ai-app/docs/LAYOUT_LOG.md

# Layout findings log

What the sessions working on Iris's retained layout found, planner and
worker alike, kept so that nothing here is rediscovered. Each entry says who
found it and when. **Delete this file when transparent frames lands**; what
must outlive it (settled design, the measurement method) is already in
`docs/LAYOUT.md`, and the current plan is in `docs/HANDOFF.md`. Commit ids
are in `/home/bob/repos/iris-layout-experiment` unless said otherwise.

## What the one-ask protocol found (planner, 2026-09-18, third session)

Branch `wip/one-ask` at `3091fb8` over `4328eac`. The change is described in
`docs/HANDOFF.md`; this is what building and fuzzing it turned up, in order.

- **The step 3 assertion was the wrong check.** At the worker's stopping
  point every generated case stopped on `assert_eq!(extent, info.part)` in
  `place`, on a `Text` asked at 45 px in `Within(All)` whose longest word is
  89.5 px: its drawing holds for `[45, 45]` and its answer box is 89.5 px
  wide. No leaf can promise its drawing holds for a box chosen from its
  answer; the plan's sentence "every drawing must hold for the answer box it
  supplies" was the defect, not `Text`. Removing the check *and the redraw
  it guarded* -- placement is re-expression, unconditionally -- made the
  suite green including both decided-box pins, with nothing else changed.
- **Six retained tests encoded the paired draw** (`settled + 2`, "drawn
  once" expecting two): they now expect one draw. Two more failed because
  `Stack` had been changed to ask non-sizing children with `Fill(All)`; they
  need `Within(All)` so a smaller answer sits inside the stack, with the
  frame narrowed to the sizing answer. That is the whole of the suite churn.
- **Seed 2 at depth 4 (`repaint-some`, `region-node`)** shrinks to a `Stack`
  sized by one text. A local redraw of the text asked it again in the box
  the stack was *asked* in and left it filling that; cold puts it in the box
  the stack's *answer* chose. A local redraw must put the fresh drawing
  back at the retained place of the parent's answer box, always, not only
  when the asked and placed places differ.
- **Six seeds at depth 5** (60 `repaint`, 308 `every-size`, 20
  `region-node`, 248, 384, 162 `reorder`) shrink to one shape: a zero `Pad`
  round a widget reading `extent_len` (a span with a share rect, or a
  `Branch`), as a share child of a span beside a fixed sibling. Seed 248
  reproduced: **cold** was wrong. In the measuring pass the inner span read
  `far = rel 1 - 17.6px` and wrote slots in it; in the placing pass the pad
  got a narrowed frame of the same pixel length, was reused (its contract
  had no pin, because `in_parent`'s `Part::Of` arm drops a child's
  `extent_len`), and its child was re-expressed into a frame where `rel 1`
  means 17.6 px less. The inner span's own record had the pin; only the
  composition lost it. Composing the pin through `Of` -- exactly where the
  part is the whole box less pixels, `pinned - part.px`, and pinning the
  parent's own length otherwise -- fixed all six; the planner's earlier
  version of the same experiment broke seeds under the old protocol because
  the second draw was still there.
- Cost after the fix (widget draws / distinct widgets, depth 8): seed 1
  cold 331/288, many 78/78, size 3/3, scroll 1, resize 40/15; seed 13 cold
  1179/982, many 335/333, resize nothing drawn. The table with the baselines
  is in the handoff. `many` at seed 13 touches 333 distinct widgets because
  a share child is asked twice per span draw, and `resize` at seed 1 draws
  40 because positive-direction spans without shares pin `far`; both are
  step 4 there.
- The 1000-seed depth-6 oracle and the 2000-seed depth-4 scan were started
  at `3091fb8` and had not finished when this was written; the next session
  reads `/tmp/oracle-1000-6.log` and `/tmp/shrink-2000-4.log` if they still
  exist, or reruns them.

## What the step 3 plan got wrong (planner, 2026-09-18, third session)

Three things, each a different kind of mistake:

1. **It kept the question the machinery could not answer.** The offer bit
   existed because a widget was drawn twice, once where asked and once where
   its answer placed it, and something had to say which draw was the
   measurement. Both plans of 2026-09-18 tried to define that bit better
   (the worker's four rules, the planner's two experiments). The repair is
   to have one draw, after which the bit has nothing to name. A plan that
   proposes bookkeeping for a distinction should first ask whether the
   distinction has to exist.
2. **It stated the contract at the wrong box.** "Every drawing must hold for
   the answer box it supplies" reads as a tightening and is actually
   unsatisfiable for any widget that reads its box. The right statement is
   the opposite: the answer box is never a question, so nothing is demanded
   of the drawing there; `Holds` is about the ask box only.
3. **It narrowed frames by region.** The worker's share frames were
   `extent_part(axis, From(span))`, a position in the span's frame; a frame
   given as a position does not move when its part moves, and `re_ask` had
   no way to put it back. A narrowed frame must be a *length* of the
   parent's frame, placed into the part by alignment on every placement,
   exactly as a declared rule already was.

The requirements did change under the plans (transparent frames, then
shares narrowing frames, then `Scroll`'s content length), which explains
some churn but not the three above; those were reasoning errors that a
five-widget reproduction with the retained records printed would have
caught in minutes. Print the records before proposing the next rule.

## The two shrinker seeds that were open on `wip/transparent-frames` (planner, 2026-09-18) -- closed by `wip/one-ask`

Both were the rule in `draw_inner` that decided which answer places a widget's
box: `measured = if info.offer() { fresh } else { retained }` with
`offer() := place == offer_place`. That bit is meant to say "this ask is a
measurement" and has no consistent value once a container's body runs in
more than one box.

- **Seed 2, `repaint`, depth 5** shrinks to `Stack{sized by child 0}[x:
  leftover] > [OneLine, Pad{0} > Span{DOWN}[Rect, OneLine], Branch]`. The
  stack's box is one text line tall. The span measured in the stack's room
  has leftover room, draws the rect and reports `leftover` across; in the
  stack's box it has none, undraws the rect and reports the text's width.
  Cold kept the first because the stack's placing evaluation reused the
  pad's retained answer, which looked valid only because `in_parent`'s
  `Part::Of` arm drops the span's `extent_len` pin. Warm re-asked the span in
  the box and got the second. The correct layout is the second: the stack's
  non-sizing children belong in the stack's box, and the measuring pass drew
  them in a box the stack never has.
- **Seed 108, `reorder`, depth 5** shrinks to `Span{LEFT} > [Span{LEFT} >
  [Span{DOWN} > [Branch{probe Rect, wide Rect, narrow Wrapped, 483},
  Wrapped], Rect], Rect]`. A draw trace shows the `DOWN` span evaluated at
  900, 450, 600 and 300 px across in one cold layout (room of the outer
  span, slot inside the inner span's measuring pass, slot of the inner span,
  slot inside that), the wrapping text re-shaped at each. In the last one
  the branch's narrow text is drawn in its real 300 px box and answers 286
  px; `draw_inner` discards that for the retained 438.9 px answer from the
  450 px evaluation because the branch's `below` place embeds
  `extent_len(Y)`, which moved when the sibling text's height changed, so
  `place != offer_place`; the text is redrawn 438.9 px wide in a 300 px box.
  Warm does the same with a different stale answer (286 px from the first
  frame). The same shape is `unsettled::a_widget_under_a_region_node_is_asked_in_the_box_that_node_was_offered`.

Two one-line experiments, both reverted, run at `49cec82` with the fast
oracle, the debug suite and the shrinker at 400 seeds of depth 5:

| change | seed 2 | seed 108 | else |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| compose the pin through `Part::Of` (`len.px - part_len.px` where `part_len.rel == ONE`) | fixed | fails | seed 220 `reorder` and one suite test fail |
| `measured = answer.0` always, and every ask records `answer`/`offer_part` | fails | fixed | seeds 184, 246, 292, 372 and two suite tests fail, all under `Scroll` |

The second experiment's failures are the case the gate was secretly holding
up: a container re-drawn in a box its own answer derived. The specific one
is `Scroll`, whose `apply_leftover` content length adds a whole viewport on
top of the content's pixels (a row reporting `600 px + leftover` in a 900 px
viewport gets a 1500 px content box), so the wrapping text inside is offered
900 px more room than it was measured in and re-wraps; the layout drifts one
iteration per evaluation, and warm and cold differ by how many they ran.
Bryan: that content length was always wrong; a share is the room left in the
viewport, so `content = max(viewport, px + rel*viewport)`. With it the
content box never re-offers room and `Scroll` needs no own-answer
evaluation.

The `many`/`resize` cost is the same mechanism in miniature: four
evaluations of a ten-widget subtree in one cold layout, from `Within(cursor..
far)` measuring rooms followed by `Fill(slot)` placing, with the span's
`extent_len` pin forcing a redraw at every box length.

## Original step 3 plan, preserved verbatim (planner, 2026-09-18)

This is the original idea from ai-app-2 `280fad7`, kept here even as the
handoff's stop notice changes with new evidence:

> ### 3. Evaluate children in parent-decided boxes
>
> Change placement so an answer-derived box never runs a container body.
> Placing becomes reuse-or-translate. Remove the offer/measurement gate and
> its retained bookkeeping only as each caller stops needing it; do not leave
> a parallel old path.
>
> Three current widgets must stop depending on measuring boxes they will never
> own:
>
> - `Span`: do not read `extent_len` unconditionally. Slots depend on `far`
>   only when shares exist (the decided slot fills its part) or for negative
>   direction; compute negative-direction slots from `total`. Pin the extent
>   length only in those cases.
> - `Stack`: draw non-sizing children in `From(0..size)` on an axis where the
>   sizing child's answer is `px`/`rel`, and `All` where it is `leftover`,
>   instead of drawing them in `All` of the measuring room.
> - `Branch` in the random rig: express "the rest of my box" as
>   `Of(40px..FULL)` rather than reading `extent_len(Y)`.
>
> Every drawing must hold for the answer box it supplies. The two focused tests
> from step 1 and the existing region-node and decided-box tests must pass here.

The surrounding seven-step implementation plan remains in `docs/HANDOFF.md`;
the quoted text above is the part whose interpretation is now blocked, so it
must remain available even if the live handoff is rewritten.

## Step 3 experiment after verifying the tests (worker, 2026-09-18)

The initial 17 suite failures mixed obsolete expectations with real defects.
`ReadsBox`, `ReadsWidth`, and `Measured` used pixel reads to compute only their
answer; failing `Counted` cases installed a box dependency without drawing
anything. Those fixtures encoded the old second draw inside the answer box.
Giving the painter answer-only pixel reads preserved their invalidation and
geometry claims while removing the obsolete paired-draw count. Separate
fixtures still exercise actual drawing dependencies with ordinary pixel
reads.

The experiment then reached a green 114-test suite. Its substantive findings:

- answer validity and final-drawing validity must remain independent all the
  way through `draw_inner`; returning their old combined contract falsely
  pinned wrappers such as `Pad` to provisional boxes;
- a repeated ask of one child replaces that child's provisional final-drawing
  contract rather than intersecting both drawings forever;
- provisional `Span` asks fill their measuring room; `Within` immediately
  tries to put the child in its own answer before the span decides anything;
- only an actually allocated share pins final span slots to `far`; an
  overfull row with a requested but unallocated share uses fixed slots;
- a narrowed share frame is `Part::From(slot)` of the span's *extent*, not a
  zero-based span in the forwarded frame;
- a local redraw re-asks the question that produced the retained answer and
  marks the parent to restore any distinct final placement.

The release fast oracle then failed all eleven ordinary cases during cold
layout. Most failures were `Text`: its provisional drawing was pinned to a
pixel width that did not include the smaller box its answer selected. A
generated `Stack` showed the same class through a symbolic `FULL` pin. This
is stronger evidence than the original suite failures: the generated tests
are not asserting draw counts or the old two-draw protocol, and no warm state
exists yet. The open decision is whether the guarantee quoted above applies
to every leaf and how `Text` can establish it, or whether answer-derived leaf
evaluation remains legal while container evaluation does not.

## What the plan of 2026-09-18 got wrong (planner, same day)

The plan claimed the retained model rests on the frame's length being the
same on every ask. Answers depend on the *part* (the box offered), not the
frame, for every widget that reads its box, so transparent frames fixed
fraction resolution and moved the second geometry from the frame to the
extent rather than removing it. Step 6 ("redraw without the deferral; both
seeds must pass now because the frame no longer changes under the widget")
followed from that claim and was false for the same reason. The plan also
carried `offer_place` ("from the first ask of the parent's draw at the
offer") forward from the old protocol without noticing it is undefinable
once a container is evaluated in several boxes, and its `Inset` sketch
assumed a narrowed frame and a placed extent could coexist, which
`frame_and_extent` collapses ("a narrowed frame is its own extent") and which
the extent-in-frame-coordinates representation cannot express in general
(`(0.5*B - 20)/(B - 20)` is not `rel + px`). The plan also wrote "a frame is
narrowed only by a declared length, an inset or the root" and the code's
`declared_lens` filters `leftover` out; Bryan: a share was always meant to
narrow the frame like the other two.

The worker executed the plan as written, found exactly this ("whether a
given draw is a measurement cannot be recovered from the ask"), tried four
bookkeeping rules (first-ness alone, place matching the retained offer place,
box matching the measured box, a retained flag on the drawing), each fixing
some seeds and breaking others, restored the deferral and stopped. That was
the right call. The plan as handed over is at ai-app-2 `152bed7` if the
wording is ever needed.

## What the worker measured on `wip/transparent-frames` (worker, 2026-09-18)

Widget draws / distinct widgets / update ms from `tests/layout_diagnostics.rs`
at depth 8; draw counts are deterministic so these are single runs.
`e44dea3` is #18's head, `34cafb6` the commit the branch starts from,
`49cec82` its head.

| seed 1  | e44dea3      | 34cafb6      | 49cec82       | 3091fb8       |
| ---     | ---          | ---          | ---           | ---           |
| cold    | 369/261/10.6 | 463/274/13.3 | 516/288/12.0  | 331/288/12.3  |
| repaint | 1            | 1            | 1             | 1             |
| many    | 157/95/0.33  | 263/108/0.59 | 187/119/0.52  | 78/78/0.13    |
| size    | 16/12/0.018  | 3/3          | 3/3/0.010     | 3/3/0.008     |
| scroll  | 2/0.002      | 1            | 1/0.004       | 1/0.001       |
| resize  | 13/13/0.019  | 22/15/0.032  | 24/76/0.090   | 40/15/0.096   |

| seed 13 | e44dea3       | 49cec82        | 3091fb8        |
| ---     | ---           | ---            | ---            |
| cold    | 1330/707/20.3 | 2940/982/28.3  | 1179/982/24.6  |
| many    | 524/159/1.09  | 1091/423/2.39  | 335/333/0.62   |
| resize  | nothing drawn | 2215/510/6.56  | nothing drawn  |

The `3091fb8` column is single runs from the third session; its `cold` and
`resize` at seed 1 are after the `Part::Of` pin composition, which added
18 and 19 draws respectively over the version without it.

Three findings, each applied on the branch:

- **Lazy `Within` placement costs more than it saves.** Leaving a child's
  answer to be placed at the end of the parent's draw puts the drawing in the
  part first and in the answer's box after; where it does not hold for both
  that is two drawings. Seed 1's resize went from 391 widget draws to 29
  with it removed.
- **An inset said in frame lengths makes a container read its own box.**
  "Less eleven pixels at the end" needs the length, and a container whose
  box is its own answer then depends on its own answer: `Pad` drew
  sixty-four times in one resize frame at seed 13. `Part::Of` says it as a
  part of the box and composes without a length.
- **Pin one axis at a time.** `extent_len` pinning both axes made a span
  dividing one hold for one length of the other.

`Part::Of`'s `in_parent` arm drops a child's `extent_len` pin (only `All`
composes one), which is what let seed 2's pad reuse an answer for a box its
span had never been measured in.

Reference renders at `49cec82` against `34cafb6`: `view` and `minimal`
byte-identical; `tabs` 2,332 pixels; `text` shows `wtext(..).width(rel(1.0))`
inside `.pad(16)` at the window's edges. Under the decided share rule that
example is correct as written: once the share narrows the frame, `rel(1.0)`
is the padded share and fits. The clipped render records the current bug.
`random` moves where nested spans do.

## Defects landed before transparent frames, and their lessons (2026-09-17 review)

- **A report is a fraction of the containing widget** (`ffd79f3`). A
  report used to come back composed through the box it was offered, and a
  span offers each child the room from its cursor, so a nested span taking
  half of what it was given took a quarter of a row whose first half was
  spoken for. Consequence: a span can overflow itself without bound, so its
  `fixed <= 0` branches are ordinary and boxes of negative length reach
  children; nothing yet states what a widget may assume about one.
- **An answer is not an answer while anything under it is dirty**
  (`0e0d4af`, superseded by `a0693ac`). `dirty_size_under` was what made an
  answer an answer until the settling walk made the state it guarded against
  unreachable. Found at seed 564, depth 6, `shuffle-every-other`.
- **A frame settles strictly bottom-up** (`a92c6ac`, `a0693ac`). A widget
  that cannot settle defers to its parent rather than drawing the parent
  from inside itself; `update` marks the root for a resize instead of
  drawing it top-down, and only where the new output falls outside what the
  root's answer holds for. Sound by induction on depth. Bryan: "then that
  entire category of issue can't even occur."
- **A text is handed back a box its own line fits in** (`4bd8607`): report
  `ceil` of the shaped size; the two tolerances that were holding it
  together (`BREAK_EPSILON_PX`, a nearest-step `Holds` start) both went.
- **A subtree that changes hands is recorded on both sides** (`e44dea3`):
  the old parent's child list is repaired and the subtree's depths re-walked
  where its top moved. The fuzzer never re-parents, which is why nothing
  generated reached it.
- **A span's leftover boundary is its own inverse** (`53b00c6`): forty
  lines became twelve and one `div` left layout.
- **`wip/stack-fraction-twice`** (a stack sized by a child reporting
  `rel(0.5)` applied it twice) is closed by transparent frames:
  `placed_extent` takes the reported length *from* the part rather than
  composing it into the part. No oracle could see it; the branch's test pins
  it. **`wip/padding-outset-and-inset`** is superseded: padding goes outside
  what it pads, and its `rel(0.5)`-under-inset failure was the same second
  application.
- Four findings from the frame/extent prototype still shape the code: an
  answer and a drawing each retain their dependencies (`answer_under` and
  `under`); a wider contract does not invalidate an existing guarantee; no
  measurement is different from a measured zero (`ActiveData::answer` is
  optional); the settling walk takes the deepest mark from a `BTreeSet`
  keyed by depth and what ends it is the mark set.

## Failed hypotheses worth not repeating

- **The placement pin was blamed for the `many` gap and is not the cause**
  (2026-09-17). Disabling it still redrew 487 distinct widgets a frame at
  seed 13 against 159; the per-widget trace showed local redraws deferring
  to their parents in chains to the root because a span handed its children
  its own placement as their frame. Transparent frames fixed that part.
- **`wip/local-reask`** re-asked a dirty widget at its offer instead of
  deferring, under the old protocol, and diverged at seeds 532 and 398 of
  depth 6. Superseded; the branch can be deleted.
- **An offer composed back up the move chain** fell back to `FULL` under a
  region node and was resolved against that node's *placed* box, so
  everything under a `Scroll` was re-asked at the content's width. Pinned by
  `unsettled::a_widget_under_a_region_node_is_asked_in_the_box_that_node_was_offered`.
- **Four bookkeeping rules for "which draw is a measurement"** (worker) and
  **the two experiments above** (planner): each fixes some seeds and breaks
  others. The bit is undefinable; `wip/one-ask` removes the second draw, so
  there is nothing left for it to name.
- **Asserting that a placed drawing holds for its answer box** (worker's
  step 3): unsatisfiable for `Text` and for any widget that reads its box
  and reports something else. The answer box is not a question.
- **Choosing between a fixed and a relative child in pixels at the span's
  current width** admits multiple self-sizing fixed points; seed 13 settled
  differently warm and cold under it. The same circularity is what a cap
  containing `leftover` would put into `SizeRule::Max`.
- **A tolerant endpoint on the span's leftover split** retained zero-height
  children at seed 16. Pinned by
  `unsettled::a_box_that_only_rounds_past_its_fixed_children_leaves_nothing_over`.
- **`Scroll` returning the final placed answer** rather than the first
  box's advanced one fixed-point iteration (seed 86). Moot once the content
  box never re-offers room, but keep the test until that is measured.
- **A `git bisect`** once named a commit that could not be the cause; read
  the tree rather than the bisect when that happens.

## Fuzzer coverage

- Seeds 1121 and 1839 at depth 4 failed on every commit before `4bd8607`
  and nothing routine reached them: the fast oracle takes ten seeds, the
  shrinker 400 at depth 5, the long oracle 1000 at depth 6. The scan that
  found them (2000 seeds at depth 4 over all fifteen cases, 261 s) should be
  run after any layout change. `Rng::new` is `seed | 1`, so an even seed and
  the odd one above it are one tree.
- The shrinker panics per thread at the first failing seed, so a run
  reports at most one seed per chunk of about 58; a seed listed as new after
  a change may have been hidden behind another in the same chunk. Check a
  single seed against the unpatched code before calling it new (seed 220
  was checked this way and is new under the pin experiment).
- Depth finds things and so does breadth; widen one axis at a time and
  record which.

## Smaller open items (carried from the old handoff)

- An undrawn `leftover` child still contributes its gap, so a vanished
  child leaves a double gap.
- Nested spans pass `leftover` weight up, so three leftover children in one
  inner span beside one in another get three quarters to one quarter. No
  other layout system does that; confirm it is wanted.
- `Fixed::div` by zero answers `MIN`/`MAX` while `ratio` answers `ZERO`;
  both are caller bugs under `debug_assert`, but the fallbacks differ.
- The comment on the `local == UiRegion::FULL` shortcut in `widget_at` says
  composing through `FULL` "is not quite the identity in f32"; on the grid
  it is exact and the shortcut is performance only.
- `docs/LAYOUT.md` §4, §5 and the density section name `Painter::place`,
  `SetSize`, `desired_width`, `apply_rest`, `Len::dp`, `Aligned` and
  `MaxSize`, none of which exist. Do not restore `OnResize::Translate` or
  `OrthoSize`.
- `tabs` changed twice across `d3b0ebf` with nobody looking; take the oracle
  as the reference and the five renders as a spot check.