acdream/docs/README.md

acdream documentation map

This page is the entry point for project documentation. It distinguishes current sources of truth from implementation history so an old plan or issue banner cannot silently override the current program state.

Current snapshot — 2026-07-27

• Milestone state: M3, “Cast a spell,” landed 2026-07-21. M4, “Live in the world,” is active.
• M4 gameplay program: resume the pre-M4 world-interaction completion program. Favorite-spell overflow, status Use/Assess, and the complete assessment surface are user-accepted. Equipped-child picking and vendor browse/transactions remain Slices 4–6.
• Structural/runtime state: all eight GameWindow decomposition slices, Modern Runtime Slices A–J, and the connected visual/lifecycle gates are complete. GameWindow is a 1,622-line composition/callback shell. AcDream.Runtime.GameRuntime owns canonical session, entity/object, gameplay, movement, physics, projectile, environment, and portal state; graphical and no-window hosts borrow the same owner graph.
• Headless state: Slice K is complete. AcDream.Headless is a presentation-free Windows/Linux host with deterministic commands/events, shared immutable content, multi-session isolation, reconnect, resource telemetry, and 1/5/10/30-session gates. The final two-account native-Linux soak completed ten minutes, logged out through ACE, and converged every ownership ledger.
• Linux graphical state: Slice L0 and the L1 implementation checkpoint are complete at 66f114b2 and 11501d52. Native Windows passes the active modern-GL/audio/window smoke. WSLg X11/Wayland correctly reject their missing GL_ARB_bindless_texture. Physical-Linux validation and L2–L6 are explicitly deferred; resume at the supported AMD/NVIDIA L1 gate.
• Completed gameplay gates: R6 locomotion/collision/projectile/teleport/ radar, two-client portal-out/materialization, indoor prepared collision, loot ordering, local/remote ground drops, and selection-marker lifetime.
• Separate visual verification: issue #225, the shared-alpha lifestone/particle result; its connected resource-lifetime and performance routes pass.
• Carried behaviour debt: issue #153 (far teleport onto an unstreamed edge), #116 (narrowed slide response), #235 (capped/RDP jump cadence), and the active temporary-stopgap rows in the divergence register.
• Divergence audit: 189 active rows — IA 18, AD 38, AP 91, TS 38, and UN 4 — plus retained struck/retired historical rows such as TS-37.
• Latest automated baseline: the Release build succeeds with the 17 test-project warnings tracked by issue #228; 8,826 tests pass and five are intentionally skipped. App passes 3,763 / 3 skips. The L1 Windows supported smoke and WSLg X11/Wayland negative-capability reports all end with zero window/GL/input/audio ownership.

Sources of truth

Read these in this order when deciding what to do next:

1. plans/2026-05-12-milestones.md — the active playable outcome, freeze boundaries, and visual gates.
2. plans/2026-04-11-roadmap.md — strategic phase ledger: shipped, active, deferred, and future work.
3. ISSUES.md — tactical defects and small follow-ups. The status inside an issue is authoritative; physical order is not.
4. architecture/retail-divergence-register.md — every known place runtime behavior can differ from retail.
5. architecture/acdream-architecture.md and architecture/code-structure.md — ownership, dependency, update-thread, and extraction rules.
6. architecture/worldbuilder-inventory.md — rendering/DAT code already owned in-tree versus mechanisms still ours to port.

If these disagree, milestones control the current outcome, the roadmap controls work ordering, the issue status controls the individual defect, and the architecture documents control implementation shape. Reconcile the stale document in the same change; do not leave both claims standing.

Research and implementation records

• research/named-retail/ is the primary retail oracle: named pseudo-C, headers, symbols, and types from the Sept 2013 build.
• research/decompiled/ is the older Ghidra fallback.
• research/ contains focused pseudocode, traces, fixtures, and gate reports. A dated research note records evidence; it does not become a new roadmap.
• superpowers/specs/ and superpowers/plans/ are per-slice design and execution records. Completed plans remain historical.
• ci-and-releases.md is the SSOT for the Gitea CI pipeline, the self-hosted runners, and how alpha releases are published. Load-sensitive tests live in Lane=Timing; see release-gate.md before adding to it.
• launch-options.md is the SSOT for every environment variable and command-line argument the client reads, including what each one changes about the run beyond its obvious effect. Read the side-effects column before trusting any measurement. Enforced by LaunchOptionsDocumentationTests: a flag without a row fails the build, and so does a row whose read site was deleted.
• audit/ contains completion and conformance audits.
• reference/ace-commands.md preserves the local ACE server's complete in-game command catalog and points to the authoritative per-command help surface.

Durable memory

• ../claude-memory/MEMORY.md indexes the live subsystem memories and the render/physics digests. Read a domain digest before changing that subsystem, especially its DO-NOT-RETRY table.
• ../memory/ contains stable engineering references such as the modern rendering pipeline, two-tier streaming, and toolchain notes.

Memory accelerates recall; it does not outrank the canonical documents above. When current truth changes, update the relevant canonical document and distill only the durable lesson into memory.

Historical and deprecated documents

• bugs.md is the April 2026 bug snapshot. It is preserved for archaeology and is not an active ledger.
• Dated plans and specs describe the decision at that time. Their completion wording is historical unless the current milestone/roadmap explicitly links the item as active.
• Old R1→R8 architecture sequencing is superseded. Current execution comes from the milestones and strategic roadmap.

Documentation maintenance rules

• Update milestone, roadmap, issue, divergence, architecture, and memory claims in the same commit when a shipped change affects them.
• Keep one issue ID per defect. Narrow an issue in place; do not reuse another issue's number as a shorthand.
• Mark automated, connected, and visual gates separately. An automated pass is not a visual acceptance, and an RDP throughput sample is not a local-display visual comparison.
• Preserve research history, but remove stale “current/next” claims from living documents once the state advances.