Interaction revision: work, witness and return
6 October 2026 · independent design review for the v0.2.3 candidate. This records the creator's new feedback: overhead ports remain functionally invisible, and religious work feels like button spam. Proposed and in-progress mechanisms below require actual integrated play; they are not a completed-demo claim.
The current weakness is structural
The v0.2.2 inspection command instantly labels the hidden incident kind and gives its remedy. Trying to purge a wrong target costs nothing, so the command also acts as a truth probe. Condition-led observations often state the required response directly. Three fixed numbered alternatives then turn the rite into finding the advancing button.
A read-only deterministic diagnostic cycled available choices 1 → 2 → 3 until one advanced, without consulting the witness. Every ordinary station completed in 4.4 seconds of acts. From 76 spirit, engine finished at 80.92 after one wrong choice; coolant at 74.92 after three; breech at 83.92 and shrine at 93.92 with none; vox at 77.92 after two. These are simulation results, not a new browser playthrough. They show that cheap penalties do not make observation necessary.
More severe click penalties, shuffled answer positions or an undocumented rhythm would preserve the underlying interaction. The useful change is to make the player's work establish something physical, and make the machine's observable reply necessary to finish it.
A small shared vocabulary
| Act | Player's material work | Machine's observable response |
| Secure | Hold an isolation contact, engage the firing lock or shut a return | Feed movement stops; a detent seats; the relevant load changes |
| Meter | Regulate draft, pressure or unction | Smoke shape, needle motion, bearing film or heat changes continuously |
| Challenge | Press a chosen witness and attend its full physical answer | A source moves in a definite order; a premature or displaced echo lacks that counterpart |
| Bind | Follow the proved circuit with a stylus or tool | The seal follows contact; a wrong branch becomes visibly connected and needs re-verification |
| Restore | Release isolation and attend the returning mechanism | Circulation, cadence or dry cycle returns; completion follows the real response |
Different stations should reuse these relationships while retaining their own apparatus and voice. A hot casing needs less load; a dry bearing needs measured oil. The priest learns the old entity's material habits rather than memorizing interchangeable colored buttons.
Bounded candidate work
Ordinary engine, cooling and breech service is moving toward tool/contact holds on a machinery schematic. A short click must not accumulate work. Correctness should be established only after the same complete material commitment for every available actuator. An incorrect completed act changes the mechanism, loses the prepared sequence and requires recovery; it must not reveal an answer through an immediate rejection. Holding alone is only the first improvement: visible contact and causal response still need inspection.
The proposed Shrine Witness Covenant isolates the relevant tether, meters incense draft against live heat, challenges an inscribed contact and follows the independently witnessed route. Hotter surroundings require less draft. A stable, readable band and smoke caption support deliberate control without reflex scoring. A material pin sequence must accompany an authentic answer; the borrowed answer may precede motion. Root owns the need/cooldown, proximity, reagents and final reward. The pure mechanism owns progress and physical mistakes.
The witnessed path remains deterministic for the same prepared encounter. Cancellation/restart cannot reroll it. Contact and trace require continuous work; submitting every endpoint in one instant must not become another five-button rite. Keyboard and pointer tools traverse the same geometry. The path is evidence the player can inspect, not a secret success flag supplied by the interface.
Instant shrine self-cleansing or an equally effective old purge cannot remain a normal bypass around the covenant. Inspection should record observable source, order and material condition rather than print an authoritative hidden-cause label. This revision must state which older services remain compatibility or expedited alternatives; it must not imply the whole diagnosis system has become mysterious merely because one panel changes.
Lifecycle and overhead gates
Release ownership belongs to the actuator/stage that started the work. A delayed release cannot cancel a different newly engaged tool. Pause, blur and reload cannot advance unattended input. Saves retain preparation cost and completed work; inconsistent held/candidate/timer combinations are rejected. Old timers must not complete after migration without renewed deliberate input. A changed hot/cold plan cannot silently credit acts from an incompatible old sequence.
For overhead ports, a valid geometric or GPU mask is insufficient. At normal gameplay size, at least one admitted terrain/actor fragment must actually be readable. Presentation may make the tiny admitted field legible, but admission must still use the priest's eye, facing, slit thickness and obstruction. Everything else stays black. Closed, misaligned and facing-away ports give no view. Adjacent apertures and first person identify the same passing world instance; independent random scenery would break the vessel's physical continuity.
Acceptance requires real controls: short-click failure, full physical work, wrong-work recovery, source comparison, an interrupted/save-restored task, concurrent crisis and a positive normal overhead port frame with corresponding negative cases. Automated campaigns may use diagnostic knowledge for regression, but cannot substitute for the player's observation. Final art, hand contact, sound listening and difficulty remain open; cinematic and narrated gameplay still require creator demo approval.
Implemented regression evidence
The assigned spirit and simulation suites passed 41 tests after the material-inspection revision. Short contact cannot accumulate an act; wrong work commits for the same duration before one affront and a reset; stale releases do not cancel another actuator. Legacy validation leaves its input unchanged, rejects impossible timers and preserves paid materials while requiring renewed contact. Covenants require proximity and full preparation, keep unlatched evidence through pause, grant no answer on cancellation, bind only the selected vessel/vox/augmetic circuit and reject immediate repeated rewards. Shrine, vox and augmetic examination return the same material description with or without a hidden sender; actual authentication requires the covenant.
The revised diagnostic maintenance policy completes all three crossings for seeds 1, 41, 1984 and 4096 with the existing victory, hull, corruption, replacement and shot requirements. It operates the draft, contact and weighted stylus with real simulation time, reading only the already-visible impressions for its trace. Cooling before vox treatment retains the existing hull, cooling-health and pressure advantage with equal elapsed time and supplies. These are regression checks; they do not establish that a new player can understand the apparatus or that the overhead view is legible.
Read-only review found a legitimate bounded-tick trace that generated a seated save rejected by its own validator. The mechanism worker fixed arrival dwell to count only time inside the pin radius; an independent 24-case check across four seeds, three contacts and two tick sizes then produced valid seated and completed ledgers. UI corrections clear paused local grips without rejected release feedback, require an accepted grip, resume at the resting stylus, reset stale challenge coordinates and disable the draft after seating. Browser evidence for those input paths is recorded separately below.
The later Playthrough V6 records actual held service, miswire recovery, counterfeit-versus-pin observation and header Pause/save/reload/regrip through browser controls. Its first run lost Watch 2; it is not a human campaign-victory claim. The mechanism worker's latest full-suite report is 107/107 after the later-sender ledger and pause-focus fixes. Normal overhead exterior readability, native/live publication checks and creative/listening approval remain open.