Aetheria/docs/build-delivery-target.md

Build Delivery Target

Date: 2026-09-17

Status: target. Operator direction only; no substrate map or cut map yet. This document owns the ends. A cut map, written after an Imagination pass over the Body, owns the means.

Why

Aetheria has no player build pipeline and no way for anyone to play it. Builds are Unity batchmode runs by hand, Windows 64-bit only, and the output never leaves the machine (Build/). Nothing in GameCult publishes a downloadable artifact: Idunn deploys services to Yggdrasil, not files.

Operator direction (2026-09-17)

• A build is downloadable from the GameCult site, served from Yggdrasil. Operator: "deployment to a build downloadable from our site via Yggdrasil".
• Public. No login, no gate. Operator: "public, with a version feed and changelog pages".
• A version feed and changelog pages come with it, not as a later nicety.

Ends

• A build is an artifact with an identity: a version, the commit it was built from, the platform, a size and a hash a downloader can check.
• Publishing is one action, and it publishes the artifact, the feed entry and the changelog entry together, or it publishes nothing.
• The feed is the authority on what exists. The site's download page and the changelog pages are projections of it, never separately edited truth.
• A published version stays published. Its bytes and its entry do not change under it; a mistake is a new version, not an edit.
• The download page tells a visitor what they are getting: version, date, platform, size, and what changed since the last one.
• A build is reproducible from its commit: the feed entry names it, and a build from that commit produces the same artifact contents.

Invariants that must survive

• State is CultCache, not JSON (F:\Projects\CLAUDE.md). The release record and the changelog are typed documents. Anything a browser eats is a projection at the xenos boundary, and is derived, never authored.
• Idunn owns service deployment to Yggdrasil, and only that. Probed 2026-09-17 (docs/build-delivery-cut.md): every Idunn unit is a supervised process that must publish signed health, and Idunn pulls rather than pushes, so it cannot carry a file artifact. Publishing uses the host's existing static-file path and does not invent a second service deployment authority.
• The site's brand is the site's (F:\Projects\gamecult-site), and the download and changelog pages follow it.
• The build host is Windows. Unity 6000.3.24f1 builds on Starfire; the serving host is Linux. Say which host produced an artifact.
• Git LFS and repo size are part of the problem: the checkout alone is 1.7 GB. A build path that needs a fresh clone per release has to say so.

Not in scope

• Auto-updating clients, launchers, patching, or delta updates.
• Platforms other than Windows 64-bit, until one is asked for.
• Accounts, entitlements, or telemetry. The download is public and anonymous.
• Selling anything.