The 17 drafts that read 0/17 against the poisoned tree were never 17 codegen
failures. Re-gated on a clean tree: 9 banked, then re-gated TOGETHER per binary
(a draft that passes alone can still collide with a sibling in the same TU —
which is exactly what `morph_lerp` and `struct V8` did) — 9 of 9 held.
ov_SC03_118 func_80183D68 · ov_SC06_008 func_8017F8CC func_80183BF4
ov_SC06_011 func_8017EDA4 · ov_SC07_006 func_8017FDF8
ov_SC06_018 func_80184370 func_80184944 func_8018A974 func_8018EDB8
Wave 4 final: 40 targets -> 35 agent-MATCH -> 27 BANKED (68%).
One stray comment in one draft had masked eight real matches.
Wave 4 (wf_05895a19-121, 75 agents, 7.9M tok): 40 targets -> 35 agent-MATCH,
0 refuted, 5 NEAR, 0 FAIL, 0 drafts lost. 18 banked so far on the whole-binary
gate across 9 binaries; the other 17 are re-gating on a clean tree (see below).
PRIOR-NOTES SEEDING HELD AT SCALE: 10 of 12 seeded targets confirmed (wave 3
was 7 of 9). func_8017C294 — the x16 family, the largest single item on the
board — is now NEAR at **2 ins** (18 -> 11 -> 2 across three seeded attempts).
THE 4th COMMENT-BLINDNESS DEFECT OF THE SESSION, and the first with blast
radius. A crack agent annotated a decl in its draft:
extern void func_801842DC(s32 a0); /* TU:4023 INCLUDE_ASM (no decl) */
`corpus._INCLUDE_ASM_CAND` only skips lines that BEGIN with a comment marker,
so it read `INCLUDE_ASM (` out of the trailing PROSE, found no quoted path, and
refused the whole binary's stub oracle — correctly, by its own R32 contract.
That then failed gate_stage for every LATER binary in the run, because they all
walk the corpus: 12 binaries banked, then 5 were blocked by one comment in a
13th. Fixed the same way as the other three today: decide candidacy on
cdecl._mask'ed text, PARSE FROM THE ORIGINAL (the mask blanks string content
and would erase the asm path). Verified on 4 binaries incl. main (2,002 stubs).
AND THE DAMAGE IT LEFT: gate_stage raised out of the CorpusError BEFORE its
revert, stranding failed drafts spliced in src/. The 17 solo re-gates that
followed all read 0/17 — they were building a POISONED TREE, not judging their
own drafts. Residue reverted here; the 17 re-gate clean next.
The pattern is now sharp enough to state: any scanner that greps C source for a
token must mask comments and strings FIRST — and agent-authored drafts make it
far likelier, because their prose mentions the exact tokens our tools hunt for.
Drew T