VDP Development Update — September 26, 2026

 VDP Development Update — September 26, 2026

Today’s work focused on improving the reliability of the VDP Strategy Workbench and preparing a cross-machine Playwright testing setup. Completed and Accomplished 1. Improved Dashboard Button11 logic - Updated the Strategy Workbench launch logic so Button11 can detect whether the Workbench is already running before attempting to start another Flask instance. - Replaced the earlier simple port check with an HTTP-level Strategy Workbench check. - Removed the need for the old IsPortOpenAsync helper. - Added logic to open the Workbench in the browser when it is already available. - Added validation for the Python executable and run.py before attempting startup. 2. Identified and corrected Python environment issues - Discovered that the existing Strategy Workbench .venv under the LEFTBRAIN shared folder referenced an obsolete Python 3.11 installation. - Confirmed LEFTBRAIN currently has Python 3.14, 3.12, and 3.9 installed. - Determined that a shared virtual environment is not a good fit for code that may be launched from multiple machines. - Decided to keep the source code shared, while using a machine-local Python virtual environment for execution. 3. Built a dedicated Strategy Workbench environment on RIGHTBRAIN - Confirmed RIGHTBRAIN has Python 3.11.9 available. - Created a new local virtual environment at: Q:\VDP_Strategy_Workbench\.venv - Upgraded pip. - Installed the Strategy Workbench requirements. - Confirmed Flask and Flask-SQLAlchemy were successfully installed. - Successfully launched the Strategy Workbench from RIGHTBRAIN using the new local environment. 4. Enabled Strategy Workbench access across the local network - Updated run.py so Flask listens on 0.0.0.0 instead of only 127.0.0.1. - Allowed the Windows Firewall prompt for Flask. - Verified RIGHTBRAIN is listening on port 5000 on all interfaces. - Confirmed the Workbench is available at: http://10.0.0.193:5000/strategy/ - Successfully opened the RIGHTBRAIN Strategy Workbench from LEFTBRAIN in Chrome. 5. Installed and configured Playwright on LEFTBRAIN - Created a Playwright environment under: D:\VDP_Playwright - Installed Playwright, pytest, and pytest-playwright. - Confirmed Playwright 1.63.0 and pytest 9.1.1 are installed. - Confirmed Playwright can use Google Chrome. - Began creating a smoke test for the Strategy Workbench. 6. Investigated Windows remoting and file-permission issues - Worked through WinRM and TrustedHosts configuration between RIGHTBRAIN and LEFTBRAIN. - Identified network profile and authentication issues affecting PowerShell remoting. - Identified inherited DENY ACL entries on the old shared .venv directory. - Determined that rebuilding the Workbench environment locally on RIGHTBRAIN was cleaner than continuing to repair the shared .venv. Backlog / Follow-Up The cross-machine Playwright test was intentionally set aside for later. Remaining work: - Update the Playwright test file on LEFTBRAIN to use: http://10.0.0.193:5000/strategy/ instead of 127.0.0.1. - Disable Flask’s debug reloader during the duplicate-process test. - Verify that pressing Dashboard Button11 while the Strategy Workbench is already running does not start another Flask instance. - Complete an automated end-to-end Playwright test from LEFTBRAIN against RIGHTBRAIN. Summary The most important result today is that the Strategy Workbench now has a cleaner machine-specific runtime architecture: LEFTBRAIN - Playwright test environment - Google Chrome RIGHTBRAIN - Dashboard / Button11 - Local Python 3.11 Strategy Workbench environment - Flask Strategy Workbench Shared source - \\LEFTBRAIN\VBShared\strategy_builder_standalone The Strategy Workbench is now successfully reachable from LEFTBRAIN over the local network while running on RIGHTBRAIN. The remaining Playwright work is primarily test automation and verification of the duplicate-Flask prevention behavior.

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