Cold Fork is a freight yard: 29 events across two stages, a four-day cycle, and
its own relationship and skill vocabulary. src/engine/ was not touched. Adding it
needed three changes outside the engine: one save slot per pack, app.js holding
the current pack, and turn.js no longer naming the mailroom (DECISIONS #34).
build.js now handles imports wrapped across lines. A conformance suite runs over
every registered pack. DECISIONS #35 records three calls on open questions.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01RxdJFbLq1rBKsUeticGV1g
The stamping scheme was wrong in a way worth recording. tools/stamp.js rewrote
src/build-info.js before every serve and build, so after each commit the
committed stamp named the *previous* commit — as it does right now, reading
76072ed+ while HEAD is 5c1784d — and the next serve rewrote it and dirtied the
tree again. A generated value does not belong in a tracked file if anything
routinely regenerates it.
src/build-info.js is now permanent and reads `commit: 'dev'`. tools/build.js
substitutes the real commit into the bundled output only, and fails loudly if
the substitution finds nothing to replace. So dist/theladder.html names the
commit that produced it, running from source honestly reads "0.3.0 · dev", and
the working tree never churns. tools/stamp.js is gone and `npm run serve` is a
plain static server again.
Also here, for picking this up later: a "Where things stand" section in the
README with the five open questions in the order they are likely to matter —
whether money stops mattering late, the negotiation gate that four early options
sit behind, the feedback widget nobody uses, how thin Dispatch is next to the
mailroom, and third-tier versus second-pack.
121 tests. docs/DECISIONS.md §25 corrected to describe what the code now does.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VMSFHyVPitUoosW5wyEADj
The MVP is playable: a turn screen, a career retrospective, an optional
feedback widget, local-storage autosave with file export/import, and a build
that flattens everything into one self-contained HTML file.
A turn has two phases — the scenario and its options, then what the choice did
and, separately, what the day cost regardless. Numbers that move without the
player seeing why are most of what makes them meaningless. Locked options are
shown greyed with the requirement spelled out rather than hidden, so a player
can see the door they cannot open yet.
The interface is named entirely by the pack. `pack.display` maps a state path to
a label, a format and an order, which is why the header reads "Standing" for a
path called `reputation` and why debt disappears while it is zero.
The first playtest then found three things, all of them fair.
*"Wasn't clear what daily drain was for."* The ledger was labelling changes by
the path that moved — "Money −$18" — when the upkeep entry that caused them had
a perfectly good name. It now says "Coffee, transit, lunch". The labels were in
the data the whole time and never reached the screen.
*"Should probably pay rent weekly / get paid every other week… would be good to
have day of week and week # shown."* Packs can now declare a calendar, and the
engine derives the day name, cycle and index from the turn number before the
event is drawn — so content can require a Friday and the header can say
"Thursday · Week 2 · Day 12". Upkeep entries take `every` and `offset`, making
wages fall on alternate Fridays and rent every Monday. The turn screen carries
a diary line — "Wages tomorrow · Rent in 4 days" — computed generically from
whatever a pack schedules.
*"Always in debt — could never get ahead."* The old economy bled $25 a day
regardless of play. It is now roughly break-even at baseline, with a
`spare_shift` event that appears *because* you are broke: the way out of a hole
should be visible from inside it. Across archetypes a careful player ends around
$1,400, an unplanned one treads water, and a careless one sinks into real debt.
That retune broke the coverage test, usefully. Random play stopped reaching hard
times at all, which made the entire debt branch look dead — it was not, since
random play is not a plausible player. Coverage is now the union across five
archetypes, including one that is broke *and* well-liked, because the "ask a
friend for money" options sit in a state no single-axis strategy reaches.
Not covered by any of this: styling and dark mode, which only a human with a
browser can check. This machine has none that can render a page.
109 tests. Reasoning in docs/DECISIONS.md §14-21.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VMSFHyVPitUoosW5wyEADj
