| Mechanism families / major placed mechanisms | 5 / 13 | 9/24; 14/40 | Thirteen major instances need geometry, warnings, stages, persistence and rearming; fixed room services and ordinary joins remain separately owned interfaces |
| Language chains across at least two languages | 4 | 8 / 12 | Evidence, alternatives, discriminating action, correction and useful transfer |
| Mystery or personal investigation chains | 4 | 7 / 11 | Causal evidence and consequences rather than additional exposition |
| Person-linked home projects | 5 | 9 / 14 | Voluntary contribution, an observable result, reclaim and personal consequence |
| Special connection challenges | 2 | 4 / 6 | Authored constraint/recovery problems, not the count of ordinary joins |
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The current SMALL first pass is **4 regions / 24 modules / 40 rooms / 12 objectives / 4 ship assemblies / 5 people / 15 scenes / 12 equipment definitions / 6 ordinary + 3 special roles / 10 encounters including 2 setpieces / 5 mechanism families / 13 major placed mechanisms / 4 language + 4 story chains / 5 home projects / 2 special connection challenges**. These are prepared proposal counts, not an owner-selected game size. Thirteen is not every interactive object: R26/R33 service transformations, the R02/R03 board/rack, ordinary doors and join faces stay owned by their room/interface descriptions rather than becoming extra P-identities. Campaign36's final evidence-entry count is still pending its focused correction and is not inferred from its earlier nineteen-entry draft.
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The 15 SMALL survivor scenes include rescue and home follow-through. Home-project scenes should be assigned within that ledger where possible; if an additional scene is necessary, record the increment instead of silently exceeding fifteen. Branches are variations of a named scene, but each materially different consequence still needs writing and state review.
Likewise, a language chain and a mystery chain may share evidence and an objective. Give the shared observation one content identity, then separately specify its linguistic inference and narrative consequence. A count of eight chains does not imply eight disjoint routes or eight extra objective sets. Conversely, calling two investigations the same chain cannot erase a distinct test or correction.
@@ 57,47 59,48 @@
|---|---|---|
| Each of24 reusable modules | Proposed internal geometry, entrance/fixture relationships, available actions and intended discovery/pressure role | Full variants and compatible interface combinations, detailed cue/interaction placement and authored exceptional states |
| Each of40 placed rooms | Named identity/module, region and objective links, actual contents/reward, first-visit/revisit purpose, proposed access and recovery constraints | Exact per-instance placement, every selected branch/transient state and concrete consequences across permitted arrangements |
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| Each of12 placed mechanisms | First-version geometry, warning, action/stages, reset/rearm and persistence boundary, usable alternative/recovery and linked discovery | Full variant/combined-encounter details, exact thresholds and exhaustive state/recovery paths |
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| Each of13 major placed mechanisms | First-version geometry, warning, action/stages, reset/rearm and persistence boundary, usable alternative/recovery and linked discovery | Full variant/combined-encounter details, exact thresholds and exhaustive state/recovery paths |
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A room brief may reference its module and a mechanism brief, but cannot omit its own distinguishing content. V1 retains Design Coverage's twelve placed-mechanism obligation; the new allowance below makes it explicit. Detailed campaign work extends these accepted briefs rather than charging them again.
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A room brief may reference its module and a mechanism brief, but cannot omit its own distinguishing content. V1 retains Design Coverage's thirteen-major-mechanism obligation; the new allowance below makes it explicit. Detailed campaign work extends these accepted briefs rather than charging them again.
**Detailed campaign specification:** every approved placed room, mechanism, clue, scene, reward and ending branch has concrete entry/exit, observation, action, interruption, persistence and recovery behaviour. Shared definitions are referenced; instance-specific differences are authored. Precise tuning may still require later evidence. This is larger than a map of twelve objectives.
**Production and validation:** engine architecture, actual tools, runtime content, assets, integration, performance, accessibility testing and real-player evidence. These are a separate, currently unauthorised phase. Documentation completion does not establish a working or enjoyable game.
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## Remaining v1 allowance
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## Current remaining v1 judgment
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This is a **fresh PM planning estimate as of 8 September, 18:10 Jerusalem**, for a SMALL-level first-pass wiki, beginning with outcomes24/25 still underway. It replaces use of the original partial111–208 hours as a remaining-work total. It does not revise the owning articles' historical estimates or pretend those were timesheets.
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The prior **144–247 role-hour** envelope is retained as a **dated 8 September planning history**. It described work beginning before Regional25 through scope/handoff and combined authoring, review, response and PM integration. It was never a timesheet, and accepted outcomes cannot now be charged again in full. Fast assignment-to-post turnaround records elapsed pipeline time; they do not measure the productive labor needed for every branch, source check or later content implementation.
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Each author row below covers only the remaining v1 outcome, not the completed first-pass contracts or the later exhaustive inventories. Shared integration has its own allowance.
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As of the accepted Mechanical35 closeout on 9 September, v1 has usable first-pass contracts and finite inventories across all fifteen domains. The remaining M3 work is narrower:
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| Remaining author outcome | Included depth and exclusion boundary | Author role-hours |
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| Finite remainder | Unique work still required | Judgment allowance |
|---|---|---:|
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| Regional/objective map | Four regions, twelve objectives, two viable dependency orders and allocation constraints; excludes the room/mechanism briefs in the next row | 8–14 |
| Acquisition, build/combat interfaces and roster | Sources for twelve parts, progression/rig-growth proposal, shared controllers and a completed nine-role roster using the three existing creature briefs where suitable; write only missing roles and distinct integration, not those briefs again; excludes exhaustive port/encounter variants | 10–18 |
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| Survival variants | Representative canister/loadout variants and provisional quantities; excludes UI and balance validation | 3–6 |
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| Story and ending map | Four mystery/personal chains, causal alternatives, visible choices and consequences; references shared clues/scenes | 10–18 |
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| Cast and home map | Five arcs/fifteen scene briefs plus five linked project operations; shared scenes counted once, no final dialogue | 12–20 |
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| Two-language map | Four chains with tests/corrections/later use and register relationship; references already-authored evidence | 8–14 |
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| Information and options inventory | Main cues, journal/manifest structure and accessibility/default interactions for v1; excludes exhaustive presentation variants | 6–10 |
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| State/content interface completion | Representative transition/reference/compatibility matrix and explicit provisional recovery policy; excludes full migration/storage design | 5–9 |
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| Scope and final v1 handoff | This scope reconciliation and a revision-specific development proposal with conditions, staffing and estimate; no implementation | 6–10 |
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| Campaign36 correction and disposition | Finish the actual-ID/evidence/state crosswalk against current sources; integrate only accepted factual corrections. Its final evidence count is pending. | **4–8 role-hours** |
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| Scope/handoff37 | This two-article refresh, one focused critique, at most one reasoned response and PM disposition. | **14–24 role-hours** |
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| Whole-v1 coherence disposition | One revision-specific cross-domain pass, bounded repairs only where an actual contradiction remains, and a final M3 disposition. It does not reopen every closed domain review. | **10–18 role-hours** |
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| **Current finite M3 remainder** | Overlap removed; includes author/reviewer/PM work still ahead at the time of this judgment. | **28–50 role-hours** |
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Author subtotal: **94–163 role-hours**. Add **24–40** for one focused independent domain/coherence review allocation, **12–20** for consolidated author responses, and **14–24** for PM cross-article integration/decision relay: **144–247 role-hours** in this planning envelope. Do not add the outline's older coherence-review allowance or each article's historical first-pass review again. The review allocation must cover both domain checks and one cross-domain pass; discovering a gap requires an explicit revision.
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This is a workload allowance, not a countdown or observed throughput claim. Campaign36 and scope37 are already in flight, so elapsed calendar time may be shorter than dividing these hours serially. The critical risks are a source contradiction that needs a bounded parent repair, a consequential unresolved interface, or unavailable review/integration capacity—not prose volume.
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**Revision after focused review:** the draft116–201 allowance omitted an explicit room/mechanism brief package despite Coverage's v1 promise. Adding20–34 author hours plus4–6 review,2 response and2–4 integration gives28–46 additional role-hours and the revised144–247. This is newly exposed scope, not slower observed throughput. The v1 target/window is retained provisionally because its parallel-content/integration buffer was not derived from the old total; confidence remains low-medium, and the9 September re-estimate must check capacity against this larger ledger.
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The PM's adopted **F1.14** calendar remains the current management forecast: M2 coherent core **11 September (10–14 September)**; complete first-pass M3 wiki **14 September (11–18 September), low confidence**; M4 detailed campaign **10 November (20 October–1 December), low confidence**. This scope analysis does not silently replace those dates. The 28–50-hour remainder is compatible with the M3 range only if the existing Lead, Reviewer, Systems and PM work can continue in parallel and the coherence pass finds bounded corrections. A new technical/production specialist on 10 September is conditional on a concrete independent gap and is not counted as available capacity. No extra permanent role or two guaranteed specialists are assumed.
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These are judgement-based allowances, not calibrated forecasts of agent typing speed. Some remaining work is already in flight and should be removed from the balance when its stated depth is accepted. Track actual assignment-to-acceptance elapsed time separately from productive effort. Fast prose is useful, but a fifteen-minute brief does not measure the work of authoring and checking every concrete branch.
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## M4 detailed-campaign boundary and allowance
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For calendar planning, retaining **22 September, likely18–29 September**, allows roughly eight to sixteen working days from8 September, with content streams overlapping and PM integration/owner decisions on the critical path. For this schedule, a working day is a6–8-hour active operating window in which available roles can overlap; it is neither a cap of6–8 summed role-hours nor a promise of that many productive hours from every role. Two additional specialist streams are planned9–10 September. This is not a division of144–247 by four permanently busy agents and is not6–8 hours of owner work. Claude is currently paused; no resumption is assumed before the owner confirms it. If the additional streams are still unavailable on10 September, use a provisional current-team scenario of25 September for v1, likely22 September–2 October, pending that day's capacity check. A late owner answer moves only dependent work; a critical shared-rule change may consume the existing buffer and requires its own revision. Re-estimate9 September18:00, or earlier if the inventory, staffing or a critical choice changes.
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M4 extends accepted first-pass briefs into exhaustive authored content; it does not re-charge their existing definitions. A current SMALL candidate needs the following distinct work, with shared observations, scenes and fixtures referenced once:
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## Deeper inventory is separate
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| M4 workstream | Unique deeper work, excluding current first pass | Judgment allowance |
+
|---|---|---:|
+
| Rooms, objectives and arrangements | Exact stateful variants for 24 modules/40 rooms/12 objectives, permitted arrangements, traversal, recovery sides and the two special connection challenges. | **90–150 role-hours** |
+
| Encounters and mechanisms | Exact geometry/population/cue/timing/rearm combinations for 10 encounters including 2 setpieces and 13 major mechanisms; fixed services stay in room work. | **55–95** |
+
| Campaign evidence and choice | Full clue distribution, corrections and consequences for 4 language + 4 story chains, deduplicated against objectives and rooms. | **50–85** |
+
| Cast, rescue and home | Final writing/state variants for 5 people/15 primary scenes/5 home projects; host and branch variants cost work without becoming new primary scenes. | **45–75** |
+
| System detail and information | Exhaustive equipment/survival/build edge cases, exact cue/string/control variants and accessibility equivalence, deduplicated against encounter/room states. | **65–110** |
+
| Persistence, compatibility and integration | Complete transition/reference/compatibility matrix, version policy, cross-domain review, corrections and PM disposition. | **45–75** |
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| **M4 SMALL candidate total** | Documentation and authored campaign only; no implementation, assets, recruitment, player sessions or technical validation. | **350–590 role-hours** |
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Existing follow-on estimates identify distinct detailed work: survival22–39 role-hours; information35–59 plus a conditional8–14 author-hour survivor-information increment with review additional; equipment48–78; traps/region pressure33–55; state35–59. These are **overlapping depth envelopes to reconcile, not a new total**. Some v1 work above advances them. When that work closes, deduct its actual accepted scope before forecasting the deeper remainder; do not add both full envelopes.
+
The range is broad because actual branch density, permitted arrangements, final dialogue depth and Campaign36's accepted evidence ledger are not yet known. It is not derived from agent typing speed, and it does not prove that the 10 November forecast is achievable. That forecast remains a low-confidence calendar judgment: it requires parallel authoring, bounded revision, no fundamental core-rule reversal and timely owner decisions only where work truly depends on them. Three representative detailed packages—a repeatable mechanism room, a two-language investigation with correction, and a short rescue/home arc—should be authored and independently checked before narrowing this allowance or extrapolating campaign duration.
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They still omit most concrete room/instance design, final cast dialogue and branches, the complete clue distribution, detailed endings, implementation, assets and validation. The detailed campaign target therefore remains **10 November, likely20 October–1 December**, with low confidence. It is a provisional calendar judgement, not a result derived from those five ranges. Before tightening it, write and independently check three representative detailed packages: a repeatable mechanism room, a two-language investigation with correction, and a short rescue/home arc. Count unique work, revision burden and shared definitions. Actual pipeline and player evidence require later phase approval.
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The owner's **30/90/100–200-hour** ambitions remain unproven. SMALL is a costed candidate for estimating authored work, not an owner-selected downgrade or a demonstrated playtime band. TARGET and STRETCH remain alternatives whose branch interactions require their own estimate rather than multiplication from SMALL.
