De-jargon the codebase: replace coined/evocative terms with plain industry-standard names

[mtklein]

Owner directive (2026-09-21): strip "Claudeisms" -- ad-hoc coined or evocative word choices -- from prose (comments, docstrings, docs) and identifiers alike, and replace them with boring, self-evident, industry-standard terms. Nothing should make a new reader think "that's a clever turn of phrase," and no one should have to guess or ask what a word means.

Principle: an identifier's job is to say what it signifies without making the reader open the implementation. Invest in clear names and well-factored code over comments; a comment is for the genuinely non-obvious "why," not to narrate what a good name already says.

Approach

One verified pass. Prose first (that is the volume that sets the house style). Every identifier rename confirmed green with ninja (some touch the build graph and build.ninja). Keep the exemplar already done: tools/stream/live.py (spine -> critical path, census -> worker grid, etc.).

Agreed replacements

coined	plain	notes
latch (ninja build rule)	copy_if_changed; helper latch_of -> copy_if_changed_from(src)	rule is `cmp -s $in $out
latch (a held ROM/RAM bit)	flag (flagSet(), "clears the flag")	test generators + OT6 Ot6*Latch asm symbols (large blast radius)
census	worker grid / survey / tally by context	live.py done; tlm.md, stream/README, banquet-decode.md, census() fn -> reachableTiles()
spine	critical path (physical stair/statue uses -> path)
lineage	run/playthrough (a particular play) or provenance/history (a save's ancestry)
bespoke	custom
wedge (stuck-state)	stall / hang	KEEP the FF6 character WEDGE
non-pace cadence (e.g. "divine cadence")	tier	KEEP pace uses ("30-frame cadence")
vouches	records / asserts
broadcast / surfs / channel-hops	output / follows / switches to the newest run
harvest	collect / gather
wants (= needs)	needs
plumbing	internals / infrastructure
landing bar	merge criteria
work ledger	the issue tracker	it is literally the GitHub issues
the pins:	the pinned settings:	tools/tests/README.md (done)
in-code inflation: utilize, simply, note that, powerful, seamless, elegant, first-class	drop / concretize	keep single source of truth, cleanly, gracefully

Owner rulings baked in

• KEEP genuine terms: FF6 mechanics (divine, break, boost, telegraph, chip), the character WEDGE, and standard software terms (critical path, canary, sentinel, checkpoint, restat, single source of truth).
• KEEP ratchet (it ratchets -- monotonic/one-way).
• Do NOT touch the upstream FF6 disassembly's own comments under ff6/notes/**.

Scale (survey, read-only)

~22 distinct coined terms; latch 719 occurrences / 143 files (two senses), census 102, lineage 117, bespoke 36, spine 18. Highest-volume prose files first: docs/design/banquet-decode.md, tools/tests/README.md, configure.py, .claude/commands/tlm.md, docs/design/kit-gau.md, the magicite docs, bosses-wob.md.

Part of the v0.21 housekeeping cycle.

[mtklein]

Landed on main: b31f8e0 renames the latch build rule to copy_if_changed (helper copy_if_changed_from(src)) across configure.py, savestate_ninja.py and compose.py, with compose.py's messages and selftest strings moved in lockstep. Verified by compose_selftest + ninja_py_selftest (green) and a regenerated build.ninja with 230 copy_if_changed edges and no rule latch. Docs-only prose pass is running on wt/dejargon-docs; the code/comment pass (the flag-byte latch, census(), WEDGE-outcome tags, in-code inflation words) runs last on the merged tree.

[mtklein]

Docs half merged to main as 93827c6 (26 files, +102/-101, prose only; reviewed line by line). Remaining for #243: the code/comment pass on the merged tree -- the flag-byte latch in OT6 asm and tests (incl. the Ot6RageTierLatch symbol), census() -> reachableTiles(), the WEDGE-outcome tags/filenames, vouches in compose.py, the in-code inflation words, and a ruling on docs/research/*.md's vanilla-hardware 'latch' uses. Runs last, after the functional branches land.