healer-man/docs/COA_CATALOG_PROMOTION_2026-10-03.md

# CoA catalog promotion — October 3, 2026

The active catalogs now use the pinned August 12 Vol'Jin talent capture and global
BASE spell evidence. CoA remains **Needs Testing**. This completes the source and
catalog foundation for further class mechanic implementation.

## Source selection and offline reuse

The builder capture comes from `srhinos/coa-datamine` revision
`5078f9ac22541c45c17a866c23aac6c12073de23`. CoA spell/class evidence uses the paired
local client extraction's global `patch-T` Spell, `patch-M` class metadata, and
`patch-S` supporting tables. Classic Ascension data retains its original Area 52
records, including linked spell payloads. Separate accessors prevent shared IDs
from crossing those scopes.

The archive supplements your extraction rather than replacing it. Its supporting
tables match the local copies. Eleven missing August node spell IDs were found
in the archive's global patch-T table. The selective download cached 26 compressed
raw shards (4,650,843 bytes) and selected 48 records including class-only references
and linked payloads. Forty-one records supplement missing local global rows.
It retains all raw columns and inferred types, with pinned metadata and checksums.
No full client archive or repeated Exiles crawl is needed.

`npm run coa:reference:promote` reads verified local caches. Promotion and historical
reference rebuilds produced identical bytes with network access disabled. The
lossless July baseline remains tracked separately for comparison.

## Active catalog changes

- 21 classes, 91 playable tabs, and 3,618 nodes: six added, 436 changed, none removed.
- 701 ability entries and 2,917 talent entries, with 3,933 node-rank references.
- Resolved 174 encoded description fields from the original builder capture.
- Regenerated all 21 CoA runtime and talent UI shards. Non-CoA talent runtime
  records and UI shards are unchanged.
- The runtime catalog has 1,276 ability families, 3,395 ranks, 3,348 distinct
  rank spell IDs, and 578 hidden triggered payloads. Sourced starter spells
  include class-catalog-only references such as Rejuvenating Venom.
- Exported six missing icons from local BLPs, with zero placeholder fallbacks.
- Preserved all 1,822 progression-chain identities, 1,266 classic chains, 7,268
  protected classic spell records, and the outputs of all 612 classic abilities.

The six added nodes are Mycelial Healing, Devourer, Dark Channeler, Crusher,
Houndmaster's Whistle, and Skewer. Full before/after evidence and coverage gaps
are in `data/coa-reference/promotion-report.json`.

## Saved builds and remaining work

Saved CoA node keys remain resolvable under their original class. Saved ranks
clamp to the captured maximum. Source changes include Agonizing Burns 1→2, Timed
Attacks 2→1, Cultist node 6274 2→1, and Advisor's Perfidy 2→1.

Numeric IDs are not a guarantee of identical effects across source versions.
August swaps the spell payloads of Agonizing Burns/Timed Attacks. It also swaps
Dark Infusion/Darkward between Cultist nodes 30036 and 6274, including a change
of tree. Existing saves contain no CoA capture-version metadata, so this update
does not attempt an ambiguous semantic migration. Affected builds need review.

All August node ranks have global DBC evidence. Thirteen older progression ranks
are absent from both selected global sources: 501862–501865, 501918–501920,
501922–501925, 502889, and 560469. Their IDs are retained and gaps are reported.
The wider catalog/context audit reports 224 missing BASE spell records and three
source connection warnings. These are not filled from Area 52.

Descriptions and client effects do not establish server-side proc timing,
acquisition rules, or complete class behavior. Bespoke mechanics and targeted
player/companion tests remain the next class-by-class phase.

## Validation and browser evidence

All 44 pipeline/cache/source-policy tests and 62 focused game tests pass. The
focused tests verify source separation, classic preservation, saved-rank
clamping, runtime shard loading, sourced spell semantics, and explicit source
gaps. Ready-five checks pass (7 game tests and 20 Python checks); no all-class
balance sweep was run. All 21 runtime shards match their generated snapshot.

The negative DBC cast-time sentinel on Berserker Axe is retained in source
evidence and clamped to an instant CoA runtime cast. Classic behavior is
unchanged. A Tinker resource test was corrected to copy the matching maximum
pools alongside the current pools; no production stats behavior was changed.

With network requests blocked, fetch reuses the complete cache, promotion repeats
identically, and historical build/audit/lookup succeed. The promoted candidate
SHA-256 is `9208e973c43c31d263fb429f7ab82a2cc6732e2a70bc14f482b6428c9b296091`.
The historical snapshot is
`e86031775dfac7e336361087c50ca23a0a7a86c36a760c85803bee4bcdb89351`.

The production build and release-bundle verification pass. A browser smoke check
created the local offline `Coaaudit` Witch Hunter and opened its five talent tabs.
Houndmaster's Whistle displays the new icon, full description, and prerequisite
gate. No warning/error logs were captured. This checks presentation at level 1;
it does not exercise unlocked combat mechanics.

The optional local API server was absent during this offline preview. Development
proxy policy/layout requests failed and offline defaults were used. Online roster
and server policy synchronization were outside this check.

Screenshot: `playtest-artifacts/coa-catalog-promotion/houndmaster-whistle.jpg`.

See [the pipeline guide](COA_REFERENCE_PIPELINE.md) for repeatable commands.