chimera-gfx-Public/docs/reviews/phase0-final-2026-07-17.md

Independent Phase-0 final review pass

• Review date: 2026-07-17
• Reviewed implementation: 72292f2d5788ad643e9d1816ce28ab754ef739b5
• Review type: separate post-implementation source, package, and artifact pass
• Result: Phase 0 accepted offline; Phase 1 hardware execution blocked

This was an independent review pass in the workflow sense: acceptance criteria were frozen, the full diff and generated artifacts were inspected after the implementation pass, and findings were required to receive tests before the review could close. It is not represented as an external human audit.

Areas reviewed

• public C ABI sizing/versioning and opaque ownership;
• context/surface/texture cleanup, limits, overflow checks, and mock state;
• separate PS5 refusal backend and symbol-resolution boundary;
• firmware gates, acknowledgements, and pre-initialization control flow;
• RetroArch/SDL2 capability claims and installed CMake targets;
• manifest schema, SBOM, dependency pins, and license notices;
• source-level prohibited-call audit and ELF import inventory;
• CI/Docker/build graphs for upload, run, boot, or credential behavior;
• host, sanitizer, install-consumer, secret, and cross-build results.

Findings resolved

ID	Severity	Finding	Resolution
R-001	high	Two empty firmware identifiers compared equal and passed the gate.	Empty embedded or requested identifiers now fail; regression tests cover empty, NONE, mismatch, null, and exact match.
R-002	medium	Adapter headers were installed without their scaffold libraries in the exported CMake package.	Both static scaffold targets are installed/exported; an installed adapter consumer compiles and exits 0.
R-003	low	Unified-diff context prefixes triggered false trailing-whitespace reports.	.patch whitespace checking is disabled through .gitattributes; ordinary sources remain checked.

No unresolved Phase-0 code, documentation, licensing, or packaging finding remains.

Accepted limitations and blockers

• No PS5 firmware is identified, allowlisted, or observed.
• GNM signatures, layouts, ownership, synchronization, and shader contracts remain unknown; no GNM function is called.
• Module-loader internal side effects remain unknown.
• The pinned SDL VideoOut backend waits in sceKernelWaitEqueue without a proven bounded timeout in this path.
• Safe cleanup after forced process termination is unproven.
• The local Docker engine is unavailable; the equivalent direct commands pass, but no container-build success is claimed.
• No ELF was transferred to or executed on a PS5.

The first meaningful next step therefore requires new authority and exact firmware information: build a firmware-specific, hash-bound, non-rendering capability probe. Even that build is not permission to transfer or execute it.