Status: Accepted Date: 2026-03-30
Supersession note: This ADR supersedes ADR 0010's blanket prohibition on AI-assisted public matches. The rest of ADR 0010 remains canonical.
ADR 0010 correctly narrowed the public product to one fixed ten-prompt catalog with authoritative Workers AI normalization for open_text settlement. In the same change, public AI-assisted matches were disabled entirely.
That removal regressed queue availability. A solo or duo human lobby can no longer promote itself to a playable public match, even though:
- the runtime already supports synthetic players end to end
- AI-assisted matches are already neutralized economically
- the public UI already explains that bot-assisted runs are off the record
The intended product behavior from ADR 0008 was narrower than a blanket ban: AI backfill should remain limited to raising 1- or 2-human public queues to the minimum playable size of 3.
The ten-seed public catalog keeps authoritative Workers AI normalization for open_text prompts, and also restores limited AI backfill:
- automatic AI backfill is enabled only when
AI_BOT_ENABLEDis true - automatic AI backfill is limited to public queues with
1or2humans - bots are used only to reach the minimum playable size of
3 - if additional humans arrive before launch, synthetic seats are removed and replaced by humans
- AI-assisted matches remain off the record: balances, streaks, and leaderboard standing do not change
- low-concurrency public sessions regain a playable path instead of stalling below
3 - the fill-timer and unanimous
start nowflow remain intact because backfilled lobbies still form through the normal queue path - human-only crowds of
3+players continue to launch without synthetic seats - the public rules and config docs must describe AI backfill as limited availability support, not a disabled legacy path