# Dump format The contract between the oracle service, the comparator, and eventually the engine under test. Frozen: changing it requires changing every consumer at once. What the comparison means, explained from zero, is in `docs/geometry-verification.md`. ```mermaid flowchart LR req["request line
(stdin, JSON)"] --> op{"op"} op -- "none: geometry" --> dump["Dump per engine
rects, style, scroll"] op -- "trace" --> trace["Trace per engine
recorded JS observations"] op -- "reflect" --> refl["Reflection dump
attribute + IDL values"] op -- "stackingProbe" --> stack["ids at points,
front to back"] dump --> vote["compare.rs vote
1/60 px tolerance"] trace --> tvote["trace::vote"] refl --> rvote["reflect::vote
exact"] stack --> svote["vote_stacking
exact, unanimous only"] ``` ## Oracle protocol The oracle is a long-lived process speaking newline-delimited JSON on stdio. One JSON object per line in each direction, no pretty-printing, no interleaved text on stdout. Diagnostics go to stderr. Browsers stay open for the process lifetime. Nothing spawns a browser per case. ### Request ```json {"id": "case-0001", "html": "...", "engines": ["chromium", "firefox", "webkit"]} ``` `engines` is optional; omitted means every engine the service launched. `script` is optional JavaScript run after `html` loads and before the dump walk (`docs/feature-cost-experiment.md`), so DOM tree-mutation ground truth is an ordinary dump. ```json {"id": "case-0002", "html": "
", "script": "document.getElementById('a').appendChild(document.createElement('b'));"} ``` ### Response ```json {"id": "case-0001", "dumps": {"chromium": {...}, "firefox": {...}}, "errors": {"webkit": "message"}} ``` `dumps` holds one dump per engine that succeeded. `errors` holds a message per engine that failed, and is omitted when empty. A response always carries the `id` it answers. ### Control `{"id": "...", "op": "ping"}` responds `{"id": "...", "ok": true, "engines": [...], "versions": {"chromium": "140.0.7339.5", ...}, "profile": "default"}`. `versions` maps each launched engine's name to its `engine_version` (see below); `profile` is the launch profile active for the process (see "Launch profiles" below). `{"id": "...", "op": "shutdown"}` closes browsers and exits. ## Dump ```json { "engine": "chromium", "engine_version": "140.0.7339.5", "viewport": {"width": 800, "height": 600}, "overflowed": false, "nodes": [ { "index": 0, "parent": -1, "tag": "HTML", "depth": 0, "bounding": {"x": 0.0, "y": 0.0, "w": 800.0, "h": 100.0}, "rects": [{"x": 0.0, "y": 0.0, "w": 800.0, "h": 100.0}], "scroll": {"client_width": 800.0, "client_height": 100.0, "scroll_width": 800.0, "scroll_height": 100.0}, "style": {"display": "block", "...": "..."} } ] } ``` - `engine_version` is the exact browser build that produced the dump, from Playwright's `browser.version()` at launch — not from `navigator.userAgent`, which the in-page walk could report but which is imprecise. Required, since ground truth without a version is exactly what this field exists to rule out. - `nodes` is every element in document order, starting at `` at index 0. Document order means `index` increases monotonically and a parent always precedes its children. - `parent` is an index into `nodes`, or `-1` for the root. - `tag` is the uppercase tag name as the DOM reports it. - `rects` is `getClientRects()`, one entry per box fragment, in content order. An empty array means the element generates no box — that is the signal, not a null `bounding`. - `bounding` is `getBoundingClientRect()`, always present, zeroed when `rects` is empty. - Coordinates are viewport-relative CSS pixels as doubles, serialized at full precision. - `overflowed` is true when the document scrolls in either axis. It is a report, not a verdict: trustworthiness is decided per node from `scroll` (see "Scrollbar probe" below), because one document-level boolean from one engine cannot say whether the engines agree. ## Scrollbar probe Additive: everything above (request, response, the rest of the dump, style subset) is unchanged. `scroll` is a new optional per-node object, alongside `bounding` and `rects`, carrying the element's client and scroll dimensions as CSSOM-View reports them (`clientWidth`/`clientHeight`, `scrollWidth`/`scrollHeight`). ```json "scroll": {"client_width": 200.0, "client_height": 100.0, "scroll_width": 400.0, "scroll_height": 100.0} ``` - The two differ on an axis exactly when the element's content spills past its padding box on that axis — here, horizontally. This holds whatever the element's own `overflow` value is: a `visible` box whose content spills reports differing dimensions too, as Chromium, Firefox and WebKit all do. What `overflow` changes is the other direction: a box that clips (`hidden`, `scroll` or `auto`) keeps its own spill out of its ancestors' scroll dimensions. - The signal is therefore "this element's content overflows it", not "a scrollbar is painted": a rendered scrollbar follows from it for `scroll` and `auto`, a `hidden` box clips instead, and a `visible` box simply spills. The dump cannot tell the three apart, and deliberately does not try — the three engines agree on the overflow and would not agree on a painted widget's width. - The root element's client box is the viewport's, so the root reports overflow whenever the page is larger than the viewport, whatever its own `overflow` value. That is the condition the whole-document `overflowed` boolean reports on its own. - Omitted from dumps taken before the probe existed, and from an engine under test with no scrolling model. Consumers treat an absent `scroll` as unknown, never as "no scrollbar" — except when scoring an engine under test against the browsers, where an absent probe is exactly the engine reporting no scrollbar. - The pixel width a scrollbar steals is platform- and theme-dependent and is deliberately not part of this contract. Only presence is. Comparison uses it as the discard rule: a case is untrustworthy when three or more engines disagree about whether some node overflows on some axis, clustered by the same pairwise-agreement rule as the geometry vote (`harness::compare::scrollbar_dispute`). Unanimous agreement that a scrollbar is present does not discard the case — it is a case an engine that does not model `overflow` is expected to fail. ## Style subset A fixed, ordered list. Present on every node, values exactly as `getComputedStyle` returns them. ``` display position box-sizing direction writing-mode float clear width height min-width max-width min-height max-height margin-top margin-right margin-bottom margin-left padding-top padding-right padding-bottom padding-left border-top-width border-right-width border-bottom-width border-left-width overflow-x overflow-y ``` A mismatch here indicts the style pipeline rather than layout, which is the second attribution axis. ## Comparison Comparison never uses absolute coordinates. 1. **Shape.** The sequence of `(tag, depth, parent)` must match. A mismatch is a parse divergence and the case reports that and stops — no geometry is compared. 2. **Size.** Each node's `bounding` width and height, and each fragment's width and height pairwise. 3. **Relative offset.** Each node's `bounding` origin minus its parent's `bounding` origin. The root compares against the viewport origin. A single wrong offset then appears once rather than corrupting every descendant. Tolerance is 1/60 px (0.01667), the coarsest engine quantization — Gecko app units. Blink and WebKit quantize at 1/64. Differences below tolerance are quantization noise. Both an exact verdict (within tolerance or not) and the raw signed delta are reported. The verdict gates pass/fail; the delta is the dense reward signal and needs no threshold. ## Trace protocol Additive: everything above (request, response, dump, style subset, comparison) is unchanged. `trace` is a new request operation with its own response shape, for what script can observe beyond geometry — return values, thrown errors, event order, promise settlement order, object structure, pixel and audio buffers — the oracle for `docs/oracle-coverage.md` → "Four kinds of oracle that need no geometry vote" item 4. ### Origin `Engine.run()` (the geometry path) uses `page.setContent`, which leaves the page on `about:blank`; many APIs this unlocks need a secure context or a real origin. The oracle starts one local HTTP server on `127.0.0.1` for its own lifetime and serves trace pages from `http://localhost:/trace/`. Browsers treat `localhost` as a secure context regardless of scheme, so `isSecureContext` is `true` without TLS. Every trace records the page's `origin` and `isSecureContext`. ### Request ```json {"id": "t1", "op": "trace", "script": "trace.value('x', 1); trace.done();", "html": "", "engines": ["chromium", "firefox", "webkit"]} ``` `script` is required: JavaScript text run in the served page, after the recorder (see below) is installed and after `html` (optional; omitted means an empty body) has loaded. `engines` is optional, same meaning as the geometry request. ### Response ```json {"id": "t1", "traces": {"chromium": {"...": "..."}}, "errors": {"webkit": "message"}} ``` `traces` holds one trace per engine that completed; `errors` holds a message per engine that failed (including "engine not launched"), omitted when empty. ### Trace ```json { "engine": "chromium", "engine_version": "153.0.8010.12", "profile": "default", "origin": "http://localhost:41673", "is_secure_context": true, "timed_out": false, "records": [ {"seq": 0, "kind": "value", "label": "x", "value": 1} ] } ``` - `profile` is the launch profile active for every engine in this run (see "Launch profiles" below). - `timed_out` is true when the recorder's fixed completion timeout ended the trace rather than the script itself calling `trace.done()`. - `records` is every observation the recorder pushed, in the order it pushed them; `seq` is that order as an explicit integer. Order is part of the result: two traces with the same records in a different order are not the same trace. ### The recorder A script installed via Playwright's `context.addInitScript`, so it runs before any script the trace page's own content carries — including inline `