Dune/docs/TRUTHTRANCE_CARD_COUNT.md

Truthtrance current named-card counts

Implemented 7 September 2026 local date. This closes a bounded base-game question gap: a player can now ask whether another player currently holds exactly, at least, or at most a specified number of cards with one canonical printed name. Previously the structured hand fact checked existence only; asking an AI the knowable equivalent in freeform produced unknown.

Compound current-fact authoring — 26 October 2026

Current-fact questions now expose the existing structured AND/OR expression envelope instead of limiting the form to two facts. A player can add up to eight terms to a group, nest AND/OR groups, switch each group's meaning and remove individual facts or groups. Removing one of two siblings leaves the remaining fact directly; other conditions and their values are preserved. The preview and submitted action retain the whole tree without truncation.

The existing parser accepts at most sixteen total nodes, counting groups, and depth four. Those software input limits are now shared by the parser and editor through game/truth-fact-expression.ts; they are not newly asserted printed restrictions. Candidate edits that exceed them are unavailable. Every leaf uses the existing entitled fields and validation, including invalid values beyond the old second fact. Invalid structure or any invalid leaf blocks Ask publicly. Busy/wrong-owner/absent-target controls cannot submit a question.

The original truthAsk fact action, queue, card custody and answer projection are unchanged. All current facts are evaluated when the target answers. AND requires every branch; OR requires at least one. The player publishes one aggregate Yes/No/unknown result, without a separate answer per condition or a future promise to retain current cards, spice or forces. Existing minimal AI answers use their entitled result; no strategy or calibration is added.

components/truth-fact-expression-fields.tsx and truth-fact-question.tsx provide controlled edit/submit handlers; the stateful original Truthtrance panel owns the draft. Battle-plan and shipment/mixed-shipment authoring keep their separate existing controls. No saved field, action kind or mode gate is added. This closes the current-fact form cap, not full Truthtrance acceptance.

Frozen proof passes 11 files,80/80, types/lint/build and eight native engine/GameTable SSR/actual edit-and-Ask callback journeys. The original Basic A/E/H/G setup/Storm source uses11 public actions, including the native two dials and Emperor Ready. Actual callbacks author three/eight-term AND/OR, mixed nesting, sixteen nodes and depth four; truthful target aggregate, one discard and original Storm Ready resumption take seven more actions each. All33 original cards remain. Eight engine cases cover24 flat variants, four nested variants, size/depth bounds, refusals and four-profile legal answers; thirteen controlled form and four structure cases add edit/validation evidence. Private report/logs: /home/quintine/.local/share/dune/checkpoints/20261026-truth-fact-expression-proof-v2/; journeys/HTML: adjacent 20261026-truth-fact-expression-runtime/. No saved-room/D1/server or recovery operation occurs. This native source is Basic; DOM/hydration, browser/mobile/deployed and broader combination acceptance remain due. Historical named-count evidence below is separately dated.

Source and interpretation

The official November 2020 GF9 FAQ, printed p.8 permits game-related yes/no questions and combinations with AND/OR. Its separate future-action discussion limits commitments to the current turn. The official PDF's indexed page text was retrieved again during this implementation; a newly downloaded local PDF is not claimed. The earlier nonbattle audit records the same authority and remaining promise work.

Applying that general permission to a question such as whether the respondent holds two Shields is an implementation inference, not an additional printed card-count rule. It concerns known present custody and needs no disputed future-action or expansion ruling. Counting cards does not promise that the respondent will keep them after answering.

Contract and behavior

The new leaf inside the existing fact question is:

{ kind: 'handCount', name: string, compare: 'eq' | 'gte' | 'lte', value: number }

value must be a nonnegative safe integer. Thresholds are not artificially limited by a current hand limit or battle dial. Names use the same exact canonical TRUTH_CARD_NAMES membership as existing hand facts. Case variants and unknown names are rejected; no new alias or combat-role inference is introduced. Shield Snooper and Portable Snooper do not count as Shield or Snooper.

The 16 October canonical registry lives in game/truthtrance-card-names.ts. Ordinary/Ix, separate Richese cache and all three independent Ecaz names feed the same exact current-fact and named-slot condition controls. Recognizing a name does not select/deal its family or reclassify a special as a weapon. The actual named Reinforcements/native-dial continuation is recorded in the native fee contract. Native battle question previews, answers/history and server logs receive canonical combat-location labels, not an Arrakis-only territory lookup.

game/truthtrance-card-count.ts provides the pure parser, matcher and sentence formatter. The engine adapter catches parser failures as TruthError, preserving the existing rejected-action path. It evaluates physical entries in the respondent's actual current hand when answering. A used card retained in hand counts; cards already in a deck, discard or on-table effect do not. The helper relies on the engine's physical inventory contract rather than deduplicating or repairing corrupted hands.

The shared Truthtrance engine handles priority, ownership, answer validation, exact single discard, history and interrupted-state continuation. A dishonest or unknown answer to this knowable leaf is rejected. In composed expressions, existing three-valued AND/OR rules still apply when another clause is unknown. Only the aggregate expected answer is projected to the target; other seats get no matching-card IDs, counts or per-clause answers. The published question and answer intentionally reveal their logical consequence.

All four AI profiles consume the existing target-only expected-answer projection. Their proactive question selection is unchanged. Root integration adds the named-count selector and fields in the existing Truthtrance controls and a rules-reference entry. No shared bot privilege or public mode gate was changed by this helper.

Focused verification

tests/truthtrance-card-count.test.ts contains eight tests:

• Four pure-helper tests cover all exact physical Shield multiplicities, 120 comparator combinations including zero and MAX_SAFE_INTEGER thresholds, exact-name exclusions, malformed input, normalized records, no input mutation and question text.
• Seventy-five real declaration/priority/question/answer cases cover zero through four held Shields and threshold/comparator boundaries. They check target-only expected answers, dishonest/unknown/wrong-actor rejection, JSON continuation, exact single discard, unchanged hand and physical deck inventory, and duplicate-answer rejection.
• Malformed nested clauses reject atomically even if another OR clause would determine the answer.
• Mixed current-count/spice/legacy-unknown-traitor clauses preserve aggregate disclosure and unknown semantics.
• Sixteen all-profile cases produce legal answers, preserve input projections, exclude other actors and remain unchanged after unrelated private opponent-hand/balance perturbations.

Final focused run: 8/8 pass, 389.668139ms. The two initial failures were test expectations using undefined instead of the established public null answer projection; no runtime defect was found. Formatting and targeted lint pass. Broader suite and browser results belong to the coordinator's integrated checkpoint, not this focused report.

Integrated checkpoint evidence

The coordinator reviewed the helper, adapter and all eight tests, integrated the accessible card-name/comparison/count form and rules topic, and read the two additional production-SQLite tests in tests/truthtrance-spice-recovery.test.ts. Those cover restored comparisons, target-only answers, unchanged hidden hands/auction, rejected false/unknown/wrong-owner answers, and concurrent answers committing one discard/history record through the production CAS.

Final registered suites: 1,577/1,577 rules/client/component tests in /tmp/dune-market-truth-final-full.log (58.53s) and 143/143 multiplayer/API tests in /tmp/dune-market-truth-final-multiplayer.log (21.18s). Final typecheck, lint and production build pass: /tmp/dune-market-truth-final-type.log, /tmp/dune-market-truth-final-lint.log, /tmp/dune-market-truth-build.log. All processes were polled to terminal success. The first broad run used an earlier, subsequently rejected all-phase market implementation and two outdated count-test null expectations; it is retained at /tmp/dune-market-truth-full.log and is not the final result.

Browser QA reused only the explicitly isolated room 8S3MRDEK, preserving its old snapshot before staging with /tmp/dune-stage-market-count.ts count. The new scenario holds one Truthtrance for the human and two real Shields for a Hard Emperor AI. The human declared the card, selected Number of a named card, verified a negative count disabled Ask publicly, restored count two and inspected the full desktop and 390×844 mobile form. The mobile button asked whether the AI held at least two Shields. Its actual paced response was Yes; the game resumed Revival, the human hand became empty, the opponent retained both Shields and one Truthtrance entered discard. History and state remained after refresh. Final snapshot /tmp/dune-count-qa-final.json, version16. Temporary viewport sizing was reset. This is a staged journey check, not a full-game compliance claim.

Remaining limits

This is one current-fact class. It does not implement arbitrary prose interpretation, category counts, future custody promises, nonbattle action commitments, or complete Truthtrance compliance. It does not certify Advanced availability, full expansion support, or complete multiplayer/browser acceptance. Those boundaries remain in the reference and ongoing implementation ledger.