PROCITY/docs/V7_THE_GAME.md

# PROCITY v7 — THE GAME (epoch charter — **RATIFIED by John, 2026-07-17**)

*(Ratified as drafted; the fantasy stands. R30 opens the epoch — v7.0-alpha wave 1.)*

*Fable (m3), 2026-07-17. From THE_FRONTIER's headline gap: the world is built, the game isn't.
v7 is the smallest set of systems that makes a stranger play twice. Design principle: every
system below rides machinery that ALREADY EXISTS — nothing here invents a new world layer.*

## The fantasy, one line

**You're a crate-digger in 90s Australia: build the collection, learn the prices, work the
towns — and be home in time for the gig.**

## The loop

Wake (save point) → plan the day (shops shut per their real hours; the gig starts at night —
the clock finally matters) → dig shops, spot the gems (priced below the guide), spend scarce
cash → sell the flips (keeper today; the auction tomorrow) → sleep = save, the day advances,
stock rotates → the collection grows → the wantlist points at another town → travel costs a
day. Repeat, richer and one gem wiser.

## The systems (each with its existing foundation)

1. **PERSISTENCE — the foundation stone.** Save = THE DELTA ONLY: cash, owned items, town, day
   number, wantlist, stats. The world is never saved — it regenerates from seed (the
   seeded-everything law finally pays its biggest dividend: saves are tiny and can't corrupt
   the world). localStorage, schema-versioned, JSON export/import for moving machines.
   *Foundation: item identity is already stable — parody items are seeded, real/mint carry
   skus (the R25/R26 sku fences were built for exactly this, before we knew it).*
2. **THE COLLECTION.** Your crate, as a UI: cover, title, artist, price paid, where and what
   day you found it. The trophy case of the whole game. (A walkable home-room shelf is v7.x —
   UI first.) *Foundation: the atlas indexes already carry every field the card needs.*
3. **THE GUIDE + THE GEM (the thrill loop).** An in-game price guide — thriftgod's BIBLE
   concept — gives a VALUE BAND per item (imperfect, like the real 90s guide books). Shops
   price with seeded variance around it → a **gem** is an item priced under its band. Skill =
   spotting them. *Foundation: mint() gem/price bands exist as data and drive nothing; real
   items have real dealgod prices; the dig card already shows asking price.*
4. **SELLING — where cash comes back.** v7.0-alpha: sell to a keeper at the counter (below
   guide, always — the no-money-pump law). v7.0: **GodBay** — list an item, a SEEDED offline
   auction resolves NEXT DAY (the come-back-tomorrow hook; thriftgod's auction brain, G's
   lane, offline tier first per the proven tier-ladder pattern — a live tier is v7.x and
   rides the G3 rails).
5. **THE DAY.** Sleep advances the day; **stock rotates per (shop, day)** — seeded, so day 3
   in Bendigo is the same for every player on that seed (parody/mint rotate; the real shop's
   real stock stays real); gigs already run a 7-night week — `day % 7` plugs straight in;
   hours already exist — now closing time costs you something. *Foundation: the segment spine,
   `isOpen`, and `plan.gigs` are all sitting there waiting.*
6. **THE WANTLIST + TRAVEL.** Mark items/artists you're hunting; seeded rumors surface hints
   ("saw one in Castlemaine" — a keeper line, a gig-crowd mutter: D's citizens finally gossip
   for a reason); **travel costs a day** → 23 towns become a strategy map instead of a
   dropdown. *Foundation: the selector, the pack, the personas.*
7. **THE FIRST FIVE MINUTES.** You arrive with $50 and a want. Three toast-beats: dig, buy,
   sell. A real splash. *(Smallest system, biggest stranger-facing payoff.)*

## The stages

- **v7.0-alpha — THE SAVE AND THE CRATE:** persistence + collection UI + sell-to-keeper +
  sleep/day cycle + stock rotation. ONE town plays as a complete (small) game.
- **v7.0-beta — THE THRILL:** the guide bands + gem variance + wantlist + rumors + travel
  costs a day. The 23 towns become the map.
- **v7.0 — THE AUCTION:** GodBay offline tier, onboarding, the tour ("day one to first gem"
  as the money shot), docs freeze, tag.

## The laws (new ones this epoch earns)

1. **The delta law:** a save NEVER contains world state — only player deltas. A corrupted
   save can cost you your stuff, never the town.
2. **The no-pump law:** every sell price < the buy-side guide band, structurally. The economy
   gets a GATE (an agent plays N seeded days and asserts net-worth growth is bounded by finds,
   not arbitrage loops).
3. **Game money is game money:** the write-back law extends — no bridge to real money, ever,
   in either direction.
4. **Classic stays pure:** `?classic=1` boots the v2 town with NO game layer (no save, no
   HUD additions) — the covenant is untouched. The game layer defaults ON for normal boots
   (the v3.1 flip precedent) with `?game=0` as the opt-out.
5. **Rotation is seeded:** stock rotation draws from (citySeed, shopId, day) — deterministic,
   gate-checkable, same for everyone on a seed.

## Lane map (first cut)

**F** the save core + gates (delta law, no-pump gate, save/load determinism) · **B** the UI
surfaces (collection, wantlist, day clock, splash — hud.js territory) · **C** the counter
sell interaction + dig-card guide hints (+ the home room, v7.x) · **A** the day/rotation
seeding contracts (new sub-streams, goldens untouched — rotation rides runtime, not plan
gen... A verifies that boundary) · **E** guide-band data baked into packs/atlases (mint
bands, real prices) · **D** rumor lines through keepers/citizens · **G** GodBay (the auction
brain, offline seeded tier) + real guide prices from dealgod.

## Risks (named now, v4-style)

1. **Economy balance** — pumps, dumps, degenerate flips. The no-pump gate is the fence; a
   playtest-bot (an agent that greedily arbitrages for N days) is the adversarial verifier.
2. **Save schema drift** — versioned from day one, migration-or-reject, never silent.
3. **Item identity across re-emits** — a re-baked atlas must not orphan owned items (the sku
   IS the identity; E's validator grows an owned-item stability check).
4. **Scope gravity** — the game wants everything (housing! romance! a phone!). The stage
   gates are the fence: alpha ships ONE town playing well before beta touches 23.
5. **v6 collision — none by design:** v7-alpha is systems/UI (F/B/C-heavy); v6's spikes are
   clips/ultra (E/D/G-heavy). They interleave; Fable sequences the rounds.

## Sequencing

v7.0-alpha can start **now** — it's unblocked (v6 waits on footage; the two don't collide).
Recommended: R30 = v7.0-alpha wave 1 (F save core + B collection UI + C sell counter contracts
first). John ratifies this charter (or amends the fantasy — it's your shop, your era, your
game) and says go.

## Risk verdicts at the close (R36, v7.0 — written by F per the single-lane-close ruling)

1. **Economy balance — RETIRED (structurally fenced).** The no-pump gate is STRICT since R30
   (5 real UI round trips all strictly negative + C's broke-player negative control); R32 moved
   the fence from the receipt to the band (`credited == min(bandLow−1, ⌊bandLow/2⌋)`, the exact
   formula, not an inequality); R34's GodBay holds EV ≈ 0.8×mid under the ONE-HAMMER law (item-
   identity-seeded — a passed-in item re-lists to the same result forever, so there is no retry
   farm), bounded above at 2×high×0.88. Both hand playtests confirmed the shape — Fable's wave-0
   line: the game charged $12 tuition for ignoring its own advice. *Honest residue:* the named
   adversarial verifier (a greedy N-day arbitrage bot) was never built as an agent — the
   structural gates + two hand playtests stood in for it. It goes live again with G's live tier
   (v7.x), where structure alone won't be enough.
2. **Save schema drift — RETIRED.** `procity-save/1` versioned from day one; corrupted/foreign
   blobs loud-reject + stash raw + boot fresh (gated since R30). The schema widened three times
   in-epoch (`pulls` R32 · `wants` R33 · `listings` R34), every field optional,
   validated-exact-and-loud when present, absent-compatible — zero migrations, zero silent
   rejections, alpha saves still load at the close.
3. **Item identity across re-emits — CARRIED (narrowed, never fired).** The sku IS the identity
   (the R25/R26 fences); real-sourced pulls/listings key by `sku:<id>`, parody by seeded slot
   identity. No atlas was re-emitted during v7, so the risk never had a chance to fire — and
   E's validator still lacks the chartered owned-item stability check. Carried to whichever
   round next re-bakes an atlas: that round must add the check BEFORE the re-emit.
4. **Scope gravity — RETIRED (the stage gates held).** Alpha shipped one town playing complete
   (R30–31), beta opened the 23 (R32–33), v7.0 closed with the auction + onboarding (R34–35).
   Every mid-epoch want was FILED, not built: the §31.6 beta queue, then the v7.x queue
   (⚖ discoverability · LIST confirm · the paper as artifact · keeper-rumor by hand · walkable
   home room). No housing, no romance, no phone.
5. **v6 collision — RETIRED (none, by design).** The epochs interleaved without a merge
   conflict or a contract collision. The one contact was the July-20 2 a.m. commits
   (`046668e`/`b339402`: 4 Rokoko dance clips + 5 trellis DJ bodies, v6-flavoured assets landing
   mid-v7 outside the round system) — swept into provenance/licence/depot by E (R36 w1) and
   gated by F (R36 w2: figure-scale spawn proof, runtime bind census, classic zero-fetch for the
   clips). One hold from that sweep rides the R36 record: the DJ bodies joined `?classic`'s
   roster ungated — Fable to bless or bounce.