoped-problem-stress -->
```

It is a property of the **session** (fixed at startup, constant across
`play again`), so a per-row column would repeat one fact on every line and
force a third accepted row width on a parser whose docstring is about
exactly that hazard (CB-WP-0032). The table shape is untouched.

**Stamped from `state.variant`, never from the `--variant` flag.** Three
call sites once wrote `state.variant = v` directly instead of
`with_variant()`, which leaves H2 inert; a log stamped from the flag would
have recorded `h2` for a session that played the baseline. **A false
provenance on real player words is worse than no provenance** — which is
also why an unstamped log reports `unrecorded` and not `ground-darvo-r0`.

## Task: render the rule, stamp the log

```task
id: CB-WP-0046-T01
status: done
priority: high
state_hub_task_id: "64b9e9bb-bcaa-45e5-975f-3527e4c95c05"
```

**Controls, all mutation-proven:**

| mutation | what went red |
|---|---|
| the scope rule never renders | *"Problems are placed by scope and nothing says what a scope does"* |
| it renders always, baseline included | *"the baseline table explains a scope distinction that is not in play"* |
| our paraphrase instead of the passage | *"the scope explanation is not the edition's own words"* |
| the writer drops the attribute | *"the log does not say which rules were played"* |
| unstamped parses as `ground-darvo-r0` | *"an unstamped log says NOTHING, not 'baseline'"* |
| `BEGIN` back to an exact match | *"the bytes hotseat.rs writes are the bytes this parses"* |

**The last mutation is the finding.** It went green the first time. Every
`trials.py` fixture composed its marker out of `BEGIN`, so all of them
**followed `BEGIN` wherever it went** — including away from what
`hotseat.rs` actually writes. Nine checks about the marker, and reverting
the marker broke every real stamped log with all nine still green.

The format is shared across two languages, so the control has to be a
**literal**: the exact bytes the writer emits, asserted from the reading
side, with the writer's own test asserting the same string from the other.
A fixture built from the constant under test cannot test the constant.

`stress_scope_rule()` matches on the **heading**, not on row 20 — a row
number is a property of today's file, a heading is a property of the rule
— and returns `None` if the edition stops carrying it (ADR-0018: an absent
explanation is reported absent, never replaced by ours).

**Done 2026-08-08.** `make all` green; `cargo test`: 80 render + 35 play;
24 `trials.py` checks. Verified on a live `make ground VARIANT=h2` page.

## Not done here

- **The other 21 passages are still unread.** `h2_rules_text()` returns
  the whole rulebook and one caller uses one row of it. The Round-step
  passages in particular are the account of the sequence the player is
  standing in, and there is nowhere on the page that says it.
- **The baseline has no `Rules_Text.csv` at all**, so this explains only
  the experiment. A baseline player still gets no rulebook — the reverse
  of the usual gap, and a `ground-game` question.
- **The 11 existing notes stay `unrecorded` forever.** Their variant was
  never written down; inventing one is the defect this pass exists to
  avoid. `2026-08-08-1818`'s three notes are almost certainly H2 on the
  internal evidence of what they say, and *almost certainly* is not a
  provenance.