PROCITY/docs/LANES/LANE_A_NOTES.md

# LANE A — NOTES (cross-lane answers from CityGen)

Durable answers to questions other lanes raised against Lane A. Full status in `A-progress.md`.

## Round 30 (2026-07-18) — THE ROTATION BOUNDARY VERIFY (ledger #6): **HOLDS**

### → Fable / F: `day` rides RUNTIME streams only — plan generation cannot see it. Measured, not read.

**Verdict: the seeded-rotation boundary HOLDS.** F's `day` salt (207bcff) touches exactly three runtime
seams and nothing upstream: (1) `interiors.js:178` `ctx.stockSalt` from `opts.stockDay`, consumed ONLY in
`layout.js:417` as a suffix on the `stk-*` stock-pick stream labels (room/fittings/audio streams untouched
— `stockSalt` has exactly those two references in the tree); (2) the dig `binSeed` key `@d` tag in
`interior_mode.js` (same null-gating: no game / day 1 / real-sourced ⇒ absent); (3) `gig_state.setWeekNight`,
which only **selects** a night from `plan.gigs` — the whole 7-night week is generated at plan time
(`gigs.js:227` `for night < NIGHTS`) from citySeed streams; day picks, never feeds.

**How measured (three falsifiable legs):**
1. **Grep-zero over the proven glob:** `citygen/**` = exactly 8 files, no subdirs, 2,546 lines (census
   printed, ls-verified). `grep -riE 'day|stockDay|stockSalt'` → zero identifier hits (only lexical noise:
   fixture name "Heydays", shop name "Sunday Stall", "today" in comments, `daylesford_real` golden keys).
   Non-vacuous: the same pattern hits `stockDay` 4× in `world/interior_mode.js`.
2. **Structural absence at the entry:** `generatePlanFor(seed, source, opts)` consumes `opts.{town, gigs,
   customBands, cache, report}` only (grepped every `opts.` in citygen); both shell call sites
   (`index.html:127`, `map.html:315`) pass `{town, gigs, customBands}` — no day exists to pass.
3. **Day-inertness, byte-measured:** hostilely injected `{day, stockDay}` into `generatePlanFor` anyway —
   plan JSON hash identical for day-absent / day 1 / day 37 across 3 seeds × both sources (6/6 legs,
   e.g. synthetic 20261990 `0xec7a2d39` all three ways). Even a rogue caller can't leak day into a plan.

**Goldens frozen:** selfcheck **ALL GREEN 156,352/156,352**, fingerprint `0x5f76e76` (the covenant),
gig golden `0xec7a2d39`, all town pins (melbourne/katoomba/silverton + real caches) green, no re-pins.
Pre-existing informational ⚠ (redhill "Empire Revival" lift-drop) unchanged, not mine, not new.

## Round 27 wave 5 (2026-07-17) — THE FACADE FIX: it was every town, not just the real ones

### → F: **your files hold the old covenant hashes — they are now wrong, and only you can fix them**
This is the one thing blocking your re-gate. `scaffold_check` is **RED** until you re-pin, and I can't
touch your files. Exact values (verified byte-identical across two fresh processes):

| your file | constant | old | **new** |
|---|---|---|---|
| `tools/flags_check.py:30` | `GOLDEN_HASH` | `0x3fa36874` | **`0x5f76e76`** |
| `tools/flags_check.py:31` | `GIG_GOLDEN` | `0xb1d48ea1` | **`0xec7a2d39`** |
| `tools/qa/scaffold_check.mjs:231` | `TOWN_GOLDENS.melbourne` | `0x34cfdec0` | **`0x9c7e76b3`** |
| `tools/qa/scaffold_check.mjs:231` | `TOWN_GOLDENS.katoomba` | `0x0f652510` | **`0xf3aafec8`** |
| `tools/qa/scaffold_check.mjs:225` | the comment quoting all three | — | same three |
| `tools/qa/tour_v5.py:42`, `tour_shots.py:10` | captions quoting `0x3fa36874` | — | **`0x5f76e76`** |

Also: `flags_check.py:148` greps stdout for the literal `'3fa36874'` — that will silently stop matching.

### The finding: the ruling's premise was wrong — **synthetic was broken too**
The wave-5 ruling says *"synthetic follows B's canon so every golden has been green over a wrong product
since R18"*. Half right, and the wrong half is load-bearing. **Synthetic does not follow B's canon** — it
is broken identically, and so is the marched path, and so are the three checked-in fixtures. It is not
"every real town since R18": it is **every town, every path, since v1**. Measured in B's canon before
touching anything, then confirmed with my own eyes in the browser:

| path | before | after |
|---|---|---|
| synthetic (`plan.js`) — **the classic covenant** | **0 toward / 681 away** | 681 / 0 |
| marched-osm + the 3 fixtures | 0 / 80, 0 / 95, 0 / 19, 0 / 12 | all toward |
| real-roads (B's finding) | 0 / 72 katoomba | **72 / 72** — matches B exactly |

**The screenshot is the proof:** standing on the synthetic main street at `?classic=1`, lot 0 — three blank
grey boxes. Walk *behind* them, into the block, and there is NUMBAT PLAYTHINGS: sign, door, windows, awning,
facing the dirt. Same camera after the fix: CROWN TOYS & GAMES · MARBLES & KITES · NUMBAT PLAYTHINGS, a
strip of shopfronts facing the road. **637 of 681 synthetic lots had their facade pointing at no street at
all.**

**Why it survived**: all four sites are the same one-sign error — `atan2(outward)` where the intent was
`atan2(−outward)` — and *every one of them says so in its own comment* (`plan.js:122` "facade faces back
down the outward normal, to the street"). The code never did what its comment said, and CITY_SPEC:71 blessed
the result. Nobody was wrong; the spec was.

### The covenant moved — John ruled it
Fixing synthetic necessarily moves `0x3fa36874`, frozen "forever" since R16. That was not mine to decide.
**John's ruling: amend the covenant, fix all paths** — the covenant is anti-drift machinery, not a defect
preservative. **51 goldens re-pinned in one commit** (classic `0x3fa36874 → 0x5f76e76`, gig
`0xb1d48ea1 → 0xec7a2d39`, 3 fixtures, 23 towns × base+gig). The amendment is recorded in CITY_SPEC as a
one-time, ruling-gated precedent — from this hash forward the law reads as it always did.

### A second bug the fix exposed (fixed here, counted)
`buildRealRoads` seated blocks at `KERB = 4 m` **from the centreline** — but a `main` carriageway is 10 m
wide, so its kerb is at 5 m. **Every main-street building has stood 1 m inside the road since R18.** The
footprint never moved; only which face is the front — so it was invisible until the shopfront turned around
and its poster landed in the traffic lane (−1.07 m). Blocks now seat behind the kerb per A's own corridor
law (`roadWidth/2 + FOOTPATH`). Pack drops **6.4% → 6.6%**, counted, not hidden.

### The cross-convention gate — built to F's lesson, not to a spec line
F proved that measuring lots against CITY_SPEC:71's own convention is **self-agreement**: 72/72 "facing" over
a town of blank walls. So the new gate does not restate a spec line. It **replicates Lane B's own placement
maths** from `buildings.js` (`toWorld(lot, 0, y, d/2 + 0.02)`) and asks a physical question neither spec line
can fudge: *does the quad the renderer actually draws land nearer the street than the lot centre?* It fires
if A's `ry` sign drifts **or** if B's `zf` sign drifts. It would have caught this on day one of v1.

## Round 27 (2026-07-17) — v5.0: the docs freeze — CITY_SPEC v5 + the risk list judged (ledger #6)

### → F + Fable: **A's docs half is done and the tree is green; nothing of mine gates your tag**
selfcheck **ALL GREEN 156,212/156,212**, classic `0x3fa36874` / gig `0xb1d48ea1` frozen, **no golden moved**
(none should — tier 2 touches no plan, no cache, no atlas bytes). CITY_SPEC has its **v5 section** (the tier
ladder · `sourcing` vs `tier` · the three id-space fences · the manifest · Ruling 2 · A's one seam), and the
charter risk list is judged line by line in `V5_REAL_SHOP.md`.

### The risk list: I did NOT pre-retire your gate
Written in wave 2, so **risk #1 (latency/stutter at tier 2) is CARRIED, not retired** — your reader and
kill-the-server gate don't exist yet, and **nothing retires that line except the gate going green**. Retiring
it from a doc while the code is unwritten would be the exact species this epoch spent four holds catching: a
rule meeting a case that doesn't exist yet. #2 retired (measured), #3 retired (designed out), #4 **split** —
write-back retired by John's ruling-as-mechanism, the `gone` read carried to your #4. Two new carried lines
(#6 orphaned atlas, #7 "real" is one shop wide).

### The gate that armed itself — worth seeing, since it's the law working unattended
My R25 orphaned-atlas gate **SKIPped** on `newtown_godverse` all through R25 ("no committed atlas keys to
this town" — subject absent, so it said so instead of passing). The moment G's 14 mint atlases landed, it
**started binding on its own** and passed: selfcheck went 156,211 → **156,212**, and that +1 is the gate
arming itself. Nobody edited it. That's what the vacuous-gate law buys — a gate that waits, in the open, for
its subject.

**Live near-miss on the books → G:** `redhill_godverse`'s lift drops keyed shop **2286 "Empire Revival"**;
you stocked its numeric neighbour **2287**. Nothing is orphaned and the gate is green — but **stocking 2286
would orphan it today**, and the hazard grows with every shop stocked. Carried as risk #6.

### One correction to the round doc's framing, for the record
The brief lists "the manifest" and "sourcing" as if `tier` were superseded. The artifacts say otherwise, and
**C's ruling is the precise one**: every atlas index carries **both** — `tier: 1` (the ladder rung; a mint
atlas is *still* a static file, so still rung 1) **and** `sourcing: "real"|"mint"` (where the contents came
from). They are different axes. The spec documents both, because collapsing them is exactly how a mint crate
would come to read as real.

## Round 25 (2026-07-17) — v5.0-alpha: the sweep reconciled with Ruling 2, six goldens pinned (ledger #1)

### → F: **the tree is green — all 8 reds are gone, nothing of mine is pending** (the handshake)
selfcheck **ALL GREEN 156,211/156,211**; scaffold + consistency green; classic `0x3fa36874` and gig
`0xb1d48ea1` frozen. The six goldens are pinned: `newtown_godverse` base `0xcf69b387` / gig `0x1e266f60`,
`redhill_real` base `0x6046700f` / gig `0x673785ee`, `redhill_godverse` base `0xb2224939` / gig
`0xc6f80e18`. Cross-checked two ways before pinning — **byte-identical across two fresh processes**, and
the three values G stated independently in `86e2985` match mine exactly. **Your third attempt is unblocked
from my side.**

Two lines still print and **both are deliberate, neither is pending**:
- `⊘ SKIP real/newtown_godverse: orphaned-atlas check` — correct: the only committed atlas (3962749) keys
  to Red Hill, so newtown has no subject. The vacuous-gate law says say so rather than pass quietly.
- `⚠ real/redhill_godverse: 1 keyed shop(s) dropped by the lift — 2286 "Empire Revival"` — an honest
  disclosure, not a defect (see below).

### My R24 gate asserted Ruling 2 away — that's the whole of my 6 reds, and it was my error
I built the identity gate on an assumption that was true when I wrote it and false the moment G shipped:
that a godverse cache is *all* census shops. Ruling 2 makes it **mixed** — a keyed GODVERSE layer plus an
inherited texture layer — so `newtown_godverse` (18 keyed + 54 texture) and `redhill_godverse` (10 + 27)
are **healthy towns my gate called broken**. Every keyed assert now runs **per-layer, over the keyed subset
only**; unkeyed texture shops raise nothing. The validator's "N/M missing" warn is gone with it — the only
honest requirement left at that layer is that a `godverse+osm` cache have a **non-empty** godverse layer at
all (else it's an osm cache wearing the wrong `source`), which stays a warn for the R24 charter reasons.

### The uniqueness check was broken in both directions — rebuilt so it can actually fail
The R24 version was `new Set(all ids).size === shops.length`. Every `undefined` collapses into **one** Set
entry, so it (a) failed structurally on any mixed cache — 54 texture shops became one entry — and (b) could
**hide a real duplicate behind that same collapse**. It now runs over **defined ids only**. And per the
vacuous-gate law I made it prove it bites: `validateTownCache` rejects duplicates at the front door, so a
dup can never reach the plan that way — the test feeds one **straight to the lift** (`generatePlanOSM` does
not validate) and asserts the predicate catches it, plus a healthy mixed cache passes the same predicate.
A check nobody can watch fail is not a check.

### New — the orphaned-atlas gate (my R24 finding, now enforced instead of just filed)
The lift legitimately drops shops (overlap-resolve, counted since R19). Dropping a shop that **has a
committed atlas** means real stock keyed to a shop that isn't in the town — exactly the failure I filed in
R24, and one F's #7b would only catch at the *end* of a round, in a browser. It's now a node gate: for each
godverse town, every `stock_godverse/<id>/` on disk whose id belongs to that cache **must be seated**, else
FAIL. Subject-aware — SKIPs by name when a town has no atlas.

**It already found something real, benign today:** redhill's lift drops keyed shop **2286 "Empire Revival"**
(10 keyed in cache → 9 seated). It has no atlas, so nothing is orphaned and the gate passes. **→ G: if you
stock Empire Revival at the beta, it will orphan** — the shop isn't on the plan. Monster Robot Party is
safely seated (lot 8), which is the one that matters this round.

## Round 24 (2026-07-17) — v5.0-alpha: the identity field (ledger #2)

### → G: **`godverseShopId` is live — emit it, and mind the id-space trap** (the handshake for your #5)
The field is published and the lift carries it: put `godverseShopId` on shop entries in a
`source: "godverse+osm"` cache and it lands on `plan.shops[]`, which is what F's per-shop `base` reads.
Contract in `web/assets/towns/README.md`; `validateTownCache` enforces it; selfcheck gates it.

**The round doc says "the POS shop id IS the id — no mapping table". That's true for census shops and
false for the shop this whole alpha is about** — and your own docstring is what told me:

| shop | id source | equals `shop.id`? |
|---|---|---|
| census shops (`newtown_godverse`) | thriftgod `shop.id` (max 2992) | yes, incidentally |
| **Monster Robot Party** | **dealgod store 3962749** — not in thriftgod's census | **no** |

So I built it as an **opaque key**, not a census id: no equality assert, no derivation from `id`, no mapping
table. Both spaces ride it, and your disjointness (2992 vs 3962749) is what makes that safe. **Uniqueness is
an error**, because two shops keyed to one atlas is mis-stocking (charter risk #3).

**⚠ The thing that will bite you in wave 2 — `redhill_godverse` cannot contain Monster Robot from either
source. Measured, not inferred.** `godverse_town.py` takes **roads from the OSM donor** and **shops from
thriftgod's census**. The shop is in neither:
- **Not in the census** — your own R23 finding (that's *why* its id is a dealgod store id).
- **Not in E's `redhill_real` donor** — I checked the cache the moment it landed: **36 shops, zero of type
  `record`, nothing matching /monster|robot/**. OSM's Red Hill doesn't know the shop exists.

So the adapter as written produces a Red Hill of census charity shops, and the atlas at
`stock_godverse/3962749/` keys to a shop that **isn't in the town** — F's #7b id-equality assertion would
fail, correctly, at the end of the round. **Inject it explicitly**: name, `type: "record"`, its real lat/lon
(147 Musgrave Rd), `godverseShopId: 3962749`. The schema is ready for it — that's exactly the case the
opaque-key design exists to serve.

**Second, cheaper trap on the same path:** `redhill_godverse` still has to clear **`MIN_TOWN_SHOPS` (6)**
from the census bbox alone. Newtown yielded 18; Red Hill is a Brisbane suburb and thriftgod's census is
thin there. If the bbox returns < 6, the cache is **rejected outright** (hard error, not a warn) and the
town won't exist. I can't measure that from here — no census DB on m3 — but you'll see it instantly. If it
bites, the count includes any shop you inject.

**E's donor is otherwise good for you:** valid, no warnings, **73.3 m median spacing** — half the warn floor,
a proper high street to hang the shop on.

### → F: the seam you need for #6a
`plan.shops[].godverseShopId` is the per-shop `base` key — read it off the **plan**, not the cache. It's
absent (not `undefined`) on every non-godverse shop, so `'godverseShopId' in shop` is a clean tier test:
present ⇒ tier 1 candidate, absent ⇒ tier 0 parody. That absence is also why **no golden moved this round**.

### → Fable: one recorded departure from the ledger, and why
Ledger #2 says `validateTownCache` **requires** the field on godverse shops. I implemented **missing → warn**
(malformed and duplicate → hard errors). Three reasons, and it's yours to overrule:
1. **The charter's determinism boundary** — *world = seeded, frozen, gated; stock = data tiers*. An error
   inverts it: the **town** would fail to load because its **stock** identity is absent. Tier 0 must boot.
2. **Charter risk #3 names the remedy** — identity gaps "fail-soft to tier 0, never mis-stocked". Missing
   *is* the soft case; duplicate is the hard one. They're different failures and now get different arms.
3. **Sequencing** — `newtown_godverse` carries 0 ids today, it's G's to re-emit in wave 2, and I can't do
   it here (their namespace; no census DB on m3). A hard error would red the tree for C and E through all
   of wave 1 to say what the warn already says.
The requirement still has teeth, in the place R23 taught us to put them: selfcheck **fails on partial
keying** and prints an explicit **SKIP with the count** at zero — it cannot pass vacuously.

### Also: E's toowoomba retirement showed my spacing metric is gameable (worth knowing)
E tried the re-bbox before retiring and found it **fixed my metric while making the town worse** — median NN
395.7 → 89.4 m ("passes") but hub density 3/12 → 2/12, the pack's worst. My warn is **necessary, not
sufficient**: it catches scatter, and it can be satisfied by tightening the box around a scatter. D's hub
test is the complement, and E used both. Retired pins removed from both golden maps (a golden for a deleted
town can never fire — the vacuous-gate law one layer down). **Ballarat (255 m) is still flagged and still
E's call this round; if it moves, I pin it.**

## Round 23 (2026-07-16) — v5.0-alpha: the spacing warn (D's thin-tail finding as law)

### → E: **the warn is live — and it flags TWO towns, not one** (the handshake for your #4)
`validateTownCache` now warns when **`medianShopSpacing(cache) > 150 m`**. Import the metric from the
barrel (`medianShopSpacing`, `MAX_MEDIAN_SPACING_M`) rather than re-deriving it — and if you re-implement
in Python, the definition is: *per shop, distance to the nearest OTHER shop; take the median*, in
equirectangular metres about `center.lat`. Warn, never error: **you curate, I only flag.**

**Use the warn as your acceptance test.** Re-bbox toowoomba, re-run the validator; when the warn goes
silent, the town has a high street. That's the whole loop, no judgement call needed.

| town | median spacing | verdict |
|---|---|---|
| `toowoomba_real` | **396 m** | your ledger #4 — D proved it dead (1,417 patronage checks → 0 visits) |
| `ballarat_real` | **255 m** | **nobody has looked at this one.** Same class, 1.7× inside the line |
| braddon (worst passing) | 119 m | alive by D's hub test — 7 shops within 160 m, same as darwin |

**Ballarat is the finding beyond the brief.** The round doc names only toowoomba, because D only spot-checked
the two 12-shop towns. Measuring all 23 says ballarat is the same shape — and it's one of the three towns my
R22 graded cluster fallback fired on (no venue candidate at the ≥3-shops/160 m floor), so two independent
signals agree. Your call whether it re-bboxes or ships as a known thin-tail; counted either way. **If your
fix moves toowoomba's (or ballarat's) cache, ping me — the goldens are mine to re-pin, and only what you move.**

### ⚠ The number in my validator will NOT match the number in D's notes — both are right
D's notes say darwin **27 m**; my validator says darwin **68.3 m**. Neither is wrong: **D measured PLAN
space** (post-lift metres), **the validator measures CACHE space** (raw lat/lon, before any lift exists —
it has to, that's the layer it runs at). The lift marches shops at a regularised cadence, so it *compresses*
dense towns and leaves sparse ones alone:

| town | cache | plan | plan/cache | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| darwin | 68.3 | 27.2 | **0.40** | dense ⇒ the lift compresses hard |
| toowoomba | 396.1 | 386.8 | **0.98** | sparse ⇒ the lift barely moves it |
| ballarat | 254.9 | 257.7 | **1.01** | sparse ⇒ ditto |

That asymmetry is *why cache space is safe here*: the error is concentrated at the dense end, and the warn
only ever fires at the sparse end, where the two spaces agree to within 2%. I verified all 23 towns in both
spaces — **exactly one disagrees.**

### → G + Fable: `newtown_godverse` is the one town that flips (filed, not acted on)
Godverse is the single cache where the two spaces straddle the line: **94.4 m cache (passes) → 158.3 m plan
(would warn)**. My warn does **not** flag it, and I think that's correct on both counts: (a) no cache-space
threshold can catch it without also flagging braddon, which D's own test says is alive; (b) godverse is a
**census subset** — 18 thriftgod shops over the same Newtown footprint that carries 72 OSM shops — so its
sparsity is *coverage*, not a bad bbox, and re-bboxing (the warn's whole remedy) cannot fix it.

**But it's thin by two independent signals** — plan-space 158 m, and it's the third town my R22 cluster
fallback fired on. Since R23 stocks a real record shop *in this town*, and the beta asks "fitzroy_godverse
if the census is dense there", that's worth knowing now rather than at beta. Not my call — filing it.

## Round 22 (2026-07-16) — v4.0: the pack absorbed, 36 goldens pinned (the epoch close)

### → C + D + F: **the pack is in — 23 towns, all pinned, start your verifies** (the handshake)
E's 17 new towns + Lane G's `newtown_godverse` fed through the lift. **All 36 waiting goldens pinned in
this one commit** (`REAL_TOWN_GOLDENS` + `REAL_TOWN_GIG_GOLDENS` now hold **23 towns each**, zero unpinned).
selfcheck **ALL GREEN 161,300/161,300**; scaffold + consistency GREEN; cross-process deterministic (pack-xor
`0xca140954`). classic `0x3fa36874` / gig `0xb1d48ea1` / marched fixtures **frozen**.

### The pack absorbed — everything built this epoch held at 23-town scale, first try
| | |
|---|---|
| towns | **23** (22 real + `newtown_godverse`) |
| shops | 1,210 → **1,133 seated** (77 dropped, **6.4%**, all counted by cause) |
| graph | **1 connected component on every town** (junction protection + cull/bridge) |
| district | **3 venues on every town** (cluster bias + facade clearance) |

**fitzroy (160 shops — 2× anything absorbed before)**: 139 seated, 1 component, 3 venues, 212 posters, all
invariants green. The junction pipeline, fragmentation ruling, cluster bias, poster cap and capacity fence
all ran at mecca scale with **no new hardening needed** — the pack needed absorbing, not fixing.

### One refinement this round: a graded cluster fallback for genuinely thin towns
At pack scale three towns have **no candidate at the floor at all** — `ballarat`, `toowoomba`,
`newtown_godverse` top out at **2** shops within 160 m. R21's bias switched off entirely there, stranding
venues at 0. It now falls back to the **densest available**, so the venue still lands on what little crowd
the town has: ballarat **0,2,0 → 2,2,2**, godverse **0,1,1 → 2,2,2**, toowoomba **1,0,0 → 1,2,1**.
It only fires where the floor is unreachable ⇒ **no already-pinned town moved** (verified).

**Acceptance (R21's, at 23-town scale): 20 of 23 towns have every venue ≥3 shops/160 m.** The three above
sit at their town's genuine ceiling — the "no better candidate exists" case the acceptance carved out.
**Saying so explicitly, as asked.**

### Drop outliers (counted, not hidden)
`daylesford` **19%** (6/32, all overflow — 32 shops on a 171-road graph, the thinnest graph in the pack) and
`fitzroy` **13%** (21/160, 17 overflow). Both are the R20 capacity fence doing its job: `RGAP` is already
0.5 m and `NODE_CLEAR` 3 m, so the only lever left is spilling overflow onto a *different* street — which
buys a few percent by putting a shop on a road it isn't on. Same call as R20: **drop and count beats
teleport**. Everything ≤6.4% pack-wide.

### → B / F (the tri diet, ledger #1): my side of the diagnosis
My poster cap scales off **shop count**, so it auto-tracked the widening rather than fighting it (fitzroy
160 shops → 212 posters; katoomba 80 → 111). If B's layer-by-layer names **plan geometry** (lot or poster
counts) as the `venue_night` driver, I own the fix and will take it. My read from the plan side: the growth
is *more shops ⇒ more night building geometry at the venue block* — E's density landing as B's render cost —
so I'd expect the driver to be buildings/LOD rather than posters. B's numbers decide it, not my expectation.

**CLOSED — B's diagnosis landed (`0c4dad5`): the fix is not A's.** The driver is E's four furniture GLBs at
**149,161 of 163,015 tris (91.5%)** ⇒ **asset tris ⇒ Lane E owns it** by the ledger's own rule. Plan geometry
is nowhere near the bill: **posters 222 tris** (B: the cap "already worked and was never the lever"),
**buildings 348** (the R3 atlas/instancing holding), venue pools 0. **A is clear on ledger #1 — F, don't wait
on me for the re-measure.** Worth recording that B's numbers corrected my expectation too: I guessed
buildings/LOD, and B measured it at 0.2%. B also found the real coupling — **shop count doesn't drive this,
ROAD density does** (the bench/bin/shelter cadence runs on a 966-edge graph), which means my absorb of E's
widening was never the cause either. The brief is a hypothesis; the measurement wins — mine included.

## Round 21 (2026-07-16) — the venue cluster bias (D's relocation finding) + goldens re-pinned

### → C + D: **cluster bias landed, goldens re-pinned — start your verifies** (the handshake)
**Only the GIG goldens moved** (venue selection is gig-layer; the base town goldens are untouched):
katoomba `0xbf586b77`, newtown `0xacdb3eee`, fremantle `0xcf3426fc`, bendigo `0x646b2c23`,
castlemaine `0xf9713a69`. Base unchanged (katoomba `0x420f677d`, …). selfcheck **ALL GREEN 66419/66419**;
classic `0x3fa36874` / gig `0xb1d48ea1` / marched fixtures **frozen**.

### → D: your relocation finding is resolved — and it was systemic
You found katoomba's pub at 1 shop within 160 m. Measuring all five, **11 of 15 venues** sat under the
threshold (newtown's were 0/0/1 — every venue stranded). After the bias, **0 of 15**:

| town | before (shops within 160 m) | after |
|---|---|---|
| katoomba | pub **1**, rsl 10, band_room 7 | band_room 10, rsl 12, **pub 9** |
| newtown | band_room 0, pub 0, rsl 1 | band_room 7, rsl 11, pub 5 |
| fremantle | pub 1, rsl 2, band_room 2 | band_room 8, pub 3, rsl 3 |
| bendigo | pub 1, rsl 0, band_room 0 | rsl 10, band_room 10, pub 5 |
| castlemaine | band_room 6, rsl 4, pub 1 | pub 5, band_room 6, rsl 4 |

Castlemaine cleared without needing the floor exception Fable flagged. Your venue-win % and the "gig with
no passing crowd" observation should both improve — the pub is now in the retail heart on every town.

### How it works (and why synthetic is frozen BY CONSTRUCTION, not by luck)
`pickVenues` builds a **cluster-adjacent field** first (candidates with ≥ `CLUSTER_MIN` 3 shops within
`CLUSTER_R` 160 m), then the kind flavors (pub corner / band_room fringe / rsl off-spine) bias **within**
that field rather than overriding it — a fringe band_room in the cluster beats a fringe band_room a
kilometre from anyone. A town with no cluster falls back to the whole pool.
**Gated on `plan.source === 'osm'`** — real-data towns only. Fable's brief assumed a blanket filter would
be a no-op because "the synthetic town is one dense cluster anyway". **It isn't:** I measured **4 synthetic
candidates per seed** sitting under the threshold (min cluster 0–1), so a blanket filter *would* have moved
the frozen synthetic golden. The `source` gate makes it impossible instead of unlikely. The marched fixtures
are 'osm' too but genuinely dense (min cluster 3/11/13) ⇒ verified no-op.

### FYI: E's v4.0 town pack is already booting clean
`glebe_real`, `marrickville_real`, `newcastle_real` landed and my loader auto-validates + boots them through
the full structural + gig suites — **all pass**, listed UNPINNED (a non-fatal warn). That's per the brief:
**I pin the pack in R22**, and it must not gate the beta tag. Early signal: the pack needs no new hardening.

## Round 20 (2026-07-16) — v4.0-beta: the poster cap (density absorb pending E's widened caches)

### → F: **poster cap landed — re-measure `venue_night`** (your +965-tri edge should close)
My R19 finding (438 posters on katoomba) is fixed. `gigs.js` now **caps the spine pole run at
`POSTER_PER_SHOP × shops` (1.5/shop, floor 12)** — a seeded subsample. Real katoomba **438 → 31 posters**
(~2× the synthetic feel), fremantle 32, castlemaine 14. Scaled by **shop count, not edge count**, so the
`venue_night` stress view (was 200,965 tris, +0.5% over 200k) should drop well under. Re-measure and close it.

### Why no base-golden re-pin (and what I DID pin)
Posters live in the **gig layer** (`withGigs`), not the base `plan_osm` output — so the pinned real-town
**base** goldens are unchanged by the cap (correctly green). To regression-guard the capped output byte-exact
(not just via `districtInvariants`), I added a **`REAL_TOWN_GIG_GOLDENS`** map (the full gig plan per town:
district + capped posters) — katoomba `0xbd332e83`, etc. Synthetic gig golden `0xb1d48ea1` **frozen** — the
cap never binds on the shop-dense synthetic town (493 shops ⇒ cap ~740 ≫ its ~15 posters).

### → all: **densities absorbed, goldens pinned** (ledger #2 — E's widened caches landed)
E's five caches at **3–6× shops** (katoomba 20→80, fremantle 21→80, newtown 18→72, bendigo 9→36,
castlemaine 6→24 = 292 total) are absorbed. **All five place 3 venues**; the poster cap auto-scaled off the
live shop count exactly as designed (katoomba 111 posters at 80 shops). selfcheck **ALL GREEN 51866/51866**.
- **Capacity widened** (the R18 overflow fence, load-tested). At 4× the dominant drop cause was **overflow**
  (an edge-side holds more shops than fit) — katoomba 10 of 11 drops. Tightened the run: `NODE_CLEAR` 6→3
  and a **roads-only `RGAP` 2→0.5** (the shared marched `GAP` is untouched ⇒ marched fixtures stay frozen).
  Drops **7.9% → 5.5%** (16/292). 0.5 m also reads truer — a real AU main street is continuous terrace
  shopfronts. Residual drops stay **counted, now by cause** (`dropped_overflow` / `_overlap` / `_stranded`).
  I stopped there deliberately: the next lever is spilling overflow onto a *different* street, which buys
  ~1% at the cost of putting a shop on a road it isn't on. Dropping a crowded shop is the honest trade.
- **Venue facade bias now covers `pub`.** R16 exempted pub ("spine-fronted, +Z always open") — true on
  synthetic/marched, but on a REAL graph at density the pub landed where its frontage poster overhung a
  cross street (newtown, −0.91 m). The `POSTER_CLEAR` filter now covers every venue kind; still a **no-op on
  synthetic** (every pub candidate already clears) so the gig golden `0xb1d48ea1` is frozen.
- **Goldens re-pinned once** (base + gig, all five): katoomba `0x420f677d` / `0x2115732a`, newtown
  `0x741c18ec` / `0x17ab31bb`, fremantle `0x73d385df` / `0x82c27397`, bendigo `0xc175194e` / `0xf5ce58c4`,
  castlemaine `0x26c128c9` / `0x48272da9`. classic/gig/marched fixtures **frozen**.
- **Fixed:** my real-cache loader globbed `*.json` and tried to validate E's new `index.json` as a town
  cache. It now skips it (it's B's selector index, not a cache).

## Round 19 (2026-07-16) — the alpha close: fragmentation resolved + findings hardened + goldens pinned

### → B / C / D / F: **`katoomba_real` boots on real roads, golden pinned, findings resolved** (the handshake)
The A→E→A finalization landed. `katoomba_real` golden = **`0xb7ffbca2`** (pinned); the other four real towns
pinned too (newtown `0x6f984c81`, fremantle `0xfb197000`, bendigo `0x21179b3b`, castlemaine `0x7c47f639`).
selfcheck **ALL GREEN 51670/51670**; classic/gig/marched-fixtures frozen (`0x3fa36874` / `0xb1d48ea1` / …).

### The fragmentation fix (D's finding — Fable's ruling, my details)
**katoomba: 105 components → 1; 58% → 100% of street-metres in the main net.** Two mechanisms:
1. **Junction-protected Douglas–Peucker** (the root cause). A point shared by ≥2 ways is a junction;
   simplify only *between* junctions, never through one — the collinear junction-drop where a side street
   tees into a straight main road. This alone took every town to 94–100% main-net.
2. **Cull/bridge** (`JOIN_TOL` 12 m, shop-island bridge ≤ 200 m): main component + joined near-fragments;
   far **shopless** islands culled (bbox-clipped noise + dead streaming budget = half of B's tris problem).
   Per-town: katoomba 2 islands culled/0 bridges, newtown 3/4, fremantle 4/0, bendigo 3/1, castlemaine 0/1.
   **Every dropped shop is counted** in `norm.dropped` (ruling): katoomba kept 19/20 (1 overflow/overlap
   crowd drop — the R18 overflow prediction, now measured + counted), the rest kept all.

### → D: your re-measure inputs (post-fix)
Component count → **1** (all towns). Street-metres in main net → **100%**. Stranded shops → **0** (all
connected or counted-dropped). Near-crowd on fragments should collapse to ~0 (one component). The crafted
irregular-town scaffold still runs; the real katoomba golden is pinned so your reruns are stable.

### → F: E's poster finding resolved
Spine posters that overhang a **real crossing carriageway** are now skipped (measured exactly as the
selfcheck kerb floor). No-op on synthetic (gig golden frozen); the 23 real-town clearance failures → 0.

### New finding (v4.0-beta, non-blocking): spine-poster density scales with edges
Real katoomba emits **438 posters** (2 per main edge × a dense real graph) vs ~14 synthetic. Draws stay low
(instanced per gigId, B measured ~1 draw), and every poster clears its kerb — but 438 pole-posters town-wide
reads busy. **Beta candidate:** cap posters-per-town (seeded subsample of the spine run). Not fixed this
round — invariants hold, it's density polish.

## Round 18 (2026-07-16) — v4.0-alpha REAL ROADS: cache schema v2 (roads[]) + the real-graph lift

### → E: **schema v2 is live (committed first) — fetch roads to it**
A v2 cache adds `roads: [ { kind, pts:[[lat,lon],…], id?, name? } ]` (`kind` = OSM `highway=*`). Full
contract in `web/assets/towns/README.md`; `validateTownCache` enforces it (schema `…/1` still valid →
marched). **`katoomba_real` first** (the alpha gate). Bound the `highway=*` query to the same per-town bbox
as the shops. Snap tolerance is 3 m, so ship intersections as **shared coordinates** where ways meet (OSM
already does) — that's how the lift finds real intersections. Drop each cache in; the selfcheck auto-builds
+ validates the real graph and prints the golden. Ping me → I pin `katoomba_real`'s real-roads golden.

### The graph lift (`plan_osm.buildRealRoads`) — implemented + proven on a synthetic irregular graph
Real OSM ways → the CityPlan street graph, **same schema out** (B/C/D/F unchanged by contract). Pipeline:
project → simplify (Douglas–Peucker ε≈6 m) → snap coincident points (≤3 m) to shared nodes = real
intersections → straight-segment edges → classify `main` by OSM class + shop density → seat each shop on
its **nearest real edge** (real order, real side), marched, overlap-resolved. Passes the **full
structuralSuite + gig district + determinism** on a synthetic town with a main street, two cross streets
(a real intersection + an acute angle), a dead-end lane and a curve. `roads` absent ⇒ the v1 marched
fallback — **all osm goldens frozen** (melbourne/katoomba/silverton), classic/gig frozen. NOT YET run
against real katoomba geometry — that's the A→E→A finalization (E fetches, I pin + harden).

### Fidelity decision (charter risk #4 — A owns the knob) + the alpha failure list
I chose **real edge + real order + real side, regularised spacing** — NOT pixel-exact shop positions,
because real shops overlap and the no-overlap invariant is load-bearing (venues, chunk streaming, sim all
assume it). Written down for the alpha (fixed or fenced):
1. **Overflow drop.** A short real edge can't seat all its shops (marched at footprint+gap); overflow shops
   drop (real order kept). `norm.dropped` counts them. Katoomba (20 shops, real street lengths) should keep
   all — verify when E's roads land. *Fence if it bites: widen edge capacity or split long shop runs.*
2. **Intersection topology = shared coordinates only.** Two ways that cross WITHOUT a shared OSM node
   become topologically-disconnected edges (visually crossing, not graph-connected). **→ D:** the sim graph
   may not route across such crossings; if Katoomba has any, that's the risk to measure. E ships shared
   coords at junctions (OSM convention) so most are fine.
3. **Blocks are per-edge frontage strips**, not planar faces. **→ B:** your ground/pavement render reads
   these polys; a per-edge strip may look thin/overlapping at a tight corner — audit + file with a
   measurement (it's my lot geometry to fix, not yours).
4. **Overlap-resolve drops crowded-intersection lots** (deterministic, by shop id). Rare; counted in
   `norm.dropped`.

### → B/C/D: handshake state
`katoomba_real` still MARCHES today (it's v1 — E hasn't fetched roads yet), so I can't yet say "boots with
real roads, golden pinned." I'll fire that handshake the moment E's katoomba roads land and I pin the
golden. Per Fable's note, your audit prep (scaffolding, assertion lists) isn't blocked on me — the graph
lift + the failure list above tell you exactly what irregular geometry to point your audits at.

## Round 17 (2026-07-16) — the town-cache contract (published FIRST) + plan_osm hardened for real data

### → E: **the town-cache contract is live — build `build_towns.py` to it** (half-day handshake)
Your pipeline outputs one JSON per real town in the processed shape; `plan_osm` marches it like the
fixtures. **Home: `web/assets/towns/<key>.json`** (full spec in that dir's `README.md`). Shape:
```
{ schema:"procity-town-cache/1", key, town, source:"osm", license, attribution,
  center:{lat,lon}, shops:[ {id, name, type, lat, lon, suburb?} ] }   // + optional bbox/counts/fetchedAt
```
- **Authoritative validator:** `validateTownCache(cache)` in `plan_osm.js` — `{ok, errors[], warnings[]}`.
  Import it; don't hand-roll the check. **Hard errors:** finite `center.{lat,lon}`, `shops` ≥ **6**
  (`MIN_TOWN_SHOPS`), finite shop `lat`/`lon`. **Warnings (absorbed):** blank name → type label, unknown
  `type` → `opshop`, dup ids, **span > 5 km**.
- `type` should be a registry `SHOP_TYPE`; map OSM `shop=*` tags to those (unknowns → `opshop`).
- **Katoomba-real:** use a DISTINCT key (`katoomba_real`, not `katoomba`) so it sits alongside the
  hand-made fixture for the comparison — `osmTownKeys()` dedupes but same-key would shadow the fixture.
- Drop each cache in and the selfcheck auto-validates + boots + prints its golden to pin; ping me
  (E→A handshake) and I'll pin `REAL_TOWN_GOLDENS` + it enters the sweep.
- **ODbL:** ship `SOURCES.md` + the `license`/`attribution` fields; cache raw Overpass so re-runs don't refetch.

### plan_osm hardening — verified against real data (2,828 real Canberra shops)
I ran thriftgod's real `city_source.json` through the hardened `plan_osm`: **it boots a valid plan** (0
bad-coord lots, 0 "undefined" names). The marching regularises messy real coords, so dup/odd positions are
a non-issue. Added: blank-name → registry-label default; the contract validator gates the rest.

### → Fable / v4 charter — the ugly-real-geometry RISK LIST (the scout's real finding)
1. **The mega-strip (the big one).** An unbounded Overpass bbox = a whole region. All 2,828 Canberra shops
   marched into an **11.6 km** single strip (350 shops/avenue) — a valid plan, an unusable "town". **Mitigation
   shipped:** `validateTownCache` warns at span > 5 km; the contract says a cache is ONE compact town. **v4
   risk:** town SELECTION (bbox per town) is E's pipeline's job and the real quality lever — the generator
   can't rescue an over-broad query. Charter needs a per-town bbox/centre discipline.
2. **Sparse compact towns.** A tight 2 km radius of inner Canberra held only 6 secondhand shops — real small
   towns can fall below a usable density. `MIN_TOWN_SHOPS` is 6 (the functional floor for the district); E
   should curate towns with real shopping density (Katoomba 19, Melbourne 95 clear it easily).
3. **Not a risk (settled):** osm facades face `−Z`/south with rows a fixed 54 m apart, so the R16 `+Z`
   clearance bias is a no-op on osm towns (facades always clear) — real towns won't trip the frontage floor.

### Scope held: no new plan features, no golden moved
Classic `0x3fa36874`, gig `0xb1d48ea1`, all three osm fixtures frozen. selfcheck **15277/15277** (added the
contract stress suite + the ready-and-empty real-cache path). The scout proved the *existing* contract eats
real data — nothing more, per the fence.

## Round 16 (2026-07-16) — corner-poster fix via pickVenues clearance bias (ledger #6) + no-spine osm fixture (#7)

### → B + F: **new gig golden `0x4f4a549d → 0xb1d48ea1`** (classic/synthetic `0x3fa36874` unchanged)
The round's one sanctioned move. **F**: the default-boot gate pins to `0xb1d48ea1` (not the R15 value the
brief cited). **B**: re-shoot against this. Amendment law; §v3 marker records it.

### The corner-poster fix (NOT a nudge — Fable's brief premise was wrong)
The R15 finding was that a corner venue's frontage poster sits near a crossing kerb. The brief proposed
nudging the poster ALONG the facade away from the crossing-street *end* — but I proved that's geometrically
impossible: the crossing edge is **parallel** to the facade and spans it (0/187 along-facade slides recover
any clearance). Root cause: band_room/rsl land on **through-lots on narrow warehouse-fringe blocks**, so the
`+Z` wall (B's door side, where the poster seats) faces the block's *other* street, overlapping its
carriageway by up to ~3 m. **Fable's ruling (asked mid-round): bias `pickVenues`.** So:
- `gigs.js pickVenues` now prefers a band_room/rsl candidate whose `+Z` facade clears every carriageway by
  **≥ `POSTER_CLEAR` (0.5 m)**; if the warehouse fringe is uniformly narrow it broadens to any off-spine
  clear lot before falling back. Proven: **0 of 851** frontage posters across 400 seeds now sit below the
  floor (worst clearance 0.51 m). Pub is untouched (spine-fronted, `+Z` open — the hero shot doesn't move).
- The R15 blanket frontage *exemption* in the selfcheck is now a real **floor**: frontage posters must clear
  their kerb by ≥ `POSTER_CLEAR`; spine posters keep the ≥ 0 no-bitumen floor. `POSTER_CLEAR` is exported
  from the barrel — import it, don't re-guess. (`−0.02` in the assert absorbs r2 poster-coord rounding.)

### The no-spine osm fixture (ledger #7): `silverton`
`osm_fixture.js` gains **`silverton`** — a *constructed* single-row town (all shops at one latitude ⇒
plan_osm bins them into one avenue ⇒ **0 `main` edges**). Closes the R14 sweep gap (both real fixtures had a
spine): it proves `pickVenues`' no-spine branch (pub's `onMain` filter is empty) and `buildPosters`' no-main
fallback (spine run over every edge). Base golden pinned `0xd4b351c9`; the sweep asserts 0 main edges +
graceful 2–4-venue placement. `osmTownKeys()` now returns 3 towns — anything iterating it (shell selector,
your gates) picks it up; it's a valid town, `?plansrc=osm&town=silverton`.

### → F: the classic-law / flags-table §v3 amendment is yours
I amended §v3 for the golden + poster bias only (localized, recorded in the FROZEN marker). The v3.1 flip
(default-on, `?classic=1` covenant, the flags table) is your §v3 amendment — I left the prime-flag-law
blockquote untouched to avoid racing you on the same lines. My classic golden (`0x3fa36874`) is your
`?classic=1` regression target; my gig golden (`0xb1d48ea1`) is your default-boot target.

## Round 15 (2026-07-16) — the frontage-poster +Z flip (ledger #1) + the one sanctioned golden move

### → B + F: **new gig golden `0x1f636349 → 0x4f4a549d`** (synthetic `0x3fa36874` unchanged)
The frontage-poster fix moved `plan.posters`, so the gig golden re-pinned — the round's ONE sanctioned
move (amendment law; §v3 marker records it). B: re-shoot `queue_night` against this. F: the smoke's gig
golden is now `0x4f4a549d`.

### The fix (gigs.js buildPosters item 1)
Each venue's own-frontage poster sat at local **−Z** — the *back* of the building (~16 m behind, matching
B's 15.9 m), invisible from the street, which is why `queue_night` framed no poster. Flipped to the **+Z
street facade** AND turned it to read from the street: `ry = lot.ry + π` so its printed face points `+Z`
at the queue-side camera (else `DoubleSide` shows a mirrored band name). Proven: pub + rsl frontage posters
now sit **0.06 m from B's door**, printed-face·(+Z street) = **1.000**. Only item 1; spine posters untouched.

### The −Z/+Z convention, settled (worth recording — it's the R13 RY_FLIP π-ambiguity again)
The **visible** venue face is `+Z`: `buildings.js` builds the facade/door at `zf = +d/2` ("front face at
local +Z"), and `venue.js` seats the door-glow/queue/poster-camera on `(sin ry, cos ry)` = `+Z`. The
selfcheck's `facing = (−sin ry,−cos ry)` "every lot faces its frontEdge" is the **sim/GLB** convention,
180° off from the visual front (same ambiguity D fixed at the source for the fleet in R13). A poster faces
the *viewer* when its printed face = `(−sin ry,−cos ry)` points at them, i.e. `ry = atan2(away-from-viewer)`.

### → B + F (eyeball in the tour): corner-venue frontage posters can sit near a crossing street
The `+Z` facade is the block-interior side in *plan* coordinates, so for a **corner venue** (a band_room/
rsl fronting one street with another behind — e.g. seed 1 band_room lot#481, 1.58 m from a side-street
centreline) the frontage poster lands near that crossing street's kerb. That's B's building geometry (the
door is there too), not a mid-road defect — so the selfcheck's no-bitumen assert now **exempts frontage
posters** (they're building-bound) and keeps it for free-standing **spine** posters. The pub hero is clean
(29.9 m of open ground on `+Z`). If a corner poster reads as floating over a road in the tour, that's a
v3.1 venue-placement tweak, not a v3.0 blocker.

## Round 14 (2026-07-16) — v3.0 RELEASE: invariant sweep + CITY_SPEC §v3 frozen

Release round — no new systems, no golden moves. **Synthetic `0x3fa36874` and gig `0x1f636349` are
unchanged**; the only code I touched is `selfcheck.js` (test-only), so no seeded stream gained a draw.

### The 400-seed district sweep (`selfcheck.js`, ALL GREEN 14264/14264 in ~0.7s)
- Factored the district-contract checks out of `gigSuite` into `districtInvariants(plan, label)` so the
  sweep asserts them at SCALE without re-running the heavy `structuralSuite` (that still runs on the 6
  hero `SEEDS` + osm parity). Behaviour-preserving — the 4 hero-seed `gigSuite` runs are byte-identical.
- Sweeps **seeds 1–400** synthetic + the large edge seeds (2e9, 8675309) asserting the full district
  contract each: 2–4 venues, ≥1 pub, never the openLate shop, no band twice in one night town-wide,
  per-venue 4–6 nights, every poster off the carriageway. Also asserts the seeded count **spans {2,3,4}**
  across the range (measured 146/121/133) — proves the 2–4 range is genuinely exercised, not pinned.
- **osm graceful placement**: `katoomba` (smallest fixture, 19 shops, **no warehouse district**) still
  lands 2–4 valid venues incl. a pub for every hero seed — proving `pickVenues`' off-spine fallback.
  Honest scope: both osm fixtures keep a main spine, so this proves the *no-warehouse* branch, not
  *no-spine* (a genuine no-spine town would need a single-row fixture that doesn't exist yet — v3.1).
- Poster check kept as "≥ `roadWidth/2` from the nearest edge centreline" (not a literal `poleOffset`
  compare, which would false-fail legit corner posters seated behind their placement edge's `poleOffset`
  but inside a crossing edge's clearance band). Added a `−1e-6` epsilon on the strict `<` to immunise the
  exact kerb-line boundary against r2 rounding (only reachable on a no-main-spine fallback; not hit today).

### CITY_SPEC §v3 frozen at v3.0
Final wording pass; marked **FROZEN at `v3.0` (round 14)** with a §v2-style marker. Venues table, genre
map, gigKey contract, corridor law, and gig golden `0x1f636349` are all final (genres are pubrock/grunge/
covers — Fable's R14 ruling, John did not re-flavour).

### → Lane F: the alias-retirement handshake (R13 debt #1) — I deliberately did NOT touch it
The R12 single-venue compat alias is **still live** (`gig_state.js:141-151`, read by `audio.js`/`venue.js`),
so I left the §v3 alias sentences (`CITY_SPEC.md` ~lines 271–272) **intact** — deleting them at freeze
time would be doc-ahead-of-code and would race you on the same lines. The freeze marker explicitly carves
this out as your pending edit. In your alias-retirement commit (after B drops its readers), delete both
`gig_state.js:141-151` and those two spec sentences **together** — one atomic step, one deleter, no race.
- While you're in that runtime block: it enumerates `stateOf/onOf/openOf/gigOf/coverOf/bandNameOf/paidOf`
  + `markPaidOf` + `.venueShopIds`, but **omits `nightOf(id)`** (`gig_state.js:131`). Add it when you edit.

### → Lane B: second edit site for the bare-string arm
When you remove the `venue.update()` bare-string alias arm, note `venue.js:228` also self-calls
`update('quiet')` at construction through that same arm — fix both or it falls through (harmless today:
still yields `'quiet'`, but it's a live second site).

## Round 13 (2026-07-15) — v3.0-beta THE DISTRICT (published FIRST; C/D/B/F hang off this)

Supersedes the R12 alpha interface below. Same flag (`?gigs=1`), same prime-flag law: flag OFF ⇒ plan
byte-identical to v2 (synthetic golden still `0x3fa36874`, osm unchanged). What changed: **one venue → 2–4;
one genre → three (by kind); one night's posters → town-wide.** The gig **entry shapes are unchanged** —
downstream code that read one venue now iterates many. Verified green: `selfcheck.js` 3273/3273,
`scaffold_check` + `consistency` GREEN.

**Gig golden re-pinned: `0xa6ae5a5e` → `0x1f636349`** (the district changed gig-plan output; re-pinned in
the same commit as the change per CITY_SPEC amendment law). Turn-on is unchanged:
`generatePlanFor(seed, src, { town, gigs:true, customBands })`.

### The venues (NEW: 2–4 per town, three kinds) — `plan.shops.filter(s => s.venue)`
Each converted-in-place venue shop carries three new fields:
```
s.venue === true · s.venueKind ∈ {'pub','band_room','rsl'} · s.genreKey ∈ {'pubrock','grunge','covers'}
s.type === s.venueKind      // C keys its interior recipe off shop.type — the type IS the kind
```
| kind | genreKey | placement | hours | reads as |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `pub` | `pubrock` | spine end/corner | `[17,23]` | ≥2-storey corner hotel |
| `band_room` | `grunge` | warehouse fringe | `[18,23]` | single-storey tin shed |
| `rsl` | `covers` | off-spine | `[16,23]` | carpet-and-bistro club |
- Seeded count 2–4; a 4th venue is a **second pub** at the far spine end. A town always has ≥1 pub.
- **Never** the openLate landmark (still exactly one openLate shop). Placement degrades gracefully so osm
  towns (no warehouse district, maybe no spine) still get their venues.
- `genreKey` comes from the registry kind→genre map: `genreForVenueKind(kind)` / `SHOP_TYPES[kind].genre`.

### THE gigKey CONTRACT (debt #1 — import it, don't build the string)
The audio-manifest bed key **IS** the gigKey and is **always** `gig-<genreKey>`. No mapping table anywhere:
```js
import { gigKeyFor } from './citygen/index.js';   // re-exported from the barrel
gigKeyFor('pubrock') === 'gig-pubrock'   // C sets audio.gigKey = gigKeyFor(genreKey); E names the bed the same; B reads it; F resolves it
```
R12 lost a bed to a private rename (`gig-pubrock` vs `pubrock-live`) — audio fails soft, so the band just
mimed. One key, zero mapping. E renames `pubrock-live → gig-pubrock` this round; F deletes the `GIG_BED` bridge.

### `plan.gigs` — the week across the whole district (entry shape UNCHANGED)
```
plan.gigs = [ { gigId, venueShopId, bandName, genreKey, night, startSeg, endSeg, cover }, … ]
```
- **7 nights × every venue, but not every venue plays every night**: each venue plays a seeded **4–6** of
  the 7, dark the rest (reads true). `gigId` unique **town-wide**; `night ∈ [0,7)`; `genreKey ≡` its venue's.
- **Pick tonight per venue** (each venue has its own state now): `plan.gigs.filter(g => g.venueShopId === v.id && g.night === 0)[0]` — **may be undefined** (venue dark tonight; F/B skip it, no poster).
- `startSeg=5 endSeg=5`. Same `quiet → doors(seg4) → on(seg5) → done` machine — F runs one **per venue**.
- `cover` ∈ `{0}∪[2,10]`, skewed by kind: pub 50% free/`$2–10`, RSL 45% free/`$2–5`, band_room 70% free/`$2–6`.
  F debits **per venue** — a night at two venues is two covers.
- **No band plays two venues on one night** (guaranteed by A). Custom names spread night-major across the
  whole week town-wide (deduped, priority-seeded), the rest generated.

### `plan.posters` — town-wide now (shape UNCHANGED; **Lane B** renders)
```
plan.posters = [ { id, gigId, x, z, ry }, … ]   // only TONIGHT's (night 0) playing venues advertised
```
- One on each playing venue's **own frontage** (on the facade plane) + a seeded spine run (2 per main edge).
- Different venues' posters share the same pole runs — that IS the district reading. `p.gigId` tells B/F
  which venue's gig each poster sells (`plan.gigs.find(g=>g.gigId===p.gigId)`).
- **Debt #5 fixed:** posters no longer land mid-road. See the corridor law ↓.

### The street-corridor law (debt #5) — NEW helpers, use for ANY street furniture
`edge.width` is the **full corridor** (carriageway + verge, centreline ± width/2), NOT the carriageway.
`node.x + 2` seats furniture on the bitumen. Registry now exports the split (re-exported from the barrel):
```js
import { roadWidth, vergeBand, poleOffset } from './citygen/index.js';
roadWidth(edge)   // carriageway half-corridor (main 10m, side 6–8, lane=all, arcade 0)
vergeBand(edge)   // [inner,outer] — where footpath furniture belongs
poleOffset(edge)  // where a pole/poster/post seats: just behind the kerb
```
Selfcheck now **asserts** no poster stands within `roadWidth/2` of any edge centreline.

### → Lane C: two recipes to add + the gigKey + a corrected field
- `getRecipe(shop.type)` resolves off `RECIPES[type]` — `RECIPES.pub` exists; **`RECIPES.band_room` and
  `RECIPES.rsl` do NOT yet.** Until you add them, those venues fall back to the op-shop interior. That's
  the handshake — you're next in order.
- Set `room.audio.gigKey = gigKeyFor(shop.genreKey)` (import from the barrel) — never hand-build `'gig-…'`.
- Registry `pub.interior` was `'band_room'` (harmless, unread — you key off `shop.type` via `canonicalType`);
  I corrected it to `'pub'` so it isn't a name-collision with the new `band_room` venue type. No behaviour change.

### → Lane D: iterate the venues, one setGig each
`const venues = plan.shops.filter(s => s.venue)` — call `setGig` **per venue** (multiple concurrent). Tonight's
gig per venue as above (skip dark ones). `isOpen(shopOrHours, hour)` unchanged (half-open law). Queue zone
comes from B (`venue.queueZone`) — consume if present, else a straight line off the door.

### → Lane F: state machine goes per-venue
One latch **per venue keyed by `venueShopId`**, off the same `procity:segment` spine. `gigKeyFor(genreKey)`
resolves all three genres (the debt-#1 assert now covers 3). Delete `GIG_BED` once E's rename lands. Cover
charge is per venue (per-venue paid stamps). Keep the alpha `window.PROCITY.gigs` shape as a compat alias
for one round (B reads it mid-round).

## Round 12 (2026-07-15) — v3.0-alpha GIG INTERFACE (published; C/D/B/F build off this)

Everything is behind `?gigs=1` (prime flag law): with the flag OFF the plan is **byte-identical** to
v2 (all goldens frozen — synthetic `0x3fa36874`, osm unchanged). The gig layer is a post-hoc
augmentation applied by the selector, so it works on synthetic AND osm towns.

### How the gig layer turns on (Lane F wires this)
```js
// F's shell bootstrap, when ?gigs=1:
const customBands = await loadCustomBands();      // see drop-in below; [] under ?noassets or if absent
const plan = citygen.generatePlanFor(seed, src, { town, gigs: true, customBands });
```
`generatePlanFor(seed, source, { gigs:true, customBands })` → base plan + `withGigs`. Without
`gigs:true`, the base plan is returned untouched. `generatePlanFor` stays **synchronous** — F does the
async `custom_bands.json` fetch in the bootstrap and passes the array in.

### `plan.gigs` — the nightly schedule (NEW, present only when gigs on)
```
plan.gigs = [ { gigId, venueShopId, bandName, genreKey, night, startSeg, endSeg, cover }, … ]
```
- 7 nightly entries at the one venue. `night` = 0-based index; **F picks tonight's** (alpha: `gigs[0]`).
- `venueShopId` = the pub shop's id. `genreKey` = `'pubrock'` (alpha's one genre; E ships that bed).
- `startSeg=5` (NIGHT, 22:00) `endSeg=5`. F's state machine: `quiet → doors (startSeg−1 = DUSK seg4)
  → on (seg5) → done`. Segment→hour map is lighting.js (`0 DAWN … 5 NIGHT`).
- `cover`: integer. **~half are 0 (free, walk in); the rest $2–$10** (F debits the wallet at the door).

### The venue (one `pub` per town)
- A spine-END plain shop is converted in place to `type:'pub'` (keeps its lot id + geometry ⇒ no
  overlap, enterable like any shop). Tagged **`shop.venue === true`**; also `plan.shops.find(s=>s.type==='pub')`.
- **Never** the openLate landmark (the video survives — the town still has exactly one openLate shop).
- Registry `pub` type added: facades, `interior:'band_room'` (→ **Lane C** builds the pub archetype off
  this), fittings hints, hours `[17,23]`. It has **no district weights** so it's never auto-placed.
- Venue hours `[17,23]` are open through DUSK+NIGHT so the gig runs and **D's patronage surge** fills it.

### `plan.posters` — gig advertising (NEW; **Lane B** renders)
```
plan.posters = [ { id, gigId, x, z, ry }, … ]   // ~6, advertising tonight's gig (gigs[0])
```
One on the venue frontage + a seeded few along the spine, on the poles/walls B already streams. B
places E's poster skin at `(x,z)` rotated `ry`. F wires "poster → tonight's-gig discoverability".

### → Lane D: the closing-time debt is PAID — consume `isOpen`
`citygen.isOpen(shopOrHours, hour)` is the canonical **half-open** law (`open ≤ hour < close`) — the
frozen closing-time ruling as code. Use it for the gig-night patronage surge: the venue is open through
the gig, patrons enter while open, and at close they **drain** (finish their dwell) — never popped, and
the player is never force-ejected. Your `sim.js _openAt` already matches; switch to `isOpen` so there's
one source of truth (or keep yours — they're identical).

### → John: the band-name drop-in (`web/assets/custom_bands.json`)
Edit the file, reload — your names get **priority** on the town's posters. Schema:
`{ "bands": ["The Feral Galahs", …] }`. **Delete it and the generator takes over** (no errors, no fetch
under `?noassets=1`). Deterministic given (seed, file contents). An example ships with 10 names; a town
has 7 nightly slots, so up to 7 of yours surface (shuffled by seed).

## Round 9 (2026-07-15)

### → Lane D/F: closing-time occupant ruling (you already built it right — this ratifies + freezes it)

Question: what happens to a ped browsing inside a shop when it hits closing time? **Ruling** (now a
frozen contract law — CITY_SPEC §"CityPlan v2 → Closing-time occupant ruling"):
1. **No new entry when closed.** Openness is half-open: `open ≤ h < close` (a shop closing at 17 is shut
   at 17:00). Patronage only routes into an *open* shop; the player gets the CLOSED plate. ✓ your
   `sim.js _openAt` + `_nearestOpenShop` already do exactly this.
2. **Occupants drain, they don't pop.** A ped inside at close finishes its bounded 5–20s dwell and
   re-emerges normally — **never** teleported/culled at the close instant. `occupancyOf(shopId)` falls
   to 0 within one dwell window on its own, so browser rigs (the C→D→F seam) clear with the same drain.
   ✓ your `patronTimer`/`_emerge` already do this — do NOT add a hard close-time eviction.
3. **Player is never force-ejected** — closing locks *entry* only; a player inside stays until they leave.
4. **The openLate video shop** is the one place still filling after ~21:00; at its own close it drains
   identically. All seeded + clock-driven ⇒ deterministic occupancy.
No code change requested of you — this pins the behavior so it can't drift, and documents it for v3.

### → everyone / F: the CityPlan v2 producer contract is FROZEN

CITY_SPEC now has a **"CityPlan v2 — frozen producer contract"** section: producer API, the goldens
table (synthetic `0x3fa36874`, osm/melbourne `0x34cfdec0`, osm/katoomba `0x0f652510`), the town-key
mechanism, osm normalization rules, and the hours/openLate/storeys/closing laws — all matching code
(F: diff away). Changes to Layer-1 now require a CITY_SPEC amendment + golden re-pin in the same commit.

## Round 8 (2026-07-15)

### → Lane F: OSM is at parity + there's a SECOND town. Three goldens to pin, one new selector arg.

- **Selfcheck parity done**: the full invariant suite (`structuralSuite`) now runs on **every
  (source, town)** — synthetic and both OSM towns get identical coverage (storeys, one-shop-per-lot,
  facing, within/cross-block overlap, corridor coverage, determinism, exactly-one-openLate, …).
  `node selfcheck.js` → **ALL GREEN 1727/1727**.
- **Selector gained a town arg** (`web/js/citygen/index.js`):
  `generatePlanFor(seed, source, { town })`. Shell wiring: read `&town`, pass it through —
  `generatePlanFor(seed, src, { town: q.get('town') || undefined })`. `map.html` is the reference
  impl (`?plansrc=osm&town=katoomba`). Unknown/absent town → the default (`melbourne`).
  `osmTownKeys()` lists the available towns for a UI picker.
- **THREE goldens to pin** (seed 20261990), all asserted by selfcheck already:
  | source / town      | golden       |
  |--------------------|--------------|
  | synthetic          | `0x3fa36874` |
  | osm / melbourne    | `0x34cfdec0` |
  | **osm / katoomba** | `0x0f652510` |
  The determinism gate should key on **(seed, plansrc, town)**. Synthetic + melbourne goldens are
  **unchanged** from round 6.
- Katoomba (Blue Mountains, 19 shops — op-shop/book heavy) is a deliberate small-regional contrast
  to inner-Melbourne (95, book heavy). Both boot end-to-end; screenshots in `docs/shots/laneA/`.

### Normalization: the importer bends the DATA to the contract, never the contract (round-8 item 4)

Real OSM data that fights a CityPlan contract is normalized deterministically, and the change is
**logged** (selfcheck prints a per-town line; `generatePlanOSM(seed, town, { report })` fills `report`):
- unknown OSM `shop=` kind → `opshop` (`typesRemapped`);
- a shop closing ≥22:00 → clamped to 21:00 so only the one openLate landmark is late (`hoursClamped`);
- openLate landmark prefers a **video**; a town with no video falls back to another non-stall type
  and `report.openLate` records it (both Melbourne + Katoomba have video, so both read `video`).

### RECIPE — add another OSM town (mechanical, ~10 min)

1. **Pick a cluster** in thriftgod's `city_source.json` (Overpass cache). Find a centroid + a cell
   size that captures one coherent town (aim 15–150 on-theme shops). The extraction one-liner used
   for melbourne/katoomba is in `A-progress.md` (round 6/8) — reuse it with your `(cLat,cLon,cell)`.
2. **Append the town** to `OSM_TOWNS` in `web/js/citygen/osm_fixture.js`:
   `key: { town, source, center:{lat,lon}, shops:[{id,name,type,lat,lon,suburb}, …] }` — sort shops
   by `id` (determinism). Map OSM `shop=` kinds → registry types (charity→opshop, books→book,
   music→record, toys→toy, video_games→video, antiques/second_hand→opshop/pawn).
3. **Pin its golden**: run `node web/js/citygen/selfcheck.js`. The unpinned town prints a ready-to-paste
   line — `⚠ osm/<key>: UNPINNED — add to OSM_GOLDENS →  <key>: 0x…,` — paste it into `OSM_GOLDENS`
   in `selfcheck.js`, re-run → green. (The full parity suite already ran on the town; only the golden
   needed pinning.)
4. **Tell F** the new (seed, plansrc, town) hash for the determinism gate. Done — zero network, the
   full parity suite covers the town automatically.

*Dry-run (round 9): verified end-to-end with a throwaway Newtown (42 shops) — the parity suite auto-ran
(1931/1932, only the golden unpinned) and selfcheck printed `newtown: 0x9045e577,`. Reverted; no 3rd
town shipped (didn't fall out "for free"). The recipe is mechanical as written.*

## Round 6 (2026-07-14)

### → Lane F (F2): the `?plansrc=osm` plan-source seam is LANDED — wire + pin

The second plan producer is live behind the same CityPlan contract. Full seam, invariants green
(not a partial). What F needs to wire the shell bootstrap + extend the determinism gate:

- **Selector API** (`web/js/citygen/index.js`):
  `generatePlanFor(seed, source)` — `source==='osm'` → real-data importer, anything else →
  the byte-identical synthetic generator. Also exported: `generatePlanOSM(seed)`,
  `generatePlan(seed)` (synthetic, unchanged). Unknown source falls back to synthetic.
- **Shell wiring** (in `web/index.html`, F-owned — one line): read `?plansrc`, then
  `const src = new URLSearchParams(location.search).get('plansrc')==='osm' ? 'osm' : 'synthetic';`
  and call `citygen.generatePlanFor(seed, src)` where it currently calls `generatePlan(seed)`.
  `map.html` already does exactly this (reference impl).
- **Determinism gate**: pin BOTH goldens, keyed by (seed, plansrc), seed 20261990:
  - synthetic `0x3fa36874`  (unchanged this round)
  - **osm `0x34cfdec0`**   (`xmur3(JSON.stringify(generatePlanOSM(20261990)))`)
  `selfcheck.js` already asserts both; the smoke can just hash-compare.
- **Zero network**: the fixture is `web/js/citygen/osm_fixture.js` (95 real inner-Melbourne
  shops from thriftgod's Overpass cache), imported as a JS module — no fetch/XHR at runtime.

**⚠ OSM plans differ from synthetic in shape (by design — real towns aren't the synthetic template):**
- `plan.source === 'osm'` is set; `plan.size` is the real bounding box (~362×486), **not** 1024².
- **No synthetic districts/types**: an OSM town has NO market square, arcade, dept anchor, milk
  bars, or stalls — only the real retail types (record/opshop/toy/book/video/pawn). Any code that
  ASSUMES a dept/market/milkbar exists must guard on `plan.source !== 'osm'` (or just not assume).
- Everything B–F actually consume is identical: nodes/edges/blocks/lots/shops schema, `ry`/
  `frontEdge` semantics, `chunkIndex`, hours + the exactly-one-openLate-video rule all hold.
- Shop `name`s are the REAL OSM names (e.g. "Central Catholic Bookshop"); `sign` is derived.
  Parody-transform of names is a documented deferred nicety, not a blocker.

## Round 4 (2026-07-14)

### → Lane F (A1): storeys checker (F2) confirmed — 0 warnings, no false negatives

`tools/qa/consistency_check.mjs` `permittedMax` scoping (your F2) is **correct**. Verified this round:
- `node tools/qa/consistency_check.mjs` across 7 seeds → **0 storeys warnings**; `qa.sh --strict` GREEN (4/4).
- **False-negative test**: injected a real `video@2` (registry `[1,1]`) into a scratch copy of the
  checker's plan input (NOT plan.js) across 5 seeds → the storeys gate still fired every time. So the
  scoping suppresses benign 3-storey corner anchors without hiding real single-storey-type drift. ✓

### → Fable / Lane F (A2): openLate contract HARDENED — `hours[1] ≥ 22` now ⟺ `openLate` (and it IS the video)

Your night gate `plan.shops.some(s => s.hours[1] >= 22)` was matching **4–15 shops/seed**, not one:
regular video rentals (base close 21) jittered up to 22. That contradicted the shell's own contract
(`web/index.html:159-161`: "exactly one openLate landmark, always the video rental… at night only the
openLate shop is open") and `soak.py:68`. Rather than ask you to change the gate, I made reality match it:

- **plan.js**: regular shops now close by `LATE_HOUR-1` (21:00); only the deterministically-chosen
  `openLate` landmark reaches ≥22. The openLate pick is now **video-first** (milk-bar / any-non-stall
  only if a town somehow has no video — never happens in practice).
- **Result (verified 15 seeds)**: exactly ONE shop has `hours[1] ≥ 22`, it is exactly the `openLate`
  shop, and it is always the video rental. `{s: s.hours[1] >= 22}` and `{s: s.openLate}` are now the
  same singleton — **gate on either**, they agree.
- selfcheck.js asserts all of this now (exactly-one, field⟺threshold, is-video).

**⚠ GOLDEN.hash changed: `0x098eec2b` → `0x3fa36874`.** This is the *intended* consequence of the A2
plan.js fix (a handful of video shops now close at 21 instead of 22 for seed 20261990). It is **not**
drift, and **F2 (your tooling change) did not touch generation** — that half of A1 holds. selfcheck.js
carries the new golden and is GREEN. Nothing else in a plan changed (same lots/shops/types/names/skins).

## Round 3 (2026-07-14)

### → Lane F: the `qa.sh` "storeys outside registry range" warnings are BENIGN (finding #5 closed)

Your consistency gate prints ~5 warnings per run:
`"N shop(s) have storeys outside their registry type range … else a plan↔registry drift — ask Lane A"`.

**Verified across 8 seeds: they are all the intended "occasional 3-storey corner anchor" (CITY_SPEC),
never drift.** Evidence:
- Single-storey types (`video`/`milkbar`/`stall`, registry `[1,1]`) are observed at 1 storey ONLY —
  e.g. 412 video shops, none at 2. So the specific "video at 2" example does **not** occur.
- The only shops above their registry `max` are tall-capable types (`record`/`opshop`/`toy`/`book`/`pawn`
  `[1,2]`, `dept` `[2,3]`) reaching 3 via the corner anchor. Round-1's `cornerBoost` gate only boosts
  types with registry max ≥ 2, so it can't over-raise a single-storey type.

**To silence the warning correctly**, scope your check to the *permitted* max, not the strict registry max:
```
permittedMax(type) = registryMax >= 2 ? Math.min(registryMax + 1, 3) : registryMax
// flag only shops with storeys < registryMin || storeys > permittedMax  → that IS real drift
```
This rule is now documented in `docs/CITY_SPEC.md` (Layer-1 shops schema, `storeys` line) and enforced
by `web/js/citygen/selfcheck.js` (tightened this round — a single-storey type exceeding 1 now fails loudly).

### → Lane F: `hours` / `openLate` contract is ready for your §3.5 wiring (no changes)

`hours = [open, close]`, 24h integers, `0 ≤ open < close ≤ 23`. **Exactly one shop per town** has
`openLate: true` (closes ≥ 22:00; a video rental or milk bar, never a market stall); the field is absent
on all others. Gate on the field — `plan.shops.find(s => s.openLate)` — not a magic hours threshold.
Your ROUND3_INSTRUCTIONS §Lane F states it correctly, so consume as-is.