✠ The Chronicle

✠ ENTRY XXXV

AUDIT-DRAIN MODE's first full day

both /march ticks fell through to /iterate as designed, closing one stuck audit row (Phase 55) and one HIGH critique finding (the title screen's last "modern steel" leak), instead of opening new phase work. Mobile also picked up the rest-choice screen (52d), and PR #200 landed the mode itself. Breadth green, baseline re-stamped byte-identical for a seventh straight night.

MECHANICS

Phase 55 — retire dead STRIKE-IS-DEAD doctrine from the engine-truth MCP

What changed

cards.library.ts's header doctrine paragraph still told the axio_overview MCP tool "no card deals raw HP damage" — a ban the 2026-08-08 unshackling retired the same day it was written. Replaced it with the current truth (direct damage is legal; Conviction/Surge/dice stay the three locked systems), fixed axio-mcp-server.mjs's extractDoctrine() selector (it had been matching nothing since the Profane Canon reworded the header, so the tool was silently printing no doctrine line at all), and pinned both halves with a new smoke test.

Why it changed

this was the stuck top-score row /oversight promoted straight to a phase on 2026-08-12 rather than let ride a third bias-weighted /iterate pass — a design-truth tool quoting a retired rule back to whoever queries it is a worse failure mode than a stale doc nobody reads.

commits c95d3310 · bef · 20b5a1be · (ship)

CONTENT

Title screen tagline — the last "modern steel" leak

What changed

the anti-modern-word doctrine (spec 34) treats "reads modern" as a defect everywhere else in the retheme, but the title screen's tagline — the first line of prose every player reads — still shipped the literal phrase. Swapped "modern steel" for "cold iron," which keeps the archaic register and doubles as folkloric ward-against-curses flavor for "the cursed lands await."

Why it changed

flagged HIGH by critique pass 23; the easiest unclaimed win sitting in the queue, closed same-day under AUDIT-DRAIN MODE's /iterate fallthrough.

commits 0f408571 · f · c297d923 · (row)

UI

Phase 52d — rest-choice screen + anvil hand-off

What changed

repurposes /rest to render the 52c rest-choice engine as three priced cards (REST / THE ANVIL / THE CUT) with the purse shown and unaffordable options visibly disabled with their reason — no back-out, matching the node's committing-choice doctrine. Picking THE ANVIL opens the real /blacksmith screen and replays the accepted pick through the engine's own resolver so only the rest node's flat anvil price is ever charged; the blacksmith screen stops being dev-menu-only. The Night Watch's mobile plumbing (three-watch screen, tutorial, e2e suites) is retired outright, since the route can't serve two session shapes at once.

Why it changed

this is the blacksmith's first player-reachable door — resolves the standing [needs-user-call] on where die-gear tempering lives.

commits 3dda879a · (ship) · dda3bf8d · (row)

✠ The marginalia

The night's watch — what ran while nobody looked
TickVerbOutcome
08-13 13:54marchsuccess — phase 52d shipped (rest-choice screen + anvil hand-off)
08-13 16:02direct push (not a loop tick)docs: reconcile combat doctrine after unshackling
08-13 17:11PR #200 mergeoversight: AUDIT-DRAIN MODE activated, Phase 55 promoted, naming session opened
08-13 19:31marchsuccess, no-op — no commit produced
08-14 03:03marchsuccess — phase 55 shipped (engine-truth MCP doctrine fix)
08-14 07:55marchsuccess — critique pass 23 HIGH fixed (title screen tagline)
  • plan/AUDIT.md: 43 pending rows (38 more sit in the Pending section

already marked [x]-resolved but not yet moved to Done — the AUDIT-DRAIN verification pass is mid-sweep, not finished). Two new rows filed by Phase 55 itself (CLAUDE.md and profane-canon.md still echo the retired doctrine in prose the MCP tool doesn't read).

  • plan/CRITIQUE.md: last pass still 23 (unattended, critique:drive

artifacts) — its HIGH finding closed today; 20 pending rows remain (all MED/LOW).

  • plan/PHASE_CANDIDATES.md: 34 pending, unchanged.
  • triage:needs-user / loop:do issues: 0 open.
  • Open PRs: 0.
  • Deploy: last gated change (52d, mobile paths) passed verify-mobile

clean; HEAD itself is a docs/plan-only tick with nothing to check.

  • Breadth check (npm --workspace axiomancer-mobile run e2e:minigames):

GREEN — all six legs (hazard, combat, gathering, encounter-routing, exploration↔combat-prelude roundtrip, upgradeable-dice) ALL PASS.

The measure — did the fighting change?

baseline:check opened this cycle stale by 1 mechanics-source commit (20b5a1be, Phase 55's cards.library.ts header edit). Re-measured with the reduced-nightly pass and committed at c297d923.

The regenerated report is byte-identical to yesterday's stamp (CQI: early 0.746, mid 0.739, late 0.814, impossible 0.820; win rate: early 54.5%, mid 8.3%, late 0%, impossible 0%) — only meta.generatedAt/ meta.commit changed. Expected: Phase 55 only touched a header comment string and an MCP doctrine-selector regex, neither of which the combat sim reads. Seventh straight night the deck-matrix numbers haven't moved.

Same standing gap as prior nights, not re-filed: the open [docs] AUDIT row on skills/digest.md §3b still reading the retired win-rate curve needs a design ruling before it can be rewritten against CQI directly. This digest reads combatQuality.index and skips the stale-law filing, same as every night since 2026-08-09.

Today's intent

AUDIT-DRAIN MODE's first day under /march proper: both ticks fell through to /iterate exactly as designed, draining one stuck audit row (Phase 55, promoted 2026-08-12) and one HIGH critique finding (the title-screen tagline) instead of opening fresh phase work — the mode is doing its job. 52d's rest-choice screen landed just before the mode activated, giving the blacksmith its first player-reachable door. Queue still carries 43 pending AUDIT rows (many already resolved in body text, pending a cleanup pass) and 20 pending CRITIQUE rows for AUDIT-DRAIN MODE to keep draining.

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.