# PROGRESS — 2026-10-09T09:03:30Z

- Last visited: 2026-10-09T09:03:30Z
- Status: Probes Completed — All Tests Passing (Verdict: APPROVE)
- Current Step: Authoring handoff.md

## Completed Tasks
1. [x] Read DISPATCH.md, ORIGINAL_REQUEST.md, PROJECT.md, and worker_m4_remediation_2/handoff.md.
2. [x] Initialize BRIEFING.md and progress.md.
3. [x] Empirically probe Character Assets Invariants:
   - Walk `04_Assets/characters/` on disk: Exactly 62 files.
   - Run `git status -s 04_Assets/characters/`: Output strictly empty.
   - Run `git diff HEAD -- 04_Assets/characters 04_Assets/archive/ep01_legacy_v1`: Output strictly empty.
   - Check all 14 core portraits (`CORE_EP01_CHARACTERS`): All >500kB, valid PNG, exact dimensions.
   - Check all 62 character files: All valid, non-empty, valid images.
   - Walk `04_Assets/turnaround_sheets/`: Exactly 55 files, all valid PNGs.
   - Walk `04_Assets/archive/ep01_legacy_v1/`: Exactly 184 legacy mp4 files + valid legal README.md.
4. [x] Empirically probe Episode Assembly & Loudness:
   - `python 05_Production_Pipeline/production_orchestrator.py --assemble-episode ep01 --check`: Clean status check, code 0.
   - `python -m pytest tests/test_m2_hygiene.py -v`: 6/6 PASSED.
   - `python -m pytest tests/test_production_pipeline_m4.py -v`: 16/16 PASSED.
   - `python -m pytest tests/test_adversarial_m4_audio_concat_probe.py -v`: 5/5 PASSED.
   - `python -m pytest tests/test_critic_gate.py -v`: 30/30 PASSED.
   - `python -m pytest tests/test_challenger1_m4_empirical_probe.py -v`: 4/4 PASSED.
   - `python -m pytest tests/test_challenger2_m4_empirical_probe.py -v`: 10/10 PASSED.
5. [x] Authored empirical test harness in `tests/test_challenger2_m4_empirical_probe.py`.
6. [ ] Write handoff.md and send message to orchestrator.