v0.8.0.15 wrote a Quickstart for a tester who has never played and then left it
in docs/, where a tester does not look — reachable only by somebody who already
has the repository. Nobody handed the box had it. build-web.ts now copies it to
dist/quickstart.md and the splash page offers it under the three doors, as a
line rather than a fourth door: reading the guide is not a way to play, and
giving it equal weight in that grid would say it is.
COPIED, NEVER RE-WRITTEN. The Markdown document stays the one copy. A
hand-written HTML twin drifts from it on the first edit, which is the failure
#15a was raised about and precisely what the v0.8.0.15 pass spent itself
undoing. It is served as PLAIN TEXT, which is honest rather than good — tables
render as pipes and the links do not click. Rendering it into a styled page
wants a small Markdown converter and is filed as TODO #109; build-web.ts's
comment names that number rather than gesturing at "the next step", so the file
and the worklist cannot drift the way the references just did.
Two things had to be true and tsc checks neither, so both are tests. The href on
the splash page and the filename the build writes are two strings with nothing
connecting them: rename the document and the build quietly publishes nothing
while the page keeps offering a link that 404s. And a .md file must not arrive
as a download — the server's MIME fallback is application/octet-stream, which a
browser saves instead of displaying, so the link would have handed a tester a
file to save rather than a page to read. '.md' is in http.ts's table now, and
the test reads that table out of the source rather than asserting on a copy of
it, which would pass while the real one was wrong.
VERIFIED AGAINST A RUNNING SERVER, not only compiled: 200,
text/plain; charset=utf-8, the guide's own first lines, and the splash link
resolving.
THE sortsCars COMMENT. Asked after v0.8.0.15 whether everything now agreed, and
the audit turned up one place that did not — the field's own doc comment named
the card's printed text as though it were the flag's meaning. Nothing reads it
to permit a sort; its two readers, resolveExtraStart in apply.ts and the
enumeration in legal.ts, both ask whether this is the one Mainline card with a
Yard Limit and therefore the one an Extra may be made up and started on. Comment
only, and worth the bump because of where it is: it is what a developer reads
before using the flag, and it is the likeliest source of the sentence v0.8.0.15
had to correct off the board. The name is kept for its link to the card face and
the comment now says outright that the name is not the meaning.
The five references and docs/design.md read v0.8.0.16. They describe this build
because the audit re-checked them against it, not because the number was swept
forward — a stamp bumped without a reading is worth less than none.
1001 fast tests and 35 sim tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01MUizFYCMHRWhbWwXhp7WPR
The four hand-written references brought up to the game as it actually runs,
ahead of the next testing round, plus a Quickstart to hand a tester who has never
played. They had not been touched since v0.6.2 — a month and two minor versions —
and each now says at the top which build it describes.
ONE LIVE BUG CAME OUT OF THE PASS. mainlineDescription told players "Cars may be
sorted into any new order here" on the Interchange. It is the printed capability
and has never been implemented: nothing reads sortsCars to permit a sort, and its
one live use is marking the card an Extra may be made up on, because it is the
Mainline card with a yard. That sentence is not only documentation — view.ts
renders it as a Mainline card's `what`, so it is what a player reads on the
board, and the generated reference printed a "Sorts cars: yes" column beside it.
A card advertising a button that does not exist sends a player hunting for it and
then concluding the game is broken.
What the documents had wrong, all of it verified against the code rather than
read for tone: the victory model in the Rules book (firstToTarget /
highestAfterDays and the target-bearing length presets stopped existing in
2026-08 — it is a free days count and a combined floor of 3 x players x days);
"there is no lobby, no server, no multiplayer"; crossing time in mph rather than
regions; Extras launched automatically eastbound; the Uncontrolled Siding listed
as a passing card; industry track length taken from the box count; and a
"Sister Trains" optional rule that never existed. The Home deck's counts table
came out under TODO #15a — Jesse's own ruling that counts move with balance —
and it had been wrong for a month, which is the argument made twice.
The Home and Mainline deck references are restructured to explain how a deck is
USED and to defer every per-card table to rules/as-built.md. Duplicating it by
hand is precisely the drift #15a was raised about: as-built needed no correction
beyond the Interchange, because build:cards regenerates it and a test fails when
the checked-in file disagrees. Everything hand-maintained around it had drifted;
it had not.
docs/design.md, the index everything starts from, said v0.4.3, "what is not: the
server", and 493 tests. It now also lists the player-facing references, which it
never has, so the Quickstart is findable at all.
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
