clay-borg/workplans/CB-WP-0029-the-tokens-on-the-table.md

id	kind	title	status
CB-WP-0029	product	The tokens on the table: components you can count, and a supply the engine may not respect	ready

Purpose

structural tier  M   (imports another edition file under AM-4's budgets and
                      touches the rendering the coverage gate is written
                      against)
chaos            d8 = 4  → no override
declared tier    M

Declaration 12 of chaos window 2 — the last. The window closes with this pass and its verdict is due; see §The window closes here.

The ask

"Let's do the token objects first."

The engine models every token correctly. It shows them as numbers on a seat card — protect 2, blamed by P3, freedom READY. A real table has objects you count at a glance.

What Tokens.csv turns out to carry

Nine token types, and the columns are more interesting than the names:

token	qty	sides	what the engine has
Stress marker	6	Single	stress: u8 — a marker on a 0–5 track
Freedom	6	Double (READY/spent)	freedom_ready: bool
DARVO stage	6	Single	darvo: DarvoStage on an OFF/DENY/ATTACK/REVERSE track
Relation link	12	Single	"two per player" — GR-L01's two slots
Focus / Blame	6	Double (FOCUS/BLAME)	focus map and blame_from list
Protection	6	Single	protection: u8
Denied	5	Single	denied: bool per Problem
Lead	1	Single	lead: PlayerId
Round	1	Single	round: u8

quantity is a component limit, and a simulation does not have one unless it is told. protection is saturating_add(1) at lib.rs:986 with no upper bound — the edition ships six Protection tokens for up to six players. T03 is about whether that matters.

sides is the second interesting column. Freedom and Focus/Blame are one double-sided token each, not two states. The engine holds Focus in a map and Blame in a list; whether those can disagree with a single physical token is worth checking.

The window closes here

Window 2 opened 2026-08-03 at d8 and runs to twelve declarations. This is the twelfth.

Its retirement condition — retire if an override changes nothing twice running — has been untestable throughout: eleven declarations, zero 8s, zero overrides. CB-EV-0024, CB-EV-0025 and CB-EV-0026 each said so.

Recording the verdict is a change to how the loop constrains itself and is therefore its own tier-M pass, not a task here. This workplan names it as due so it is not lost between passes, which is how the ten rulings went uncollected.

Task: decide what a token is, here

id: CB-WP-0029-T01
status: todo
priority: high

decisions/ADR-0016-*.md (tier M merges survey and decision).

• Vendor Tokens.csv? ADR-0015's test applies: does it carry text a player reads? front_text (READY, DENIED, PROTECTION…) and use do. shape and size are print instructions and do not.
• What is a token in the renderer? The engine has no Token type and should probably not gain one: a token is a view of state the aggregate already holds. Deciding otherwise means a second source of truth for Stress.
• Where do they sit? Player tokens belong with their seat; Denied belongs on its Problem; Lead and Round belong on the table. The overhead view is what makes that placement meaningful — a token drawn in a list is a number with a picture.
• Does quantity bind? The decision T03 needs: is the component count a rule the engine must enforce, an artifact of physical production, or undetermined? Do not answer it here from taste — T03 measures first.

Task: tokens as objects

id: CB-WP-0029-T02
status: todo
priority: high

Draw them, on the table built in CB-WP-0028.

• Stress on a 0–5 track, not the number 5. The track is the thing that makes "one more Attack and I trigger DARVO" visible before it happens.
• DARVO on its OFF→DENY→ATTACK→REVERSE track, which is the game's namesake mechanic and currently the least visible thing on the page.
• Freedom as a two-sided disc — READY or spent, using the edition's own front_text.
• Protection, Blame and Focus as counted objects by their seat.
• Denied on its Problem, not as the word denied in a corner.

Controls:

• every existing coverage probe still passes. They name facts, and CB-WP-0027 and CB-WP-0028 both showed a fact-naming probe survives a reflow. A third confirmation is worth having;
• the token text comes from the edition, asserted as a substring of the vendored file — the rule ADR-0015 established and the thing that stops a hand-copied label drifting;
• a seat with no tokens renders as a seat with no tokens, not as a seat missing its area. The empty case is the one that silently vanishes.

Task: does the engine respect the supply?

id: CB-WP-0029-T03
status: todo
priority: high

Measure before deciding. For each token with a quantity, ask whether the aggregate can exceed it:

• Protection (6) — saturating_add(1) with no bound. Can one seat hold three? Can the table hold seven? Write the check, run it, report the number.
• Denied (5) — five tokens, and a scenario deals at most five Problems. Probably safe; probably is not an answer.
• Relation links (12, two per player) — GR-L01 enforces two slots, so this one is likely already respected. Confirm rather than assume.
• Focus/Blame (6, double-sided) — one token per player that flips. Can a seat hold Focus and have Blame from the same source at once? If so, the model and the component disagree.

Whatever this finds is a finding, not a fix. A component limit the rules do not state is underdetermined and belongs to ground-game; the engine must not start enforcing a bound nobody ruled. CB-WP-0023 exists because SOLVE was offered where it could not act — inventing a limit is the same error in the other direction.

Controls:

• each answer is a runnable check, per GameDesign §1 — a claim about the supply is arithmetic and needs its reproduction;
• the register gets a row per token that can exceed its quantity, or a stated "none found", because a survey that reports nothing and leaves no trace is indistinguishable from one that was not run.

Task: evidence

id: CB-WP-0029-T04
status: todo
priority: medium

evidence/CB-EV-0027-*.md.

• Whether the supply is exceeded, with the numbers.
• Whether the tracks changed what the maintainer could see coming — the Stress track exists so a player can see DARVO approaching, and that is a claim about play, not about pixels.
• What the reflow cost the coverage gate, third data point.
• The window-2 verdict is due (§The window closes here) — name it as outstanding if the closing pass has not run.
• Quote CB-WP-0028's cost by re-running the instrument.