8.7 KiB
Open Questions
Things we believe but couldn't fully verify in the first discovery pass, or that we observed but couldn't explain. Each question has a verification path — what would resolve it.
When a question gets resolved, move the answer into the relevant detail file (architecture.md, agent-pipelines.md, etc.) and delete the entry here. Or move it to bugs-and-fixes.md if it turned out to be a bug.
Q1: Does native_action_selector always fire after dialogue, or only sometimes?
Why we care: Determines whether embed_actions_in_dialogue: true truly bypasses the native selector, or whether they run in parallel and fight for the action slot.
What we observed: The trace dump (all_traces_1776478948530.json) shows mood_evaluation and memory_search_query_generation after generate_response, but no obvious native_action_selection span. Either:
- (a) It's triggered on demand only when
embed_actions_in_dialogue: falseand didn't fire in the captured session. - (b) It's named something else in the trace tree.
- (c) It was firing in parallel and the trace just didn't capture it under a recognizable name.
Verification path: Set embed_actions_in_dialogue: false in SkyrimNet.yaml, trigger an NPC dialogue, capture a fresh trace, look for new spans that weren't there before. If new *action_evaluation* spans appear, hypothesis (a) is confirmed.
Q2: What's the actual GM polling timer source?
Why we care: We've been calling it "polling every ~30s" based on gamemaster.continuousSceneCooldownSeconds, but the trace doesn't show a clean periodic tick — fires correlate with events too.
What we observed: GM gamemaster_evaluation calls fire at irregular intervals in the captured logs. Sometimes ~30s apart, sometimes seconds after a player input or NPC event.
Hypothesis: The "polling" is actually event-driven — every relevant Skyrim event (per Events.yaml filters) triggers a GM evaluation, with continuousSceneCooldownSeconds as a minimum gap to prevent spam. So idle silence + cooldown = ~30s tick; active scene = much faster.
Verification path: Disable all event-triggered firings in Events.yaml (set allowNPCReaction: false everywhere), enable continuous mode, sit in an empty cell with no NPCs, watch trace timing. Should see clean 30s ticks if cooldown is the only timer.
Q3: What does defaults_manifest.json actually do?
Why we care: Understanding the first-run / reset path is important for users restoring config.
Hypothesis: It's the schema the DLL seeds first-run config from. When a YAML doesn't exist, the DLL writes one populated from this manifest.
Verification path: Delete overwrite/.../config/Memory.yaml (a low-stakes one), launch Skyrim, check whether a fresh Memory.yaml regenerates with default values. If yes, hypothesis confirmed.
Q4: Is gamemaster.agentEnabled distinct from gamemaster.enabled?
Why we care: Both default true in this install. If they're the same, that's tech debt; if they're different, we need to know what each gates.
Verification path: Toggle agentEnabled: false while keeping enabled: true, observe behavior. Then swap. Document whichever toggle changes what.
Q5: Does gamemaster_scene_planner ever fire in current config?
Why we care: prompts/gamemaster_action_selector.prompt:96-119 references a scene_plan context variable, suggesting a separate planner agent populates it. But the captured trace dump shows no scene_planner spans — either it never fires, or it fires under a different name, or it's gated behind an MCM toggle that's currently off.
Verification path: Search Agents.yaml for any scene_planner-related variant. Check MCM for a "Scene Planner" toggle. Enable if found, observe traces.
Q6: What's the canonical decorator list?
Why we care: Decorators are the bridge from prompts to game state. Without the full list with signatures, we can't reason about what's possible to surface in a prompt.
What we have: ~30+ decorator names spotted in trace spans:
decnpc, is_in_faction, is_player, is_in_combat, get_arousal_state, render_character_profile, render_subcomponent, format_event, short_time, get_name, get_nearby_npc_list, get_recent_events, get_quest_stage, is_narration_enabled, get_relevant_memories, get_scene_context, get_world_knowledge, papyrus_util, outfit_context, …
Verification path: The full list is dynamically generated by the DLL via prompts/documentation/main.prompt. The in-game web UI's /api/documentation endpoint should expose the full enumeration with signatures. Hit that endpoint with curl against the local web server (port from WebServer.yaml).
Q7: Where do contributing mods' YAML actions live on this disk?
Why we care: We claim they live in /home/dafit/Games/Skyrim/nimmersky/mods/{ModName}/SKSE/Plugins/SkyrimNet/config/actions/*.yaml, but we haven't enumerated the actual files in this install. Need this for the git-tracking plan.
Verification path: find /home/dafit/Games/Skyrim/nimmersky/mods/ -name "*.yaml" -path "*/config/actions/*". List all paths, count by mod, sample one schema to confirm consistency with action-system.md description.
Q8: What's IntelEngine doing exactly?
Why we care: It's a sibling SKSE plugin that registers 15 actions and has its own SQLite DB. We don't know its scope.
What we have: Plugin name suggests "intelligence" — possibly classification, world observation, scene tagging, or persistent narrative state.
Verification path: Check if IntelEngine ships its own README in the mod folder. Read its config files at overwrite/.../config/plugins/IntelEngine/ (factions.yaml, settings.yaml). Inspect its action YAMLs to see what behaviors it registers.
Q9: How does the SQLite vector_memory_system actually retrieve?
Why we care: The 0014_regenerate_embeddings migration confirms an embedding pipeline. We know all-MiniLM-L6-v2 is the embedding model. We don't know retrieval-time semantics: similarity threshold, top-K, recency weighting, faction filtering.
Verification path: Read Memory.yaml for tunables. Trace a memory_search_query_generation span end-to-end — the meta agent generates a query string, then the DLL must embed it, run a vector similarity search against the vector_memory_system table, and inject results into the dialogue context. Check the SkyrimNet.log for SQL query patterns.
Q10: Knowledge Pack format (0017_knowledge_packs migration)
Why we care: dafit already authors nimmerverse/nimmersky/oghma-sknpack/ knowledge packs (Whiterun, Winterhold, Solstheim, etc.). Understanding the runtime ingestion + storage format would let us validate that our packs are well-formed.
Verification path: Read 0017_knowledge_packs.sql to see the table schema. Inspect an oghma-sknpack file to see the source format. Trace ingestion in SkyrimNet.log — search for "knowledge_pack" or "sknpack" patterns. The oghma-proxy tool probably has documentation we wrote ourselves.
Q11: Does the chunker overlap suspicion for NPC↔NPC restatement still hold?
Why we care: During Bug #2 diagnosis we hypothesized tts.maxSegmentWords: 4 might amplify chunker race conditions in NPC-NPC scenes. We later determined the GM-loop bug fully explained restatement and the chunker was innocent. But the small chunk size remains as a stress test for any other latent chunker bugs.
Verification path: Once Bug #2 is fixed, observe NPC-NPC scenes (Whiterun market with Ysolda↔Brenuin) with maxSegmentWords at 4 vs 24. If 4-word chunks cause clipping or audio gaps not seen at 24, the chunker has a chunk-size-dependent issue worth filing as Bug #4.
Q12: How does the in-game prompt editor's propose_prompt_edit tool flow back into the override file?
Why we care: The runtime override at overwrite/prompts/agent_chat.prompt.backup.1776372078 proves edits via the in-game LLM-driven prompt editor (agent_prompt_helper.prompt) get persisted with epoch-stamped backups. We don't know the exact write semantics — does it always backup-and-replace, or only on accept?
Verification path: Use the in-game prompt editor on a low-stakes prompt, watch what files appear/change in overwrite/prompts/. Document the backup naming and write-on-accept behavior.
Conventions for adding new entries
- Number monotonically (Q13 next).
- Each entry needs why we care + verification path at minimum.
- If a question gets answered, move the answer into the appropriate detail file and delete the entry here. Don't let resolved questions pile up.
- If a question gets partially answered, update it with the partial answer and what's still unknown.