VoxelForge/Standalone/Research/WorldAssemblerM3/HANDOFF-ABYSS.md

Handoff: speed research moves to abyss (Debian 13, i9-12900HK)

Written 2026-10-19 by the Windows orchestrator (Claude) for the Claude instance on abyss.

Where things stand

• Branch assembler/world. Rounds S3–S13 committed. Each round's report is Standalone/Research/WorldAssemblerM3/Round*/REPORT.md. Latest committed: S13 87b0e5d (Round17, a tile-cost breakdown, diagnostics only).

• S14 (Round18) is running on the Windows PC. Its targets:

  • LOD0 marching cubes costs 243 ns/sample: find out what's inside it;
  • fix LOD4's column-cache misses (8,224 vs about 1,700);
  • add shared column pages only if they're still worth it.

  The Windows side finishes, reviews, commits and pushes it. Pull before you touch Core files.

• Current in-game numbers (owner plan, BuildHost actor, 25 cm SurfaceWorld, owner's 5800X3D):

  • full set about 4.9 s (S7: 17.4 s);
  • walkable ring about 0.51 s;
  • LOD0 about 1.09 s;
  • 40 m/s ring 75/75;
  • about 29 worker-seconds over 8 TaskGraph background workers.

• Open levers, in rough order:

  1. the S14 findings;
  2. a frequency-aware far detail cutoff. A global octave drop failed, and the 2 cm LOD-agreement gate rejects any far simplification, so a screen-space gate would need the owner's OK;
  3. visibility-aware scheduling in caves;
  4. RMC batching;
  5. per-strate voxel size;
  6. a disk terrain cache.

  The disk cache is approved as a FEATURE (multiplayer-compatible, compression tested), not as a speed fix.

Owner rules (non-negotiable)

• Writable scope: the VoxelForge repo only. On abyss, ask the owner before installing system packages, UE or toolchains.
• Never push main. Pushing assembler/world (and feature branches) is allowed.
• Byte-identical output vs earlier rounds is NEVER a gate. The gates are:
  • determinism of the current build across worker counts;
  • no quality regression;
  • bump the recipe version when output changes.
• Speed is judged on the cold path (nothing cached): walking, flying and 40 m/s running must be smooth on a first visit.
• Changes go in the shared layer and must benefit every generator family.
• Luna (Codex gpt-6-luna, effort max) implements; Claude orchestrates. Claude doesn't write code itself. Sol costs 20× and is used only for short read-only design asks, with the owner's OK.
• Briefs:
  • investigation rounds are open QUESTIONS answered with measurements, not directives;
  • give the goal, invariants and evidence bar, not the method;
  • be kind: credit what the last round got right.
• Every brief says "Do not commit, push or stash". Claude reviews against the code and captures, then commits specific files (never files over 300 KB, never raw PNGs).
• Owner explanations:
  • plain language, headline first;
  • say what he'll SEE or feel in game;
  • say what's measured vs inferred.
• Plugin hard rules are in CLAUDE.md, plus CODEMAP.md and ARCHITECTURE.md (§8.10 protected invariants).

Codex launch (Linux)

codex exec -m gpt-6-luna -c model_reasoning_effort="max" -c sandbox_mode="workspace-write" -c tools.web_search=true - < brief.md > out.log 2>&1

• Launch it as a tracked background task, so you're notified when it ends.
• On "Selected model is at capacity": wait 120 s, then resume with codex exec resume <session id> -m gpt-6-luna ... - and a short "continue where you left off" on stdin.
• Watch for runaway processes (more than 40 min) and rounds longer than 6 h.

First round on abyss: Linux baseline (proposed)

1. Build. Get the Core library (Standalone/Core) and its headless benchmark/audit/hash tools building with Clang on Linux. The Windows standalone uses MSVC plus a D3D11 viewer, so the viewer stays Windows-only.
2. Baseline. Record the laptop baseline on its performance cores (plugged in, fixed power profile):
   • per-LOD tile cost (S13 counters);
   • standalone full clipmap;
   • W1/W8/W12 hashes.
3. Determinism. Compare the hashes against Windows (Round17/Round16 list them). A Linux/Windows mismatch is a real multiplayer finding: dedicated servers usually run Linux.
4. Later, only if the owner agrees and provides UE 5.7 Linux plus his assets: headless BuildHost (-nullrhi) tests on Linux.

Not transferable: cache-size effects (24 MB vs 96 MB L3), thread/slot tuning, smoothness, captures. Those must be confirmed on the owner's Windows PC before they're claimed to him.