add support for decoding recoded shards (dragoon/komodo!13)

- should close dragoon/komodo#3
- based on top of dragoon/komodo!12

> **Note**  
> - commits containing "_DEBUG_" will be removed once this is done
> - this MR is based on dragoon/komodo!12 and will be rebased on top of `main` once dragoon/komodo!12 lands

i think this is best [reviewed commit by commit](dragoon/komodo!13 (58cec473))