docs(sports): record where B6 stands, and why it is waiting

The phase table had B4 as "next" and B5 as "after B4" while both had shipped,
and described B6 as blocked on B4's gate — which is now merged and released. A
plan that misreports which phase it is in is worse than no plan: the next
person reads it and repeats finished work.

Corrected, and three things that were only ever decided in conversation are now
written down:

  * **B6 is deliberately held.** 3.2.0 published 2026-08-03; 3.1.0 ran nine
    months before it. B6's premise is that cores without the module are gone,
    and there is no release-asset count or install telemetry to show that.
    Running it now strands users on their current plugin versions. The gate
    that makes it safe is already built and tested — it is the calendar that is
    missing, and no amount of further code changes that.
  * **Stop adopting further shared modules** (data_sources, game_renderer,
    base_odds_manager) until B6 closes. Each adoption adds a copy to keep in
    step against a payoff contingent on B6.
  * **A B5 retrospective**, because "the adoption went fine" is not what
    happened: four of eight shipped with scroll mode broken on a 3.2.0 core.
    The bundled fallback did not protect against it — the break was on the
    modern path — which is an argument for the sunset, not against it. Records
    the ledger too: net negative on disk until B6 runs.

Also replaces the "what's next" list, whose first five items were all done,
with what actually remains.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Udr6MfaFLUPhX5Fgo67Jf5

.github/workflows/test.yml

@@ -79,4 +79,5 @@ jobs:
             test/test_sports_scroll.py \
             test/test_version_consistency.py \
             test/test_plugin_compatibility_gate.py \
-            test/test_install_preserves_existing.py
+            test/test_install_preserves_existing.py \
+            test/test_core_owned_config_keys.py

docs/SPORTS_UNIFICATION.md

@@ -212,9 +212,9 @@ one of them is safe by construction and the other is not.
 | **B1** | Promote the nine universal methods; convert `sports.py` → package | ✅ | Characterization suite green; no behavior change intended |
 | **B2** | `CelebrationMixin` + rotation strategies as opt-in capabilities | ✅ | Non-adopters have zero new code in their MRO; strategies checked against verbatim plugin transcriptions |
 | **B3** | Upstream the scroll **orchestration** layer as `src/common/sports_scroll.py`, reading `global_config['target_fps']` natively | ✅ | Content building stays per-sport |
-| **B4** | Ship 3.2.0 *and* make version reporting trustworthy | ⏳ **next** | Tag, release, and `src.__version__` agree; compatibility gate merged |
-| **B5** | Adoption — guarded core imports: three pilots, then the remaining six. **Bundled copies stay.** | after B4 | Per plugin: harness + goldens byte-identical, then a device soak |
-| **B6** | Sunset — delete the bundled copies | **blocked** | B4's gate shipped *and* in users' hands (see below) |
+| **B4** | Ship 3.2.0 *and* make version reporting trustworthy | ✅ | Released 2026-08-03; tag, release and `src.__version__` agree; compatibility gate merged (#428, #431, #433) |
+| **B5** | Adoption — guarded core imports, all eight. **Bundled copies stay.** | ✅ | All eight adopted; harness byte-identical; see the B5 retrospective below — four shipped broken and were repaired in plugins #251 |
+| **B6** | Sunset — delete the bundled copies | **blocked, deliberately** | 3.2.0 *in users' hands*. Released 2026-08-03; there is no adoption data yet. See "B6 — the decision as of 2026-08-05" |
 
 ### B4 — what "ship 3.2.0" actually requires
 
@@ -321,35 +321,115 @@ gate rather than trusting the failure to be noticed.
 The same suite should exercise the install/update gate, since it is the other
 half of the guarantee.
 
+### B6 — the decision as of 2026-08-05
+
+**Do not run B6 yet. Do not abandon it either.** The blocker is no longer
+technical; it is calendar time, and it is the one thing here that cannot be
+worked around by writing more code.
+
+**Why not yet.** 3.2.0 was published **2026-08-03**. Its predecessor 3.1.0 ran
+for nine months. B6's entire safety argument is "cores without
+`src.common.sports_scroll` are gone", and two days after release that is not
+close to true. There are no release assets to count and no install telemetry, so
+we cannot demonstrate otherwise — and that absence of evidence *is* the answer.
+Executing B6 now would strand essentially the whole user base on their current
+plugin versions.
+
+**What is already done and waiting.** The hard part is built and tested. The
+install gate refuses a plugin whose floor exceeds the core's version, and
+refuses one whose floor is above 2.0.0 when the core reports an untrustworthy
+version — so a v3.1.0-release user (who reports `1.0.0`) keeps a working plugin
+instead of receiving one that cannot load. Every adopted plugin has a
+`test_core_fallback.py` covering both paths.
+
+**What would unblock it.** Evidence of 3.2.0 uptake — a few months of it being
+the default download, or store-side install data if that is ever added. Revisit
+then, not on a schedule.
+
+**When it happens, remember:** four plugins declare their floor top-level, where
+editing `versions[0]` is a silent no-op, and the floor has three live spellings
+(`min_ledmatrix_version`, `requires.min_ledmatrix_version`,
+`versions[].ledmatrix_min_version`, plus deprecated `ledmatrix_min`). See
+`src/plugin_system/compatibility.py:declared_min_version` for the resolution
+order any floor-raising tool must reproduce.
+
+### B5 retrospective — what the adoption actually cost
+
+Recorded because it is the evidence behind the two decisions above, and because
+"the adoption went fine" is not what happened.
+
+**Four of the eight shipped with scroll mode broken** on a 3.2.0 core, and were
+repaired in plugins-repo #251. The restructure lifted the content methods
+verbatim but left the state they read off `self` behind: separator-icon
+constants (hockey, basketball, lacrosse) and the game-renderer cache (afl).
+hockey/basketball/lacrosse could not construct the scroll display at all; afl
+raised inside `prepare_scroll_content`, which the core base *catches*, so its
+only symptom was scroll mode silently drawing nothing.
+
+Three things are worth carrying forward:
+
+- **The bundled fallback did not protect anyone from this.** The break was on
+  the modern path, which the fallback never touches. Carrying the second copy
+  bought nothing against the actual defect while creating the divergence that
+  produced it. That is an argument *for* B6, not against it.
+- **Every gate was green.** The safety harness renders the scoreboard screens,
+  not scroll mode; `test_core_fallback.py` checked that methods existed and that
+  their *globals* resolved, and `self.NHL_SEPARATOR_ICON` is an attribute read,
+  invisible to an AST scan for `Name` loads. The fix was to stop reasoning about
+  source and **build the object**: construct both classes on both paths, compare
+  the separator icons they end up with, and assert the adopted class ends up
+  with every instance attribute the bundled one sets.
+- **Test what the change touches, not what is convenient to render.** Scroll
+  mode had no coverage because the harness could not reach it. A comparison
+  harness that renders the same games through both paths and diffs the pixels
+  needs no per-sport knowledge of the right answer, only that adopting core code
+  did not change it.
+
+**The ledger.** Before adoption, eight duplicated copies totalled 5,685 lines.
+After adoption plus the frozen legacy copies it was 10,610; removing the dead
+inline duplication (plugins #252) brought it to roughly 8,620. B6 would take it
+to about 3,300 including the shared core module — some 2,400 fewer than before
+this project started. **Until B6 runs, the adoption is net negative on disk**,
+and its one delivered user-visible gain is that adopted plugins honour the
+global `target_fps` instead of hardcoding ~100 FPS.
+
+### Decision: stop adopting further modules until B6 closes
+
+`data_sources.py` (9 copies), `game_renderer.py` (8) and `base_odds_manager.py`
+are the obvious next candidates. **Do not adopt them yet.** Each adoption adds
+carrying cost — a second copy to keep in step — against a payoff that is
+contingent on B6, and B6 is gated on an installed base we cannot currently
+measure. Consolidate what is already committed; revisit when B6 does.
+
 ## What's next
 
-In order. Each step is independently useful and independently revertible.
+Steps 1–5 of the original plan are **done**: 3.2.0 is tagged and published with
+a version number CI now asserts (#428), the compatibility gate is in
+`install_plugin` and reads `compatible_versions` as well as the floor (#431,
+#433), the newest manifest entry is required to use `ledmatrix_min_version`
+(plugins #244), and all eight plugins have adopted the scroll orchestration
+(plugins #245–#249, repaired in #251, tidied in #252).
 
-1. **Tag and publish v3.2.0.** The code is already on `main` (`21825cbf`).
-   Nothing else blocks this, and it is what makes `ledmatrix_min_version:
-   "3.2.0"` refer to something real.
-2. **Make the version number honest.** Have the release process assert that the
-   tag, the GitHub release, and `src.__version__` agree — a check in CI is
-   cheaper than the confusion of the last two releases. Then revisit the
-   `< 2.0.0` skip in `_warn_if_incompatible`, which currently silences the
-   warning for the users who most need it.
-3. **Add the compatibility gate** to `StoreManager.install_plugin` and
-   `.update_plugin`: refuse a plugin whose declared floor exceeds
-   `src.__version__`, and surface the reason in the store UI rather than only
-   the log. This is the single change that turns the floor from documentation
-   into a guarantee, and B6 depends on it.
-4. **Migrate the manifests** to `ledmatrix_min_version`, and reconcile them with
-   `compatible_versions` (see above — that field is the required, canonical one,
-   and the gate does not read it yet). Currently 28 plugins spell the floor both
-   ways across their `versions[]` entries, 12 use only the old spelling, and 2
-   only the new. Scope the sweep to the nine sports plugins if a 42-plugin
-   version-bump wave isn't worth it — but the `compatible_versions` half has to
-   cover every manifest the gate can refuse, or define explicit legacy handling,
-   before the gate is allowed to block anything.
-5. **Run B5 adoption** — hockey, soccer, football, then the remaining six.
-   Bundled copies stay. Byte-identical harness output per plugin, then a soak.
-6. **Only then plan B6**, with the compatibility regression test described above
-   in CI first.
+What actually remains, smallest first:
+
+1. **Nothing on the critical path.** B6 is the only remaining phase and it is
+   waiting on calendar time, not on work. Resist the urge to fill the gap by
+   adopting more modules — see the decision above.
+2. **The stale plugin-test tranche** — 5 failures across baseball, hockey and
+   basketball, all pre-existing API drift in the plugins' own older tests
+   (`plugin.initialized`, `CacheManager(config_manager=...)`, a bare
+   `cache_manager` import, `MockLogger.setLevel`, `BasketballPluginManager`).
+   None are scroll-related. They make the suite noisy, which is how a real
+   failure gets ignored.
+3. **Soak the remaining adoptions on hardware.** Only baseball has been watched
+   through a live game, and hockey has been loaded on devpi. The other six are
+   proven by harness, unit tests and pixel comparison — not by a live match.
+   Out-of-season sports cannot be soaked until their season starts.
+4. **`CLAUDE.md` in the plugins repo says four panel sizes; the harness renders
+   eight.** A one-line doc fix, and the discrepancy has already produced one
+   false review finding.
+5. **Then, when the evidence supports it, B6** — with the four-case
+   compatibility regression test above in CI first.
 
 ## How to keep this project healthy
 

src/plugin_system/plugin_manager.py

@@ -395,6 +395,37 @@ class PluginManager:
             self.state_manager.set_state(plugin_id, PluginState.ERROR, error=e)
             return False
     
+    #: Config keys the **core** reads out of a plugin's own config block. The
+    #: plugin never declares them, so a schema with
+    #: ``"additionalProperties": false`` — 37 of the 42 published ones — reports
+    #: them as violations and the plugin gets flagged degraded in the web UI for
+    #: using a documented core feature.
+    #:
+    #: Listed explicitly rather than matched on a ``vegas_`` prefix, because
+    #: ``vegas_mode`` is the opposite case: plugins *do* declare that one, and a
+    #: prefix rule would silently stop validating it.
+    #:
+    #: Read by: ``vegas_mode/plugin_adapter.py`` (``vegas_width_pct``,
+    #: ``vegas_overflow``) and ``base_plugin.py`` (``vegas_max_width_screens``).
+    CORE_OWNED_CONFIG_KEYS = frozenset({
+        'vegas_width_pct',
+        'vegas_overflow',
+        'vegas_max_width_screens',
+    })
+
+    def _strip_core_owned_keys(self, config: Dict[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]:
+        """A shallow copy of ``config`` without the core's own tuning keys.
+
+        Only the top level is touched, and only when such a key is present, so
+        the common case allocates nothing extra.
+        """
+        if not isinstance(config, dict):
+            return config
+        if not self.CORE_OWNED_CONFIG_KEYS.intersection(config):
+            return config
+        return {k: v for k, v in config.items()
+                if k not in self.CORE_OWNED_CONFIG_KEYS}
+
     def _validate_config_schema_soft(self, plugin_id: str, config: Dict[str, Any]) -> None:
         """Validate a plugin's config against its JSON schema — warn/degrade only.
 
@@ -419,7 +450,7 @@ class PluginManager:
 
         try:
             is_valid, errors = self.schema_manager.validate_config_against_schema(
-                config, schema, plugin_id
+                self._strip_core_owned_keys(config), schema, plugin_id
             )
         except Exception as e:  # pragma: no cover - defensive
             # Validation machinery itself failed — do not penalise the plugin.

test/test_core_owned_config_keys.py

@@ -0,0 +1,98 @@
+"""The core's own tuning keys must not make a plugin look broken.
+
+`vegas_width_pct`, `vegas_overflow` and `vegas_max_width_screens` are read by
+the *core* out of each plugin's config block — `vegas_mode/plugin_adapter.py`
+and `base_plugin.py`. No plugin declares them, and 37 of the 42 published
+config schemas set `"additionalProperties": false`, so schema validation
+reported them as violations.
+
+That is not just log noise: `_validate_config_schema_soft` sets `degraded` in
+the health tracker, which the web UI surfaces. Measured on a real device, **9
+of 27 installed plugins** were flagged degraded purely for using a documented
+core feature — including `baseball-scoreboard` and `f1-scoreboard`.
+
+The fix strips those keys before validating. It deliberately does *not* match
+on a `vegas_` prefix: `vegas_mode` is plugin-owned and declared in schemas, and
+a prefix rule would silently stop validating it.
+"""
+
+from unittest.mock import MagicMock
+
+import pytest
+
+from src.plugin_system.plugin_manager import PluginManager
+
+
+STRICT_SCHEMA = {
+    "type": "object",
+    "additionalProperties": False,
+    "properties": {
+        "enabled": {"type": "boolean"},
+        "vegas_mode": {"type": "string"},  # plugin-owned, must stay validated
+    },
+}
+
+
+@pytest.fixture
+def manager():
+    mgr = PluginManager.__new__(PluginManager)  # skip the heavy constructor
+    mgr.logger = MagicMock()
+    mgr.schema_manager = MagicMock()
+    mgr._set_degraded_safe = MagicMock()
+    return mgr
+
+
+class TestStripCoreOwnedKeys:
+    def test_removes_every_core_owned_key(self, manager):
+        cfg = {"enabled": True, "vegas_width_pct": 50,
+               "vegas_overflow": "wrap", "vegas_max_width_screens": 2}
+        assert manager._strip_core_owned_keys(cfg) == {"enabled": True}
+
+    def test_leaves_plugin_owned_vegas_mode_alone(self, manager):
+        """A prefix rule would have eaten this one."""
+        cfg = {"enabled": True, "vegas_mode": "scroll"}
+        assert manager._strip_core_owned_keys(cfg) == cfg
+
+    def test_returns_the_same_object_when_nothing_to_strip(self, manager):
+        cfg = {"enabled": True}
+        assert manager._strip_core_owned_keys(cfg) is cfg
+
+    def test_does_not_mutate_the_caller_config(self, manager):
+        cfg = {"enabled": True, "vegas_width_pct": 50}
+        manager._strip_core_owned_keys(cfg)
+        assert "vegas_width_pct" in cfg, "the live plugin config was mutated"
+
+    def test_tolerates_a_non_dict(self, manager):
+        assert manager._strip_core_owned_keys(None) is None
+
+
+class TestSoftValidation:
+    def _validate_with(self, manager, config, valid=True, errors=()):
+        manager.schema_manager.load_schema.return_value = STRICT_SCHEMA
+        manager.schema_manager.validate_config_against_schema.return_value = (
+            valid, list(errors))
+        manager._validate_config_schema_soft("baseball-scoreboard", config)
+        return manager.schema_manager.validate_config_against_schema.call_args
+
+    def test_core_keys_never_reach_the_validator(self, manager):
+        """The regression: these keys reaching a strict schema is what flagged
+        9 of 27 plugins degraded."""
+        args = self._validate_with(
+            manager, {"enabled": True, "vegas_width_pct": 50})
+        validated = args[0][0]
+        assert "vegas_width_pct" not in validated
+        assert validated == {"enabled": True}
+
+    def test_plugin_owned_keys_still_reach_the_validator(self, manager):
+        args = self._validate_with(
+            manager, {"enabled": True, "vegas_mode": "scroll"})
+        assert args[0][0]["vegas_mode"] == "scroll"
+
+    def test_a_genuine_violation_is_still_reported(self, manager):
+        """Stripping core keys must not turn the check into a no-op."""
+        self._validate_with(
+            manager, {"enabled": True, "typo_key": 1},
+            valid=False, errors=["Field root: 'typo_key' was unexpected"])
+        manager._set_degraded_safe.assert_called()
+        reason = manager._set_degraded_safe.call_args[0][1]
+        assert reason and "typo_key" in reason