Ask WHO where WHO is known to answer, even when the game states a count

[HarryCordewener]

Requested by Grave · project thread

Before: since #198 deployed, Tapestries MUCK's page has said 26,842 connected. That number is the PLAYERS in its plaintext MSSP reply, and it is the game's player objects: it sits beside DBSIZE 174343, ROOMS 50509, EXITS 77079 and OBJECTS 19623, and those four add to within 290 of DBSIZE. Because the game stated a count, the probe stopped typing WHO, which had been counting 300 to 500 on every crawl.

After: where an address is known to answer WHO, the probe asks it even when the game has stated a count. PresenceChoice already ranks WHO above MSSP, so WHO's count is published, and MSSP is still the fallback if WHO fails.

How: crawl_target.who_answers_at (migration 0043) records when a WHO at that address last came back with a count. WhoAnswers.Learn sets it on a counted WHO, clears it when the login prompt takes WHO for a character name, and leaves it alone on an unreadable answer. The crawl loop passes it to the probe as ProbeTarget.WhoAnswers, which defaults to false, so mui-probe and every other caller keep the old restraint. The migration backfills every game with a single address and a counted who presence row, dated by its newest such row; Tapestries is one of them. A game with several addresses isn't backfilled, because presence rows don't say which address answered, so it learns per address the next time a WHO there counts. CLAUDE.md's WHO rule gets the exception.

The first commit's 10,000 ceiling on PLAYERS is reverted.

Not built locally (the container can't reach the .NET download host); CI is the build.

The presence rows from 6–7 Oct that hold about 26,840 are untouched.

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https://claude.ai/code/session_015Ciq6ySnuNyVtkEBnVceLU

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Walkthrough

MSSP PLAYERS values above BannerCount.Implausible are no longer accepted as stated counts. Numeric values above the ceiling are distinguished from unparseable values during presence selection, allowing existing WHO-based reasons and counts to apply.

Changes

MSSP presence selection

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Parse and limit MSSP stated counts src/MUI.Crawl/Banner/BannerCount.cs, src/MUI.Crawl/Mssp/MsspPresence.cs, tests/MUI.Crawl.Tests/Mssp/MsspPresenceTests.cs	MsspPresence.Numeric trims and parses values using invariant culture. Stated rejects values above BannerCount.Implausible. Tests cover values above and at the ceiling.
Select WHO results for rejected counts src/MUI.Crawler/Crawl/PresenceChoice.cs, tests/MUI.Crawler.Tests/Crawl/PresenceChoiceTests.cs, tests/MUI.Crawl.Tests/Telnet/PlaintextMsspTests.cs	ReasonFor assigns PlayersNotNumeric only when parsing fails. Tests verify WHO count selection, WHO-based reasons, and continued WHO requests when MSSP reports 26842.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Change: Bug fix

Merge Risk: 🔵 Low · up to 58ec7

Very large decimal player counts can receive the wrong diagnostic reason. The impact is narrow, but the classification should be corrected.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 46.67% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 15 functions across 6 files.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately summarizes the main change: ask WHO when the game reports an implausible MSSP player count. It is specific and related to the pull request.

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Actionable comments posted: 1

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Inline comments:
Review comments at @src/MUI.Crawl/Mssp/MsspPresence.cs:
- Around line 170-172: Update the PLAYERS parsing flow around int.TryParse to
validate decimal syntax separately from bounded integer conversion, so values
outside the int range are classified as numeric and above the ceiling rather
than PlayersNotNumeric in PresenceChoice.ReasonFor.

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between c3ba5ac and 58ec716.

📒 Files selected for processing (6)

• src/MUI.Crawl/Banner/BannerCount.cs
• src/MUI.Crawl/Mssp/MsspPresence.cs
• src/MUI.Crawler/Crawl/PresenceChoice.cs
• tests/MUI.Crawl.Tests/Mssp/MsspPresenceTests.cs
• tests/MUI.Crawl.Tests/Telnet/PlaintextMsspTests.cs
• tests/MUI.Crawler.Tests/Crawl/PresenceChoiceTests.cs

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