v0.8.0.14 — the coaches that never come back, and a district that ends at its own sign

Six reports from the Day 2-3 playtest of v0.8.0.13.

GAMES IN PROGRESS DO NOT SURVIVE THIS ONE. Modifiers are now bounded by the
Limits, which makes a once-legal move illegal, so a save holding one is refused
at that move: whistle-6945.day3.stage10 stops at intent 528 of 539. Jesse's call,
knowing it strands the game on the box. The file is untouched and v0.8.0.13
still finishes it.

The Sparrow running empty and Tom unable to unload his passengers are the same
shortage from opposite ends, and both are the rules working as printed. §9.2
boarding discards the emptied coach into the CLASSIFICATION yard, detraining
draws a fresh empty out of the DIVISION yard, and §2.2 sends Classification back
only when the Division Yard runs bare — so coaches move one way. Measured over
the save: sixteen in the Division Yard at setup, zero from Day 2 Stage 8 to the
end, fifteen piled in Classification, the Division Yard steady at 46-47 freight
cars with no prospect of going bare. Jesse's ruling is Gitea#2's: the shortage
stays and the game says so. A train made up short now reports what its card
wanted and why none is coming (`makeUpShort` — `trainNeedingCars` answered null
for "done" and for "cannot be done" alike, so the phase moved on in silence); the
yard panel warns while the condition lasts; the Depot's blocked panel was right
all along.

The modifier outside the Limits was working as designed and the design was
Jesse's own call, now reversed. What decided it is what the board shows — a card
beyond your own sign, in territory §8.1 and §10 reason about. The case that
motivated the exemption was checked on the reported move rather than argued away:
the Power Plant sat at (-1,3) against a sign at column 3 and two spots inside
were free, legal and adjacent.

Switching filled the history with coordinates — a line per move, plus one per
mandatory coupling. It is still LOGGED in full; what the panel draws is the line
saying somebody switched, the first move, work at an INDUSTRY (named, not a
coordinate), the Small Yard sort, and a closing summary. The suppressed lines are
still WRITTEN, marked `trace`: dropping them outright was the first attempt and
the step-queue suite caught it, because dwellForStep pays nothing for a step that
said nothing, so the board stopped replaying switching at all. The last move
rides in the closing line rather than being kept in place — nothing knows a move
was the last until the turn is over, by which time the line has been streamed to
every client and cannot be revised. Two things fell out of reading those lines:
every move ended with a tutorial sentence the opener already gives, and the move
count said "of 6" with the six hardcoded, which is wrong on a night Stage.

Make-up lines name their train — they all read "the train being made up", so
looking back for train 10 found nothing under that name — and "a empty tank" is
now "an empty tank". The Small Yard's options read as the train they would build
instead of `[1,2,3,0]`; the one Jesse wanted was the first of five and unreadable.
Two of those five were junk: bringing the last car to the end is the identity and
would have spent a Move, and a two-car reversal duplicated its only real option.
Both are filtered by the resulting order, not by the case that made them.

A Small Yard may now put cars AHEAD of the engine, which was Jesse's own open
question. Two sources disagreed and the design notes won: the v0.4.5 card text
says the sort puts the engine at the nose, implications.md says "any order,
including cars ahead of the engine". `engineAt` is optional on the intent, so
older saves replay to the same train. The menu did not multiply — the engine is a
separate short list against the consist as it stands, eight options for a
four-car train rather than twenty. §8.2 needed no new code: badlyMadeUp is
deliberately direction-free, so a PUSHING train is fit to run and only a
broken-backed one is held. The button warns by asking that predicate rather than
copying it, and immediately earned itself — every one of train 10's eight options
is refused, the one asked for at the table included, because that train carries a
caboose and each sort moves it off the rear. That is the right answer rather than
a gap: the train is already made up, so every offer would break it, and the labels
say which is which. A made-up order is always on the menu for a train that needs
one, because "bring car k to the tail" is enumerated for every car and the caboose
is one of them.

Labels read WEST TO EAST, with the engine drawn as the board's own ◀ / ▶ arrow.
"Front to back" is not a direction a table can read — which end is the front
depends on which way the train points — and board-svg has reversed east-facing
consists since v0.8.0, so the button now describes the same train as the picture.

The Freight Agent, Porter and Laborer groups now say what the role is for, where
the role is chosen. Tom reached for the Freight Agent to detrain passengers,
which is a Porter's action in the Cargo phase; both halves were working and
neither was visible.

TODO closes #107 (the nose sort) and gains #108 (the coach ratchet, with the
measurement, to revisit on a second game's data).

999 fast tests and 35 sim tests pass.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01DmdqqCNoiqE7GBo6wthBnR

src/web/main.ts

@@ -1807,7 +1807,17 @@ function render(): void {
    * steps still queued are withheld, and each appears as its step goes up.
    */
   const heldBack = stepQueue.pendingLines();
-  const allLines = heldBack > 0 ? session.lines().slice(0, -heldBack) : session.lines();
+  /**
+   * HELD BACK FIRST, THEN THE TRACE LINES DROPPED — the order matters.
+   *
+   * `pendingLines` counts lines in the log, including the `trace` ones a switching move writes for
+   * its caption (`web/game.ts` § inHistory), so the tail has to be cut off the RAW list or the
+   * arithmetic slips and the panel runs ahead of the board. Filtering afterwards only decides what
+   * is drawn.
+   */
+  const allLines = (heldBack > 0 ? session.lines().slice(0, -heldBack) : session.lines()).filter(
+    (l) => l.tone !== 'trace',
+  );
   /**
    * NINETY LINES, IN THE SAME BOX (Jesse, 2026-09-16: "increase to 90, keep the box the same size").
    *
@@ -1955,12 +1965,35 @@ function renderYards(f: Frame): void {
   $('divtot').textContent = `${yards.divisionTotal} cars`;
   $('clstot').textContent = `${yards.classificationTotal} cars`;
 
-  // The one thing worth calling out: the yard about to turn over.
+  /**
+   * The one thing worth calling out: the yard about to turn over — or the one that never will.
+   *
+   * THE COACH CASE IS ITS OWN WARNING (Jesse's ruling, 2026-09-17: say it loudly, change no rule).
+   * Coaches travel one way. §9.2 boarding discards the emptied coach into the CLASSIFICATION Yard
+   * and detraining draws a fresh empty out of the Division Yard, and §2.2 sends Classification back
+   * only when the Division Yard runs bare. Measured over one three-Day game: sixteen coaches at
+   * setup, none left by Day 2 Stage 8, fifteen piled in Classification, and the Division Yard
+   * holding steady at 46-47 freight cars — so the refill will not fire before the game ends.
+   *
+   * Every consequence of that is silent on the board. A Depot simply offers no passenger action, and
+   * the Sparrow — three coaches and nothing else — is made up empty and runs the whole Division that
+   * way. The cars are in plain sight in Classification; what cannot be seen is that they are not
+   * coming back. So the panel says it where the pile is.
+   */
+  const held = (row: { type: string; loaded: number; empty: number }[], type: string): number => {
+    const r = row.find((c) => c.type === type);
+    return r ? r.loaded + r.empty : 0;
+  };
   const bare = yards.divisionTotal === 0;
+  const coachesStranded = !bare && held(yards.division, 'coach') === 0 && held(yards.classification, 'coach') > 0;
   $('divyard').classList.toggle('bare', bare);
   $('yardnote').textContent = bare
     ? `The Division Yard is bare — the ${yards.classificationTotal} cars in Classification return to it now.`
-    : 'loaded / empty. Classification returns to the Division Yard only when the Division Yard is bare.';
+    : coachesStranded
+      ? `NO COACHES in the Division Yard — all ${held(yards.classification, 'coach')} are in Classification, ` +
+        `which comes back only when the Division Yard is bare, and it still holds ${yards.divisionTotal} cars. ` +
+        'Until then no passengers can board or detrain, and a train whose card calls for coaches is made up empty.'
+      : 'loaded / empty. Classification returns to the Division Yard only when the Division Yard is bare.';
 }
 
 function renderDistrict(f: Frame): void {
@@ -2408,11 +2441,34 @@ function renderActions(
    * title of the ONE group `menu.makeUp` actually covers leaves every other "Making up …" group,
    * however it is titled, on screen where a player can act on it.
    */
+  /**
+   * WHAT A ROLE IS FOR, said where the role is chosen (playtest, 2026-09-17).
+   *
+   * Tom had a train standing at his Depot with a loaded coach on it, picked the Freight Agent to
+   * unload the passengers, and found nothing that would do it — "didn't have any opportunity to
+   * unload passengers". Both halves of that were working correctly and neither was visible: the
+   * Freight Agent stocks a box and never touches a train, and detraining is a PORTER's action in
+   * the Cargo phase. Why it was impossible as well (§9.2 wants an empty coach from the Division
+   * Yard) was already in the Blocked panel, off to the side — but a player who has chosen the
+   * wrong role is not reading a panel about the right one.
+   *
+   * A SENTENCE, NOT A HOVER. The tip on the heading would have answered him only if he already
+   * suspected he was in the wrong place, which is precisely what he did not.
+   */
+  const ROLE_SCOPE: Record<string, string> = {
+    'freightAgent.':
+      'The Freight Agent stocks the green Loading box from the Division Yard, and frees a jam. ' +
+      'Passengers board and detrain in the Cargo phase, with a Porter — not here.',
+    'porter.': 'A Porter works passengers between a platform and a coach standing at your Office.',
+    'laborer.': 'A Laborer moves one load one step along MEN → AT → WORK, and loads or unloads a spotted car.',
+  };
+
   html += menu.direct
     .filter((g) => !/^(Play|Discard) a card from my hand$/.test(g.title) && g.title !== menu.makeUp?.title)
     .map(
       (g) =>
         `<div class="grp"><h3>${esc(g.title)}</h3>` +
+        (ROLE_SCOPE[g.kind] ? `<p class="dim scope">${esc(ROLE_SCOPE[g.kind]!)}</p>` : '') +
         g.actions
           .map((a) => {
             // §6.2 — a drawn card has to be played or discarded before the turn can end. Keyed on