booth/persistent-memory.md

Persistent memory — booth

Last updated: 2026-09-22

Always check for /tmp/booth-dev-handoff.md — if it exists and its Written: stamp is under 8 hours old, read it (it carries the in-flight handoff from the previous session), then delete it. Older than 8 hours: stale — delete it unread.

Repo purpose

The Booth is the fleet's operator-review surface: agents post work by making a folder under ~/booth-data, the operator looks at it and judges it in the browser, and the judgment gets back to the agent that posted it. It was built as a file-shuttle and is being converged, unit by unit, onto the review loop it turned out to actually be.

Current state / in-flight

As of 2026-09-22:

• NOTHING IS IN FLIGHT. U6 (benches) landed, all four review gates closed, released as v0.6.0, with the last open defect closed in v0.6.1. Deployed; tree clean at 1b394dd, 611 tests green, 19/19 booths 200 live. ⚠ NOT PUSHED — push is the operator's call and he did not give it this session; main is ahead of origin/main. → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-u6-benches-released.md
• v1 is gated on seven units. SIX ARE LANDED. U7 IS THE LAST ONE. U1 ce598b3; U2 → v0.2.0/v0.2.1/v0.2.2; U5 → v0.3.0; U4 → v0.4.0; U3 → v0.5.0; U6 1c3ce5d → v0.6.0.
• ⚠ Before starting U7, read persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-u7-section-premise-half-wrong.md AND re-count the booths first. Its premise has degraded twice over: every booth that needs navigation is FLAT, and on 2026-09-22 the four large booths it was sized against (pancake-v3-full/pancake-v4-full at 270 items, sindra20-engines, sindra-finalists) had ALL been swept. Largest live booth is miranda-is at 92 items. Two of 19 booths have subfolders and both are reports. Sections buy close to nothing; the rail, filters and grid keyboard are the unit.
• THE LAST OPEN DEFECT IS CLOSED. The wrong-shaped answer that 500'd the gallery and marks pages (pre-existing, measured at 42ea67f) is fixed at _hydrate — the placement the session recommended three times and the operator never ruled on, taken under a stated assumption and cheap to move (one condition in one function) if he disagrees. Measured before/after: both pages 500 → 200, error visible, the booth's other pick untouched. Two things fell out of it that matter more than the fix — U3's _safe_fragments lost its natural trigger and is now a synthetically-falsified backstop, and that guard's own handler could not survive the failure it was handling. Read persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-a-wrong-shaped-answer-500s-the-gallery.md before touching marks rendering anywhere.
• ⚠ TWO OPERATOR DECISIONS ARE OUTSTANDING AND BOTH ARE DELIBERATELY NOT DONE. (1) The single althing note to the 17 handles about booth link refusing booth URLs — gated as multi-recipient, drafted nowhere, NOT SENT. (2) Seeding the bench registry from the board — he said "no seeding yet", so booth bench import --apply has NOT been run against live data and .benches.json does not exist in ~/booth-data.
• ⚠ THE 17 CONSUMING HANDLES WERE NEVER TOLD that keep stopped meaning "waiting on an answer" — operator decision 2026-09-22, no broadcast, and it still stands. This CHANGES HOW THE 2026-10-06 RE-COUNT READS: the hold rides for free but not-pressing-keep has to be learned, so a flat .forever rate does NOT falsify the diagnosis. Read its entry before measuring.
• A remote exists and main is AHEAD of it. origin is git@gitea.phasefinal.com:vh/booth.git; the first push of this repo's history was 2026-09-22 (26 commits, v0.2.0–v0.5.0 in one motion). As of this snapshot main is 11 commits ahead of origin/main — the whole of U6 including the v0.6.0 and v0.6.1 tags. Pushing is the operator's call.
• Two dated predictions are pending and must not be run early. U5's adoption re-measure on 2026-09-29; the .forever re-count on or after 2026-10-06. Before the second, read persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-no-notice-and-what-it-does-to-the-prediction.md.
• FIVE methodology proposals sit with the operator, untracked by his choice — four from earlier rounds plus Kimi's new one: promote "the falsifiable test is weaker than the invariant it guards" to its own ambiguity class in /heid-contract-review. It now has two data points in this repo (five of seven U4 falsifiers vacuous; U6 shipped a tie-break falsifier that could not fail). They are /heid* skill changes, not this repo's work.
• The booth set churns hard: 26 → 24 → 25 → 23 → 19 across five sessions. Re-count rather than trusting any number written here.

Recent decisions

• [2026-09-22] The last open defect closed, and building its falsifier found another — the wrong-shaped answer fixed at _hydrate; _safe_fragments lost its natural trigger and its handler could not survive the failure it handled → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-a-wrong-shaped-answer-500s-the-gallery.md
• [2026-09-22] U6 released as v0.6.0 — benches, and the number that was two defects — six of seven v1 units landed, NOT PUSHED → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-u6-benches-released.md
• [2026-09-22] Three cold panels on one unit, and what each lens could only see alone — READ BEFORE DECIDING TO SKIP A GATE; all five passes found something the others structurally could not → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-three-cold-panels-on-one-unit.md
• [2026-09-22] U6 landed — three surfaces, three jobs, one predicate — the seam review caught three real contract defects incl. a per-row resolve_booth that would have 404'd the board → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-u6-benches-landed.md
• [2026-09-22] The 69% link-board rot was two defects wearing one number — READ BEFORE SCOPING ANY LINK-BOARD WORK; U5 closed the larger half and full-URL-vs-origin identity is a measured call → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-one-number-was-two-defects.md
• [2026-09-22] U3 landed — the page declares the seam, the Booth mounts into it — ten regexes against author HTML replaced by a substring test and a + → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-u3-declared-embed-seam-landed.md
• [2026-09-22] A wrong-shaped answer 500s the gallery and the marks page — PRE-EXISTING (measured at 42ea67f), NOT U3; the v0.2.2 lesson is only half-implemented → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-a-wrong-shaped-answer-500s-the-gallery.md
• [2026-09-22] The browser became a test surface — READ BEFORE TOUCHING playwright IN pyproject; the pinned upper bound is the foot-gun, and these tests SKIP rather than fail → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-the-browser-became-a-test-surface.md
• [2026-09-22] A vacuity pass that tries the contract's own mutation agrees with itself — U3 ran one, reported 7/7, and a cold panel then showed one of the seven was vacuous; READ BEFORE WRITING A Falsifiable: LINE → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-seven-of-seven-falsifiers.md
• [2026-09-22] U4 landed — lifetime is derived, not declared — three states, viewing is activity, and no new arithmetic anywhere → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-u4-derived-lifetime-landed.md
• [2026-09-22] The .forever diagnosis got a live positive control — 3 of the 4 booths awaiting an answer were ALSO hand-pinned — RE-COUNT 2026-10-06 → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-forever-had-a-live-positive-control.md
• [2026-09-22] No fleetwide notice for U4, and what that does to the prediction — READ BEFORE THE 2026-10-06 RE-COUNT; a flat rate does not falsify the diagnosis → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-no-notice-and-what-it-does-to-the-prediction.md
• [2026-09-22] Four independent paths to one fail-open delete — the bug-hunt panel's class, and the zsh word-splitting trap that shipped an empty bundle → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-four-paths-to-one-fail-open-delete.md
• [2026-09-22] Two reads of one file are not one read of one state — a TOCTOU seam that composes two correct readers into a fail-open delete → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-two-reads-are-not-one-state.md
• [2026-09-22] Five of seven INV falsifiers did not falsify anything — read before writing a Falsifiable: line; a green test cited one rather than being one → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-vacuous-falsifiers.md
• [2026-09-22] The third one-branch template miss — this repo's recurring blind spot; read before adding a fact to any template → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-third-one-branch-template-miss.md
• [2026-09-22] The size cap opened a service-wide hang — a FIFO has st_size 0; a bound that trusts it inherits what it does not mean → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-size-cap-opened-a-hang.md
• [2026-09-22] An existing test stopped me retiring documented behaviour — the clean fix for the mtime race would have silently changed TTL doctrine → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-doctrine-not-defect.md
• [2026-09-22] Two U5 panels, and prose reached a released outage — read the detail before assuming a conformance finding stops at its own module → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-u5-panels-reached-a-released-bug.md
• [2026-09-22] U5's adoption prediction split in two — the handle rides for free, the why must be learned — RE-MEASURE 2026-09-29 → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-u5-adoption-split-in-two.md
• [2026-09-22] The U2 bug-hunt panel was not ceremony — the lock-unlink race and the TTL guard that was failing at its own job → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-u2-bug-hunt-panel.md
• [2026-09-22] The lenient reader's blast radius was the whole service — marks_for runs per booth per index load; a raise there is an outage → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-lenient-reader-blast-radius.md
• [2026-09-22] booth marks / booth answer got real exit codes — read it before changing anything the 17 consuming handles call → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-cli-exit-codes.md
• [2026-09-22] scripts/booth went from zero tests to five — they run the real script under system python3, so they also check INV-1 → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-22-scripts-booth-got-tests.md
• [2026-09-21] v0.2.0 was tagged while a gate was in flight — the sequencing lesson: if a gate is outstanding, the tag waits → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-v020-tagged-with-a-gate-in-flight.md
• [2026-09-21] A write over a damaged .marks.json wiped the booth — the reads-lenient / writes-strict asymmetry, and why it exists → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-marks-write-wiped-judgment.md
• [2026-09-21] Seam review and cold panel had zero overlap, twice — evidence for running both; neither substitutes for the other → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-two-gates-are-complementary.md
• [2026-09-21] Every code-changing finding came from the AMBIGUITY pass — a finding about the /heid-contract-review skill, not about this repo → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-ambiguity-pass-did-the-work.md
• [2026-09-21] Deterministic order is a cross-cutting v1 invariant — operator directive; read before adding ANY ordered surface → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-deterministic-order-invariant.md
• [2026-09-21] U2 (marks) landed — one primitive for three mechanisms — what moved where, and the HTTP mirror remote sessions poll → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-u2-marks-landed.md
• [2026-09-21] A partially-answered pick counts as OPEN — declared, not smuggled; it is the reading that makes U4 correct → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-partial-answer-counts-as-open.md
• [2026-09-21] The U2 seam review earned its place, and how — inline.place indexes by subscript — the miss a cold panel cannot see → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-u2-seam-review-earned-it.md
• [2026-09-21] Marks are one .marks.json per booth — operator decision with two rejected alternatives; read before restructuring → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-marks-storage-decision.md
• [2026-09-21] U7's section premise is half wrong — every booth that needs navigation is FLAT — read before starting U7 → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-u7-section-premise-half-wrong.md
• [2026-09-21] sindra-finalists is U2's flag motivation, caught live — evidence, not argument → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-sindra-finalists-is-the-motivation.md
• [2026-09-21] The information architecture and the v1 gate landed — the single defect the seven units decompose → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-ia-and-v1-gate-landed.md
• [2026-09-21] The .forever diagnosis is a falsifiable prediction — U4's success criterion — re-count a fortnight AFTER U4 lands → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-forever-diagnosis-is-a-prediction.md
• [2026-09-21] Extracted from eshpfi into its own repo — test_booth.py is the regression net the v1 rewrite is checked against → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-extracted-from-eshpfi.md

Tried and abandoned

• [2026-09-21] Tagging a release while a review gate was in flight — cost a same-hour v0.2.1 and a correction to 15 handles → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-tagging-with-a-gate-in-flight.md
• [2026-09-21] Letting the write path share the read path's leniency — a tolerant reader and a tolerant writer are not the same decision → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-tolerant-writer-over-tolerant-reader.md
• [2026-09-21] Letting Jinja hot-reload templates in the deployment root — caused a live outage: 19 of 25 booths at 500. Why auto_reload=False → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-jinja-hot-reload-outage.md
• [2026-09-21] Five mechanisms to get one question beside one artifact — the accretion signature this whole v1 rewrite is undoing → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-five-mechanisms-one-job.md
• [2026-09-21] Regex-injecting chrome into arbitrary author HTML — the defect U3 exists to close → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-regex-injecting-chrome.md
• [2026-09-21] A boolean escape hatch as the lifetime mechanism — why .forever is a symptom; the defect U4 exists to close → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-boolean-escape-hatch-as-lifetime.md
• [2026-09-21] Letting the link board absorb the announce job — 69% rot; U5 gave the job a home, which is what unblocks U6 → persistent-memory.d/2026-09-21-link-board-absorbing-announce.md