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# Harness, SDK & wire protocol — guide (crewrift tier)

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

#### 1. Coworld reporter is a persistent WebSocket 'ran it = success' service that fetches/parses the replay itself
`crewrift`

The CURRENT Coworld reporter contract is a persisted WebSocket service (report_request -> report_output / report_failed), NOT a per-episode CLI/bundle runner; the authoritative spec lives in the LATEST metta checkout (roles/REPORTER.md + reporter/protocol.py), not the coworld repo whose manifest can be on an older schema -- diff them before building. It needs NO manifest URI -- per-episode game config is embedded in the replay (the canonical source), so parse dimensions/config from the replay. The renderable artifact is flagged via an in-zip manifest.json with keys reporter_id, render, event_log (NOT a render.txt at root); the render target must be a single .md or .html (reject .htm). Replay access: the platform mandates no key, so own a provisional context.replay_uri (file:// or https://) plus a REPORTER_REPLAY_URI env fallback, fetch your own inputs over HTTPS (not handed a bundle), emit report_failed when neither is present, and check extension for compression (.json.z=zlib, .json.gz=gzip; decompress hosted zlib payloads before decoding); only accept target.kind=='episode'. Error policy ('ran it = success'): a readable replay ALWAYS produces output -- emit a well-formed zero-row [] payload for zero notable events (treat [] as success, not error), never a missing file; treat an undecodable replay or a per-tick hash mismatch as report_failed, not a partial prefix. Crewrift's ecosystem splits responsibilities: a commissioner (among-them-commissioner) schedules seat-rotated episodes and computes rankings, a reporter (crewrift-eventlog-reporter) expands a replay into structured event rows, and a grader (crewrift-grader) scores from wins/score-spread/tasks/kills/voting -- route optimizer signals through these roles rather than reimplementing them.
  <sub>sources: auggie:a1385085-652c-4b2c-a080-791afa05f93b, claude-code:10f74020-e0e6-4515-8d0c-f071d41766ad, claude-code:1402d3ec-c565-4576-ba22-97942b9f9d0b, coworlds/coworld-crewrift/coworld_manifest.json (+2)</sub>

#### 2. Diagnose silent inaction across the whole pipeline; suspect a swallowing except first and separate strategic from tactical failure
`crewrift` · **negative result** · ⚠ _session-derived, unverified_ · _see related: S012 (other tier)_

'Bots do nothing' is rarely one bug: trace the full action pipeline end to end before fixing anything, because apparent inaction stacks independent layers (an action-index mismatch, a policy starting in an idle no-op mode, gameplay modes short-circuiting to noop until perception succeeds). When a policy outputs 100% noop for a match, do NOT first assume perception/decision is broken: a catch-all except Exception around the per-frame decision that returns a stale noop on any failure turns every crash into silent inaction -- strip or log that handler before theorizing. 'Strategically correct but tactically inert' is a distinct failure mode: the outer meta-decide loop picks the right mode per phase yet the agent never moves; diagnose the outer mode-selection loop and the inner task-selection separately, since correct transitions say nothing about whether the chosen mode emits real actions. A silent server action rejection masquerades as a no-cooldown loop: kills against fellow imposters were rejected server-side with no body and no cooldown reset, so killReady stayed true and the bot re-entered seeking the same illegal target (symptom: a costly action 'fires' repeatedly with no observed effect and no cooldown progression). When a downstream stage never fires (no meetings, voting never runs), suspect the upstream action mapping against the engine's input handler first (a self-report pressed B to report a body but the server triggers reporting only on button A). Set the policy's action-press range tight but strictly inside the server's authoritative acceptance range and check both (pressing interact at <=16 world px while the server accepted kills within <=20 px lands the action but wastes approach; pressing outside silently no-ops).
  <sub>sources: opencode:ses_1fa65507bffexDcakAPT4pHA1d, opencode:ses_201637e3bffeRa6Y0x3DOs8hh1, opencode:ses_21ab38af3ffeCyRfclXzAswGm1, opencode:ses_1f7b6dc30ffeDmQtlUZI25HAjh (+3)</sub>

#### 3. A reduced tournament action space silently strands SELECT-gated features; identical lockstep motion is a determinism bug
`crewrift` · **negative result** · ⚠ _session-derived, unverified_ · _see related: S014 (other tier)_

A reduced discrete action space silently strands UI features: a tournament runner's 27 actions = {9 directions} x {none,A,B} omits the SELECT button (mask 0x10), so agents restricted to those 27 actions get no error but lose every SELECT-gated capability (global chat/SHOUT, usurp vote, hostage commit) -- audit which game features are unreachable in a tournament action space and document the workarounds (agents connecting directly to the WS are NOT bound by the documented '27 discrete actions', which is a downstream assumption; verify action-space claims against the wire protocol, not secondary docs). When every agent in a multi-agent game performs identical motion in lockstep (all drift to one corner together), suspect shared deterministic logic firing in sync (a determinism bug) before blaming pathfinding: check whether the policy's decision source is deterministic and whether agents share a start phase -- a deterministic stub LLM that always returns the same action produces exactly this. Give each randomness consumer its own RNG substream rather than one shared global RNG (a shared RNG lets any reordering of calls silently change behavior and defeats parity testing), and add a divisibility assertion to fixed-width frame-capture dumps (a corrupted capture is caught cheaply when file size stops dividing evenly by the fixed frame size, e.g. bytes / 16384).
  <sub>sources: opencode:ses_20c066070ffeBjXMnfQULai0Lw, opencode:ses_20a41d230fferPYcSsh385tuSR, opencode:ses_224322057ffexj7SYlcfVA0zgy</sub>

#### 4. Define suspicion features once over an abstract event stream and parity-test both adapters; crewborg runtime ships from the pinned SDK
`crewrift` · _see related: S016 (other tier)_

Define each suspicion feature ONCE over an abstract event stream and feed it via two adapters (offline expanded-JSONL clipped by visibility intervals, and the live perception tape plus event log), then add parity tests asserting both adapters produce identical features on the same game; this guarantees the offline-fitted model behaves the same in-game. The crewborg Crewrift policy imports the shared players.player_sdk from a PINNED public players repo declared in pyproject.toml (no local checkout) so the SDK stays fixed even as the vendored fork drifts, structured perception (Sprite-v1 scene decoder) -> belief/suspicion -> strategy -> action; its runtime orchestration (step loop/bridge) ships from that pinned SDK, NOT the locally vendored mode code, so when diagnosing whether a vote actually reaches the server, read the installed SDK's bridge/runtime path (it installs attend_meeting immediately when belief becomes Voting), not just the local mode. Authenticate Observatory API scrapers via softmax.auth using an X-Auth-Token header, and on a missing token EXIT with a clear actionable message telling the operator to run 'uv run softmax login' rather than failing obscurely.
  <sub>sources: personal_labs/crewrift_lab/crewrift/crewborg/docs/designs/suspicion-le, personal_labs/crewrift_lab/crewrift/crewborg/docs/trace-logs.md, personal_labs/crewrift_lab/AGENTS.md, personal_labs/crewrift_lab/README.md (+2)</sub>

#### 5. Persephone whisper protocol: cooperation-gated rendezvous at 20px, rate limits, configurable round schedule, B-toggles-menu
`crewrift` · **negative result**

Persephone whisper entry requires the other party's cooperation and is the core interaction bottleneck. Interaction range is BUBBLE_RADIUS = 20px (distSq <= 400). To CREATE a whisper near a target (A) you must be >20px from all players already in a whisper or you are blocked with 'YOU'LL BE OVERHEARD'; to REQUEST entry (B) you must be within 20px of a player who IS in a whisper, and a requester must be GRANTed by an occupant (unless auto-grant); unanswered requests time out after 10s (240 ticks). Visibility: inside a whisper you have NO global chat and can't vote in usurps; players only see global messages sent AFTER they entered the room (hostage exchange loses prior history); a whisper holds at most 4 occupants and messages are not replayed to later joiners; during the forced leader-summit phase the whisper action menu (B) is disabled. Action/chat actions are rate-limited (defaults: global shout 10s/240 ticks, whisper chat 2s/48 ticks, whisper actions 2s/48 ticks; customizable via GameConfig.actionRateLimits), so pace offers/messages to the cooldown and pad recorded cooldowns conservatively (server cooldown + 2 ticks). Playing-phase duration is configurable per round and varies enormously across presets (fast=15s/round; medium=descending 180/120/60s; medium12=300..60s over five rounds), so drive the time budget from the PARSED round schedule, not a hardcoded length. In a whisper the B button TOGGLES the action menu, so programmatic menu sequences must assume the menu starts closed and TRACK open/closed state themselves (menu state is not observable from pixels). NEGATIVE live failure modes: repeatedly pressing B can CANCEL a pending request before the opener finishes its GRANT sequence (throttle entry-request pulses ~72 ticks, bounded retries); a requester must NOT press menu actions (R.ACCPT) from ordinary gameplay pixels (blind-accepting from the overworld opened a SELF-whisper instead of joining -- fire join/accept only when a whisper-like view confirms the agent is in the shared whisper).
  <sub>sources: players_checkouts/players/users/james/personal_cogs/persephone/RULEBOO, personal_cogs/persephone/agents/eurydice/DESIGN.md, personal_cogs/persephone/agents/eurydice/IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md, players_checkouts/players/users/james/personal_cogs/persephone/GAME_AP (+1)</sub>

#### 6. NEGATIVE: the Coworld hosted-play spectator /global viewer is broken; validate episodes via /player, not the viewer
`crewrift` · **negative result**

NEGATIVE RESULT (dated 2026-05-14): the Coworld hosted-play spectator viewer (/proxy/clients/global over the /proxy/global WebSocket) is broken in cogs_vs_clips -- upstream sends one 'hello' frame then drops the TCP connection with code 1006, leaving the viewer permanently Disconnected. The /player WebSocket path is unaffected, so containers still play full episodes; only the human-watchable viewer fails. Do not block on the viewer when validating episode play.
  <sub>sources: archive/cogames_playground/bulbacog/designs/COWORLD_MIGRATION.md</sub>
