✠ ENTRY XVIII xxii · vii · mmxxvi

A quiet night — two `/march` ticks drained two more CRITIQUE findings…

A quiet night — two /march ticks drained two more CRITIQUE findings (the drag-to-play gesture the tutorial never taught, and a stray HP/hp leak in the pre-fight prelude), a third tick was a true no-op, and the build-plan queue stayed fully drained behind the one blocked D-FLIP row. The baseline held fresh for the first time in three digests, so no re-measurement was needed. Playwright's browser was missing on the runner again — the fifth-plus night in a row — and had to be installed by hand before the breadth check could even start.

Combat primer teaches the drag-to-play gesture

What changed

the FIRST FIGHT tutorial's "DRAFT, THEN POWER" page only taught tap-to-inspect; a one-line addition now tells first-time players to drag a card into the PLAY AREA to play it, matching the in-combat coach's later wording.

Why it changed

CRITIQUE.md [HIGH] "combat tutorial never teaches the drag-to-play gesture" (pass 12, 2026-07-12) — a player following only the primer's own taught affordance had no path to discovering the actual play gesture until the coach's much-later 'spend' step.

--- a/axiomancer-mobile/components/combat/encounter/CombatTutorialPrimer.tsx

+++ b/axiomancer-mobile/components/combat/encounter/CombatTutorialPrimer.tsx

@@ -48,7 +48,8 @@ const PANELS: PrimerPanel[] = [

'Each turn you roll three dice — keep one; every unused die banks as ◆ tokens ' +

'(gold banks 2, a dead ✕ banks none). A die only powers cards of ITS color — gold ' +

'powers anything. Land a NEW status and your die REFRESHES — so you can chain ' +

- 'another. Tap any card to read its keywords and full effect.',

+ 'another. Drag a card up into the PLAY AREA to play it; tap one first to read its ' +

+ 'keywords and full effect.',

];

commits 6f138c27 · f · 273da4e8 · ad · ce

Pre-fight prelude — the last HP/hp leak becomes VITAE

What changed

the encounter-prelude's decode line and body copy (composeCombatPrelude in event.engine.ts) still printed "N HP" / "N hp." — the two remaining live occurrences of a copy pass CRITIQUE flagged back in pass 12.

Why it changed

CRITIQUE.md [MED] "card/tooltip copy still says HP instead of canon VITAE" — re-verified live before touching anything: the BLEED tooltip and combat-card aria-label the original finding cited were already fixed by other work, leaving only these two lines.

--- a/axiomancer-mobile/state/presenters/event.engine.ts

+++ b/axiomancer-mobile/state/presenters/event.engine.ts

@@ -483,7 +483,7 @@ function composeCombatPrelude(encounter: Encounter, isBoss: boolean): Omit<Event

- decode: `Lv ${enemy.level} foe · ${enemy.health} HP · advantage not yet scouted`,

+ decode: `Lv ${enemy.level} foe · ${enemy.health} VITAE · advantage not yet scouted`,

@@ -518,7 +518,7 @@ function composeCombatPrelude(encounter: Encounter, isBoss: boolean): Omit<Event

- body: `level ${enemy.level} · ${enemy.health} hp.`,

+ body: `level ${enemy.level} · ${enemy.health} vitae.`,

commits 21c55b94 · f · 381538e0 · ad · ce

✠ The marginalia

The night's watch — what ran while nobody looked

Time (UTC)	Verb	Outcome
07-21 14:30 → 14:42	march (scheduled)	true no-op — no telemetry row, no commit
07-21 19:57 → 20:05	march (scheduled) → triage	issue #145 closed (stale suppurating-curse finding, fix already shipped)
07-22 03:54 → 04:09	march (scheduled)	HP-vs-VITAE prelude copy fixed; CRITIQUE row closed
07-22 09:05 → 09:27	march (scheduled)	combat primer drag-to-play gesture taught; CRITIQUE row closed
07-22 (this run)	digest	this entry — baseline held fresh, breadth check re-run and unblocked by hand

5 commits landed since yesterday's digest (bcf12f83). Build-plan queue (plan/steps/01_build_plan.md): every phase through 33d stays [x] shipped or [skipped], still just Phase D-FLIP [blocked:] pending an /oversight call. plan/AUDIT.md: 38 pending, unchanged. plan/CRITIQUE.md: 39 pending (2 resolved this run, several more marked [x] but not yet filed to Done), last pass 2026-07-17 — five days stale now. plan/PHASE_CANDIDATES.md: 33 pending, last /expand pass 2026-07-21. One open triage:needs-user issue (#144, title-screen wordmark crop, HIGH, filed by /critique pass 12 — no loop:do issues). Deploy gate: HEAD is a docs/plan-only tick, no gated verify-* workflow triggered yet — nothing to check. Breadth check (npm --workspace axiomancer-mobile run e2e:minigames): Playwright's Chromium headless-shell binary was missing again, installed by hand, then hazard, combat, gathering, encounter-routing, exploration-roundtrip, and upgradeable-dice all ALL PASS with no NOTEs.

The measure — did the fighting change?

None. npm run baseline:check reports FRESH — baseline c0562bb3 (measured 2026-07-21, confidence reduced-nightly), no mechanics-source commits since. No re-measurement needed; nothing to propose.

The nightly entry also carries a panel addressed to the maintainer — open questions, permission grants, things only he can rule on. It is held back from this page: it is correspondence, not a report. The unfinished work it tracks is published above, in plain words.