Corporate Ladder Soft Launch went live on 2026-06-15 with the bot, leaderboards, and Web App on promptanatomy.lol. The one-thumb loop was already clear—tap left or right, dodge meetings, climb Career Years. What followed was quite a sprint: not new mechanics, but UI, UX, visuals, and algorithm until scores, surfaces, and endgame behaved under real Telegram traffic. We tagged v2.4.0 in DITreneris/ladder when filing trust caught up to the loop.
This field note is what that sprint closed—especially plausibility, where the API must reason in milliseconds while Supabase, Railway, and the bot stay in sync. Stack depth stays in Telegram Game Stack; here we document the trust layer players and operators feel after soft launch.
What soft launch did not guarantee
Soft launch was honest about open work: polish, load tuning, and scoring-rule hardening continued, with tagged releases when player-visible math changed. The live field note also stopped the rank ladder at CEO (35y). The open repo README now runs through Board Member (50y) and Angel Investor (75y), with scores filing up to 100y—late-game satire on the hero, same binary loop, new hazards (Quorum, Runway) without new UI chrome per beat.
Worse for trust: power-user runs could 400 on submit despite legal play. The Web App showed a strong run; Supabase never got a row. Daily and weekly boards looked thinner than they were—a leaderboard that lies by omission is worse than no leaderboard. v2.4 fixes the definition of accepted before persist, the same discipline we encode in Critique Agent v1.0 for local audits.
The plausibility sprint (run_duration_ms)
Plausibility was the hardest line item. The client throttles taps at 120ms; the API must decide whether a submitted run could have happened in true elapsed time—not just whether the years number looks impressive. Before v2.4, caps tied to unix seconds alone rejected legal fast runs at Manager and Director bands. Hours of device replay, prod logs, and freeze-and-watch passes followed: align rung-rate with the tap floor, add +2s second-bucket slack, then require run_duration_ms (true play time in milliseconds) on every POST /runs.
At v2.4.0, SECURITY.md documents the contract:
| Check | What it blocks |
|---|---|
Session window (run_started_at vs Telegram auth_date) |
Idle-forge and stale initData |
Tap density vs run_duration_ms (120ms floor → ~16.7 rungs/s cap) |
Tap-bot density and impossible climb speed |
Minimum duration floor (rungs × 120ms × 0.85) |
Packed rungs inside too few milliseconds |
| ms vs unix-second consistency (+2s slack) | Forged long duration inside a short session |
End-to-end flow:
Player tap loop → Mini App records run_duration_ms
→ POST /runs (Railway API)
→ plausibility gate (session + density + consistency)
→ accepted: Supabase row + leaderboard refresh + best_score to client
→ rejected: 400 + HR audit toast (no silent drop)
Getting those three clocks—client throttle, unix seconds, true milliseconds—to agree was not a one-line fix. It was the sprint.
What v2.4 ships (player-visible)
Filing UX. Post-run sync chip, serial submit queue, and best_score on the API response so you see filing state instead of guessing. Game-over card trimmed to one context line and one punchline—RE-APPLY stays above the fold. Wrong-side taps surface Employment Terminated with an immediate retry path; the run ends clearly, not silently.
Visuals and endgame. Progressive corp-env ghost backdrops shift per floor band (Intern Pit through Investor Lounge) without competing with obstacles. Board Member and Angel Investor bands reuse the same left/right discipline; the hero promo card shows Level 6 satire—funding, ego, exit—not a new control scheme.
Production friction. Vercel CSP blocked inline handlers—Leaderboard and Share needed data-action listeners under Telegram’s in-app browser. Rewarded HR Training revive needed AdsGram hosts in the allowlist after v2.3 security headers shipped. Home marquee ticker rotates shift-aware headlines; headlines freeze on Punch In so vindicated deaths stay fair.
Canonical rank ladder (post–v2.4):
| Rank | Career Years |
|---|---|
| Intern | Start |
| Manager | 10y |
| Director | 20y |
| CEO | 35y |
| Board Member | 50y |
| Angel Investor | 75y |
Scores file up to 100y when the API accepts the run.
Swiss-clock chain (Supabase, Railway, bot)
Supabase must behave like a Swiss clock: submit_cooldowns, run rows, and leaderboard RPCs mean one thing per schema version. Migrations 002 and 003 are required before v2.4 sign-off—cooldown persistence and leaderboard grants are not optional polish.
Railway (API) is the authoritative gate. It validates plausibility, writes only accepted runs, and returns structured errors the client can show. Deploy API before mini-app when scoring rules change so you never debug UI v2.4 against API v2.3.
Bot stays thin: distribution and Web App chrome, not game rules trapped in aiogram. High care on the bot means stable deep links and menu URLs pointed at the current Vercel bundle—otherwise players open stale JS against a fresh API.
We freeze a commit, run Tier A–C gates in SHIP_GATES.md, update the prod bundle anchor, then cut v2.4.0. Same promotion discipline as Evaluation Hooks for AI Workflows on .blog: define accepted, then persist.
Guardrails
.lol engagement remains optional play, not proof of AI implementation maturity. Do not cite game MAUs or leaderboard rank in procurement decks—redirect sponsors to pass rate and incident cost per AI Procurement Freeze. For where play fits among Prompt Anatomy properties, see The Prompt Anatomy Ecosystem Map.
Play and share
Corporate Ladder is playable at promptanatomy.lol and through @CorporateLadder_bot; it is listed on tApps Center. v2.4.0 is the tag where leaderboard filing earned trust—share a run, challenge a colleague, rematch from the bot deep link. That is the live loop; the core Prompt Anatomy job on .blog remains structured implementation, not high scores in a satirical office game.
