fix(play): solo cold-open starts the player ALONE — no auto-recruited companion (G6); G5 streaming verified already-works

[100yenadmin]

Two play-experience bugs. Scope: scripts/play.sh only (engine + skill verified, not changed). Engine stays the sole writer; no wire contracts / --resume / persist_beat batching touched.

Do NOT close on merge — verify on the next 8799 + .app playtest.

Note: origin/main advanced past the commit this work assumed — servers/engine/seed_baldursgate.py no longer exists (seeding is consolidated into generator.py), and skills/dungeon-master/SKILL.md already contains the G5 streaming guidance. Findings below are against current origin/main and confirmed by live solo play.sh runs + a deterministic engine probe.

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G6 — "a companion was just THERE with no reason" (solo cold-open) — FIXED

Where the companion was seated (trace):

• The engine seed path is already correct on main. server.start_world("baldurs-gate") seeds the party empty — verified deterministically: get_state party length is 0 immediately after start_world. questgen.py records the cold-open companion as a prelude REFERENCE only (0 party.append, 0 add_to_party); every party.append in the engine lives inside the recruit / load_canon_character tools, gated on add_to_party/kind.
• The companion was seated at PLAY time, by scripts/play.sh's solo cold-open prompt. Both branches — the authored-hero path and the DM-invents-PC path (byte-identical lines, MD5 matched) — instructed the DM: "A companion should ENTER as part of that opening scene … Recruit them into the party as that meeting lands." So a "solo" run recruited a sidekick on the very first DM turn.

Reproduced live (before fix): a solo play.sh cold-open produced a 2-member party — the PC plus a silently-seated companion (the verified bug).

Fix (option a — solo starts alone): rewrite that instruction in both cold-open branches so a SOLO session starts with the player ALONE — the DM does not recruit a companion at cold-open (no recruit_companion / load_canon_character(add_to_party=true) for a sidekick, and no companion in the party). Companions are met later, in play, and only then introduced on-screen and recruited (the "voiced, with a real wound and a reason they fall in together" craft guidance is preserved, just deferred to the meeting). A roster figure may still appear as a face in the world, but not as a party member.

• Engine untouched (its reference-only prelude already keeps the companion available to be met later).
• play_party.sh — the multi-agent path where a pre-seeded AI companion is intended — untouched.
• Engine stays the sole writer.

Verified live (after fix): a fresh solo play.sh cold-open produced a 1-member party — the PC only; the opening narration names no companion. Before → after: party 2 → 1. Acceptance met.

Diff: 1 file, 2 lines (bash -n clean).

G5 — "I can't see the DM streaming" — VERIFIED ALREADY WORKS (no change)

skills/dungeon-master/SKILL.md on current main already contains both pieces the task asked for:

• Streaming (a dedicated "## Streaming your narration" section): "Stream your narration to the player as you write it, not in one dump at the end of the turn"; "Open with prose immediately. Your FIRST act on a beat is a short log_event(kind="narration", …)"; "Persist beat at the end. After the prose has streamed, call persist_beat to commit the STATE deltas."
• Paragraph breaks (the "## Format your narration" section): "Separate distinct beats with a blank line (two newlines) so paragraphs render as paragraphs." (This is the sibling render PR — the base commit here is literally fix(viewer): promote action palette into main column + render chronicle paragraphs #411 "render chronicle paragraphs".)

The viewer's /events reads the live chronicle (the log_event sink) with a since/seq cursor, so mid-turn narration surfaces immediately. A live beat confirmed narration appearing incrementally mid-turn (the /events count climbed across the turn rather than jumping once at the end) with \n\n paragraph breaks present.

Verdict: streaming + paragraph breaks already work end-to-end on current origin/main. Per "if streaming already works, say so and make no change," no skill change was made (no fabricated fix).

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Verification notes

• The change is a DM-prompt string in scripts/play.sh (no engine code path); validated by bash -n + a deterministic engine probe (empty seed party) + live before/after solo runs (party 2 → 1).
• The local claude -p DM lane was intermittently dropping turns during testing (an environment/rate-limit condition, unrelated to this prompt change) — hence the do-not-close note and the ask to re-confirm on the real 8799 / .app playtest.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes
  • Fixed opening scene to ensure players begin their adventure solo, with companions now properly introduced later through gameplay progression rather than at the start.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro Plus

Run ID: 6e23d280-d4f2-4c2a-a705-28ae50f8b6ba

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between b23884c and df36539.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• scripts/play.sh

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

This PR modifies the Dungeon Master prompt instructions in scripts/play.sh to enforce solo party composition during the opening scene. Both the pre-seeded hero flow and the default hero-selection flow now explicitly forbid companion recruitment at session start, deferring companion introduction until later in-play.

Changes

Solo party enforcement in DM cold-open instructions

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Solo party enforcement in DM cold-open scripts/play.sh	DM opening-scene instructions are updated to explicitly require a solo party and forbid companion recruitment at session start, applied to both the HERO_CAMP (pre-seeded hero) and non-HERO_CAMP (default hero selection) DM instruction branches.

Possibly related PRs

• electricsheephq/WorldOS#412: Both PRs modify scripts/play.sh to change the cold-open Dungeon Master prompt so the player starts solo with no auto-recruited companion; they touch the same DMSG opening-scene instructions in both HERO_CAMP branches.
• electricsheephq/WorldOS#388: Both PRs modify the scripts/play.sh cold-open first-DM-turn prompt text to control what the DM's initial player-facing output is.

Poem

🐰 The party gathers, one heart and soul,
No sidekick joins the opening role,
Just hero bold, without a friend,
In solo quest from start to end—
Companions earned, not given free! 🎲

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🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~3 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Description check	⚠️ Warning	The description is comprehensive and addresses the template, but the Licensing/CLA checkbox section is not filled out, which is a required template element.	Complete the Licensing/CLA section by checking the required checkboxes to confirm CLA acceptance and that no restricted material is included.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately describes the main change: fixing a bug where solo cold-open sessions auto-recruited a companion, now ensuring the player starts alone.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

⚔️ Resolve merge conflicts

• Resolve merge conflict in branch fix/gui-companion-streaming

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[100yenadmin]

Superseded: solo cold-open starting the player ALONE (G6) landed on main via #412 (b23884c) — scripts/play.sh L357/370 carry the cleaner rewrite. This PR edits the pre-rewrite text. Closing.