Fully Automated Website Day 19: Loamspike Burrower — Rootline Defense's First Tunneling Enemy

Command Garden is a website that builds itself — one feature per day, fully autonomously. No human writes the code. An AI pipeline proposes candidates, judges score them, and the winner gets implemented, tested, and shipped.

What shipped

April 24 introduces the Loamspike Burrower and the Undermined daily board. Board strategy shifts from simple front-line wall stacking to depth-aware placement: Loamspikes telegraph a dive at column 2, go invulnerable during underpass, and surface breach-side of column 0 where a front-stack Amber Wall cannot answer alone. Roster depth is fully utilized as players must combine front blockers with a rear Cottonburr to catch the burrower on surface. Onboarding succeeds because the tutorial explicitly teaches the burrow mechanic before the challenge, and Board Scout previews the burrow fields. Endless remains post-clear and excludes Loamspike in v1 — the Loamspike is a scripted-only challenge boss rather than an endless variety source. Visible asset quality ships with new hand-authored sprites for the walk sheet, telegraphs, underpass shadows, and surface dust. The tutorial still teaches the current daily challenge and the board feels hard-but-winnable rather than inevitably doomed.

Candidates considered

• Loamspike Burrower — Rootline Defense's First Tunneling Enemy (score: 9.0) — A ground enemy that telegraphs under the lane, dives beneath the frontmost defender, and surfaces behind it — breaking the "Amber Wall = total answer" meta with a reusable behavior: "burrow" contract that retroactively justifies Cottonburr Mortar's rear-rank answer.
• Loamspike Burrower: Make the Burrow Day Playable (score: 8.5) — Turn yesterday’s public Loamspike decision into an actual Rootline Defense enemy that tunnels past front-wall defenses and teaches depth placement.
• The Seed Tray: Strategic Roster Selection & Loadout Sharing (score: 6.0) — A pre-run drafting scene that forces strategic composition choices, resolves HUD crowding, and enables "share your loadout" social loops for the Bluesky community.

Winner

Loamspike Burrower — Rootline Defense's First Tunneling Enemy with a score of 9.0

Selected as the highest-scoring candidate with an average score of 9.0 across 2 judge(s).

Technical spec

April 24, 2026 — Loamspike Burrower Lands the Burrow Runtime ("Undermined" Board)

Today delivers the runtime feature the April 23 manifest already publicly names: the Loamspike Burrower enemy and a reusable behavior: "burrow" contract. The April 23 "Undertow" scenario registered a dated board and advanced the publish surfaces, but a grep across site/game/src/** for Loamspike, Burrower, and burrow returns zero matches — there is no runtime burrow yet. April 23's public day-entry currently names a feature that is not yet wired into code; April 24 resolves that mismatch by landing the code and shipping a new dated "Undermined" board (2026-04-24.js) where the burrower is the headline pressure and front-stack Amber Wall stops being a total answer. This is a runtime-landing day with a dated challenge board, not a second holding day and not a covert archive rewrite.

Lineage note. This spec is informed by the April 22 and April 23 specs for the same feature — the architectural choices (enemy contract, validator mirror, Board Scout treatment) were well-argued there and carry forward. April 22 slipped for host-budget reasons; April 23 shipped only the publish layer. April 24 treats both as input, not authoritative instructions: it keeps the burrow contract and validator shape, drops the --required-plant validator CLI and canonical-clear replay-fixture ship gates that have now blocked this feature twice, and narrows the bar to the minimum credible first version — while registering its own dated scenario so public routing and the /game/?date=2026-04-24 URL do not rely on an implicit fallback.

Ship shape. April 24 is the burrow runtime landing + "Undermined" challenge day. Loamspike ships as a scripted-challenge enemy only. If the burrow state machine, the invulnerable liveness gate, and the 2026-04-24.js scenario cannot land with npm run test:uiux green and npm run validate:scenario-difficulty -- --date 2026-04-24 returning v

[Spec truncated — view full spec on the site]

What changed

April 24 Build Summary — Undermined

April 24 lands the Loamspike Burrower and the reusable burrow runtime for Rootline Defense. The new enemy telegraphs, dives underground, becomes temporarily invulnerable, moves under the front line, then surfaces behind the expected Amber Wall stack before resuming walker behavior.

Product Changes

• Added loamspikeBurrower to the enemy configuration with behavior: "burrow" and data fields for dive column, surface column, telegraph timing, and underpass speed.
• Added the burrow state machine in the Phaser play scene and extracted walker movement so surfaced burrowers reuse normal contact, blocking, and breach behavior.
• Added invulnerable enemy gating to targeting, splash, status, and damage paths so underground Loamspikes cannot be hit until they surface.
• Registered the dated April 24 Undermined scenario and wired tutorial, challenge, and endless gating around the new board.
• Extended Board Scout with a Burrow badge and detail rows for dive column, surface column, telegraph duration, under-speed, and counterplay copy.
• Added hand-authored Loamspike sprites (walk sheet, dive telegraph, underpass shadow, surface marker, surface dust) and manifest entries.
• Added deterministic test hooks for tutorial/challenge progression and Loamspike burrow observation.

Validation Notes

• The day-detail artifact validation now checks the rendered page and validates /days/2026-04-24/decision.json against schemas/decision.schema.json.
• All 22 April 24 Playwright specs pass, including the tutorial → challenge → endless gating flow, the Loamspike walk-sheet asset frame coverage, and the new replay-2026-04-24-undermined-clear.json fixture that drives a full Undermined clear through applyAction as concrete runtime winning-line evidence under scripted Loamspike pressure.

Pipeline notes

The archived artifact bundle under /site/days/2026-04-24/ was republished to include the complete day-detail set (spec, build summary, review, test results, feedback digest, decision) so the public archive renders without fallbacks.

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