Wire the caption merge, and write the target architecture down

merge_faceless_captions had been written and never called; both crop
endpoints called the non-destructive context_fragment_links instead, with no
decision recording that choice. Wiring it changes panel count and every panel
index, so the chapter needs a re-crop with the panels prefix cleared first --
crop_webtoon skips an upload when the key already exists, which is right for a
resume and silently wrong after a slicing change. Noted at the line.

It does not cover the head-in-one-shot body-in-the-next split that prompted
the question. _merge_plan only folds a fragment that has text and no face.

ARCHITECTURE.md is the target shape from the user's design, with what exists
against each section today. Nothing in it is built.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

ARCHITECTURE.md

@@ -0,0 +1,368 @@
+# ARCHITECTURE
+
+The target shape of the pipeline, written 2026-08-13 from the user's design. This is **not** what the code
+does. `NEXT.md` holds the live state and `AUDIT.md` holds the current pipeline. Every section here ends
+with what exists today, so the gap is legible without reading both.
+
+The governing principle:
+
+> Do not make the next panel understand the previous panel. Make it understand the current world state
+> produced by all previous panels.
+
+Vision produces observations. A persistent chapter graph owns identity and relationships. Everything below
+follows from that split.
+
+## 1. The page is a region graph, not a list of panels
+
+```
+page
+ ├─ regions
+ │   ├─ panel
+ │   ├─ inset_panel
+ │   ├─ embedded_art
+ │   ├─ text
+ │   ├─ tail
+ │   └─ character_occurrence
+ │
+ └─ edges
+     ├─ contains(region, region)
+     ├─ reads_before(text, text)
+     ├─ tail_of(tail, text)
+     ├─ points_to(tail, character)
+     ├─ spoken_by(text, character)
+     └─ same_identity(character, character)
+```
+
+A flat set of panels cannot express a television inside a room. That is the defect the current pipeline
+shows most often.
+
+**Today:** the crop stage emits a flat panel list with a bbox each, plus `context_fragments`, a
+non-destructive caption-to-face link. Vision emits per-panel characters and dialogue. There is no
+containment edge, no tail region and no region type.
+
+## 2. Identity exists independently of names
+
+```
+occurrence c42
+    -> identity char_07
+         name = null
+         aliases = []
+```
+
+`char_07.name` may be filled later, or stay null forever and display as `unknown character #7`. The
+occurrence is the observation, the identity is the cluster, the name is an optional label on the cluster.
+Three levels, never collapsed into one.
+
+**Today:** the schema already has this split. `identity_assignments` is the occurrence,
+`characters` owns the identity, `name` is nullable and downstream already falls back to an anonymous
+display. What is missing is the clustering, not the separation. See section 4.
+
+## 3. Speaker attribution is a scored graph edge, not a procedure
+
+Do not write `find bubble -> find tail -> nearest character`. Score every plausible edge:
+
+```
+score(text, character) =
+    learned_t2c_score
+  + tail_evidence
+  + spatial_evidence
+  + same_panel
+  + dialogue_continuity
+  + character_activity_prior
+  + identity_context
+```
+
+`learned_t2c_score` is the load-bearing term: a pair classifier over the whole page, the text object's
+visual feature and the character object's visual feature. Magi's text-character head does exactly this.
+It can start as a tiny MLP:
+
+```
+t2c(text_embedding, character_embedding, page_context, geometry_features) -> p(speaker)
+```
+
+with geometry carrying normalized relative position, distance, overlap, same-panel, containment depth and
+tail direction.
+
+Then the cases fall out of one mechanism instead of four:
+
+| case | what carries it |
+| --- | --- |
+| bubble with a tail | `t2c` + tail, usually decisive |
+| bubble with no tail | `t2c` + spatial and context |
+| speaker outside the panel | recent identities + an offscreen candidate |
+| narration | the narrator candidate |
+| nothing resolves | unknown speaker |
+
+**A dialogue line must not be required to resolve to a visible character.** That is a failure mode, not a
+safeguard. The speaker type is a union:
+
+```
+speaker = visible(character_id) | offscreen(character_id?) | narrator | unknown
+```
+
+**Today:** `speaker_ref` is already a typed union of `character_id | name | unknown | narrator`
+(`decisions/audit-phase1.md#speaker-ref-is-canonical`). `offscreen` is the missing arm. Attribution is a
+prompt to gemma over a window of panels, with no geometry term at all. The `det`/`seg` tail heads exist
+and are unused (`caveats/speaker-attribution.md#tail-is-not-geometry`).
+
+## 4. Character recognition is occurrence, then identity, then name
+
+```
+character detection
+       ↓
+occurrence embeddings
+       ↓
+pairwise same_identity probabilities
+       ↓
+chapter-wide constrained clustering
+       ↓
+char_001, char_002, ...
+       ↓
+optional character-bank lookup
+       ↓
+name or unknown
+```
+
+Two rules that the current code gets wrong.
+
+**The embedding is not the character crop alone.** Combine four signals: the character crop, the face or
+head crop, the full-body crop, and a contextual object feature. Magiv2 combines detected object features
+with a separate crop-embedding model.
+
+**Cluster chapter-wide, not page by page.**
+
+**Two characters in the same panel may be one person.** Mirrors, photographs, flashbacks, insets,
+screens, imagined scenes and repeated action drawings all break that rule. Make it a weak cannot-link,
+and only when the two are on the same narrative plane.
+
+**Today:** the embedding is the person box only, which is measurably the wrong signal
+(`caveats/audit-open.md#cosine-not-identity`). Clustering is greedy and local: `tracklets.link_tracklets`
+groups within an 8-panel window. `tracklets.cannot_link` treats same-panel co-presence as a **hard**
+constraint, which is exactly the correction above. Naming is `db.add_name_claim`, corroboration over
+`name_claims`.
+
+## 5. The art-in-art problem needs a narrative plane
+
+Treat the page as a hierarchical scene graph:
+
+```
+page
+└── panel A                     depth=0
+    ├── character c1
+    ├── text t1
+    └── television/poster       depth=1, type=embedded_art
+        ├── character c2
+        └── text t2
+```
+
+Speaker candidates normally come from the same `scene_depth`. Otherwise a real character standing beside a
+poster of a drawn person can be given the poster person's line.
+
+A region classifier predicts a type:
+
+```
+story_scene | inset_story_panel | flashback | screen | photo | poster | illustration | decorative
+```
+
+Perfect classification is not the point. The output that matters is one probability:
+
+```
+same_narrative_plane(a, b)
+```
+
+which then enters the association score in section 3 and the cannot-link in section 4.
+
+**Today:** nothing models this, and it is the whole of the remaining identity error on the lead. On the
+19:44 run of 2026-08-12 his 16 assignments were 14 correct plus a photograph of another man and a chibi
+drawing. Both are art inside a panel. Vision also boxes cats as people and dresses them (`p081`, `p108`).
+
+## 6. Narrative understanding is a state machine, not a per-panel description
+
+```
+story_state
+├─ entities        (characters, locations, important objects)
+├─ scenes
+├─ timeline
+├─ relationships
+├─ unresolved_threads
+├─ facts
+└─ hypotheses
+```
+
+A panel produces a **delta**, not another standalone prose interpretation:
+
+```
+panel 142:
+- character_07 enters room_03
+- character_02 is already present
+- character_07 says "..."
+- object_12 changes owner: 02 -> 07
+- possible flashback begins
+```
+
+### Facts, hypotheses and unknowns are different records
+
+```
+fact:        source=panel_142  confidence=0.99  character_07 is visible
+hypothesis:  confidence=0.64                    character_07 is angry
+unknown:                                        who caused the explosion
+```
+
+A later panel strengthens, replaces or invalidates a hypothesis without rewriting history.
+
+### Scene state is explicit and inherited
+
+```
+scene_31:
+  location: school_rooftop
+  time: evening
+  participants: {char_03: present, char_07: present, char_11: offscreen}
+  pov: null
+  narrative_mode: present
+  parent_scene: null
+```
+
+A panel inherits this unless visual evidence overrides it. That alone kills a class of errors. A character
+absent for one panel has not left. A panel with no background has not changed location. A tail-less line
+keeps the offscreen participant as a candidate. A close-up still belongs to the scene.
+
+### Classify the transition, not just the panel
+
+```
+CONTINUE_SCENE | NEW_SCENE | LOCATION_CHANGE | TIME_SKIP | FLASHBACK_START
+FLASHBACK_END | DREAM/IMAGINATION | POV_CHANGE | EMBEDDED_SCENE
+```
+
+`EMBEDDED_SCENE` is what stops a television's contents mutating the room around it:
+
+```
+scene_12 present
+ ├─ panel 101
+ ├─ panel 102
+ └─ embedded scene_13 [television]
+      ├─ panel-like region
+      └─ char_19
+```
+
+### Character state is written by a resolver, never by the vision model
+
+```
+char_07:
+  known_names: [...]
+  currently_at: room_03
+  status: alive
+  appearance_state: {clothes: school_uniform, injured: true}
+  relationships: {char_02: friend?}
+  last_seen: panel_142
+```
+
+The path is `observation -> resolver -> state transition`, and the resolver may reject an impossible
+update.
+
+### Conversation state is its own record
+
+```
+conversation_18:
+  scene: scene_31
+  participants: [char_02, char_07]
+  last_speaker: char_07
+  addressee: char_02
+  topic: missing_key
+```
+
+This is the strongest available prior for a tail-less bubble. Given `A: where did you put it? / ... /
+A: don't lie.`, turn-taking assigns the middle line with no visual evidence at all.
+
+### An unresolved reference survives instead of being forced
+
+```
+unknown_04:
+  type: person
+  descriptions: ["the man from yesterday", "silhouette in panel_58"]
+  candidate_ids: {char_12: 0.55, char_19: 0.22}
+```
+
+Chapter 6 may reveal `unknown_04 == char_12`, and that identity back-propagates through the graph. The
+same applies to unnamed characters, pronouns, disguised characters, mysterious objects and unseen
+speakers.
+
+### Two memories
+
+- **Working narrative state**: the current scene and the recent ones, in detail.
+- **Canonical long-term memory**: compressed facts, not chapter summaries. `char_07 learned that char_02
+  betrayed the group.` `object_04 is held by char_11.` `char_03 does not know char_07 survived.`
+
+### A chapter boundary is a checkpoint, not a reset
+
+```
+chapter_checkpoint:
+  persistent_entity_changes / relationship_changes / location and status changes
+  newly established facts / unresolved questions / active plot threads / final scene state
+```
+
+Chapter `n+1` starts from that. The detailed panel graph may be kept forever. Only five things load into
+the model: the current scene, the previous scene, the relevant character records, the active threads, and
+retrieved old facts.
+
+### A consistency checker runs after each scene and chapter
+
+Seven checks. A dead character appearing normally. A character knowing a fact before learning it. An
+object owned by two people at once. A flashback never closed. A location jump with no transition. A
+speaker who was neither present nor offscreen. A name that conflicts with the identity graph. The model
+proposes corrections. The graph stays the source of truth.
+
+**Today:** none of this exists. Each stage reads its predecessor's blob for one panel or one beat.
+`recent` is a rolling list of the last few dialogue lines and is the only carried state. Chapter
+boundaries are a reset. There is no fact-versus-hypothesis distinction anywhere, which is why narration
+asserts things no panel shows (`NEXT.md` item 6).
+
+## 7. The staged version worth building
+
+Do not recreate Magi's monolithic network first. Detection, vision and character embeddings already exist,
+so stage it:
+
+```
+page
+ ↓
+region detector          panels / nested regions / texts / characters / tails
+ ↓
+object feature extraction
+ ↓
+three pair models        character↔character (identity)
+                         text→character      (speaker)
+                         text→tail           (bubble structure)
+ ↓
+chapter graph
+ ↓
+global character clustering
+ ↓
+optional naming
+ ↓
+ocr + reading order
+ ↓
+dialogue stream
+```
+
+The VLM then judges only the ambiguous graph edges. It no longer rediscovers every character and dialogue
+relationship from raw pixels on every panel. Magi formulates detection and association as graph
+generation, which is why it beats a crop, OCR and nearest-character pipeline here.
+
+## What to take from this before the rewrite
+
+Three items are cheap against the current code and pay immediately. They are entered in `NEXT.md`, not
+here.
+
+1. **`same_narrative_plane`, as a per-detection field.** Vision already returns per-panel boxes. Add a
+   `plane` or `depth` to a detection, set when the model says the figure sits inside a screen, poster,
+   photo or drawing. That buys the containment edge with no detector. It is the whole of the remaining
+   identity error on the lead, and it feeds every stage below.
+2. **Same-panel co-presence becomes a weak cannot-link.** `tracklets.cannot_link` currently makes it hard.
+   It needs item 1 first, because the plane is what makes the weak version safe.
+3. **`offscreen` as a fourth `speaker_ref` kind.** The union already exists, the arm does not.
+
+## Sources
+
+Magi and Magiv2 for the detection-and-association-as-graph-generation formulation, the text-character
+pair head, and the character bank of exemplar images plus names. Magiv3 for panels, texts, characters and
+tails with their associations, and for character grounding between textual descriptions and detected
+character regions.

CLAUDE.md

@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ Goal, invariants, and working rules. Read this first.
 | `caveats/` | every known limit and its revisit trigger, indexed in `caveats/CLAUDE.md` |
 | `AGENTS.md` | commands, with the traps beside them |
 | `AUDIT.md` | the 2026-08-11 pipeline audit, the source of the roadmap |
+| `ARCHITECTURE.md` | the target shape of the pipeline, and what exists against it today |
 | `spec-v3.md` | current quality and look work, marked DONE/TODO per item |
 
 Do not restate a finding here. Point at the decision.

JOURNAL.md

@@ -723,3 +723,36 @@ Checks: `worker_vision.py` self-check ok, `tracklets.py` self-check ok, orchestr
 `/characters/reset` asked for it.
 
 Artefacts: `sheet_*.png`, one contact sheet per character. Session scratchpad only, not committed.
+
+## 2026-08-13 — the dialogue stage names nobody, and why
+
+Ran `dialogue` 116/116 in 5m57s on the fourth cycle's registry, to see whether the fixed identity lets the
+existing `name_claims` path name the female lead. It does not, and the six claims it produced name three
+separate defects.
+
+```
+p040  character_2b1b12a1  "Choi Haeseon"  caption  1.00   -> NOT promoted
+p010  character_b1dd5659  "Lim Seonho"    caption  1.00   -> conflict flag
+p047  character_b1dd5659  "Seonho"        address  0.90   -> conflict flag
+p011  character_f0d4e901  "Seonho"        address  1.00   -> PROMOTED
+p026  character_f0d4e901  "Seonho"        address  1.00   -> PROMOTED
+p110  character_028d4a49  "Haeseon"       address  1.00   -> already named
+```
+
+All three are fixed in `db.add_name_claim` and recorded in `decisions/identity-naming.md`: alias grouping,
+a confident caption as strong evidence, and one name per character. `test_name_binding.py` replays these
+six claims, 121 tests pass, and each new assert was confirmed to fail with its fix disabled.
+
+Also wired `merge_faceless_captions` into both crop endpoints. It had been written and never called; both
+endpoints called the non-destructive `context_fragment_links` instead, and no decision recorded that
+choice. It does not cover the head-in-one-shot, body-in-the-next split that prompted the question, because
+a body fragment has no text and `_merge_plan` only folds a fragment that has text and no face.
+
+Found while wiring it: `crop_webtoon` skips an upload when the key exists, which is right for a resume and
+silently wrong after a slicing change. Documented at the line and in `NEXT.md`.
+
+Wrote `ARCHITECTURE.md` from the user's design: region graph, occurrence/identity/name, speaker as a scored
+graph edge with a typed union, narrative plane for art-in-art, and a persistent story state machine. Every
+section carries what exists against it today. Nothing in it is built.
+
+Nothing ran on a GPU after the dialogue stage.

NEXT.md

@@ -39,28 +39,42 @@ contain the right person. Coverage is still the `has_face` gate plus those refus
 
 ## Next
 
-1. **Deploy the two tracklet fixes and run the fourth cycle.** Neither has touched a GPU. Rebuild the
+1. **Re-crop the chapter and run the fifth cycle.** Four changes are written and tested since the fourth
-   orchestrator image, reset the registry, run vision/identity/reconcile, then re-check the lead's crops.
+   cycle, and none has touched a GPU.
-   Expect roughly 30 tracklets over 64 crops instead of 12, so identity goes from about 1m25s to 3 or 4
-   minutes. Watch the lead's assignment count against 36.
 
-   Neither fix is sufficient. Bare hair colour still links different men, and the cat still joins its
+   - `merge_faceless_captions` is wired into both crop endpoints. It was written, never called, and
-   neighbours. Do not add a crop-to-crop cosine to close that: measured on this run's 22 embeddings,
+     `context_fragment_links` was called instead. A stranded caption fragment now vstacks into the
-   different people reach 0.93 while the same person reaches 0.96, so no threshold exists
+     face-bearing fragment it belongs to, so panel count and every panel index change.
-   (`caveats/audit-open.md#cosine-not-identity`).
+   - three naming fixes in `db.add_name_claim` (`decisions/identity-naming.md`): alias grouping, a caption
+     as strong evidence, and a name held by another character refusing to promote onto a second one.
 
-   Agreed next step after the cycle, chosen by the user and not started: **stop letting cosine pick the
+   **Clear `s3://panels/<manga>/<chapter>/panels/` before re-cropping.** `crop_webtoon` skips the upload
-   gallery.** There are 9 live characters. `run_stage_identity` builds `union_cands` from the members'
+   when the key exists, so a re-crop after a slicing change silently keeps the previous run's images.
-   cosine top-k shortlists, so a metric that cannot separate people decides who is even considered. Send
+   Wiring the merge is a slicing change. Everything downstream is invalidated by it, so this is a full
-   the live cast instead, gender-gated, capped and logged when truncated. Note two traps found while
+   re-run and not a stage rerun.
-   reading it: `/vision/resolve` sends up to 3 reference images per candidate
+
-   (`worker_vision.py:1057`), so 9 candidates is 27 images plus the query and needs a cap; and only a crop
+   Expected: fewer than 116 panels, `2b1b12a1` named `Choi Haeseon` from the p040 caption, the lead's
-   with a non-empty cosine shortlist enters `shortlists` at all, so an empty top-k currently drops the crop
+   `conflicting-name-claims` flag gone, and the green-dress woman no longer named `Seonho` but carrying a
-   from resolution entirely.
+   `name-already-taken` flag instead.
+
+   Not fixed by any of it. Bare hair colour still links different men. Do not add a crop-to-crop cosine to
+   close that. Measured on 22 embeddings, different people reach 0.93 and the same person reaches 0.96, so
+   no threshold exists (`caveats/audit-open.md#cosine-not-identity`).
 
    Then, separately, test embedding the FACE box rather than the person box. `face_detect` already finds
    the face and pairs it for `has_face`. That is the likely root cause of cosine measuring scene instead of
-   person, and the test is to re-embed these same 22 detections and recompute the matrix.
+   person. The test is to re-embed these same 22 detections and recompute the matrix.
+
+1b. **The head/body split that started the crop question is NOT fixed.** The wired merge only folds a
+   fragment that has text and no face. A body fragment carries no dialogue, so `_merge_plan` leaves it
+   solo and it becomes its own panel and its own shot. Finding it needs a different signal, most likely a
+   face touching the bottom edge of one fragment with a textless fragment below. No evidence has been
+   gathered yet on how often this chapter does it.
+
+1c. **Three items from `ARCHITECTURE.md` are cheap against the current code.** A `plane` field per
+   detection for art-in-art, same-panel co-presence demoted to a weak cannot-link once the plane exists,
+   and `offscreen` as a fourth `speaker_ref` kind.
+
 2. ~~**Order the corners in `_bbox_to_pixels`.**~~ **Done 2026-08-12, run and verified on a GPU.** 0
    degenerate boxes over 119 detections (`decisions/identity-bbox.md#bbox-corners-ordered`).
 3. **Vision boxes animals as people and dresses them.** `p081` and `p108` are cats, described

decisions/CLAUDE.md

@@ -48,5 +48,9 @@ still live belongs in `caveats/`.
 | [A roster name is a guess, so it never reaches detection](identity-bbox.md#roster-does-not-name) | closed |
 | [`merged_into` is exactly one hop deep](identity-bbox.md#merge-chains-flatten) | closed |
 | [`_bbox_to_pixels` orders the corners, because the model sometimes swaps them](identity-bbox.md#bbox-corners-ordered) | closed |
-| [A tracklet is bounded by span, not only by pairwise distance](identity-bbox.md#tracklet-span-cap) | closed, GPU pending |
+| [A tracklet is bounded by span, not only by pairwise distance](identity-bbox.md#tracklet-span-cap) | closed |
-| [A generic word is not identity evidence, and one tokenizer serves both consumers](identity-bbox.md#generic-tokens) | closed, GPU pending |
+| [A generic word is not identity evidence, and one tokenizer serves both consumers](identity-bbox.md#generic-tokens) | closed |
+| [The gallery is the live cast, not cosine's top-k](identity-bbox.md#cast-is-the-gallery) | closed |
+| [A name is a word set, not a string](identity-naming.md#alias-grouping) | closed, GPU pending |
+| [A confident caption names a character on its own](identity-naming.md#caption-is-strong) | closed, GPU pending |
+| [A name belongs to one character](identity-naming.md#one-name-one-character) | closed, GPU pending |

decisions/identity-naming.md

@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+# Naming a character
+
+How a discovered name reaches `characters.name`. The mechanism is `db.add_name_claim`, fed by the dialogue
+stage through `service._absorb`.
+
+## A name is a word set, not a string {#alias-grouping}
+
+**Closed, 2026-08-13, not yet run on a GPU.**
+
+Claims grouped on the casefolded name, so `Lim Seonho` from a p010 caption and `Seonho` from a p047 address
+counted as two names for one character. `len(grouped) > 1` fired, a `conflicting-name-claims` flag was
+filed, and promotion was blocked permanently on evidence that in fact corroborated.
+
+`alias_groups` groups two names when one's word set contains the other's, and keeps the longer as
+canonical. `Seonho` and `Lim Seonho` are one name and the registry stores `Lim Seonho`. `Seonho` and
+`Haeseon` are still two, so a real conflict still flags.
+
+## A confident caption names a character on its own {#caption-is-strong}
+
+**Closed, 2026-08-13, not yet run on a GPU.**
+
+Promotion needed two distinct panels, or one `self_intro` or `name_tag` claim above 0.9. On the 2026-08-12
+chapter the only claim naming a main character was `Choi Haeseon`, a caption at p040 at confidence 1.0, and
+it was discarded. She held 13 correct crops and stayed anonymous through the whole pipeline.
+
+A caption is the narration naming the person it is drawn beside, which is how a webtoon introduces its
+cast, so it joins `STRONG_EVIDENCE`. This is the loosest of the three changes and is only safe because of
+the next one.
+
+## A name belongs to one character {#one-name-one-character}
+
+**Closed, 2026-08-13, not yet run on a GPU.**
+
+Being addressed by name identifies the addressee. Choosing which drawn body that is fails often. Two panels
+addressed `Seonho`, the dialogue model pointed `target_local_id` at the woman standing beside him, and two
+independent claims promoted her. The registry then held a female `Seonho` over 9 crops beside the lead's
+`LIM SEONHO`.
+
+A promotion now checks every other live character of the same manga first, by alias group. A collision
+refuses the promotion and files a `name-already-taken` flag carrying both ids. The collision is itself
+evidence that either the addressee or the identity cluster is wrong, so it is worth surfacing rather than
+resolving silently.
+
+Deliberately not built: no attempt to decide WHICH character deserves the name. That needs the addressee
+fixed, which is `ARCHITECTURE.md` section 3.
+
+## Checks
+
+`test_name_binding.py` replays the six real claims from the 2026-08-12 chapter. Each new assert was
+confirmed to fail with its fix disabled: the caption test with `STRONG_EVIDENCE` reverted, the alias test
+with casefold grouping restored. The taken-name test asserts a flag kind that only the new branch emits.

worker_crop.py

@@ -240,12 +240,15 @@ async def crop_webtoon(data: WebtoonInput):
     tag = uuid.uuid4().hex[:8]
     locals_ = [transport.get(u, f"{SHM}/wt_{tag}_{i:04d}.png") for i, u in enumerate(data.page_uris)]
     strip = restitch(locals_)
-    crops = slice_webtoon(strip)
+    crops = merge_faceless_captions(slice_webtoon(strip))
     context_links = context_fragment_links(crops)
     panels = []
     for idx, (crop_img, bbox) in enumerate(crops):
         uri = f"s3://panels/{data.manga_id}/{data.chapter_id}/panels/p{idx:03d}.png"
         # slicing is deterministic, so on a resume the same idx -> same key; skip re-upload.
+        # TRAP: that holds only while the PLAN is unchanged. Edit slice_webtoon or the merge pass and a
+        # re-crop silently keeps the previous run's images under the same keys, because every one of them
+        # already exists. Clear the s3://panels/<manga>/<chapter>/panels/ prefix before re-cropping.
         if not transport.exists(uri):
             out = f"{SHM}/wt_{tag}_p{idx:03d}.png"
             cv2.imwrite(out, crop_img)
@@ -266,7 +269,7 @@ async def crop(data: CropInput):
         raise HTTPException(400, f"page not readable: {data.page_uri}")
     h, w = img.shape[:2]
     webtoon = h / w >= WEBTOON_RATIO
-    crops = slice_webtoon(img) if webtoon else kumiko_panels(local, data.rtl)
+    crops = merge_faceless_captions(slice_webtoon(img)) if webtoon else kumiko_panels(local, data.rtl)
     context_links = context_fragment_links(crops) if webtoon else {i: [] for i in range(len(crops))}
     ambiguous = flag_overlaps(crops, data.page_index)