2026-11-13
Why scans still break the rules we never break
The answer in five lines
- 75 of 170 customer photos still break a rule after the full live chain. Most of those (77 of 127 breaks) are the rule checker getting it wrong, not the lines.
- 45 breaks are real line mistakes where the app already has a fix. That fix is switched off, or it only looks at the bottom stripe. That is how the 180-degree fold reached you.
- 4 of 170 photos came back with the foot not at the bottom: your two upside-down ones, and two upright photos the app turned on their side. The app never turned a single photo 180 degrees.
- Every broken scan does land in the "Violated rules" list as designed. But nobody has ever cleared it (271 open), and 164 of those are false alarms of the kind above.
- Fixing the checker alone (nothing changes for customers) takes 75 photos down to 28. With three more fixes it is 15. The fixes that change what customers see wait for a scored run and your OK.
Your four photos
Thin lines, on the side you commented on. A small circle marks where each line starts.
671e (left side). The sail's lowest stripe (at the top of this picture, because the photo is upside down) folds back on itself. The step that should have rejected it only checks that the line stayed near the model's line and did not get shorter. The fold passes both. The repair step that would have put the model's line back is switched off in the live app. The photo itself was taken head-down and the app left it that way. The stripes clearly get shorter toward the bottom of the picture, but the app does not use that to decide which way is up.
9fad (right side). The app turned this photo the wrong way: a quarter turn clockwise when it needed a quarter turn the other way. That left the head at the bottom. The top stripe runs right to left while the others run left to right. That stripe is the one SAM3 traced, and the app hands back SAM3's line in whatever direction SAM3 drew it. The "all lines run the same way" step runs before SAM3, not after.
dc27 (left side). The model drew the two top stripes short: 47 and 95 pixels on a 1500 pixel tall picture. Nothing in the live app lengthens a line that stops short of the luff or leech, and no rule measures "reaches both edges". On the other model's version (right side) two lines sit on one stripe, 5 pixels apart. The checker catches that, but the clean-up step does not, because three lines are crowded together near the head there.
f03b (right side). You read it right: SAM3's lines were thrown away on the two long stripes. Its trace moved more than 3% of the picture away from the model's smooth curve, which is the safety limit we set to stop SAM3 jumping to the next stripe. On a flapping sail the real tape wanders further than that, so the app falls back to the smooth curve.
Why rules still break: causes and counts
170 photos from the live app, 127 rule breaks on 75 photos.
| Cause | Breaks | Photos | Lines wrong? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photo taken looking up the mast: stripes run up the picture, and the checker sorts "top to bottom" by height in the picture | 48 | 29 | No, checker wrong |
| Line looks right, but the "entry wider than exit" check misreads it: close-up perspective, the stripe running off the photo edge, or angles within a few degrees | 22 | 20 | No, checker wrong |
| Other checker misreads (a real stripe running corner to corner, a smooth line end read as a kink) | 7 | 3 | No, checker wrong |
| Small hook or fold at one end of a line, added by the app after the model (the model's own line was clean) | 17 | 10 | Yes. A fix exists but only looks at the bottom stripe, and the repair step is off |
| Line drawn in the opposite direction to the others (SAM3 line handed back as SAM3 drew it) | 14 | 14 | Direction only; the shape is fine. The fix exists but runs too early |
| Photo not foot-down (upside down or on its side) | 9 | 4 | Yes. The app never tries upside-down |
| SAM3 line with a real wave or hook that the safety check let through | 4 | 3 | Yes. The repair step is off |
| Stray piece of line on the photo edge | 1 | 1 | Yes. The repair step is off |
| Whole-boat photos from a distance: lines trace the sail edges, not the stripes | 4 | 2 | Yes. Nothing is meant to catch this yet |
| Boom line where there is no boom | 1 | 1 | Yes. Nothing is meant to catch this yet |
The fix list, in order
| # | Fix | Photos it cleans up (of 170) | Changes what customers see? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Checker: judge "entry wider than exit" with all lines running the same way, ignore stripe ends cut off by the photo edge, allow 5 degrees | 33 fully clean (photos with this break: 58 to 13) | No |
| 2 | Checker: on looking-up-the-mast photos, order stripes across the stack, not by height in the picture | With fix 1: 75 photos down to 28 | No |
| 3 | Make every line run the same way again after SAM3 | 75 photos with mixed directions down to 0 | Only the direction, not the shape |
| 4 | Upside-down check: if the stripes get shorter toward the bottom of the picture, turn it 180 and try again | Exactly your 2 upside-down photos, no others touched | Yes |
| 5 | Switch on the repair step for folded and kinked lines only (put the model's line back) | Folded-line photos 16 down to 0 | Yes |
| 6 | Add a shape check to the SAM3 safety step, so a folded SAM3 line is refused | Your 671e plus up to 3 others | Yes |
| 7 | Run the end-hook fix on every stripe, not just the bottom one (not needed if 5 ships) | 9 photos improved | Yes |
| 8 | Re-check and clear the Violated Rules list after fixes 1 and 2, and show a count | Up to 164 false alarms cleared | No |
| 9 | Find out why two upright photos were turned on their side, and agree one way to show looking-up-the-mast photos (your call) | 2 photos, plus 46 handled inconsistently | Needs a decision |
| 10 | Find which step adds the end hooks | The 12 hook lines | Investigation |
| 11 | Catch two lines on one stripe when three lines crowd together | 1 photo | Yes |
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 together leave 15 of 170 photos with any rule break, and 4 with a hard one.
We are not proposing to switch on the whole repair step as it stands. It would also delete a real top stripe on 6 photos, where the head stripes sit close together, and one stripe on 5 more.