clay-borg/workplans/CB-WP-0012-render-port.md

---
id: CB-WP-0012
kind: product
title: "Stage 1, second slice: the rendering port"
status: todo
---

# Purpose

Tier **L**, the declaration CB-WP-0011 deferred and owed.

```
structural tier  L   (INTENT stage 1 creates a new capability port)
chaos            d4 = 1  → no override
declared tier    L
```

Declaration 7 of 12 in the calibration window. The CHAOS gate earned its
first `caught` entry last pass by rolling this same declaration down to S;
this time it rolls nothing, so the pass runs at full weight — survey,
adversarial review, ADR, then code. The hard gate applies as stated: **no
implementation code for the render capability exists before ADR-0007 is
committed.**

## What this pass owes

INTENT stage 1 is *"Inspectable 2D table — card/token/hand/relationship-
graph visualization, drag-to-propose, debug inspector, hot-seat play."*
CB-WP-0011 shipped the debug inspector. This pass owes the other three,
and the port they hang from:

```
cb-render-api
├── cb-render-null
└── cb-render-???        <- the survey's question
```

**The leading constraint is AM-4a**: 246,250 lines of 250,000, measured —
**3,750 lines of headroom**. Every candidate implementation of a 2D table
is a five- or six-figure line count. This is the first capability in the
project whose obvious implementation costs more than the entire remaining
budget, so the survey's first duty is to establish whether that is a real
obstacle or an artifact of how AM-4a is instrumented.

## Task: survey the render port and its dependency cost

```task
id: CB-WP-0012-T01
status: done
priority: high
```

Write `research/CB-RES-0006-render-port.md`.

**Measure, do not estimate.** The candidate line counts must come from
the same method `tools/dep-weight.py` uses — `cargo tree --edges normal`
over a real resolved graph, then counted `.rs` lines in vendored source —
so the numbers are comparable to the AM-4a figure rather than merely
adjacent. Last pass's correction was a hand-counted number; this pass has
no excuse for one.

**Measure the marginal cost, not the total.** What AM-4a charges is what a
candidate adds to a graph that already holds 23 crates. A candidate's
headline size overstates its cost by whatever it shares with the base.

Cover at minimum: an immediate-mode GUI (`egui`/`eframe`), a 2D game
framework (`macroquad`), the raw stage-2 stack (`wgpu` + `winit`), a CPU
rasterizer (`softbuffer` + `tiny-skia`), a terminal UI (`ratatui`), and at
least one option that is not a Rust toolkit at all.

**Ask whether the instrument is right.** If AM-4a's figure counts code
that never reaches a shipped binary, the headroom it reports is wrong, and
that has been true for every pass that has cited it. Check this before
recommending any budget change — a survey that argues for raising a target
it has not first audited is arguing in its own favour.

**Done 2026-08-02.** [CB-RES-0006](../research/CB-RES-0006-render-port.md).
Two findings, and they point opposite ways.

The cheapest candidate that opens a window (`macroquad`) costs a marginal
**480,501** lines — **128×** the headroom. `egui` + `eframe` costs
2,782,849. `ratatui`, the option one expects to be cheap, costs *more than
macroquad* (1,067,013) because `rustix` pulls `linux-raw-sys` at 479,901
lines.

And AM-4a is mis-instrumented: **36.2% of the shipped-runtime figure
(89,048 lines) is proc-macro crates** — `syn` alone is 66,916 — which run
in the compiler and never reach a binary. Real headroom is **92,798**, not
3,750. Every pass that cited 3,750, this workplan's own Purpose included,
cited a number wrong in the conservative direction.

The recommendation survives the correction: `macroquad` is still 5.2× over
at 92,798. That was the condition for proposing the correction at all, and
the correction is filed separately rather than bundled with the decision
it would unblock.

Recommended: `cb-render-api` + `cb-render-null` + **`cb-render-html`** —
emitted HTML/SVG/JS, marginal AM-4a cost **zero**, with `cb-render-wgpu`
left to stage 2 where it becomes the interface's second use.

## Task: adversarial review of the survey

```task
id: CB-WP-0012-T02
status: done
priority: high
```

Step 2 of the inner loop, run against T01's recommendation rather than for
it. The review must name, at minimum:

- what the recommended option **cannot** do that a windowed toolkit can,
  stated concretely rather than as a caveat;
- the failure mode of building the port around a single implementation
  when the second-use rule exists precisely to stop that;
- whether the survey's dependency argument would survive if AM-4a's target
  were simply wrong, i.e. whether the recommendation is load-bearing on a
  number the same pass proposes to correct.

A review that ratifies the survey without producing a control the survey
lacked has not run.

**Done 2026-08-02.** [challenge](../history/260802-render-port-challenge.md),
[response](../history/260802-render-port-response.md). **Not approvable as
written** — four of six challenges conceded, and the survey's two main
arguments replaced.

- **C1**: the survey concluded the sub-100k region was empty without
  measuring it. It is not empty. `tiny-skia` fits at 83,956; the real
  windowed floor is `fltk` at **140,079 — 1.5×** corrected headroom, not
  128×. "Two orders of magnitude" withdrawn.
- **C1b**, which the concession exposed: `wgpu` + `winit` is **1,741,979**
  marginal lines against a 250,000 target. **AM-4a is incompatible with
  INTENT stage 2** — 7× the whole target — and has been since both were
  written. Raised for the maintainer, deliberately not decided here.
- **C2**: "marginal cost zero" was scored on an axis chosen to produce
  zero, and the same move already flattered `sdl2`/`fltk`. One acquisition
  rule now covers all three, and it *raises* two candidates' cost.
- **C3**: the survey contradicted itself on the second-use rule.
  **`cb-render-api` and `cb-render-null` are withdrawn from this pass.**
- **C4/C5**: six controls adopted as binding on ADR-0007 — a loopback
  token with a mutation-backed refusal test, JS barred from constructing
  commands, and the coverage gate crossing the language boundary.
- **C6**: the candidate measurements did carry a positive control (empty
  `unlocated` for all seven, verified). The C1 batch did **not** — it
  copied the measurement function without the guards — and was re-measured
  under them before being cited. The HTML row is relabelled *0 by
  construction, not by measurement*.

**Fidelity note:** the review ran in the same session as the survey rather
than a separate one, per this environment's standing instruction not to
spawn agents unasked. It therefore inherits the author's sampling and is a
lower bound on what a separate reviewer would find.

**Note on tier:** this pass no longer creates a capability port, which was
its structural trigger for tier L. The declaration and its roll stand — a
tier that changes because review shrank the work would be a function of the
outcome. Recorded as the CHAOS window's second entry.

## Task: ADR-0007 — the render port

```task
id: CB-WP-0012-T03
status: todo
priority: high
```

Record the decision, the rejected alternatives with their measured costs,
and the controls the implementation must carry. No implementation code
lands before this commits.

## Task: the port and its first implementation

```task
id: CB-WP-0012-T04
status: todo
priority: high
```

`cb-render-api` plus `cb-render-null` and the implementation ADR-0007
chooses, delivering visualization, drag-to-propose and hot-seat play.

**K13 binds here.** The renderer consumes a `Project`ion and can never
feed back into validation; a drag that proposes a move must go through the
same command path a CLI move takes. The inspector's coverage gate is the
precedent for the control this needs.

## Task: evidence

```task
id: CB-WP-0012-T05
status: todo
priority: medium
```

`evidence/CB-EV-0010-render-port.md`. Carry the standing items: the
falsifiable prediction from CB-EV-0009 §4 that the trailing-3 meta share
drops to 0% this pass, SH-3 at 0.0% for a sixth pass, and whether tier L
at full weight produced anything the rolled-down pass would have missed —
the CHAOS window's second data point, and the first from a non-override.