aetherbound-guild/docs/product/GAME_PRODUCT_CONTRACT.md

# Aetherbound Guild: Game Product Contract

> Authority: player promise, complete loop, run and campaign shape, canonical
> vocabulary, product boundaries, and design acceptance.
>
> Revision: guild-charter-integration-r4 / 2026-08-11
>
> Companion authorities:
> [SYSTEMS_AND_BATTLE.md](SYSTEMS_AND_BATTLE.md),
> [ECONOMY_AND_BALANCE.md](ECONOMY_AND_BALANCE.md), and
> [SAVE_AND_FAILURE_CONTRACT.md](SAVE_AND_FAILURE_CONTRACT.md).

## 1. Authority And Decision Order

This document defines what the game promises. The systems authority owns
combat, party-line, recruit, profession, equipment, and artifact mechanics. The
economy authority owns prices, rewards, pacing, capacity selection, difficulty
numbers, and simulations. The save/failure authority owns commit, casualty,
interruption, retry, recovery, and rollback behavior.

When two statements conflict, apply this order:

1. the frozen repository specification and later explicit Owner decisions;
2. save integrity and exactly-once transaction rules;
3. formulas in the systems and economy authorities;
4. this product intent;
5. content, presentation, gallery, and prototype instances.

The repository remains design-only. No document in this package authorizes an
engine project, runtime implementation, production package, store operation,
or bulk final media production. Human comprehension, fun, visual, listening,
device, packaging, and release acceptance remain later gates.

### 1.1 Owner-Locked Casualty Rule

Owner decision, 2026-08-11: **a Fallen Recruit never respawns during the same
battle and never revives later in the current run**. Zero HP removes that
Recruit from the resolving line immediately. Reserve Recruits do not enter as
automatic replacements. Recovery happens only after the locked outcome, by
entering the next Market short-handed or hiring a newly generated Recruit.
Difficulty, rewards, items, Artifacts, healing, reload, and Meta progression may
not override this rule.

## 2. Product Definition

**Aetherbound Guild** is a premium landscape 2D Japanese hand-drawn fantasy
auto-battler about building a changing company from generated recruits. At each
market the player reads three battle offers, hires recruits, buys equipment,
locks or refreshes offers, equips the company, and orders one horizontal party
line from front to rear. The player commits to a risk, watches the deterministic
battle resolve, reads the causal result, then adapts after rewards, deaths,
dismissals, and replacements.

The transferable play thesis is independently expressed as:

```text
read a market and a visible threat
-> buy a capability under price pressure
-> order one front-to-rear line
-> commit to a reward/risk contract
-> observe automatic execution
-> explain the first decisive interaction
-> keep, dismiss, mourn, or replace
-> repeat with a changed company and budget
```

Player skill is preparation, valuation, formation order, risk selection, and
diagnosis. Battle controls are limited to start, pause, speed, inspect, and
retreat. There is no repeated manual skill activation and no mid-battle
formation or equipment editing.

### 2.1 Audience

Primary players enjoy job systems, shop valuation, equipment interactions,
formation order, and watching a prepared plan work without attack-by-attack
input. Secondary players enjoy mastering a broad fixed catalog, finding hidden
hybrids, completing collections, and applying optional postgame laws.

The game must support 15-30 minute partial sessions, 45-75 minute complete
contract runs, touch-only play, frequent pausing, and return after a long break.

### 2.2 Commercial And Platform Boundary

| Field | Contract |
|---|---|
| Business model | One-time premium purchase; no ads, paid energy, random paid reward, paid currency, battle pass, daily streak, or pay-to-skip |
| Presentation | Original landscape 2D Japanese hand-drawn fantasy; no third-party commercial asset enters this repository |
| Target platforms | Landscape mobile, PC, and console with equivalent touch, mouse, keyboard, and controller semantics |
| Launch languages | English and Simplified Chinese from semantic message IDs, not concatenated strings |
| First clear | 15-25 authored hours across eight regions and sixteen contracts |
| Mastery | 60+ hours of profession, equipment, artifact, enemy, and high-difficulty breadth |
| Connectivity | Complete core play offline; platform services never gate play or save access |
| Development | Frozen until all design-completion gates, independent review, and Owner approval pass |

No real-time wait, offline income, social obligation, or monetized relief may be
introduced to solve economy or failure problems.

## 3. Canonical Vocabulary

These terms are shared keys. Product-facing documents must use them with the
same meaning.

| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Guild | Persistent profile containing unlock breadth, region progress, records, settings, and collection knowledge |
| Recruit | One generated participant in the current run, built from a generated name, modular appearance seed, fixed profession, rolled attributes, exactly one Trait, equipment, level, and survival history |
| Profession | One fixed reusable combat ruleset from the authored catalog |
| Trait | One short mechanical modifier with a visible benefit and cost; each Recruit has exactly one |
| Party line | The ordered simultaneous deployment from front to rear |
| Line capacity | Maximum allied footprint deployable at once; selected as ten and earned from four during each run |
| Reserve | A living Recruit owned in the run but not currently deployed |
| Market | The between-battle shop state containing Recruit, equipment, and battle offers plus refresh (reroll) and lock actions |
| Battle offer | One combat offer with a fixed enemy order, risk tier, reward, retreat result, and seed |
| Run creation draft | The durable pre-run record that reserves one Run seed, its four opening Recruit offers, and the current accepted pair before `current_run` exists |
| Round | One Market preparation, one committed battle, one result, and one reward/recovery handoff |
| Run | One contract attempt containing repeated Rounds, cumulative hires and losses, a contract boss, and a terminal result |
| Contract | One twelve-Round regional challenge followed by a boss Muster and boss battle |
| Region | One campaign area containing two ordered Contracts and two bosses |
| Artifact | A run-defining shared rule modifier, distinct from unit equipment |
| Coin | Run-only purchase resource; cleared when the run closes |
| Renown | Persistent breadth-unlock resource; it cannot buy raw combat power |
| Guild Charter | Persistent eight-Region board where Renown buys catalog, trial, threat-information, and optional Oath-law breadth for future generated runs |
| Replacement Credit | Run-only price relief created by Recruit death and consumed only by later hires |
| Fallen | A Recruit reduced to zero HP and permanently removed from the current run at outcome commit |
| Meta progression | Persistent access, information, and rule breadth; it may not replace run decisions |
| Record | A persistent fact about discoveries, clears, mastery, or a past run; it never turns a Recruit into a fixed narrative lead |

`Company` may describe all living Recruits owned during a run. It is not a
deployment cap. A run's cumulative hire count and living Reserve count are
independent from Line capacity.

The canonical count used by every dismissal rule is:

```text
live_recruit_count = count(unique Recruit IDs owned by the current run
                           whose state is living,
                           across deployed party and Reserve)
```

Offers, summons, Fallen Recruits, dismissed Recruits, and pending hires do not
count. A dismissal is legal only while a Market is open, its target is living,
and `live_recruit_count >= 2` at both preview and commit. A legal dismissal must
leave at least one living Recruit.

## 4. Fixed Content Envelope

The complete package contains exactly:

- 12 base Professions;
- 24 regular advanced Professions, exactly two descendants per base;
- 6 hidden hybrid Professions, for 42 total Profession identities;
- 36 mechanical Traits;
- 320 equipment items;
- 60 Artifacts;
- 100 ordinary/elite enemy identities plus 16 bosses;
- 8 Regions, each with two Contracts and two bosses.

Recruits are generated compositional units, not an authored cast. They do not
need recruit-specific social progression, courtship, individual narrative
arcs, or individual voice-content systems. Generated names and modular visual
parts are presentation combinations, not additional gameplay identities.

Every catalog row must alter a decision. A row that differs only by name,
rarity, color, art, or a scalar is filler and fails the design gate.

## 5. Player Promise And Experience Pillars

### 5.1 Order Is A Build Axis

Front-to-rear order changes legal targets, protection, reach, projectile
collision, healing access, displacement, summon space, and collapse after a
death. Reordering one pair must visibly change at least one predicted event in
a valid fixture.

### 5.2 Automatic Battle Is Trustworthy

The same initial state, content revision, seed, and retreat timestamp produces
the same result. Major actions, target changes, immunity, displacement, and
failed actions have inspectable reasons. Presentation speed never changes the
simulation.

### 5.3 Loss Changes The Company

Death is permanent for the current run. Dismissal is deliberate and cannot be
used for profit. Equipment returns to run inventory, so losing a trained
Recruit hurts without usually destroying every viable counter. Replacement
Credit and a protected base-Profession offer make recovery purchasable, while
lost level, Trait, Profession, and survival history preserve consequence.

### 5.4 Randomness Presents Bounded Markets

Seeded offers vary a run, but every Market contains a steady battle option and
the recovery rules preserve an affordable base Recruit after ordinary losses.
Locks, escalating refresh prices, fixed catalog schemas, and separated random
streams prevent closing, reloading, or unrelated draws from changing an offer.

### 5.5 Progression Adds Grammar

Within a run, capacity, levels, Profession promotions, equipment, Artifacts,
and enemy combinations expand planning. Across runs, Meta progression opens
new sidegrades, previews, challenges, and catalog breadth. It never supplies a
permanent universal damage, HP, Coin-income, or starting-capacity advantage.

## 6. Product Vetoes

Reject a feature or content row if it depends on:

- manual attack or skill spam during battle;
- a second battlefield axis, hidden sub-row, or free actor wandering;
- silent targeting, reach, protection, immunity, or retarget exceptions;
- a universally correct item, Trait, Profession, order, hire, or refresh plan;
- a generated Recruit needing authored individual plot or bespoke voice scope;
- permanent power grinding to make Standard difficulty fair;
- paid rescue, paid reroll, real-time recovery, or offline resource gain;
- deletion without an explicit transaction and causal record;
- a battle over 150 simulation seconds;
- content volume, rarity, or cosmetic variants used to conceal filler;
- copied names, prose, formulas, layouts, trees, art, audio, or source
  expression from private reference material.

## 7. Complete Loop And State Handoffs

### 7.1 Guild To Run

```text
choose the next unlocked Contract and difficulty
-> review its enemy families, boss rule, and reward breadth
-> durably reserve one Run seed in a run creation draft
-> generate four provisional Recruits from that seed at offer indices 0..3
-> choose exactly two at no Coin cost, revising the pair if desired
-> atomically commit that seed and those two Recruit records into current_run
-> open Round 1 with 52 Coin
```

Seed reservation and offer materialization are persistence steps, not an extra
player-facing page. Once the four offers exist, Back, Cancel, Save and Quit,
process restart, clock change, or repeated confirm returns the same draft and
cannot allocate another seed. The player may revise the accepted pair until Run
commit. That commit promotes the draft exactly once; only then are the two
unchosen provisional Recruits discarded. They are not fixed characters and are
not retained. The first Market always allows at least two affordable
base-Profession hires so the player can fill the opening capacity of four.

### 7.2 Repeated Round

```text
open the stable Market
-> inspect three Recruit, four equipment, and three battle offers
-> buy, sell, dismiss, lock, or refresh
-> equip and order the Party line
-> choose one battle offer and review exact failure exposure
-> commit and resolve automatic battle
-> inspect first decisive cause and all Fallen Recruits
-> claim one fixed reward or resolve defeat/retreat
-> increase capacity at the declared clear milestones
-> open the next Market with surviving Company, Reserve, Coin, and Credit
```

The player may hire beyond current Line capacity. Those Recruits enter Reserve
and remain available for later preparation. No Reserve enters battle
automatically after a death.

### 7.3 Boss Muster And Run Close

After twelve cleared Rounds, capacity reaches ten and the Boss Muster opens a
final non-rerollable market. The boss preview exposes its target, phase,
summon, displacement, and timeout rules. Boss victory clears the Contract.

A run closes by Contract clear, explicit abandonment, or inability to deploy
one living Recruit after defeat recovery. Coin and Replacement Credit close
with the run. Region progress, Renown grants, Guild Charter claims, catalog
discoveries, and Records commit once. Surviving generated Recruits become a
run-history entry rather than persistent playable units.

The sixteenth campaign boss uses the same run-close settlement, then opens one
explicit first-clear decision only after every result, casualty, reward, and
progression receipt is verified:

- **Complete the First Chronicle** archives the surviving Company as Records,
  presents the finite ending and Final Ledger, then returns to Title.
- **Open the Oath Season** archives that same Company, opens the postgame hub,
  and prepares a new generated run under separately reviewed optional laws.

Both choices close the cleared run. Neither choice preserves a Recruit,
equipment loadout, Coin, Credit, position, level, or pending operation as
playable state. Ordinary New Run remains available after either choice.

## 8. Recruitment, Dismissal, Death, And Replacement Promise

- Each Recruit has one current Profession. It cannot freely change jobs.
- A base Recruit may make one permanent promotion inside the run when the
  requirements in the systems authority are met.
- All rolled attribute totals at a given offer level use the same budget;
  distribution, Profession, Trait, order, and price create value differences.
- A Recruit has exactly one Trait for its entire lifetime.
- Dismissal is legal only in a Market when the canonical
  `live_recruit_count >= 2`, returns equipment, removes the Recruit, and
  requires review when survival history is nonzero. Preview and commit both
  revalidate the count.
- Death never selects or destroys equipped items; they return after outcome.
- Death grants no same-battle respawn, resurrection timer, extra life, or
  automatic Reserve substitution.
- Fallen Recruits do not return later in the run through reload, training,
  healing, promotion, reward, or Meta progression.
- A death creates Replacement Credit; dismissal does not.
- All hire, dismissal, casualty, equipment return, and credit changes are
  atomic operations owned by the save/failure authority.

Attempting to dismiss the final living Recruit is blocked with
`FINAL_LIVE_RECRUIT`. It removes nothing, returns no rebate, creates no
protected recovery offer, and does not become Company collapse. Ending a run
with a living Recruit remains the separate explicit `Abandon Run` transaction.
If the final Recruit instead becomes Fallen, casualty settlement, protected
recovery, and Company-collapse rules apply without being routed through
dismissal.

This is an economic and strategic loss model, not a character-bond simulator.
The result report respects the generated name and survival record without
creating authored biography obligations.

## 9. Capacity And Cumulative Recruitment

Every run begins at four footprint and increases after cleared-Round counts
`2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12`, reaching ten for the boss. The formula and five-profile
selection evidence are solely in the economy authority.

Line capacity limits simultaneous allied footprint, not purchases. The run
stores separate values for:

```text
line_capacity
living_recruit_ids[]
reserve_recruit_ids[]
recruits_hired_total
recruits_fallen_total
recruits_dismissed_total
```

There is no cumulative hire cap. Market supply, Coin, escalating refresh cost,
and low dismissal recovery are the anti-hoarding constraints. A content row or
UI label may not treat ten as the run roster total.

## 10. Campaign, Session, And Decision Shape

| Scope | Target | Terminal state |
|---|---:|---|
| Battle | 25-110 s typical; 150 s hard cap | Causal report, reward, defeat, or retreat |
| Round | 3-6 min | Stable next Market with committed casualties and reward |
| Contract run | 45-75 min; twelve Rounds plus boss | Clear, abandonment, or company collapse |
| Typical session | 15-75 min | Suspend-safe Market, battle snapshot, or run result |
| First clear | 15-25 h; sixteen ordered Contracts across eight Regions | Finite ending and postgame selection |
| Mastery | 60+ h | Visible Profession, catalog, boss, and challenge completion records |

Each Region's first Contract teaches one new pressure and its second combines
that pressure with earlier rules. Each of the 16 bosses synthesizes the current
Contract rather than merely increasing HP. Unlock order must provide at least
two rational counters to every mandatory boss without requiring a random item.

The five pacing profiles, exact Market/battle/decision timestamps, full-clear
budgets, and no-decision gaps are owned by the economy authority. A battle can
be fully automatic while remaining decision-dense because a causal result and
the next stable Market appear within 15 seconds of resolution.

## 11. Onboarding Contract

Teaching uses **safe action -> guided comparison -> independent commit**. It
must never make the entire opening build for the player.

| Target | Required player action | Safe boundary | Understanding proof |
|---:|---|---|---|
| 0:00-1:00 | Choose two provisional Recruits from four generated offers | Pair can be revised before atomic Run commit; return/restart restores the same four | States one Profession job and one Trait cost |
| 1:00-3:00 | Hire two Recruits and fill capacity four | First Market has protected affordable offers | Distinguishes Line capacity from owned Company |
| 3:00-5:00 | Swap front and rear positions | Predicted targets update before commit | Identifies who protects and who can reach |
| 5:00-7:00 | Choose steady or pressured battle offer | Both are completable; risks are explicit | States reward difference and first threat |
| 7:00-9:00 | Start and inspect automatic battle | Pause and 1x remain available | Identifies first decisive interaction |
| 9:00-12:00 | Choose reward and adapt next Market | Reward draft is fixed; no reload reroll | Makes one causal equipment/order change |
| 12:00-16:00 | Recover after a scripted nonterminal casualty fixture | Training state grants no persistent reward or death | Explains death, equipment return, and Credit |
| 16:00-20:00 | Complete an independent Round | One no-reward reset before commit | Buys, orders, commits, and diagnoses without a pointer |

Experienced players may skip highlights, but the concise rule reference remains
available. Returning players receive a state recap, next objective, current
Market/encounter boundary, casualties, and one optional no-reward rehearsal.

## 12. Difficulty And Postgame Promise

Difficulty changes enemy and reward parameters, not hidden target rules,
catalog access, save integrity, or the permanence of Fallen Recruits. Standard
is balanced without Meta power. Lower difficulty preserves all systems and
Records. Higher difficulty rewards broader risk selection but cannot become a
mandatory progression route.

Persistent breadth is reviewed through the **Guild Charter**, an original board
of eight horizontal Region seals and prerequisite tracks. It spends Renown only
on catalog packets, Profession clues or trials, threat information, and optional
Oath laws. It never contains percentage power, starting resources, extra Line
capacity, Recruit preservation, or casualty reversal.

The sixteenth boss completes the campaign before asking the player to choose:

- **Complete the First Chronicle:** archive the surviving Company, view the
  finite ending and Final Ledger, and return to Title.
- **Open the Oath Season:** archive the same Company, enter the postgame hub,
  review optional laws, and create a new generated run.

After that finite ending, postgame provides:

- **Profession Mastery:** clear fixed counterfactual trials for every base,
  regular advanced, and hidden hybrid identity;
- **Catalog Completion:** discover and validate every equipment, Artifact,
  Trait, ordinary/elite enemy, and boss identity;
- **Oath Contracts:** apply one or more fully previewed run laws that change
  valuation, formation pressure, market constraints, or enemy composition;
- **Final Ledger:** a finite completion screen for all mastery and challenge
  requirements.

Postgame does not promise endless content or infinite stat scaling. Repeated
unchanged clears cannot be the majority of the 60+ hour mastery target.
The cleared Company is never a postgame roster; Records may show its final
composition and history but cannot instantiate those Recruit IDs in a run.

## 13. Accessibility, Localization, And Input

### 13.1 Accessibility Baseline

- UI scale presets at 100%, 115%, and 130% without clipped functional text;
- reference landscape layouts at small, standard, and large safe areas;
- reduced motion, reduced flash, camera-shake intensity, and hit-stop options;
- independent master, music, ambience, voice, and effects volume;
- captions for every information-bearing audio event;
- color-independent rarity, target, protection, status, risk, and casualty
  encoding;
- high-contrast target paths and Party-line position indicators;
- pause, 1x, 2x, and 4x without loss of event-log information;
- complete keyboard/controller remapping and complete touch path;
- screen-reader labels and deterministic focus order for every Market,
  formation, result, recovery, and confirmation state;
- no required rapid tap, precision drag, simultaneous input, audio-only cue, or
  unpausable reading window;
- low-power presentation settings that never alter simulation ticks or results.

### 13.2 Input Semantics

All platforms map the same verbs: focus, inspect, compare, buy, sell, lock,
refresh, equip, reorder, confirm, cancel, start, pause, speed, retreat, and open
event log. Touch instructions name Tap as the primary operation: Tap a Recruit
or item to select, then Tap a legal destination or target to commit the pending
choice. Drag is an optional shortcut; select-then-destination performs every
reorder and equip action. Battle provides no hidden pointer-only command
surface.

Destructive or spending actions use a review state. Duplicate confirm input
returns the first operation receipt and cannot spend, dismiss, claim, or close
a run twice.

### 13.3 Localization Rules

- English and Simplified Chinese share semantic message IDs and typed values.
- No sentence is assembled from translated fragments.
- Generated names store component IDs and a rendered snapshot so migration and
  language changes remain deterministic.
- System nouns have one glossary entry; content cannot invent synonyms for the
  canonical state terms.
- Layout validation covers English pseudolocalization at 130% expansion and
  Simplified Chinese at 130% UI scale.
- Player-entered profile/run labels are Unicode-safe; generated Recruit names
  remain content-filtered and do not require online moderation.

## 14. Content Interface And No-Filler Gate

Every consumed gameplay row declares:

```text
stable_id and localized_name_id
catalog family and unlock placement
decision changed
state inputs read and authoritative outputs changed
trigger, timing, target, tradeoff, and counterplay
at least two nontrivial interactions
failure mode and causal-report event
presentation, accessibility, localization, and asset needs
fixed validation fixtures and expected event differences
```

A Recruit offer additionally declares Profession, attribute budget/distribution,
one Trait, level, generated identity seed, list price, and offer provenance. An
opening provisional offer also declares its run creation draft ID, fixed index
`0..3`, deterministic offer ID, and canonical output hash. A
Profession changes battlefield responsibility or resource/timing/target/order
grammar. Equipment and Artifacts change behavior, not only magnitude. An enemy
creates a distinct preview-to-counter question. A Region changes composition,
market pressure, or formation valuation. Any row failing its decision test is
rejected before production planning.

## 15. Product Validation Gates

### 15.1 Comprehension

With at least five uncoached target players:

- four identify front and rear and predict the first legal target;
- four distinguish Line capacity, living Company, and cumulative hires;
- four explain one equipment or order counterfactual before battle;
- four state what death, dismissal, retreat, and run close preserve;
- four can explain why the final living Recruit cannot be dismissed and can
  find the separate `Abandon Run` action;
- four use refresh and lock without expecting a reload reroll;
- four can state what Renown buys on the Guild Charter and why no claim adds
  permanent combat power;
- four distinguish Complete the First Chronicle from Open the Oath Season and
  predict that both archive, rather than preserve, the cleared Company;
- three voluntarily start another Round or name a specific build test.

### 15.2 Decision And Economy Quality

- A meaningful hire or provisional-Recruit choice occurs within one minute.
- A formation-order counterfactual occurs within five minutes.
- Every 20-minute profile trace stays within its stated decision-gap bound.
- Capacity ten passes all five analytical profile gates; larger candidates do
  not pass the same complete gate set.
- Three ordinary deaths are recoverable within the next Market in the fixed
  solvency fixture without making death profitable.
- Fixed seeds reject always-refresh, always-hire, always-dismiss, and never-
  replace as dominant strategies.

### 15.3 Battle Trust

- Reorder fixtures change targeting, reach, protection, healing, movement, or
  projectile results exactly as previewed.
- Every rejected action and retarget has one machine-readable reason.
- 1x exposes every major cast, projectile collision, displacement, summon,
  death, collapse, and retreat event.
- 4x and pause produce the same outcome hash as uninterrupted 1x.
- The result identifies the first decisive cause before aggregate statistics.

### 15.4 Open Human Gates

Machine checks cannot approve fun, emotional weight, visual clarity, listening
quality, generated-name quality, device ergonomics, or willingness to continue.
Those require prototype, target-player, device, independent-review, and Owner
evidence. Runtime, media production, packaging, store, and release remain
separately authorized.

## 16. Acceptance Checklist

- [ ] One ordered Party line is the only deployment grammar.
- [ ] Battle is fully automatic apart from diagnostic controls and retreat.
- [ ] Generated-Recruit, death, dismissal, replacement, Reserve, capacity, and
      cumulative-hire rules are explicit.
- [ ] Final-Recruit dismissal is illegal at preview and commit without changing
      abandonment or casualty recovery.
- [ ] All four authorities use the same counts, terms, IDs, and ownership.
- [ ] The complete Market loop includes Recruit, equipment, battle, refresh,
      lock, risk, result, reward, and recovery decisions.
- [ ] Run creation reserves its seed before generating the four opening offers,
      preserves a revisable exact pair, and promotes the draft exactly once.
- [ ] First clear is 15-25 hours and mastery is 60+ hours without waiting.
- [ ] The Guild Charter has eight horizontal Region seals, sourced
      prerequisites, existing Renown costs, and breadth-only effects.
- [ ] The final boss presents Chronicle completion and Oath Season as two
      explicit choices; both archive the Company and ordinary New Run remains.
- [ ] Every gameplay row passes the no-filler decision test.
- [ ] Accessibility, localization, offline, premium, and save-integrity
      boundaries are preserved.
- [ ] Originality, human acceptance, development, and release gates remain open.