THE DOC GAP, and it cost tokens this session. `docs/automation-runbook.md` was titled "the
autonomous campaign, as it actually runs" while documenting the RETIRED OpenRouter/ox-alpha system
whose lanes are all deliberately DEAD. The current Claude-wave pipeline existed only as two dense
tooling-inventory rows in SETUP.md — reference, not procedure. Three of this session's costliest
mistakes were procedural and a playbook prevents each:
* hand-typed a refill target -> invented func_80184F60 (2nd instruction of a matched function), 58k
* hand-rolled a serial gate loop when parallel_gate existed -> ~1h for what took 103s
* re-derived a function banked verbatim in ~20 overlays -> 102k
NEW docs/wave-playbook.md — start to finish, each guard paired with the MEASUREMENT that produced it
(that pairing is the part a generic decomp guide cannot have, and the seed of the future template).
automation-runbook.md retitled HISTORICAL with a pointer; SETUP.md §6.9 links the playbook.
NEW tools/seed_ref.py — the cross-TU banked twin, joined on corpus signature hashes (no atlas knn,
~2s fleet-wide), wired into t5_cards.py. FLEET: 87 open stubs have a banked twin; 41 of them sit in
twin_sweep's refusal ledger, invisible to BOTH tools at once. Documents twin_sweep's two holes:
load_sigs covers 141/213 binaries (main, resident, all md_MAIN_* absent), and one curated symbol
name silently disables an entire binary via a bare `except Exception: pass`.
Schema note: seed_ref's binary/fn are the EXEMPLAR's, because api_agent greps src/{binary} for {fn};
naming them after the target would send every agent grepping for itself — caught pre-ship.
HARVEST §333-§338 from the s67o2_1/pool_1 waves:
§333 frame size is set by DECLARED aggregates, not used ones — an unreferenced trailing local is a
dial (3 instances; one worth 30 of 32 residual rows)
§334 a reload spill slot rounds to BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT for align AND size: one 4-byte pseudo grew a
frame by 16 (82->53)
§335 `extern u16 A[]` at a variable subscript allocates ~8B/access of dead stack temps that inflate
the frame with ZERO extra instructions — invisible in a body diff (141->20)
§336 the §5a barrier goes at the BOTTOM of the twin; find_cross_jump walks BACKWARD
§337 the CC1-ONLY blocker class: blocker_probe's static oracle says "none" and cc1 still fails
§338 _sltiu_bounds misreads a non-switch sltiu as a bounds check, over-spanning the table
gate_wave.py now STREAMS both lanes (R55) — it captured output and printed at the end, leaving a
zero-byte log indistinguishable from a hang.
I reported 240 of 244 turn-finishes truncated in wave bk and called it ~100%. That
count came from grepping lines containing 'finish=', which api_agent only prints when
a turn ends WITHOUT a tool call — so the denominator was not all turns, it was all
anomalous turns. I compared a subset against itself.
Counting every turn:
bk (8k / 420s): 240 truncated of 3,222 turns = 7.4%
bt (16k / 700s): 16 truncated of 1,210 turns = 1.3%
Still a ~6x improvement and the change stands on its own evidence, but it is a tax
reduction, not the collapse I described. Recorded alongside: a truncated turn is one
turn of 24, not a lost agent — the logs show the agent emitting its tool call on the
very next turn.
Both docs keep the wrong figure explicitly, with why it was wrong, so the next reader
does not re-derive it from the same grep.
SETUP gains rows for recover_rejects.py (free recovery of the 45% of drafts that never
reach the gate, 13% of which are a deterministic symbol rebase),
restart_main_lane_when_idle.sh, and a campaign-constants row recording MAXTOK 16000 /
HTTP_TIMEOUT 700 with the measurements behind them: reasoning_tokens=0 so the output
cap was the reasoning cap, 240 of 244 turn-finishes truncated at 8k, an uncapped hard
prompt wanting 8,067 tokens, ~30 tok/s, and the 1M-context / 131,072-max-completion
model ceiling that makes 16k our choice rather than a limit.
The runbook gains the same table plus the ordering rule (generation < HTTP_TIMEOUT <
stallguard's 1200s kill), the evidence that turn caps are NOT binding on the default
lane, one-lane-one-band with the size table that retired the 120-2000 slot, the
maintenance lane's new recovery job, and the main-lane restart helper.
The runbook was dated 2026-06-22 and described the reach-1 grinder pivot — it named
no lane that exists today, two months and an entire toolchain later. Rewritten around
what is actually running: the six lanes and their restart rules, the OpenRouter
drafting toolchain (cards, LEVER_CRIB, per-lane budgets, the draw's admit/refuse
census, quotas as floor AND ceiling), the banking toolchain by binary class
(sweep_parallel vs gate_main vs the gate-time jtbl carve vs -O0 objects), the main
lane, the distill lane and the flywheel's measured yield, the rate/credit numbers with
their denominators, and recovery.
Two ops laws are stated where they will be read rather than rediscovered: bash parses
a while-loop up front (so code, args and draw-defaults each take effect differently),
and never pkill -f a lane by a bare name because it matches the harness's own wrapper.
SETUP.md gains rows for main_lane, the distill lane and the three restart helpers.
- residual class travels with the draft: drafter stamps // @class / // @stuck; gate_stage logs
the worker's gcc-quirk class to the backlog (not the coarse manifest class).
- wave_targets.py --class <C> / --list-classes: class-grouped re-attempt waves over the backlog's
classified near-misses (REGALLOC/SCHEDULE/REMAT/STRUCT/IV/LOOPGUARD/LOOSE/PLUMBING).
- orchestrator prep: auto-picks a class-focused wave when a class accrues >= threshold near-misses,
else a fresh pool harvest; clears the draft dir per wave.
- tools/workflows/distill.js: post-wave agent extracts NEW byte-verified gcc idioms -> cookbook §21
(R16, conservative); drafters now read the LIVE cookbook so distilled idioms feed forward.
- runbook: the full prep->worker->gate->distill cycle (the Phase-18 close-rate loop, automated).
Drew T