ButcherCraft v0.10.3-alpha.1

Employee Operations Update

This release marks a major milestone for ButcherCraft.

Employees are no longer passive workers waiting for assignments—they can now perform their first real production task through the exact same deterministic architecture used by the player.

This update preserves the project's core design philosophy: employees never bypass gameplay systems. Every operation flows through the existing Workstation, Execution, Scheduler, and owner-result pipeline.

Added

Employee Grinder Operation

• Employees can now perform the Grinder's Beef Trim → Ground Beef operation.

• Added manual employee operation command:

   

  /butchercraft employee operate <employee>

   
• Employees operate the Grinder through the existing deterministic Execution pipeline.
• Employees observe Execution completion and Grinder owner-result evidence before completing work.

Employee Operation State Machine

Added employee operation lifecycle:

• Preparing
• Operating
• Waiting for Completion
• Operation Complete
• Idle

Each explicit command performs exactly one workstation operation.

Improved

Workforce

• Employees now remain stationed at reserved workstations after completing an operation.
• Reservations persist between operations.
• A new explicit operation request may be issued after successful completion.
• Duplicate operation requests remain blocked while an operation is active.

Grinder Integration

• Employee requests now use the exact same validation path as player interaction.
• Existing Grinder recipe validation is fully reused.
• Existing Scheduler timing is fully reused.
• Existing Execution lifecycle is fully reused.
• Existing owner-result publication is fully reused.

Diagnostics

Expanded employee operation diagnostics now include:

• Current operation state
• Reserved workstation
• Execution ID
• Active recipe
• Failure reason
• Reservation state

Fixed

Employee Operations

• Fixed operation requests remaining permanently consumed after the first successful operation.
• Employees may now perform multiple manually requested Grinder operations while keeping the same workstation reservation.
• Duplicate requests remain rejected only while an operation is actually active.

Validation

• Improved employee operation lifecycle validation.
• Improved Grinder operation boundary validation.
• Improved reservation lifecycle verification.

Technical

Architecture

Maintained strict subsystem ownership.

• Workforce owns employees.
• Workstations own inventory and processing.
• Execution owns operation lifecycle.
• Scheduler owns timing and dispatch.
• Employees never mutate workstation inventory directly.
• Employees never receive private Execution authority.
• No Production automation has been introduced.

Testing

• 1,422 automated unit and architecture tests.
• 198 required GameTests.
• Expanded employee operation regression coverage.
• Expanded Execution integration coverage.
• Expanded reservation lifecycle testing.
• Expanded duplicate-request protection.
• Expanded command synchronization validation.

Current Employee Capabilities

Employees can now:

• Navigate to departments.
• Navigate to reserved workstations.
• Reserve supported workstations.
• Wait at operating positions.
• Perform Grinder operations.
• Observe completion.
• Remain ready for additional manually requested work.

Employees still do not:

• Transport products.
• Operate the Patty Former.
• Claim Production Orders.
• Perform autonomous work.
• Carry inventory.
• Automatically repeat operations.

These capabilities are planned for future Workforce milestones.