VoxelForge/OPSTACK-PROGRESS.md

OPSTACK — progress log

APPEND ONLY. Never rewrite or reorder entries. Write the entry for a piece of work before starting it, so an abrupt session end still leaves an accurate marker.

Entry format: date · what · believed-true · UNVERIFIED (everything not yet built by Jahni) · next single action.

This file is how a fresh context resumes. Read the last entry first, then OPSTACK-PLAN.md §9.

---

2026-07-27 — branch created, design locked, nothing built

What: Branch experimental created from 69fa73e tmp and checked out. main untouched and is the known-good fallback world. Design finalised across OPSTACK-PLAN.md (incl. §2.5 op taxonomy and §2.6 acceptance bar, both added after Jahni's objection that a naive "ops" reading would just be his old room-operations system). Kickoff prompt written to OPSTACK-PROMPT.md.

Believed true: the plugin builds and runs correctly as of this commit — everything through F20 phases 1+2 is built and working (confirmed by Jahni 2026-07-26; the "PENDING BUILD" markers still in fable-idea.md / ARCHITECTURE.md are stale and are queue item Q3). bEnableDensityVolume is already set to false. Lighting is deprecated for now. Live direction before this refactor was 3D density generation (overhangs, caves inside mountains).

UNVERIFIED: nothing yet — no code has been written for this refactor.

Known open bugs, not yet fixed, documented in AUDIT-2026-07.md §1: C1 large-seed noise collapse · C2 three cache keys missing LayoutVersion · C3 FMath::PerlinNoise2D on the SDF hot path (dormant) · C4 GetPlayerPosition zero-vector sentinel · C5 unbounded-join-on-shutdown · C6 diff-layer scaling.

Next single action: Phase 0.5 — the three automation tests (density purity across worker threads, ClassifyTile vs brute force, DiffLayer under contention). Then the Phase 1 skeleton header only. Then STOP for a build. See OPSTACK-PROMPT.md → WHAT TO DO.

---

2026-07-27 — Q4 done: the design docs are in git

What: .gitignore replaced the single !CODEMAP.md exception with !*.md, and committed ARCHITECTURE.md, AUDIT-2026-07.md, CLAUDE.md, OPSTACK-PLAN.md, OPSTACK-PROGRESS.md, OPSTACK-PROMPT.md, REVIEW_FINDINGS.md, fable-idea.md (commit 3128852). CODEMAP.md.bak stays ignored (.bak doesn't match *.md).

Why first, out of queue order: every *.md was ignored, so a git commit of this progress file would have silently recorded nothing. The whole unattended crash-safety discipline depends on this file being committable, so it had to lead.

Believed true / verified: verified — git ls-files "*.md" now lists all nine.

UNVERIFIED: nothing (no C++ touched).

Next single action: Phase 0.5 tests + the Phase 1 skeleton header.

---

2026-07-27 — starting Phase 0.5 (tests) + Phase 1 skeleton header

Plan for this batch, written before doing it (so an abrupt end leaves a marker):

1. Source/VoxelForge/Private/Tests/VoxelForgeDeterminismTest.cpp — density purity, shuffled order, multi-threaded (ParallelFor), bit-equality.
2. Source/VoxelForge/Private/Tests/VoxelForgeClassifyTileTest.cpp — ClassifyTile verdict vs a brute-force sweep of the exact mesher lattice.
3. Source/VoxelForge/Private/Tests/VoxelForgeDiffLayerTest.cpp — N readers + 1 writer, monotonic version, no crash.
4. Public/VoxelDensityOp.h — the Phase 1 contract. HEADER ONLY, nothing wired into GetDensityAt.

Known design constraint found while reading: ClassifyTile and GetDensityAt's per-chunk caches need a live UVoxelStrateManager, whose only entry point is Initialize(UVoxelSettings*, int32) reading TSoftObjectPtr pools. Tests therefore build transient UVoxelStrateDefinition objects and point soft pointers at them. If that resolve turns out not to work headless, test 2 self-skips rather than failing — noted here because a skip that looks like a pass is exactly the kind of thing that hides a bug.

UNVERIFIED: everything below this line until Jahni builds. No test has ever been compiled in this plugin — Private/Tests/ is a new directory and the module has never pulled in AutomationTest.h.

Next single action: write the three test files.

---

2026-07-27 — batch A+B landed, BUILD GATE reached

Commits, oldest first:

Commit	What	Risk
3128852	.gitignore !*.md + the eight design docs into git (Q4)	none
6eec796	the three Phase 0.5 tests + VoxelForgeTestFixture.h	new files only
d41d34e	Public/VoxelDensityOp.h + EVoxelTileClass moved to VoxelTypes.h	header-only
73f6b26	AUDIT C2 fix — five caches now key on GetLayoutVersion()	⚠️ the only commit that touches a hot path
b4d13e0	regression test for C2	new file only

Believed true: 73f6b26 is behaviour-neutral at a static layout — the layout version only moves on Initialize, so a running world sees the same keys it saw before, plus one uint32 compare per chunk-change. It changes behaviour only after a RebuildStrates / editor live edit, which is the bug.

Design decision worth not re-litigating: ClassifyBox in VoxelDensityOp.h is deliberately NOT source-only. ApplyBoundarySeal does Max(D, SealFactor·BaseDensity) inside its band — it forces solid regardless of input, and pure direction (FillOnly) cannot express that. Over a box sitting entirely in the top seal band the source says AllAir, FillOnly kills AllAir, both hypotheses die → Mixed, whereas ClassifyTile returns AllSolid there today. Not a hole, but a silent loss of exactly the trivial tiles T1.d exists to skip. So forcing ops reset the fold, and ops after them still apply. The full mapping from the fold to today's ClassifyTile is written out in the header.

Deliberately NOT done, and why: AUDIT C1 (unbounded SeedF) is a one-line fix at six sites, and OPSTACK-PLAN §8 lists it first. I left it. It is dormant at small seeds, and applying it changes SeedF from Seed to hash(Seed)&0x3FFF — i.e. it re-rolls the whole world's noise even at today's seed, forcing a re-tune. Doing that in the same build Jahni is using to judge four other unverified changes costs him attribution for no present-day benefit. It should land on its own, deliberately, when he has an hour to re-tune. It is still a real bug — do not lose it.

UNVERIFIED — everything above. None of it has been compiled. In particular the test fixture's TSoftObjectPtr → transient-object resolve has never run.

Next single action: build-free queue. Q1 (OPSTACK-DECOMPOSITION.md), then Q2, then Q3.

---

2026-07-27 — build-free queue done. END OF UNATTENDED SESSION.

What (queue items, all zero-build-risk):

• Q1 — OPSTACK-DECOMPOSITION.md (commit c188ee8). All 8 archetypes read line by line and broken into source / combiners / modifiers / structural post, with every FStrateGenerationParams field traced to its destination op. Three findings that change sequencing are in its §0.
• Q2 — the param audit is §9 of that same file. Every field is claimed except WaterLevelRelative, which is a render/water property misfiled in the density struct (and Lerp'd across strate boundaries, where a water plane arguably shouldn't be). Reported, not deleted.
• Q3 — stale markers ticked (commit 831ee2f): fable-idea F20 phases 1/2 + F18, REVIEW_FINDINGS perf pass 2 + batch 3, ARCHITECTURE's biome full-param redesign. NOT ticked: ARCHITECTURE's F6 master material graph — its C++ half is built but the graph is editor-side work that is genuinely still open.
• Q4 — .gitignore (commit 3128852, done first out of order because progress-log commits depended on it).
• CODEMAP §3 rows for every new/moved symbol; OPSTACK-PLAN phase markers ticked.

The three findings, so they are not lost if only this file is read:

1. The op contract probably needs an SDF channel as well as a density channel. Rooms, pits and chimneys are SmoothMin'd in SDF space before a single carve, and three of the four SDF archetypes add roughness to the SDF, not to density. A single-channel Eval can only overwrite — which is also why cross-source SmoothUnion ("a maze inside a mountain that looks like it belongs") is not expressible without it. Decide before porting Maze; it is far cheaper now than after four ports. Not applied — it is Jahni's call.
2. Worm tunnels are why TunnelNetwork can never skip a tile. A fielded 3D-noise carve with no bounds forces CarveOnly everywhere, killing AllSolid for the most-used archetype. Its amplitude is trivially capped by WormStrength, so ~10 lines of scalar bound recovers deep-rock skipping. Suggests one numeric bound belongs in Phase 2, not Phase 3 as the plan has it.
3. Disturbances already carry lattice bounds ClassifyTile discards (it only tests ChasmDensity > 0 strate-wide). A win available to SurfaceWorld independently of everything else.

Believed true: the working tree is a coherent, committed state. Nine commits on experimental, main untouched.

UNVERIFIED — the whole C++ batch. Nothing has been compiled. Specifically at risk: Private/Tests/ is a new directory, the module has never included AutomationTest.h, and the test fixture's TSoftObjectPtr → transient-UVoxelStrateDefinition resolve has never run.

Next single action: BUILD. Then fix what the tests say, then answer OPSTACK-DECOMPOSITION.md §11, then port Maze. Do not write more plugin C++ before the build.

---