# HANDOFF, 2026-08-12 (sixth session)

Live state is in `NEXT.md`. This file is only what this session did. The previous handoff is in
`JOURNAL.md`.

## Asked

The two context files, then "go" on the third GPU cycle, then "commit", then "what's next". Then the user
checked the lead's crops in the review UI and said the assignments were wrong. Then "test on one of the
panels first". Then "mind presenting the panels with boxes". Then "so, we didn't fix it properly?". Then
"go with the 1".

## Result

One worker fix proven on a GPU. One measurement that killed the plan's item 1. One GPU cycle. Then the user
found the registry is over-merged, which invalidates the cycle's headline numbers, and two more fixes were
written for it. The third fix the user chose, item 1 of the three options, is NOT started.

| metric | 17:38 run | 18:07 run |
| --- | --- | --- |
| detections | 117 | 119 |
| assignments | 59 | 68 |
| coverage | 50% | 57% |
| degenerate boxes | 1 | 0 |
| assigned among face-bearing | 59/72 = 82% | 68/71 = 96% |
| assigned among gated | -- | 0 |
| chains deeper than one hop | 1 | 0 |
| `merged_from` stamps | 9 | 22 |

Cycle timings, 18:07-18:13 UTC: vision 116/116 in 3m59s, identity 116/116 in 1m24s, reconcile 18/18 in 50s.

## Committed and proven on a GPU

`_bbox_to_pixels` sorts each coordinate pair after clamping
(`decisions/identity-bbox.md#bbox-corners-ordered`). 0 degenerate boxes over 119 detections, against 1 in
117. Commit `54bd126` on `restore-runtime`. Its caveat is deleted.

## Measured, no code

**The 145 ground-truth labels are for a different manga.** Every row in `identity_labels` keys to chapter
`8ca8249b`, cast "Rico" and "Ikekin", 81 panels. Chapter `7c944dd4` has zero, so
`/review/identity?job_id=778297bc...` returns `labeled: 0, accuracy: null`. Scoring `8ca8249b` gives 7/138
on a run with 44 assignments over 246 panels, predating every fix.

**Coverage is the `has_face` gate and nothing else.** All 68 assignments landed on face-bearing detections
and none on a gated one. Recall among face-bearing detections is 96%, up from 82%.

**Embedding cosine cannot separate people.** All 22 crop embeddings for the lead, pulled from
`manga/<manga_id>/characters/_crops/*.npy`, 1152 dims, L2-normalised. The cat scores up to 0.82 against
men, two different men score 0.93, the highest pair in the matrix is 0.96
(`caveats/audit-open.md#cosine-not-identity`). This rules out a crop-to-crop cosine link, which was the
fix proposed one message before the measurement.

## Written, tested, NOT deployed and NOT run on a GPU

Both in `/mnt/server/home/kami/docker-apps/manga-infra/orchestrator/`, uncommitted there:

- `tracklets.py`: `link_tracklets` rejects a merge whose group would span more than `window` panels
  (`decisions/identity-bbox.md#tracklet-span-cap`). `window` bounded each pair, transitivity was unbounded,
  and the lead's 22 native assignments came from 3 tracklets spanning 0, 22 and 30 panels.
- `tracklets.py` + `service.py`: one `appearance_tokens` with a `GENERIC` stopword set, and
  `service._appearance_tokens` delegates to it, so reconcile's pre-filter is fixed too
  (`decisions/identity-bbox.md#generic-tokens`). Whole chains hung on the word `short`, one pair on the
  word `hair`.

On the same 22 crops, candidate overlap forced to pass: 3 tracklets at worst span 30 becomes 9 at worst
span 8.

## Not started

**Item 1, which the user chose: stop letting cosine pick the gallery.** `run_stage_identity` builds
`union_cands` from the members' cosine top-k. So a metric that cannot separate people decides who gemma is
even allowed to consider. There are 9 live characters. Send the live cast instead, gender-gated, capped and
logged when truncated. Two traps found while 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. It needs a cap.
- only a crop with a non-empty cosine shortlist enters `shortlists` at all, via the
  `if s.get("candidates")` guard in `service.py`. An empty top-k drops the crop from resolution entirely.

Also open: nothing downstream re-ran, the job is still parked at `dialogue waiting`, and vision boxes cats
as people and dresses them (`p081`, `p108`).

## Checks

```bash
.venv/bin/python worker_vision.py     # self-check ok, including the swapped-corner assert
./check_stale.sh                      # exit 0 before the cycle and after it
/usr/bin/ssh kami@192.168.1.104 "cd /home/kami/docker-apps/manga-infra/orchestrator && python3 tracklets.py && python3 -m pytest -q --ignore=test_api.py"   # self-check ok, 118 passed
```

Every new assert was confirmed to fail with its fix disabled: the span cap returns `[[0, 1, 2]]`, and the
generic-word pair links with `GENERIC` emptied.

## Next command

Deploy the two orchestrator fixes and run the fourth cycle.

```bash
cd /home/kami/Programs/n8n-worker && ./check_stale.sh     # must exit 0
/usr/bin/ssh kami@192.168.1.104 "cd /home/kami/docker-apps/manga-infra/orchestrator && docker compose up -d --build orchestrator"
J=778297bc-e7ce-439d-91b5-8a027060d17f; M=ef105a86-4b7e-4ac4-b45c-b7d83b8f5b5e
/usr/bin/ssh kami@192.168.1.104 "curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1:9090/characters/reset -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{\"manga_id\":\"$M\",\"confirm\":true}'"
# the reset returns restart_identity_worker: true -- honour it, see the traps
/usr/bin/ssh kami@192.168.1.104 "curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1:9090/stage/clear -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{\"job_id\":\"$J\",\"stage\":\"vision\"}'"
for S in vision identity reconcile; do /usr/bin/ssh kami@192.168.1.104 "curl -s --max-time 5400 -X POST http://127.0.0.1:9090/stage/run -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{\"job_id\":\"$J\",\"stage\":\"$S\"}'"; done
/usr/bin/ssh kami@192.168.1.104 "docker logs manga-orchestrator --since 1h 2>&1 | grep tracklet"   # expect ~30 tracklets, was 12
/usr/bin/ssh kami@192.168.1.104 "docker exec manga-orchestrator python3 /app/audit_registry.py 7c944dd4-e972-42c7-ba60-9f6939548e80 6"
```

Then re-check the lead's crops by eye. A stage counter will not show this defect.

## Traps confirmed or found

- Restart a worker with `tmux send-keys -t manga-workers:<window> C-c`, then re-send the launch line from
  `start_workers.sh` with its `MIOPEN_ENV` prefix. A `pgrep` kill matches the calling shell.
- `POST /characters/reset` returns `restart_identity_worker: true`. Honour it, the worker caches the
  registry.
- `identity_assignments` has no `method` column. The `merged_from:` stamps live in
  `identity_assignment_sources`. `chapters` has no `title` column. The orchestrator image has no numpy.
- A heredoc piped into `docker exec` over `/usr/bin/ssh` silently produces no output. Write the script to a
  file, `scp` it, `docker cp` it, then run it.
- Mixing `echo` with a `tar cf -` stream over ssh corrupts the archive. Separate the calls.
- `panel_order` and the panel filename differ by one: `panel_order` 10 is `p009.png`.