Hold the Flood — Design Review
REV103 · r4 · 2026-09-06 16:30 UTC · Independent Design Critic · In review — review of DES103 r7, the Design Document at revision r13, and World and Mystery r17, the two revisions PMR003 asked for. Both were saved before REV103 r3 existed (r13 three minutes before, r17 two seconds before), so each closure below quotes its correction and the one item neither could have read is carried. REV103 r3–r1 are on the REV103 archive; REV102 r6–r1 on the REV102 archive; REV101 r8–r1 on the REV101 archive; every revision is in page history (REV103 r3 dcd90e · r2 3ff337 · r1 285925 · REV102 r6 538724 · … · REV101 r1 7ad187).
What was reviewed
| Artifact | Revision | UTC | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Document — DES103 r7 (document r13) | 50046f (r12 50840d) | 16:13 | Against PMR003 and REV103 r2: the arrival/stun/burst sequence; "can reach"; stale handoffs replaced; the valve table, two supplies and coil-route qualification as lead proposals; state tables and ledgers moved to a new Appendix C. Diffed against r12; §13 re-tallied |
| World and Mystery — WLD102 r17 | 26f497 (r16 812fd6) | 16:16 | PMR003 2 in full: valve table (V, V2, V3: found shut, set open; connectivity, not order; success = the sluice-head lamp); two supplies; drain R above V3's weir; the coil-route qualification; the workshop clause removed. States that r13 needs only the weir clause to match |
| Tasks 6e92d0, PM Reviews e71669, Brief 28fb1c | unchanged |
Verdict — revise: one kill, one clause, one sentence, one deletion
r13 and r17 resolve REV103-6 and -7 and half of -8 exactly as asked, and the ledgers now live where the owner need not read them. What remains: the one-unit residual of REV103-2, which only REV103 r3 raised; the weir clause the world designer added after r13, which §11 must lift; the stale sentence at the end of the live PM report; and one question the finale's supply answer opens rather than closes — whether the relay's channel is energised water or flowing water — which decides whether opening the three valves lights the yard from the relay's side. No verdict is offered on r14 before it exists.
REV103 r3 items against r13 and r17, with corrections quoted
| Item | Correction | Verified |
|---|---|---|
| REV103-2 (residual) — the scene alternates; the rule fills the emptier battery first | r13 predates REV103 r3. §13 still: "Two stragglers, two motes, collected into the first battery"; "kills sixteen… the coil's battery from two to ten, the arc's from nothing to eight"; Appendix C ledger 3:00 "2 / 0", 7:30 "10 / 8" | Open, unchanged. Under §5's rule the tally is 1 / 1 at 3:00 and 9 / 9 at 7:30, and §8's discharge needs a full battery. Seventeen kills, or one straggler's mote on the way to the hall, closes it |
| REV103-6 — stun, arrival and burst timing | r13 §13: "8:20. With about sixty of them in the water, the second discharge: they stop, stunned for eight seconds; six large motes… collected along the channel's edge during the stun"; "The burst: for ten seconds the cutter's hits jump body to body through the packed, recovering crowd… The burst is spent on a recovering crowd, not a stunned one, because a stun lasts eight seconds and a burst ten; how many it kills is a proposal, not a demonstrated outcome." Ledger rows 8:20 and 8:30 match | Resolved. Dispatch 8:00, channel full by 8:20, stun to 8:28, burst from 8:28 — one sequence on one clock |
| REV103-7 — the finale's causal explanation | r17: the valve table ("V… shut (opened in tier two)… open; V2, the pool valve… shut… open; V3, the head valve… shut… open"; "Success condition: the sluice-head lamp… lights while the yard is lit or during a discharge in the pool; any of the three left shut leaves it dark. Order never matters"); the coil route ("a crowd held by the still-lit B1 stays where it is"); the Shut row ("the workshop stays useful"); two supplies with "Drain R sits on the relay's feed above V3's weir, so opening it empties only the relay's channel: the head pool, the junction pool and the yard channel keep their water". r13 §11 carries the same valve table and supplies as lead proposals, without the weir clause | Resolved on the world page; §11 lacks the weir clause — without it, "The drain valve empties the relay's feed… and touches nothing else" is false with the valves open, as r17 says. One clause to lift (the mirror rule) |
| REV103-8 — superseded live wording | §1: "so any crowd that can reach it and has no nearer lit beacon starts toward it". Appendix B's "Open handoffs" replaced. But the live PM report paragraph (r13's own, line 559) still ends: "One PM request: rule on the routing model… and say whether the alternative still goes to the owner as a decision" — ruled at D016, answered, and now stated in decision 3 | Half resolved; one sentence to delete |
One new item
REV103-9 — What the relay's channel carries decides whether opening the valves lights the yard (both pages)
- Where: World r17 and r13 §11, the relay chain's Understand row: "The relay is a device under clause 2: it works only while its channel carries current"; and the two-supplies paragraph: "the relay has always run on the sluice-head channel that feeds it, its own [always-wet] water… the door is on the pool side's dead line and is fed only when V, V2 and V3 join that water to a lit yard or to a discharge"; the valve table: V3 joins the head pool to "the sluice-head channel that feeds the relay"; the success condition: the lamp lights "while the yard is lit or during a discharge".
- Why it is unresolved: the document uses "current" for electricity everywhere else, and clause 1 says current flows through water to everything the water connects. If the relay's channel is energised water (as "a device under clause 2… carries current" says), then opening V3, V2 and V joins it to the head pool, the junction pool and the yard channel, and the yard beacon, the hatch and the sluice-head lamp light from the relay's side with the panel on causeway or off — the success condition is wrong, the "price" is permanent while the valves are open, and the finale's access is a lure the pages do not price. If instead the relay's channel is flowing water that turns the drum — which "always-wet", "empties the relay's feed and stops the drum" and the weir all suggest — then the relay is hydraulic, not "a device under the power clause", and the chain's sentence must say so; the door is then the only electrical thing at the head, and everything else in r17 holds.
- Consequence: small in words, but it is the one physical fact the finale rests on, and the two readings give different games at the sluice head.
- Category: missing design detail (one sentence; the world designer's, then mirrored in §11).
- Minimal change: state which. The hydraulic reading needs the least: "The relay is not on the power clause: its drum is turned by the water flowing in its feed, and that water carries no charge; drain R stops the flow. The door beside it is electrical, on the pool side's dead line." Then the valve table, the success condition and the drain's effect are all true as written.
What holds
Everything credited at REV103 r3, plus: the arrival/stun/burst sequence; §1's rule wording; the finale's valve table and supplies on both pages (subject to REV103-9); Appendix C holding the state tables and both ledgers, which leaves §12 and §13 as prose for the owner — the length note from REV103 r2, taken. Expedition one still closes to the unit; expedition six closes once REV103-2's one unit is fixed.
Finding index — where every finding lives
Superseded reviews: REV103 r3 · r2 · r1 · REV102 r6 and earlier on the REV102 archive · REV101 r8 and earlier on the REV101 archive.
| Finding | Raised in | Status |
|---|---|---|
| REV101 Findings 1–5, Secondary 1–5, N1–N17; REV102-1 to -13 | REV101, REV102 | Resolved, closed, or delivered |
| PMR002 1–4; PMR003 1a, 1b, 1d, 3 | PM | Met in r13 |
| REV103-1, -3, -4, -5 | REV103 r1–r2 | Resolved at r10–r12 |
| REV103-6 — stun, arrival, burst | REV103 r3 | Resolved at r13 |
| REV103-7 — finale: valves, supplies, coil route, workshop | REV103 r3 | Resolved at World r17; §11 needs the weir clause |
| REV103-8 — superseded live wording | REV103 r3 | Half resolved: §1 done; one PM-report sentence remains |
| REV103-2 (residual) — one unit at the discharge threshold | REV103 r1, r3 | Open — not yet read by the lead |
| REV103-9 — the relay's channel: energised or flowing | REV103 r4 | Open — World first, then §11 |
PM report — REV103 r4
- Task: REV103. Artifact: Design Review, REV103 r4 (this page); r3 moved to the REV103 archive verbatim.
- Reviewed: Design Document 50046f in full, diffed against 50840d; World and Mystery 26f497, diffed against 812fd6. §13 re-tallied under §5's rule; every closed item's correction quoted; the finale's supply sentences read on both pages against clauses 1 and 2.
- Changed decisions: none by this role.
- Evidence: the quoted sentences and the tally. No players, sessions, scores or asset checks; nothing built, prototyped, tested or created; no external source verified or repeated as fact.
- Verdict: revise — REV103-2 (one kill or one mote), the weir clause into §11, one sentence deleted from the PM report, and REV103-9 (one sentence on the world page, then mirrored). r13 and r17 have done everything else PMR003 and REV103 r3 asked.
- Remaining risk: REV103-9 is the only item that could be a design change rather than a sentence; the hydraulic reading makes it a sentence.
- Next handoff: world designer — REV103-9; lead — REV103-2, the weir clause, the PM-report sentence. I review the resulting revisions when they exist and post nothing before then except a PM correction. One exact PM request: none.