pog-mcp 0.9.1 → 0.9.3

package/package.json

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 {
   "name": "pog-mcp",
-  "version": "0.9.1",
+  "version": "0.9.3",
   "type": "module",
   "description": "MCP server that lets an AI agent play Proof of Goal — wallet, sign-in, squad building, and matches as typed tools.",
   "license": "MIT",

package/skill/reference/measurements.md

@@ -644,6 +644,1062 @@ secondary edge on top. An agent that only differentiates its roles and never
 touches the keeper beats a naive squad 44.0% of the time and loses 9.7% — better
 than four wins to one loss, with the rest drawn.
 
+## Which engine constant is a detectable lever? (`constant-sweep.mts`)
+
+Every other section here sweeps a SQUAD and holds the rules fixed. This one does
+the opposite. It pins a basket of published archetypes and moves the hardcoded
+numbers in `packages/engine/src/engine.ts`, one at a time, because that is the
+shape a "weekly rule" would ship: one global constant moved for everybody.
+
+The statistic is not "did the game change" — that is easy — but **"did the
+ordering of squads change"**. A rule that makes every match higher-scoring
+without moving anyone's best answer is a texture knob, not a lever.
+
+**How the sweep reaches a `const`.** `engine.ts` is read, one exact string is
+replaced (the match count is asserted, so an engine edit fails the probe loudly
+instead of silently sweeping nothing), its two relative imports are rewritten to
+absolute paths, and the result is written to a `mkdtemp` directory and imported.
+Nothing is written inside the repository. `fair` needs no patch: production never
+sets it — there is no `fair:` outside the engine's own tests, and every engine
+input is built from an explicit field list — so it is a global constant in
+practice, and setting it on both squads IS the rule change.
+
+**Not swept: the zone-press coefficient.** Its selector is broken — every
+candidate weight is `0.0`, so `weightedPick` falls back to "the first non-GK
+slot" — and a coefficient in front of an undefined selection measures nothing.
+Forbidden until the selector is decided.
+
+### The statistic, and why not the obvious one
+
+Rows below are in **win-equivalent share**: a win is 1, a draw is 0.5, a loss is
+0, and every match counts. The obvious alternative — win rate among DECIDED
+matches — conditions on something the swept constants themselves move. Free-kick
+occurrence takes the regulation draw rate from 57.9% to 38.1% across its range,
+so a decided-only percentage mixes "who wins more" with "which matches got
+decided at all". It also inflates the number the activation gate is read
+against: an 11/80/9 record reads 55% decided, clearing a +5pp gate, while the
+squad's actual advantage over all matches is one point. The gate's own
+justification is stated in weekly LEAGUE POINTS, so the statistic it is compared
+to has to include the draws that earn them.
+
+Deltas are **paired**. Every condition replays one seed column, so the default
+cell and the swept cell are matched match for match, and the test differences
+the columns rather than treating them as independent samples. An unpaired
+denominator would only be safe if the residual covariance stayed positive, and a
+rule that REVERSES a fixture is exactly where it need not — which would make the
+unpaired test anti-conservative on the cells this probe most wants to be sure
+about. (Both of these were review findings on the first version of this section,
+which used decided-only percentages and an unpaired z.)
+
+The same seed column is shared across the two MODES as well, and `gameFlg` is
+read only after minute 90 — so a match decided in regulation keeps that result
+in knockout mode, and the two modes' estimates are positively correlated. The
+exposure-weighted test therefore does not add their errors in quadrature; it
+takes the Cauchy-Schwarz upper bound, which is looser than the truth and cannot
+be anti-conservative. That is the only direction an acceptance gate may err in.
+
+### Controls
+
+| Control | Result |
+| --- | --- |
+| Mirror, `gameFlg 0` (one squad against itself; true z = 0) | z **+0.31** |
+| Mirror, `gameFlg 1` | z **+0.28** |
+| Patch identity — the temp-dir pipeline at the SHIPPED values vs the stock engine | 1,000 matches identical |
+| `fair` identity — `fair: 5` written out vs `fair` omitted | 1,000 matches identical |
+| Paired alignment — a re-patched shipped-value engine vs the default COLUMN | 200,000 matches, largest per-match difference **0** |
+| Counter trigger, swept 0% to 100% of eligible turnovers, in both baskets | must be REJECTED, and is — the run ABORTS if it is not |
+
+**Every control in that table aborts the run; none of them warns.** A mirror
+that fails is the condition that makes every table unreadable, and a negative
+control that PASSES is an acceptance bar that has failed its own calibration.
+Printing "bar too loose" and exiting 0 was itself a defect — an invalid run
+could be consumed as a successful one.
+
+One more number is counted every run, and it is a MEASUREMENT rather than a
+control — nothing aborts on it, because a knockout draw is a legitimate outcome
+to count rather than a failure:
+
+| Measured every run | Result |
+| --- | --- |
+| Knockout draws, across both baskets | **0 in 5,440,000** knockout matches |
+
+That draw count is a claim this section originally got wrong in the other
+direction. It said knockout mode "has no draws by construction". It nearly does:
+`runExtraTimeLoop` breaks a tie on INEQUALITY, so extra time either produces a
+golden goal or falls through to a sudden-death shootout. But an earlier version
+of that check read "a score changed", and one attack CAN score for both sides —
+a post-play layoff gives a second shot, and a `gk_catch` can launch a counter
+that scores — which ended extra time level and skipped the shootout. The
+constants swept here move goal production, which is exactly what that path keyed
+on, so the column is counted every run instead of declared.
+
+The patch-identity control is the one this section could not do without: without
+it, "the constant did it" and "the import rewrite did it" are the same
+observation. The alignment control is the one the PAIRED test could not do
+without — a paired test cannot detect misaligned columns from its own output, so
+a freshly patched shipped-value engine is required to reproduce the default
+column match for match, in order.
+
+3,400,000 matches in the narrow basket (5 archetypes, 10 fixtures, 10,000
+matches each, 17 conditions, both modes) plus 7,480,000 in the wide one.
+**Bonferroni over m = 8,320 pre-registered comparisons, two-sided: |z| >= 4.53.**
+That m prices the SEARCHES, not just the tests. A gate cell does not spend one
+hypothesis, and BOTH of its sides are data-chosen. The baseline side picks a
+leader out of K and builds a band around it — noisy standings could have named
+any of the K, so it could have surfaced any pair, K(K−1)/2, not just the K−1 the
+leader it happened to pick needed. The swept side then reads a head-to-head
+against that band, another K(K−1)/2. So K(K−1): **20 hypotheses per narrow gate
+cell and 110 per wide one**, not 5 and 11. Every gate is also derived at all three
+exposure weights, and all three are charged. On top of that sit the two fixture
+families: the narrow basket's 10 fixtures and the wide basket's 55, at every
+swept value — without the second, an axis could be called INERT while
+significantly moving fixtures among the six archetypes the wide basket exists to
+cover.
+
+**The bar is a z and does not move with the sample size; the effect it
+corresponds to does.** There are two test families here and they have different
+answers — the fixture deltas are a PAIRED test between two conditions, the
+activation gate is a ONE-SAMPLE test of a head-to-head share, and their standard
+errors are unrelated. For the fixture deltas, per basket (they run at different
+N, so averaging would let the better-powered one speak for the other):
+
+Two numbers, because they are two different things. `bar x SE` is the effect
+whose EXPECTED z equals the cutoff — a significance threshold at about 50%
+power, not a minimum detectable effect. The 80%-power figure adds z(0.80):
+
+| median / worst | significance threshold | 80%-power effect |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| narrow, regulation | 1.0 / 2.2pp | 1.2 / 2.6pp |
+| narrow, knockouts | 1.8 / 3.0pp | 2.1 / 3.6pp |
+| wide, regulation | 1.8 / 3.8pp | 2.1 / 4.5pp |
+| wide, knockouts | 2.9 / 4.8pp | 3.4 / **5.7pp** |
+
+Read the worst column, not the median, since "every test is powered enough" is a
+claim about the tail — and read it honestly: **the worst wide-knockout fixture
+cell is not powered to catch a 5pp effect at 80%.** Every other cell is. That
+qualification applies to the MARGINS classification, which is what the fixture
+deltas decide; the gate is a different test, and its own answer is below.
+
+For the gate itself the answer is different and sharper: **no pair was ever
+formed.** At every swept value, in both baskets, the new optimum was already
+inside the default band, so there was nothing to test.
+
+So the gate has no power line to print in THIS run. It has one for a rerun that
+does form a pair, and it reports the same two quantities as the table above plus
+a warning when the 80%-power effect exceeds the 5pp gate itself — because a pair
+that just misses under an SE that wide is underpowered, not refuted. Forcing a
+band of one makes both branches fire, which is how they were checked: the wide
+basket lands at a 7.1pp threshold and an 8.5pp 80%-power effect, i.e. above the
+gate, and says so.
+
+That only settles anything if the band is SHARP — noisy standings widen it, and
+a wide enough band absorbs every new leader, which would be a power limitation
+wearing the costume of a result. So the probe reports the band's own
+discrimination: it holds **2 of the 5** narrow squads and **3 of the 11** wide
+ones, with its edge **1.45pp** and **1.60pp** from the leader. A band that tight
+is not swallowing the basket. That is the number a smaller rerun moves, and the
+one to check before reusing this conclusion.
+
+### The table
+
+Basket: `role-433`, `def-433`, `def-532`, `shootonly-433`, `flat-433` — five
+outfield templates, the shared `squad-lib.mts` builders, so a row here and a row
+in the round-robin above are the same squads.
+
+- **`sig`** — fixture deltas clearing the corrected bar, out of 40 in the narrow
+  basket (10 fixtures x 4 swept values) and out of 220 in the wide one (55 x 4).
+  Both are printed, because an axis can be classified on the wide basket's
+  evidence alone and a table that hid it would publish a verdict whose decisive
+  measurement is invisible.
+- **`rev`** — of those, how many crossed 50%: the fixture's ANSWER flipped, not
+  just its margin.
+- **`gate`** — the new optimum against the whole stale band, under the new rule:
+  the SMALLER of the two baskets' gains, and only if both are significant. In
+  WIN-RATE advantage points, the unit the plan writes its 5pp threshold in. Track 3.1 activates on this at +5pp, but **on an
+  exposure-weighted mix of the two modes, not per mode** — see below.
+
+| Axis (shipped) | Mode | sig (narrow) | sig (wide) | rev | Largest narrow delta | gate | What that row leaves FREE |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| **FK occurrence** `rand(10)<1` | reg | 21/40 | 102/220 | 0 | **+11.8pp** `role-433` vs `flat-433` @x4 | none | the FK taker: every basket squad kicks from slot 9, so this is "more free kicks", never "more free kicks AND a better taker" |
+| | ko | 18/40 | 100/220 | 0 | +8.8pp `def-532` vs `flat-433` @x4 | none — +7.5pp against `role-433` alone, 0.0pp against the band it belongs to | shootout exposure — it is a property of the PAIRING, and the basket fixes both halves |
+| **Post play** `rand(10)<1.5` | reg | 18/40 | 50/220 | 0 | −4.8pp `role-433` vs `flat-433` @x4 | none | the PP2 shooter is drawn by `getPlayer`, so the row confounds "more post plays" with "who the draw lands on" |
+| | ko | 5/40 | 40/220 | 0 | −3.4pp `role-433` vs `shootonly-433` @x4 | none | same, plus FW count: 433 and 532 field three and two forwards, and `fwIdx.length` gates the branch |
+| **Counter** `THRESHOLD=5` | reg | 3/40 | 5/220 | 0 | −2.0pp `shootonly-433` vs `flat-433` @0% | none | the four sampled thresholds span 0% to 100%, but changing this constant reroutes RNG consumption, so outcomes need not interpolate between them |
+| | ko | **0/40** | 7/220 | 0 | −1.2pp (below bar) | none | as above. This is the control: it never produced a gate in either basket, which is the only behaviour that matters here |
+| **`fair`** default 5 | reg | 13/40 | 37/220 | **1** | **+10.9pp** `shootonly-433` vs `flat-433` @22 | none | `fair` is uniform across all 22 players here; per-player or per-position `fair` is a different (and unmeasured) axis |
+| | ko | 7/40 | 23/220 | 0 | +10.9pp `shootonly-433` vs `flat-433` @22 | none | keeper `defense`, which every extra penalty routes through — held fixed inside each template |
+
+**Nothing here becomes a candidate.** All eight rows move margins somewhere — the
+control included, once the wide basket is counted — and
+the one pairing that re-prices anything does so against a squad that was already
+tied for best. The pass set at the plan's own activation gate is empty over both
+baskets, and the answer took a day rather than a release.
+
+**Empty for these four axes, which is not the same as empty for the pool.** The
+plan's weekly-rule pool also names set-piece `dBonus`, penalty attack noise, and
+base `dBonus`; none of them is swept here, and this run says nothing about them.
+The axes measured are the ones the issue behind this section listed — the two
+hardcoded rates, `fair`, and the counter control. Anyone reading this as
+"schedule nothing" should read it as "schedule none of these four, and go
+measure the other three before concluding anything about the pool."
+
+The verdict is deliberately absent from the rows above: it belongs to the AXIS,
+not to a mode. The next section is where it is issued.
+
+### Activation is per AXIS, not per mode
+
+The gate is specified on an exposure-weighted mode mix, and the two modes are
+nowhere near equally exposed: the ladder has no cap beyond a five-minute
+cooldown, while the cup runs once a day. **Cup entry is the top 48 of the whole
+ladder, ACROSS divisions** — division decides weekly matchmaking, not cup
+access, so what actually zeroes a manager's knockout exposure is never
+QUALIFYING, at any division. A rule that clears 5pp in knockouts alone has not
+cleared the gate, and reading the verdict per mode would say it had. The weight
+below is a regular qualifier's day: **1.33 / (1.33 + 12 + 3) = 0.081** — 1.33
+knockout matches against 12 ladder matches AND the cup's own three group-stage
+matches, which are played in regulation mode and so belong in the denominator
+too. Leaving them out gives 0.100 and overweights the knockout evidence.
+`KO_EXPOSURE` is an argument, and the sensitivity below is why the choice does
+not matter here.
+
+**One value per row: the one that got FURTHEST through the ordered gates.** That is the same thing as "the best schedulable value" only when nothing blocks it, and here everything is blocked. A weekly rule ships one
+global number, so pairing regulation's best value with knockout's best would
+price a rule nobody can schedule — and could clear 5pp when no real value does.
+For the same reason the row is not simply the biggest number: a value blocked on
+one gate must not hide a smaller value that passes them all.
+
+**And one SQUAD per row.** A manager fields one build across a schedule that is
+mostly ladder and partly cup; the same eleven cover both. So the mix is applied
+to each squad's season first, and the optimum and the stale band are read off
+that one weighted table — averaging two separate per-mode contrasts would price
+an improvement no single squad achieves.
+
+**The wide basket vetoes; it does not compete.** Its eleven archetypes CONTAIN
+the narrow five (the probe refuses to run if they ever stop containing them), so
+a stale response that survives there is a build the manager could actually have
+fielded, and it disproves a re-pricing the smaller set claimed. Taking whichever
+basket happened to pass would let a subset's claim stand against its own
+superset's counter-example, so the gate takes the smaller of the two gains — and
+requires BOTH to be significant, rather than inheriting significance from
+whichever had the smaller point estimate.
+
+Track 3.1 has four activation gates, not one — a gain threshold, evidence, "no
+dominant build", and draw-rate and goals-per-match bands. All four are applied
+here, and the third is applied in TWO pieces because only one of them is
+decidable.
+
+The plan states that gate twice: absolutely ("no dominant build") and as a
+change ("dominance must not increase"). The absolute form is testable and is
+tested — `domAbs`, one squad significantly beating every other in the wide
+basket, refused at the corrected bar. The change form is not. `dom` is a
+difference of two standardised pairwise z-scores, which carries SD ~1.4 at ANY
+sample size, so a literal "> 0" would refuse half of all rules that changed
+nothing, and no amount of simulation shrinks that. Nor can the difference be
+paired away: the leader and its weakest opponent are argmax and argmin picks
+that can change IDENTITY between the two conditions, so there is no fixed pair
+to difference. What this probe does instead is a 2-sigma DIRECTION screen at
++3.0. It refuses far more than a corrected test would — that would sit near 6.4
+— which is the safe direction for a gate whose job is to refuse. It is a
+heuristic, it says so in the probe's own legend, and it is not the plan's
+sentence. The plan does not put numbers on the feel bands, so the ones
+used are the probe's declared defaults (|draw| <= 5pp, |goals| <= 20%,
+overridable) and every row prints its measured movement so a different band can
+be applied to the same table by eye.
+
+**The gate is measured against the whole stale optimum, not one member of it.**
+Where the default standings do not resolve a single best build — and in knockout
+mode they do not, `role-433` and `gkheavy-433` are not separated — the manager
+who never re-solves could already have been on any squad in that band. Crediting
+a rule for a switch that was free at the shipped rule would be measuring the
+tie, not the rule. So the gain is the WORST margin against the whole band, and a
+new leader drawn FROM the band scores zero by construction.
+
+| Axis | Best value | Gate (ko weight 0.081) | dom | domAbs | draw | goals | Blocked by |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| FK occurrence | x0.25 | **0.00pp** | +0.4 | 0.4 | **+5.1pp** | −16% | gain — and it would also fail the draw band |
+| Post play | x0.25 | **0.00pp** | −0.1 | 0.0 | −1.0pp | +3% | gain |
+| Counter (control) | 0% | **0.00pp** | +0.7 | 0.9 | +1.4pp | −6% | gain |
+| `fair` | 1 | **0.00pp** | +0.5 | 0.6 | +3.6pp | −12% | gain |
+
+`dom` is the CHANGE in the leader's weakest margin; `domAbs` is that margin
+itself, in the eleven-archetype basket. Both block, and the two are not
+interchangeable: a rule that leaves an already-dominant squad exactly where it
+stood scores a `dom` near zero while failing the requirement outright, which is
+why the absolute column exists at all. `domAbs` is the one carrying the plan's
+sentence — at or past the corrected bar, the same |z| the rest of this section
+uses, 4.53 at these sample sizes, one squad significantly beats every other,
+which is what a dominant build is. `dom` is the direction screen described
+above, at a threshold this probe declares rather than quotes.
+
+Both are computed on the exposure-WEIGHTED season, from weighted head-to-heads
+at the activation weight. Taking the larger of the two pure modes does not cover
+the mix: a squad's margins against different opponents are each linear in the
+weight, so the minimum of them can peak at an interior crossing even when the
+squad dominates at neither endpoint.
+
+**Every gate is zero, and the reason is sharper than "the effects are small".**
+The one cell that re-prices anything — FK x0.25 in knockouts — promotes
+`gkheavy-433`, which was already tied for best at the shipped rule. A manager
+sitting on it gains nothing from the rule; a manager sitting on `role-433` could
+have switched for free before the rule existed. Nothing here beats what was
+already available.
+
+And the exposure weight — the one judgement call in this section — does not
+carry it. The probe re-derives the GAIN at both extremes rather than asserting
+the choice does not matter. (Only the gain; dominance, feel and fixture movement
+are worst-of-both-modes by design and are not re-evaluated per weight, so this
+table is not four verdicts.)
+
+| Axis | Ladder-only (w=0) | Mixed (w=0.081) | Knockout-only (w=1) |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| FK occurrence | 0.00pp | 0.00pp | 0.00pp |
+| Post play | 0.00pp | 0.00pp | 0.00pp |
+| Counter (control) | 0.00pp | 0.00pp | 0.00pp |
+| `fair` | 0.00pp | 0.00pp | 0.00pp |
+
+Those three points do not settle the interior on their own: each squad's
+weighted score is linear in the weight, the leader is their upper envelope, and
+an envelope can hand the lead to a THIRD squad only somewhere in the middle. Nor
+does a grid settle it — an interval can be narrower than the step.
+
+So the interior is **solved**. Everything the gate reads is linear in the
+weight, which makes all three of its boundaries enumerable:
+
+- where two squads' win-equivalent shares cross — the leader changes;
+- where a leader's lower edge meets a candidate's upper edge — the stale band
+  changes;
+- where two head-to-head margins in one row cross — the gate takes a MINIMUM
+  over the band, so the controlling member switches there, and a minimum of
+  lines attains its maximum at exactly such a kink.
+
+The boundaries of BOTH baskets go into one set, because the activation rule
+reads both at the same weight and takes the smaller gain — solving each basket
+on its own grid answers a different question. Evaluating every boundary, and
+inside every resulting interval its midpoint plus both ONE-SIDED limits (the
+gain jumps where the leader changes, so a shared endpoint reports the wrong
+squad), plus the weights where the two baskets' gain lines cross — that is where
+`min(narrow, wide)` peaks when their slopes oppose — comes to 9,816 probe
+weights across every value:
+
+> **The largest gain reachable at ANY exposure weight is 0.00pp**, against a 5pp
+> threshold. At all 9,816 probe weights the swept optimum was already inside the
+> default band in at least one basket.
+
+That statement deliberately carries no significance claim, and does not need
+one: a gain that never reaches the threshold cannot clear the gate at any bar.
+Which also keeps the search honest — those thousands of data-derived weights are
+not in the Bonferroni count, so a "significant" result selected from among them
+would be a hypothesis nobody paid for. Reporting the maximum instead needs no
+correction at all. (If a rerun ever pushes that maximum ABOVE the threshold, the
+probe says so and stops claiming it: the satisfying set of the full predicate
+can be a narrow off-centre segment, and finding it would need its own boundaries
+solved and charged.)
+
+The boundaries are solved rather than sampled because sampling got this wrong
+twice on the way here. A 0.02 grid reported 0.00pp; solving only some of the
+boundary families reported 2.70pp; solving all of them but maximising per basket
+reported 2.87pp — and applying the veto at a common weight, which is what the
+gate actually does, brings it back to 0.00pp. Each of those was a different
+question, and only the last one is the gate's.
+
+`dom`, `draw` and `goals` are the WORST of the two baskets, deliberately — not
+the basket that supplied the gain. The gate asks "did anything get re-priced";
+those columns ask "at what cost to the field", and the second question is not
+scoped to the first one's basket.
+
+**A pass here would still not mean "schedule it."** The probe's best outcome is
+`CANDIDATE`, not `REPRICES`: track 3.1's gauntlet additionally requires a result
+to hold at growth buff 0 AND max, and to split the ACTUAL top-N live squads into
+two or more distinct best responses. Every squad here is tenure 0 and
+hand-built, so this probe structurally cannot run either check — it names them
+on every run instead of implying it did.
+
+**And the near miss is not a near miss.** FK x0.25 fails the gain gate outright —
+0.00pp, because the build it promotes was already inside the default band — and
+it would fail the draw band too, at +5.1pp against a +/-5pp limit. Its dominance
+is fine on the weighted season (+0.4 change, 0.4 absolute), which is worth
+stating precisely: an earlier version of this section read dominance off the two
+pure modes and reported +4.4, and that was an artefact of not weighting. The
+candidate that looked closest to shippable still fails, but on the gain and the
+feel band, not on concentration.
+
+### What the control calibrates
+
+The counter trigger is in this sweep to check that the bar rejects things, and
+under a paired test it is **not** inert: 3 of 40 narrow fixture deltas clear the
+bar, and 12 of 440 across the wide basket's two modes. They are small — and no
+value of it ever produced a gate, in either basket, at any exposure weight. That
+is the useful result:
+
+> **MARGINS means "detectable", not "worth shipping".** A knob that gates 3.9%
+> of goals reaches MARGINS at this sample size. The class that separates a lever
+> from a texture knob is the gate, not significance.
+
+It also supplies a floor. In the NARROW basket — same N, same ten fixtures on
+both sides, the only comparison here that is apples to apples — the largest
+movement this known non-lever produces is **2.0pp**. Anything a candidate does
+that is not comfortably above that is not distinguishable from what a knob
+nobody would ship already does:
+
+| Axis | Mode | Largest fixture move | vs the control's 2.0pp |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| FK occurrence | reg | 11.8pp | **6.0x** |
+| FK occurrence | ko | 8.8pp | **4.4x** |
+| `fair` | reg | 10.9pp | **5.5x** |
+| `fair` | ko | 10.9pp | **5.5x** |
+| Post play | reg | 4.8pp | 2.4x |
+| Post play | ko | 3.4pp | **1.7x** — the closest any candidate comes to the floor |
+
+The probe flags a row as indistinguishable from the control below **1.5x**, so
+post play in knockouts clears that line — but only just, and by less than any
+other candidate-mode pair in the table.
+
+The control is swept in BOTH baskets — that is what the gate needs — but this
+ratio is deliberately narrow-only on both sides. It compares a MAXIMUM over a
+family of cells, and the two baskets run at different N over different
+membership, so a cross-basket maximum grows with whichever family has more cells
+and less power rather than with whichever axis moves more. Mixing them swung
+these ratios by a factor of two between runs that changed no measurement.
+
+### Per axis, what actually moved
+
+**FK occurrence is the strongest axis, and what it does is CONCENTRATE.** From
+2.5% to 40% the regulation draw rate runs 57.9% -> 52.8% (shipped) -> 38.1% and
+goals per match 0.653 -> 0.779 -> 1.288. Every large delta at x4 has the same
+shape: the differentiated squads pull away from `flat-433` (`role-433` vs
+`flat-433` 68.4% -> 80.2% of the win-equivalent share). Turning it DOWN
+compresses the field instead — `flat-433`'s points per match rises 0.769 ->
+0.842 while every other squad's falls. So the axis is a skill-expression dial:
+more free kicks means more of the match decided by who invested, less means more
+of it decided by nothing. Turning it down therefore costs on both feel gates at
+once — more draws AND fewer goals — and in knockouts alone it also raises the
+leader's weakest margin from z 6.3 to 8.9, which points at concentration rather
+than rotation. Read that as the knockout-only reading it is: on the
+exposure-weighted season the same change is +0.4, well inside the direction
+screen, and the activation table above reports the weighted number.
+
+**`fair` is the only axis that ROTATES demand rather than amplifying it.**
+Raising it from 4.5% to 100% moves `shootonly-433` from 1.127 to 1.302 points
+per match in regulation and 1.370 to 1.518 in knockouts, while `role-433` and
+`def-433` stand still — more fouls means more free kicks and penalties, and
+those are converted by `shoot`. It carries the run's single reversal: `role-433`
+vs `def-433` goes from **47.5%** at the shipped default to **50.8%** at
+`fair 22`. Read that precisely — the DELTA is significant, the new level is a
+coin flip. The rule turned "the defensive lean is better" into "there is no
+difference", which is a re-pricing; it did not turn it into "the attacking lean
+is better".
+
+`fair` is also the only axis whose regulation dominance column does not move
+(+0.0). At the midpoint (`fair 11`, 50%) it still moves four fixtures
+significantly while taking the draw rate DOWN, 52.8% -> 48.6%, and goals up,
+0.779 -> 0.899 — the one cell in the whole sweep whose feel side-effects point
+in a direction anyone would ask for.
+
+**Post play is the weakest candidate.** Its largest move is 2.4x the control's
+in regulation and 1.7x in knockouts — the closest any candidate comes to a knob
+that gates 3.9% of goals. It needs x4 (60% of box entries) to reach even that,
+the feel barely registers (draw rate +4.3pp, goals −0.095), and across all eight
+of its wide-basket cells — four swept values in each mode — the top of the
+eleven-archetype table never changes.
+
+**The counter trigger never gates.** Swept from "counters never happen" to
+"every eligible turnover becomes one", goals per match moved 0.036, the basket's
+top never changed in either mode or either basket, and no cell produced a gate.
+**What rejects it is the compound activation gate, not the significance bar** —
+the bar finds its 3 narrow and 12 wide fixture movements perfectly real. That is
+the calibration: fixture-level significance is not evidence of a useful lever,
+and a gate worth believing when it accepts something has to reject this.
+
+### Does the answer move once the manager may re-optimise?
+
+The narrow basket's biggest weakness is that five archetypes may simply not
+contain the alternative a rule rewards. So EVERY swept value of every axis — the
+control included, so it is checked on the same surface as the candidates — is
+re-asked over the ELEVEN archetypes the round-robin publishes, 55 fixtures,
+4,000 matches each. That is 34 cells; the probe prints them all, and the shape
+is simple enough to state:
+
+Standings here are the **win-equivalent share** — the same 1 / 0.5 / 0 statistic
+the gate measures, so the leader they name is the squad the gate is then
+evaluated on. Ranking by league points instead is not a monotonic
+transformation of it when draw rates differ, and these constants move draw rates
+by fifteen points.
+
+| Mode | Shipped rule's top four | Last | Cells whose top changed |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| reg | `gkmin-433` .603, `def-433` .586, `def-532` .585, `role-433` .564 | `flat-433` .365 | **none of 16** |
+| ko | `role-433` .615, `gkheavy-433` .599, `def-433` .591, `def-532` .573 | `flat-433` .259 | **2 of 16**, both FK down |
+
+In regulation, `gkmin-433` leads every single cell — nothing moves the answer at
+any value of any axis. The two knockout exceptions are FK x0.25 and FK x0.5,
+which both promote `gkheavy-433` (+7.5pp z 4.7 and +6.0pp z 3.8 against
+`role-433`; 0.0pp against the tied band it belongs to). `flat-433` is last in 32
+of the 34 cells; the two it is not are FK x0.25 and x0.5 in regulation, where
+`stars-433` drops below it — that build wins and loses far more than it draws,
+so a metric that counts draws at half costs it more than a points table does.
+
+**That one axis-and-direction is the most interesting number in this section.**
+Read as a pair in both rules:
+
+> `gkheavy-433` vs `role-433`, knockout: **49.8% (z −0.3) at the shipped FK rate
+> -> 53.7% (z +4.7) at FK x0.25.** A coin flip becomes a significant win. Those
+> are shares; the +7.5pp above is the same reading as a win-rate advantage, which
+> is exactly twice the share advantage over 50%.
+
+Mechanically that is coherent: fewer free kicks means fewer set-piece goals,
+more matches level at full time, more shootouts, and the 29-point keeper the
+round-robin ranks sixth becomes the best build in the basket. It is a real
+re-pricing of the keeper budget by a rule.
+
+Read the "changed the answer" claim with the qualification the probe prints
+beside it: **the shipped knockout leader is not separated from `gkheavy-433`**
+either. So the honest description is not "the rule dethroned the leader" but
+"the rule turned a pair that was tied into a pair that is not" — which is still
+a re-pricing, and still the only one in the sweep.
+
+**It changes no advice in `SKILL.md`, and that is a decision rather than an
+oversight.** That file already refuses to settle the keeper total and says the
+knockout answer turns on shootout exposure. This sweep reaches the same place
+from the opposite direction — it moves a RULE instead of a squad, and the one
+thing that moved was the keeper budget in the mode where shootouts live. A
+second construction agreeing is a reason to trust the sentence that is there,
+not a reason to write a new one; nothing here is a fact an agent could act on,
+since none of these constants is scheduled.
+
+And it is worth **0.0pp at the activation gate** — in the mode with the LEAST
+exposure, since knockouts are cup-only and the cup runs once a day for the
+ladder's top 48. Two things reduce it from +7.5pp to nothing, and both are in
+the activation section above. `gkheavy-433` is inside the shipped rule's
+unresolved top band, so a manager could already have been on it for free. And
+the same cell moves the draw rate +5.1pp, outside the +/-5pp band a rule change
+is allowed to move it, so even a real gain there would have been refused.
+
+Incidentally, the shipped rows above are an 11-archetype round-robin at 4,000
+matches per fixture — roughly seven times the 300 seeds behind the published
+table — and they agree with it where that table says it is decidable:
+`gkmin-433` clear at the top of regulation, `role-433` at the top of knockouts,
+`flat-433` at the bottom of all but two. The middle band still reorders between
+the two runs, as that section says it must — and note that the bottom is where
+the metric matters: on a points table `stars-433` is above `flat-433`, and on
+the win-equivalent share the two swap in a couple of cells. The shipped `role-433` vs `def-433`
+fixture also independently reproduces the Skill's "solidity beats aggression"
+pair at 10,000 matches: the attacking lean takes 47.5% of the win-equivalent
+share in regulation and 53.1% in knockouts.
+
+**Do not read that 47.5% against the Skill's 56.5%** — they are different
+statistics on the same fact. The Skill quotes DECIDED matches, this section
+quotes the win-equivalent share, and half of all regulation matches are draws,
+so the share is compressed toward 50 exactly as the round-robin correction above
+warns. The knockout figures (53.1% here, 53.6% there) are directly comparable,
+because knockout draws are vanishingly rare — zero in the 5,440,000 knockout matches
+this run played, though not structurally impossible.
+
+### Degrees of freedom this sweep LEFT free
+
+Counting the degrees of freedom that were controlled is not enough; the keeper
+section above was wrong three times in one day and the cause was a different
+uncontrolled degree of freedom each time. So, explicitly:
+
+- **Manager response.** The basket is fixed; nobody re-solves a squad against
+  the swept rule. The wide-basket section shrinks this hole from five archetypes
+  to eleven but does not close it — eleven hand-built squads are a sample of the
+  legal space, not an argmax over it. Every verdict above is "…across these
+  baskets", and an axis that only rewards a build outside them reads as flat.
+- **Growth buffs.** Every squad is tenure 0. Production applies
+  `applyMatchGrowth`, which raises effective `total` and therefore `teamPow`,
+  and the zone press, the team-contribution terms and possession all read it.
+- **Set-piece slots.** `squad-lib` pins the FK taker to slot 9 and the penalty
+  taker to slot 10 for every candidate. The FK rows are the RATE axis only.
+- **Slot order.** Identical across the basket, which pins the broken zone-press
+  fallback to the same position in all of them. Held constant, not measured.
+- **Interactions.** One axis moves at a time. Nothing here says what FK x4 does
+  while `fair` is 22, and a pool built from two axes at once is untested.
+- **`cond`.** Fixed at 5 everywhere, as production does today. A form system
+  would invalidate every row.
+- **Opponent population.** Archetypes, not the live ladder — and production bots
+  are a single build, which is neither.
+
+Re-run after any engine change:
+
+```bash
+npx tsx packages/mcp/skill/reference/probes/constant-sweep.mts
+N=2000 WIDE_N=1000 npx tsx …   # faster; the bar is fixed, the detectable EFFECT moves
+```
+
+---
+
+## Is a per-player scene weight a decision? (`appr-role.mts`)
+
+The section above swept engine constants and found nothing that re-prices a
+squad choice — not because the effects were small, but structurally: every
+constant it can reach sits in front of BOTH `ofPoint` and `dfPoint`, so it moves
+the two squads together. Per-player selection weights are the one remaining
+candidate that creates a **difference between two squads** rather than moving
+both sides, and they are the axis the tactical-sheet track would ship.
+
+**The lever measured here does not exist in the engine.** `*_APPR` is a table
+per POSITION, so two forwards in the same squad are drawn with the same weight
+and a manager cannot tell them apart. The probe patches `getPlayer` to multiply
+each candidate's weight by a per-player, per-scene number carried on the player,
+defaulting to 1 — nothing else — and sweeps that number. So the answer is about
+the axis, not about one proposed interface.
+
+### The statistic, and the controls
+
+Rows are in **win-equivalent share**: a win is 1, a draw is 0.5, every match
+counts. Deltas are **paired** — every sheet replays one seed column, so the
+default cell and the swept cell are matched match for match — and the seed
+depends on the squads and the side and never on the sheet.
+
+**Bonferroni over m = 13,314 pre-registered comparisons, two-sided: |z| >= 4.62.**
+That m prices the SEARCHES as well as the tests. A ladder read against the
+FIXED shipped default costs only its rungs, because an argmax over the ladder
+could only ever have surfaced one of the contrasts already counted. A comparison
+whose BOTH sides are data-chosen — "is the optimum interior", which pits a
+selected rung against a selected neighbour, and "which sheet is the best
+response", which pits two selected sheets — is charged K(K−1)/2, the number of
+pairs the search could have surfaced.
+
+The noise floor is the whole run's, not one section's: **the largest standard
+error anywhere in this run is 0.59 points of share**, which puts the
+significance threshold at **2.74 points** and the 80%-power effect at **3.24**.
+A paired standard error depends on the outcome variance and on the covariance
+between the two conditions, so it is not constant across sections merely because
+`N` is — quoting the concentration ladders' own worst cell and extending it to
+every later null was a review finding on this section. So every effect called
+large below is an order of magnitude above the run's own floor, and every "no
+effect" is a claim about a band 2.74 points wide.
+
+| Control | Result |
+| --- | --- |
+| Mirror, both modes (one squad against itself; true z = 0) | z **+0.4** / **−0.5** |
+| POLICY mirror, both modes (same squad AND same sheet on both sides; true z = 0) | z **+1.0** / **+0.8** |
+| Patch identity — the patched engine with no sheet vs the stock engine | 1,000 matches identical, **whole `MatchResult`** |
+| Permutation null — the same ×32 on either of `role-433`'s two byte-identical midfielders | 1,000 matches identical, scoreline and winner |
+| Dead-scene null — ×1024 and ×0 on the offence table's ZP/PP1/FK1/FK2 columns | 1,000 matches identical, **whole `MatchResult`** |
+| Zero-weight null — ×1024 on the keeper, whose offence weight is 0 everywhere | 1,000 matches identical, **whole `MatchResult`** |
+| Paired alignment — the default column, replayed | 10,000 matches, largest per-match difference **0** |
+| Anti-focus calibration — funnelling `stars-433`'s 12-point defender must LOSE | **−11.6pp** (z −28.9) / **−14.0pp** (z −26.6) |
+
+<!-- not a payoff table -->
+
+**Every one of those aborts the run.** The comparison DEPTH in the right-hand
+column is part of the control rather than an implementation detail: where the
+claim is that nothing happened at all, the whole `MatchResult` is compared —
+every event in order, every player stat, every shootout round — because a
+rewrite that changed which player was drawn while landing on the same score
+would pass a scoreline check and leave every table below measuring the rewrite.
+The permutation null is the one exception and deliberately so: there the two
+players ARE interchanged, so the event names and per-player stats move by
+construction and only the outcome can be asserted.
+
+Three are worth naming for what they separate. The **permutation null**
+separates "the weight moved the ball to a better player" from "the weight
+perturbed the RNG": moving the same multiplier between two players who are
+identical to the byte must change nothing, and it does not. The **anti-focus
+calibration** is the directional negative control —
+a harness that reported a gain from concentrating on the squad's worst player
+would be measuring the act of concentrating rather than who is concentrated on,
+and every row below would be that artefact. The **dead-scene null** doubles as a
+re-derivation: the probe enumerates the offensive `getPlayer` call sites FROM
+THE SOURCE, finds `A0 A1 A2 CA1 CA2 PP2` and nothing else, and confirms that a
+multiplier on the four remaining offence columns is inert — the dead table the
+plan describes, checked rather than quoted.
+
+### The concentration curve
+
+`stars-433` is the focal squad because it is the only published archetype whose
+players differ inside a position group — three forwards at 28-29 points and four
+defenders at 12. `role-433` rides along as the other half of the question: its
+three forwards are identical to the byte, so any movement there is cross-GROUP
+reallocation with the within-group term pinned at exactly zero.
+
+| Focal slot (`stars-433`) | ×0 | ×1 | ×1024 | League | Knockout |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| slot 8 — FW, 29 pts, pass 6 shoot 9 | 33.1 | 36.7 | **68.0** | **+31.3pp** | **+35.8pp** |
+| slot 10 — FW, 28 pts, pass 4 shoot 10 | 33.1 | 36.7 | 64.8 | +28.1pp | +32.3pp |
+| slot 7 — OMF, 26 pts, alone in his group | 37.5 | 36.7 | 29.2 | −7.5pp | −8.8pp |
+| slot 1 — DF, 12 pts (anti-focus control) | 38.0 | 36.7 | 25.1 | −11.6pp | −14.0pp |
+| `role-433` slot 8 — FW, identical to its two peers | 46.9 | 48.1 | 58.9 | +10.8pp | +13.2pp |
+
+> **Measured on** — `stars-433` (4-3-3, `STARS` slot weights, `ATTACKING` mix
+> from `squad-lib.mts`: keeper 19, four defenders at 12, midfield 17/16/26,
+> forwards 29/29/28) against `def-433` (4-3-3, `EVEN` weights, `DEFENSIVE` mix),
+> which plays the shipped weights in every cell. The two squads never change:
+> all 212 points, both formations, both sets of kicker flags and the whole
+> defensive table are byte-identical across every row. The only thing that moves
+> is one number in front of one player's offensive selection weight, in all six
+> reachable scenes at once. The last row swaps the focal squad for `role-433`
+> (`EVEN` weights, `ATTACKING` mix), whose forwards are identical to each other.
+> **Sample** — 10,000 matches per cell, home and away, SHA-256 seeds; 20,668,000
+> matches in the run, about four minutes.
+> **Mode** — both, one column each. League is draws-allowed (`gameFlg 0`),
+> Knockout is winner-guaranteed. The League and Knockout columns are the paired
+> delta from the ×1 cell; the ×0/×1/×1024 columns are League shares.
+> **Effect** — 31.3 percentage points of win-equivalent share in League and 35.8
+> in Knockout, between two squads that are the same eleven players. That is
+> nearly three times the largest thing the engine-constant sweep could move
+> (11.8pp) and larger than any squad-construction axis measured anywhere in this
+> file. Concentrating on the WRONG player is worth −11.6pp, so the axis is
+> double-edged rather than free. Even with the within-group term removed by
+> construction — `role-433`'s identical forwards — pure cross-group
+> reallocation is still worth 10.8pp.
+> **Source** — `appr-role.mts`, section (1).
+
+**The best focal player is not the best finisher.** Slot 8 beats slot 10 by
+3.2pp in League and 3.5pp in Knockout, and slot 10 is the one with `shoot` 10.
+That much is measured. **Why is not** — and it cannot be, on a fixed points
+budget. The two forwards differ in five things at once: `pass` 6 against 4,
+`dribble` 9 against 10, `shoot` 9 against 10, `defense` 5 against 4, and one
+point of total; slot 10 also carries the penalty-kicker flag. Moving a single
+attribute in isolation is impossible when every point spent has to come from
+another attribute of the same player, so no cell in this probe separates them.
+
+The candidate mechanism, offered as a hypothesis rather than a result, is the
+`style = attrs.pass` branch: `playArea2` and `playArea1` both decide
+pass-versus-dribble-versus-long-shot from `pass` alone, so a low-pass carrier
+ends possessions with long shots instead of advancing them. What supports it
+without a cross-player comparison is the scene table below — the same player's
+multiplier reverses sign between the midfield scene and the box scenes — and
+what would settle it is an engine change, not another squad.
+
+### Does the anti-concentration term bite?
+
+`atkAttrSum` is the selected player's POSITION GROUP total minus his own, so the
+better the player selected, the less team-aggregate support stands behind him —
+and `atkRate` varies by scene, so the size of that penalty does too. The
+question the plan asks is whether that produces a non-flat optimum.
+
+It is real, and it is not enough. One point of a selected player's total is
+worth **+1/3** on `ofPoint` directly and costs at most **rate × 0.1 ×
+teamPow/100** of group support. The largest `O_*_RATE` anywhere in the shipped
+tables is 1.00, so the loss coefficient never exceeds 0.100 against a gain
+coefficient of 0.333. The probe prints that arithmetic from the source tables
+and then measures it against a COUNTERFACTUAL engine with the subtraction
+deleted:
+
+| `stars-433` slot 8, all scenes | ×1 | ×8 | ×1024 |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| shipped, League | 36.7 | 49.2 | 68.0 |
+| subtraction deleted, League | 36.9 | 52.3 | 73.4 |
+| shipped, Knockout | 34.6 | 49.6 | 70.4 |
+| subtraction deleted, Knockout | 35.2 | 52.9 | 75.7 |
+
+> **Measured on** — the `stars-433` vs `def-433` fixture above, played twice:
+> once on the shipped engine and once on an engine identical except that all
+> five `atkAttrSum = <group> - <player>.total` sites — including the home-team
+> DMF path that reads the ball carrier rather than the selected player — are
+> replaced by `atkAttrSum = <group>`. Nothing else differs; the ×1 row is the
+> same squads with no sheet at all, so the gap between the two ×1 cells is what
+> the term is worth to a game nobody has concentrated.
+> **Sample** — 10,000 matches per cell, home and away, SHA-256 seeds.
+> **Mode** — both, two rows each.
+> **Effect** — 5.4 points of share in League (z 13.4) and 5.3 in Knockout
+> (z 11.2) is what the term is worth AT MAXIMUM CONCENTRATION; at the shipped ×1
+> it is worth 0.2 (z 0.5) and 0.7 (z 1.4), both inside the sample's own error.
+> So it takes 5.2 points off a concentration payoff that would otherwise reach
+> 36.5 — about a seventh — and changes nothing at all about who you should
+> concentrate on. **0 of the 50 ladders in the one-opponent sections have a
+> significant interior optimum: 48 put their argmax at a ladder END and the
+> other 2 peak on an interior rung the sample cannot separate from its
+> neighbours,** which is undecided rather than monotone and is counted
+> separately for that reason. Monotonicity is a different question from where
+> the argmax is — a ladder can dip significantly in the middle and still peak at
+> the top — so every adjacent rung is tested too: **134 of the 134 ladders swept
+> anywhere in this run have no significant step against their own direction.**
+> The curve is steeper without the term and the same shape.
+> **Source** — `appr-role.mts`, section (2).
+
+The place where the term is not small is the **lone player in his group**. A
+4-3-3's single OMF gets `omfAttr − his own total` = exactly zero support, while
+a forward in a three-man group carries 4.56 points of it into every A1
+selection. That is most of why slot 7 loses in the table above despite holding
+26 points: funnelling the attack through him costs the whole group term. It is
+also a fact about FORMATION rather than about roles — the same player in a 4-4-2
+would have a partner to be supported by.
+
+### Scene-dependence: the same player, opposite instructions
+
+| `stars-433` sheet on slot 7 (the 26-point OMF) | League | Knockout |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| default — no sheet | 36.7 | 34.6 |
+| ×32 in A2 only | 39.0 (+2.3pp) | 37.5 (+2.9pp) |
+| ×0 in A0 and A1 only | 38.4 (+1.7pp) | 36.5 (+2.0pp) |
+| **both — ×32 in A2, ×0 in A0/A1** | **41.4 (+4.7pp)** | **40.1 (+5.5pp)** |
+| the same ×32 in EVERY scene | 30.7 (−6.0pp) | 27.6 (−7.0pp) |
+
+> **Measured on** — the `stars-433` vs `def-433` fixture above, with every sheet
+> applied to ONE slot: the 26-point attacking midfielder, pass 8 dribble 8 shoot
+> 7, the only OMF in the formation. Every other slot on both squads is
+> untouched, and the opponent plays the shipped weights throughout.
+> **Sample** — 10,000 matches per cell, home and away, SHA-256 seeds.
+> **Mode** — both, one column each; every row clears the corrected bar (|z| 5.8
+> to 14.4).
+> **Effect** — 10.7 percentage points of share in League and 12.5 in Knockout
+> separate the best and worst way of spending the SAME multiplier on the SAME
+> player: +4.7pp when its sign follows the scene and −6.0pp when it does not.
+> A per-player slider would have produced the losing row. The scene signs are
+> stable across modes: A2 positive, A0/A1/CA1/PP2 negative, CA2 inside the noise.
+> **Source** — `appr-role.mts`, section (3).
+
+This is the strongest evidence for the `style = attrs.pass` hypothesis above,
+and it is stronger for being WITHIN one player: the OMF is the squad's best
+passer, and his multiplier pays in midfield (A2) and costs in the box (A0/A1),
+where the forwards' `shoot` and their group support both beat him. No squad
+attribute changes between those rows — only which scene the weight applies to —
+so the confound that blocks the cross-player comparison is absent here. It is
+still not proof: A0/A1 differ from A2 in what they reward as well as in who
+carries, and separating those needs an engine change. **No scene of the
+forward's own ladder points the other way**, so
+scene-dependence is a property of the player rather than of the axis: slot 8
+gives one distinct argmax in both modes, six positive signs in League and five
+plus one below the bar in Knockout, and not a single negative one.
+
+### Opponent-dependence, and the round robin that decides it
+
+| Sheet, `stars-433` | vs `role` | vs `def-433` | vs `def-532` | vs `shootonly` | vs `passonly` | vs `flat` |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| default | 37.2 | 36.7 | 34.5 | 42.5 | 36.1 | 47.4 |
+| **carrier** — slot 8 ×32, all scenes | **60.7** | **60.6** | **52.7** | **71.4** | **62.6** | **75.6** |
+| finisher — slot 10 ×32, all scenes | 58.6 | 58.4 | 52.3 | 68.1 | 59.1 | 72.3 |
+| playmaker — slot 7 ×32 A2, ×0 A0/A1 | 42.8 | 41.4 | 37.1 | 50.9 | 44.1 | 55.6 |
+| sheet — playmaker plus slot 10 ×32 in A0/A1 | 54.6 | 51.3 | 44.0 | 67.6 | 57.7 | 71.8 |
+| tier — slots 7-10 ×8, all scenes | 50.7 | 49.3 | 43.8 | 62.2 | 52.7 | 68.2 |
+| spread — the four 12-point defenders ×4 | 28.6 | 30.3 | 30.3 | 30.4 | 26.4 | 33.9 |
+
+> **Measured on** — `stars-433` against six published archetypes built by
+> `squad-lib.mts` — `role-433`, `def-433`, `def-532`, `shootonly-433`,
+> `passonly-433`, `flat-433` — every one of them playing the shipped weights.
+> The focal squad's 212 points never change across the whole grid; only its
+> sheet does. `tier` is the coordinated policy: four players lifted together at
+> a smaller multiplier rather than one player at a large one.
+> **Sample** — 10,000 matches per cell, home and away, SHA-256 seeds; 84 cells
+> across the two modes.
+> **Mode** — League shown; the Knockout grid is in the probe output, where
+> `carrier` runs 54.0 to 78.6 and every margin over `default` is wider. Its
+> ranking matches this one in five of its six rows — the sixth is the `def-532`
+> swap in Effect below.
+> **Effect** — 41.7 percentage points of share separate the best sheet from the
+> worst against the same opponent (`flat-433`: 75.6 vs 33.9), and the ordering
+> of the seven sheets is identical in eleven of the twelve opponent-by-mode
+> cells. The twelfth is `def-532` in Knockout, where `carrier` and `finisher`
+> swap by 0.1 points of share — inside the sample's own error, which is why the
+> band there names both. `carrier` sits in every cell's leader band; `def-532`,
+> the deepest defensive shape in the grid, is the only opponent that pulls
+> anything level with it. The distinct raw argmax count is **2**, and one of the
+> two is never beaten anywhere.
+> **Source** — `appr-role.mts`, section (4).
+
+That grid holds the opponent's sheet at the default. The next one lets the
+opponent choose too, on the SAME squad, so the sheet is the only difference:
+
+| Round robin, `stars-433` both sides | beats significantly (League / KO) | in the unbeaten band |
+| --- | --- | --- |
+| carrier | 5 of 6 / 5 of 6 | yes |
+| sheet | 4 of 6 / 3 of 6 | yes |
+| finisher | 3 of 6 / 3 of 6 | no |
+| tier | 3 of 6 / 3 of 6 | no |
+| playmaker | 2 of 6 / 2 of 6 | no |
+| default | 1 of 6 / 1 of 6 | no |
+| spread | 0 of 6 / 0 of 6 | no |
+
+> **Measured on** — `stars-433` against `stars-433`: the same eleven players,
+> the same 212 points and the same kicker flags on both sides of every fixture,
+> with the sheet as the only difference. Twenty-one fixtures per mode.
+> **Sample** — 10,000 matches per fixture, home and away, SHA-256 seeds.
+> **Mode** — both; the two modes agree row for row.
+> **Effect** — 76.0% of the share for `carrier` against `default` in League and
+> 78.3% in Knockout — a 52-to-57 point win-rate advantage from the weights
+> alone. **Significant 3-cycles: 0 in both modes.** The unbeaten set — the
+> sheets nothing significantly beats — holds `carrier` and `sheet`, 1.4 points
+> of share apart in League and 1.5 in Knockout, under the corrected bar. Read
+> that as a PARTIAL order and not a total one: 3 of the 21 pairs in League and 4
+> in Knockout are inside the bar, so "no cycles and a two-member unbeaten set"
+> leaves some pairs unresolved rather than ranking all seven. What it does
+> settle is the direction: nothing here beats `carrier`, and no sheet outside
+> the unbeaten pair is unbeaten.
+> **Source** — `appr-role.mts`, section (5).
+
+### Crossing the two — the grid the verdict actually rests on
+
+The two grids above are one-dimensional slices: one varies the opponent's SQUAD
+with its sheet pinned to the default, the other varies its SHEET with its squad
+pinned. A best response can be conditional on the product while both slices
+share a leader, so neither settles the roadmap question on its own. Multiplying
+them does:
+
+Each cell is my best-response BAND against that opponent squad playing that
+sheet, and — after the bar — the argmax rung of the full concentration ladder
+swept inside the same cell, so "more is better up to the corner" is checked
+where the best response is rather than only against one fixed opponent.
+
+| My best response \| ladder argmax | vs `default` | vs `carrier` | vs `finisher` | vs `playmaker` | vs `sheet` | vs `tier` | vs `spread` |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| `role-433` | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 |
+| `def-433` | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C/F \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 |
+| **`def-532`** | **C/F** \| ×1024 | **C/F** \| ×1024 | **C/F** \| ×1024 | **C/F** \| ×1024 | **C/F** \| ×1024 | **C/F** \| ×1024 | **C/F** \| ×1024 |
+| `shootonly-433` | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 |
+| `passonly-433` | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 |
+| `flat-433` | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 | C \| ×1024 |
+
+> **Measured on** — `stars-433` against all six opponent squads, each of them
+> playing each of the seven sheets, with all seven of my own sheets AND the full
+> nine-rung concentration ladder tried against every combination. C is
+> `carrier`, F is `finisher`; a cell names every sheet the sample cannot
+> separate from that cell's leader. A second focal squad runs the same grid:
+> `role-433`, the hard case, since its three forwards are identical to the byte
+> and only cross-group reallocation is left — against the other five squads over
+> a reduced sheet set (`default`, `carrier`, `spread`), 30 further cells.
+> **Sample** — 10,000 matches per cell, home and away, SHA-256 seeds: 114
+> squad-by-sheet-by-mode cells, 14,700,000 matches in this section alone.
+> **Mode** — League shown. The Knockout grid differs in three `def-433` cells
+> and nowhere else: it ties `carrier` with `finisher` against `carrier`,
+> `finisher` and `tier`, where League resolves, and resolves against `sheet`,
+> where League ties. `def-532` is C/F in all fourteen of its cells in both modes.
+> **Effect** — 0 cells out of 114 exclude `carrier` from the best-response band,
+> and the ladder's argmax is the TOP rung in all 84 cells where it was swept: 84
+> ends, 0 interior optima, 0 unresolved, and 84 with no significant step
+> downward at any rung along the way. The distinct raw best-response count is
+> 2, and the three cells where `finisher` edges ahead on the raw number are all
+> `def-532` in Knockout, by 0.1 to 0.2 points of share against a 2.74-point
+> threshold. Every cell of the second focal squad's grid reads C/F, which is the
+> permutation control showing through rather than a conditional answer:
+> `role-433`'s slot 8 and slot 10 are the same player twice, differing only in
+> the penalty-kicker flag. So one sheet is a best response against every
+> squad-and-sheet combination measured, and concentrating harder is better in
+> every one of them.
+> **Source** — `appr-role.mts`, section (6).
+
+### The other half of the table — defensive selection weights
+
+`D_*_APPR` picks who contests each scene, and the same multiplier applies there.
+It is a comparably large lever and it points somewhere surprising.
+
+| Defensive focal slot | ×1 | ×1024 | League | Knockout |
+| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
+| `stars-433` slot 8 — FW, defense 5, **29 pts** | 37.2 | **52.0** | **+14.8pp** | **+18.7pp** |
+| `stars-433` slot 1 — DF, defense 5, 12 pts | 37.2 | 37.8 | +0.6pp | +0.9pp |
+| `def-433` slot 2 — DF, **defense 9**, 20 pts | 52.4 | 57.1 | +4.7pp | +5.3pp |
+| `def-433` slot 8 — FW, defense 2, 19 pts | 52.4 | 17.7 | −34.7pp | −35.5pp |
+
+> **Measured on** — `stars-433` and `def-433`, each against `role-433` playing
+> the shipped weights. The multiplier is applied to the DEFENSIVE table in every
+> scene; the keeper's A0 weight is the one entry left alone, and the offensive
+> table is untouched in all four rows. Both focal squads keep their 212 points
+> and their formations across every cell.
+> **Sample** — 10,000 matches per cell, home and away, SHA-256 seeds.
+> **Mode** — both, one column each. As in the concentration table, the ×1 and
+> ×1024 columns are League shares and the League/Knockout columns are the paired
+> delta from that mode's own ×1 cell.
+> **Effect** — 14.8 percentage points of share in League and 18.7 in Knockout
+> for funnelling defensive duty onto `stars-433`'s biggest FORWARD, against
+> +0.6pp for its nominal defender. Every defensive point is
+> `defense + cond/2 + total/3`, so a 29-point forward with defense 5 outscores a
+> 12-point defender with defense 5 by more than five points before any group
+> term. On `def-433`, whose totals are flat, the answer reverts to the defender
+> with the highest `defense` (+4.7pp) and the forward becomes catastrophic
+> (−34.7pp). **0 of the 8 defensive ladders have a significant interior
+> optimum; 7 peak at an end and 1 peaks inside without separating from a
+> neighbour.**
+> **Source** — `appr-role.mts`, section (7).
+
+### Degrees of freedom this probe LEFT free
+
+The keeper section below was wrong three times in one day and the cause was a
+different uncontrolled degree of freedom each time. So, explicitly, and knowing
+that the verdict under this list is a NEGATIVE one — the things left free are
+the ways it could be wrong:
+
+- **`cond`.** Fixed at 5 for all 22 players in every cell, as production does
+  today. **This is the load-bearing one.** Concentration here has no cost
+  because involvement has no cost; an involvement-driven form system is exactly
+  the change that would put a price on the ×1024 column, and it would invalidate
+  every row above rather than shift it.
+- **Growth buffs.** Every squad is tenure 0, so `teamPow` is exactly 100.
+  Production raises effective `total`, which scales BOTH the individual `total/3`
+  and the group term the anti-concentration section measures — so the 5.4pp that
+  section reports is a tenure-0 figure.
+- **Manager response.** The opponent grid is fixed and nobody re-solves a squad
+  against a sheet. A squad built KNOWING it will funnel one player is a
+  different 212-point problem, and it is not measured here: the co-optimisation
+  of points and weights would only make the effect larger, which is not the
+  direction that would rescue the axis.
+- **The sheet space.** Seven hand-built sheets and one nine-rung ladder per
+  slot. That is a sample of a space with eleven slots × six scenes of free
+  parameters, not an argmax over it. "No cycle among these seven" and "one best
+  response over the crossed grid" are both claims about these seven — a
+  conditional best response living outside them would read as an answer here.
+- **The focal squads.** Two, and only one of them (`stars-433`) has players who
+  differ inside a position group at all, so the within-group half of this axis
+  is measured on one roster. The crossed grid runs `role-433` as a second focal
+  squad, but over a reduced opponent-sheet set and with a formation and a set of
+  kicker flags it shares with the first. **Which** player to funnel is already
+  known to be squad-conditional — the defensive table above reverses its answer
+  between `stars-433` and `def-433` — and nothing here says the best focal SLOT
+  is the same on a roster neither squad resembles. What the grid does support is
+  narrower and is what the verdict uses: whether to concentrate at all does not
+  depend on the opponent.
+- **Set-piece slots.** `squad-lib` pins the FK taker to slot 9 and the penalty
+  taker to slot 10. Slot 10 appears above as a focal player, so its rows carry
+  kicker duty as well as its weight — slot 8, the headline row, carries neither.
+- **Formation.** Every focal squad is a 4-3-3. The lone-OMF result is a fact
+  about a group of one, and a 4-4-2 would not reproduce it.
+- **Interactions.** One sheet at a time against the default. Nothing here says
+  what a role sheet does while an engine constant is also moved.
+- **The defensive keeper slot.** Section (7) leaves the keeper's A0 weight at
+  100 in every cell. Whether a manager should be able to keep his keeper OUT of
+  the 1v1 is a question this probe does not ask.
+
+### The verdict, and what it means for tactical sheets
+
+**Detectable: overwhelmingly.** Up to 35.8 points of win-equivalent share on one
+squad whose 212 points never change, and 76.0% head to head against the same
+eleven players on the default sheet. Every other section of this file measures a
+lever by changing the players; this one changes nothing except which of them the
+ball reaches, and moves more than any of them. The engine-constant sweep — the
+only other section that holds a squad fixed — moved 11.8pp at its widest and
+re-priced nothing.
+
+**A decision: no.** Every diagnostic points the same way. 0 of 50 ladders in the
+one-opponent sections have a significant interior optimum — 48 peak at an end,
+the remaining 2 peak inside without separating from a neighbour — 84 of 84
+ladders swept INSIDE a crossed cell peak at the top rung with nothing
+unresolved, and all 134 ladders in the run are free of any significant step
+against their own direction. The anti-concentration term is real but worth about a seventh of the
+payoff, and it changes the slope without changing the answer. The round robin
+finds zero 3-cycles in either mode and an unbeaten set of two sheets 1.4 points
+of share apart. And the crossed grid — every opponent squad against every
+opponent sheet, on two focal squads, 114 cells — never once excludes `carrier`
+from the best-response band. **Concentration is monotone: more is better, up to
+the corner, against every squad and every sheet measured.**
+
+So the axis is not a decision *yet*, and the word doing the work is `cond`. The
+reason concentration is free is that involvement costs nothing — the eleventh
+selection of a player is exactly as good as his first, because `cond` is a
+constant. That is what a form system changes, and it is the one change that
+could put an interior optimum on these ladders. **Roles before form would ship
+the largest monotone answer in the game.**
+
+Two things in the tables above survive that verdict and are worth keeping:
+
+- **Scene shape is where the interesting half lives.** The same multiplier on
+  the same player is worth +4.7pp or −6.0pp depending only on which scenes it
+  applies to, and the best focal player is the best PASSER rather than the best
+  finisher. Whatever a sheet eventually exposes, a single "involvement" slider
+  would throw both away.
+- **The defensive table is a second lever of the same size and nobody has looked
+  at it.** On a squad with uneven totals the best defender to funnel duty to is
+  the biggest FORWARD, because `total/3` is in every defensive point. That is
+  either a feature to expose or a formula to reconsider, and it is decided by
+  the same track.
+
+Re-run after any engine change:
+
+```bash
+npx tsx packages/mcp/skill/reference/probes/appr-role.mts   # ~21M matches, ~4 min
+N=2000 npx tsx …   # ~50s; the bar is fixed, the detectable EFFECT moves
+```
+
 ---
 
 ## Note for the maintainers