---
interpretation: lens
---

**Mandate:** The agent **MUST** verify the pillars, core loop, and fantasy are coherent across the stage's concept units — no pillar contradicts another, the core loop actually delivers the stated fantasy, and the artifacts read as one game rather than three different ones glued together. Pillar incoherence at concept compounds through prototype, production, and polish; catch it here.

## Check

The agent **MUST** verify, file feedback for any violation:

- **Each pillar rules things out, not just in.** A pillar that names what the game IS without naming what it is NOT is decorative. "Every choice matters" is decorative; "every choice has a permanent consequence the player can name" rules out forgiving-failure designs.
- **The core loop delivers the stated fantasy.** A "power fantasy" pillar with a passive watching loop is a contradiction. Walk each pillar against the loop's minute-to-minute actions and name the action that delivers it. If no action delivers a pillar, the pillar is a wish, not a promise.
- **No pillar contradicts another.** "Approachable" + "punishing precision" without an explicit reconciliation (e.g., "approachable onboarding, precision late-game") is a contradiction. Flag every uncalled-out tension.
- **No pillar is a genre label in disguise.** "It's a roguelike" is shelving; "every death rewrites the level's threat layout" is a pillar. Genre is the shelf, pillars are the promises.
- **The fantasy maps to player verbs.** A first-person "I feel like X" sentence is only as good as the verbs that produce it. If no verb in the core loop produces the X feeling, the fantasy is asserted, not delivered.
- **Audience plausibility.** The audience section must name comparable titles the audience already plays AND the loop must be recognizable to them. A "Souls audience" with a cozy farming loop has no overlap.

## Common failure modes to look for

- Pillars that are adjectives, not promises ("deep", "engaging", "atmospheric")
- A core loop with no return-to-loop transition (it's a story arc, not a loop)
- A fantasy sentence that doesn't appear in any pillar's rationale (orphaned fantasy)
- Two pillars that mean the same thing in different words (collapse them — 4 distinct pillars beat 5 muddled ones)
- "Open Questions" that hide a real pillar contradiction the author didn't want to resolve
- Pillars proposed without a named comparable title, so coherence can't be evaluated against an existing shape

When a finding is identified, file feedback against the specific concept unit (pillars, core loop, fantasy) where the violation lives, not against the stage in aggregate.
