# Reported deep-view artifact investigation and fix

Date: 2026-09-29

## Purpose

Investigate the reported URL state that displayed large yellow/black geometric regions and sometimes an almost entirely black frame. The production source before this pass is preserved as `index.before.html`. The fix is intentionally narrow: do not restore previously removed expensive work unless evidence points to it.

Reported state:

- bits: 273
- re: `-15958919693715511752069626580195447581643016686947107473855747766272418724092005269`
- im: `3884297345146583343999140717464554120497735725078805729405733239132420430333375719`
- span: `35679807704506851074208413824041445358585910697267232113437882789120793`
- palette: 0
- cycle: 0.008
- shift: 0.18
- base iteration: 350, adaptive enabled, quality high

At 1108×1582, the adaptive initial target for this region is approximately 1536 iterations and the renderer takes the `fast-extended` path.

## Root cause 1: unsafe series jump

The integrated fourth-order series approximation was enabled for the reported view. The fast-reference worker selected:

- reference pixel ≈ `(69.5, 922.5)`
- reference length: 1285
- series jump: 773
- fourth-order coefficient components up to approximately `2.35e38`, close to the maximum finite f32 magnitude

The series validity test checked truncation terms in unscaled orbit space, but did not bound the *intermediate scaled f32 polynomial products* used by WGSL. At screen-domain deltas away from the selected reference, `a4 * d^4` can overflow before the later `ldexp` rescales the term.

The reproducible probe in `experiments/reported-view/analyze.mjs` evaluates the exact worker output from the preserved pre-fix source. On a 32×32 viewport sample grid:

- pre-fix: 290 / 1024 series starts produce a non-finite fourth-order intermediate
- fixed: 0 / 1024, because series acceleration is disabled

This is sufficient to generate `RANGE` failures and black unknown pixels. Separate CPU surrogate comparison also showed large escape-iteration deviations in this state, so merely adding an overflow clamp would not make the current jump trustworthy enough for publication.

### Fix

`SERIES_APPROXIMATION_ENABLED=false` now disables production series construction. The code remains present for future work, but the fast-reference worker emits `jump=0` and zero coefficients.

Re-enabling series should require at minimum:

1. viewport/reference-relative bounds on all scaled polynomial intermediates,
2. a propagated truncation/rounding error bound carried into the perturbation path,
3. a corpus test that checks false escapes, not only absolute approximation error,
4. strict handling when the selected reference is off-center.

## Root cause 2: publishing numerical failures before repair

The FAST primary frame was colored and presented immediately after the primary perturbation pass, before `recoverNumericalCostOrdered()` repaired `REFERENCE_END`, `RANGE`, and other numerical failures.

`COLOR_WGSL` writes alpha zero for `FIELD_UNKNOWN`. Therefore an early provisional frame can appear:

- black when there is no usable history,
- mixed with reprojected old colors when stable history exists,
- as large geometric regions reflecting reference validity / numerical-failure domains rather than Mandelbrot geometry.

### Fix

For `fast-extended`:

- primary colorization is deferred (`deferPrimaryColor = deferColor || fastExtended`),
- unresolved statistics are read,
- numerical failures are repaired,
- only then is the first provisional recolor/presentation allowed.

Direct rendering keeps its existing provisional behavior.

## What was *not* reverted

The previous FAST coverage-repair dispatch was not restored. The existing full-frame unknown reduction and final invariant still detect untouched reason-0 pixels, and prior A/B coverage tests found no holes. The reported state produced a concrete series failure mechanism, so restoring an O(pixels) repair pass would treat the symptom without addressing the cause.

Other removal-pass optimizations are unchanged.

## Verification

### Regression

`node tests/regression.mjs`

Result: PASS, 19 WGSL kernels.

Additional regression pins were added for:

- `SERIES_APPROXIMATION_ENABLED=false`
- FAST primary-color deferral via `deferPrimaryColor=deferColor||fastExtended`

### Reported-view worker probe

`node experiments/reported-view/analyze.mjs`

See `results.json`.

Key result:

| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---:|---:|
| reference length | 1285 | 1285 |
| series jump | 773 | 0 |
| non-finite series-start samples | 290 / 1024 | 0 / 1024 |

### Existing integrated CPU benchmark

`node experiments/integrated_bench.mjs`

Completed successfully. The series section now reports jump 0 at all tested spans, while periodicity, sparse active state, multi-reference, and CPU fallback tests continue to run.

### Browser/WebGPU smoke

`tests/browser_smoke.mjs` could not run because its expected external Chromium remote-debug endpoint at `127.0.0.1:9333` was not available in this environment. This is an environment limitation, not a test assertion failure. Actual WebGPU visual confirmation of the supplied URL remains the most important local-device check.

## Build summary

See `build-summary.json`.

- before SHA-256: `e69b91ead027927d977a065d27d9e27629110122df20aa470eab877e23f77ac7`
- fixed SHA-256: `c53c0dc4cb9fa2d2046aaa12ef03cc79c61a710b0c8db36dea1a87be2d9aedd8`
- HTML size delta: +396 bytes (comments/guard and publication-order logic)

The WGSL kernels themselves were not changed in this pass, so kernel hashes remain pinned to the prior 19-kernel set.