Google Pixel 2 XL (taimen, MSM8998) — the reference port

scope: device:google-taimen · severity: fact · confidence: proven · subsystem: overview

Evidence

the taimen repo — docs/BLUEPRINT/, docs/campaign/, docs/HANDOFF-*.md

The port porthole was extracted from, and the profile that proves the framework is real rather than aspirational.

Why it is worth reading even for a different device

Taimen is a 2017 Snapdragon 835 phone with an A/B bootloader, a DSC panel, a Google-specific coprocessor (Easel / Visual Core), and no mainline support worth the name at the start. Most of what went wrong is not specific to it — that is the entire premise of brain/laws/ and most of brain/traps/.

The distinctively taimen-shaped parts, kept honest in profiles/google-taimen/tools/: Easel, the FTM4 touch controller, Qualcomm chromatix camera tuning, the TAS smart amp, and the device’s mic topology.

Where the evidence lives

The full corpus stays in the taimen repo — roughly 600 KB of it — because copies rot against their originals. This brain cites it; it does not duplicate it.

what	where
Subsystem deep-dives (suspend, perf, display, camera, wifi, pstore, reset)	taimen/docs/BLUEPRINT/BP-*.md
Per-workstream campaign status	taimen/docs/campaign/
Session handoffs, ~20	taimen/docs/HANDOFF-*.md
What works, with evidence	taimen/docs/DEVICE-SUPPORT-MATRIX.md
Build procedure and its traps	taimen/docs/BUILD-RUNBOOK.md
Device state protocol	taimen/docs/DEVICE-PROTOCOL.md

Hardware facts as data

profiles/google-taimen/device.env — the forbidden slot, the boot-retry countdown, the watchdog ceiling, the USB gadget that lies, the bootimg offsets. Each of those was expensive to learn and is now one porthole config away.

Lineage

Preceded by an angler (Nexus 6P, MSM8994) attempt, archived. The most durable thing carried forward from it was not code: it was the habit of not trusting the instrument.