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# Meetings, voting & social deduction — guide (loop tier)

Reference notes, design rationale, and negative results (6).

#### 1. Treat engine source as ground truth for game rules; parameterize over config
`loop` · **negative result**

For a scripted game policy the rulebook/prose is NOT ground truth -- the engine SOURCE CODE is (e.g. Persephone's rulebook said leaders could act at the summit but sim.ts's !isSummit gate blocked the menu; a framework schema describing a capability is not proof, e.g. mettagrid attack is AttackActionConfig(enabled=False)). Rules are version- and config-dependent: a game bump can change cooldowns, timers, and rewards, so re-check the engine source when precision matters. Crucially, express capacity and urgency (probes/round, timers) as a function of the config-supplied round duration rather than hardcoding defaults -- a design assuming 15s rounds breaks on 60-300s presets. Never list an action the engine forbids in a state as a legal option.
  <sub>sources: personal_labs/crewrift_lab/docs/crewrift-gameplay.md, alpha_cog/docs/upstream-issue-report.md, opencode:ses_1fb148d00ffe5ob6k0yKT3aHke, opencode:ses_1fb48dd11fferLGXS1vWdHa0wS (+1)</sub>

#### 2. Specify chat PARSING separately from generation, with longest-match-first keywords
`loop` · ⚠ _session-derived, unverified_

Inter-agent communication needs a PARSING spec, not just a generation spec, because you cannot assume other agents share your message type or format: specify how incoming messages are interpreted (templates, coded messages, interpretation rules, fallback when unparseable) separately from how you emit them, or the agent cannot act on what it hears. Keyword-extraction parsers must match longest-pattern-first (e.g. 'SEND ME' before 'SEND') or a shorter substring steals the match. Specify multi-step interactions (e.g. a negotiation: approach, open channel, wait for entry, exchange, assess, escalate or exit) as an explicit state machine -- states, transition triggers, per-state action protocol, exit conditions -- rather than hiding the logic inside a single 'mode'; keep accept/offer decisions a lookup table keyed by the relevant party attributes, not prose.
  <sub>sources: opencode:ses_1fb8906dcffete6Fy63Vc7IEPv, codex:019e090d-a88d-76f2-b1f5-cd3e4eda9381</sub>

#### 3. Enumerate the real communication channels before writing any coordination mode
`loop`

Before writing any coordination mode, enumerate the actual communication channels the environment exposes, because a hard constraint may be that agents in different rooms/teams cannot communicate at all. Many tempting modes (coordinate with the other room, signal teammates across rooms) assume cross-room comms the game does not provide; delete or redesign every behavior premised on a channel that is not there. Do not put coordination facts in agent memory unless the agent could have OBSERVED them through the game or an allowed channel -- relying on a team blackboard unavailable in the environment leaks information the agent should not have. For LLM use, make observability explicit in the context (observed teammate claim, trusted same-policy talk, visible gear/cargo, inferred objective, private teammate knowledge, public accusation) to stop the model leaking private info into public actions.
  <sub>sources: opencode:ses_1fb8906dcffete6Fy63Vc7IEPv, players/player_sdk/docs/metta_cogames_framework/README.md</sub>

#### 4. Detect which Cogs-vs-Clips channel is active; vibes and talk are mutually exclusive
`loop`

In Cogs vs Clips, communication channels are variant-dependent and may be mutually exclusive: 'vibes' is a pure signaling channel with NO gameplay coupling (role identity is set by equipped gear, not by vibe, so do not infer role from a vibe token), while the 'talk' variant disables change_vibe_* and lets agents attach a <=140-char message (50-step cooldown) visible only to agents within the 13x13 window. change_vibe is disabled while talk is active (cogsguard/game/talk.py disables it) -- a strategy proposing simultaneous talk + vibe is wrong against the real game. Detect which channel is active from the mission/manifest config or at runtime (whether PolicyEnvInterface.talk is non-None / whether change_vibe is exposed) rather than assuming both, emit vibes one-shot only when vibe actions are actually exposed (once per role transition), and verify mechanics against COGS_V_CLIPS.md and installed cogsguard source before implementing a strategy doc's claims.
  <sub>sources: archive/cogames_playground/bulbacog/COGS_V_CLIPS.md, archive/cogames_playground/bulbacog/designs/OUTER_LOOP_AND_MODES.md, codex:019e28a2-f81d-79b1-a7f7-5f6583c280f1</sub>

#### 5. Stagger broadcasts: a shared chat channel surfaces only one message per tick
`loop` · **negative result** · ⚠ _session-derived, unverified_

NEGATIVE RESULT: shared-channel perception bandwidth limits broadcast strategies -- when all agents shouted identity within the same few frames, the overworld surfaced only one chat-strip message at a time, so most claims were never perceived. Stagger broadcasts across the round and account for the channel's per-tick display capacity, not just whether you emitted. The fix: switch from talk-on-cooldown to EVENT-based talk after a ~100-tick coordination window, compress the status as short as possible, use a status|message delimiter for urgent events, and fire only when there is something to coordinate (role/resource/target/raid) AND relevant agents are within text-visibility range. In a 2k smoke run this cut total talks dramatically (~134 events: role~46, res~71, tgt~9, raid~2) versus eight agents talking every 50 ticks all game.
  <sub>sources: codex:019e181f-6289-7332-9837-05f0e9cadded, codex:019e194d-3a17-7eb2-9df9-7bae24112862</sub>

#### 6. Diagnose all-zero scores as behavioral collapse; count submittable units, not modes
`loop` · ⚠ _session-derived, unverified_

In cogs_vs_clips, all-zero scores with high 'Clips held' and ~9960 max_steps_without_motion is a BEHAVIORAL-COLLAPSE signature, not a scoring-file bug: pull replay metadata (aligned-junction hold time) to confirm real collapse, then count 'no path to nearest-adjacent ... reason=equipping miner' warnings (here 10k-20k per episode) to localize the failure to the station/equipping path rather than strategy tuning. Separately, internal behavior 'modes' inside a policy (idle, task_completing, reporting, pretending, hunting, fleeing, alibi_building, meeting) are strategy modules dispatched by a mode registry keyed on role/phase (imposter->hunting, crewmate/ghost->task_completing, voting->meeting), NOT separate submitted policies -- when counting policies, count submittable units, not internal strategy branches.
  <sub>sources: codex:019e28a2-f81d-79b1-a7f7-5f6583c280f1, codex:019e2c82-7519-7f31-9e67-83e99b108bb2</sub>
