The cap item existed so a three-round match would fit inside a 400-step scan.
Phase 0a's truncation bootstrap removed that constraint -- scan length is a free
parameter now -- and the same phase showed the cap is the thing that turns
stalled games into losses: 20.6% of cap-hit games lost, 99.4% of all losses. A
120-ply cap would put *more* games into the wall and make "freeze the round
while ahead" easier, so the round cap stays at 400 and max_steps_rate stays a
watched metric.
Also records what the plan never listed: ppo.py, gates.py and league.py all take
a single-round State and still have to be wired to MatchState. That is the
largest remaining piece of Phase 1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XBQKgvBbxbheiTF1AVy1Sh
coolguyandClaude Opus 4.8
62b755c3f0