ADR 0084: The head can read his branches

Status: accepted (James, 2026-08-09). Applies to pi lane logs.

Context

Presence says which rooms Clankie occupies, but it cannot answer what somebody said there or what he said back. The answer must come from a room record, not a model-authored memory or another framework's private session stream.

Decision

observe_room reads LaneLog, the same bounded append-only room history used by the TUI lanes view. With no arguments it lists rooms; with (lane, targetId) it returns recent heard and said entries.

The tool is available to every captain lane, but visibility is asymmetric. An operator turn may read every room. A Discord, voice, or gameplay turn may read non-operator rooms and can never list or read the operator lane. The gate comes from the current lane captured by the host, not from a model-controlled argument.

Consequences

• Clankie can look before answering questions about another room.
• Ambient users cannot pull the operator transcript through him.
• A read never sends, steers, resumes, or changes the observed room.
• The record is intentionally only what is heard and said; private reasoning and raw pi session state remain outside the room log.