Operator decision 2026-09-22: no broadcast to the 17 consuming handles. Same posture as U5 — adoption gets told apart from design because nobody was primed. The consequence is a measurement one and it needed writing down before it was lost. U4's two halves have different adoption costs: the hold rides for free (a session runs `booth ask` and its booth is held, knowing nothing), but NOT pressing `keep` has to be learned. So a flat `.forever` rate on 2026-10-06 is exactly what 'the mechanism works and nobody was told' looks like, and reading it as a falsification would retire a correct diagnosis on an uncontrolled measurement. Records the three counts to report instead, and states the sensitivity floor: only 4 of 24 booths carry marks at all, so the hold can touch at most a sixth of the fleet and an effect below one or two booths is not resolvable.
3.0 KiB
No fleetwide notice for U4 — and what that does to the prediction
2026-09-22 · booth
Operator decision, 2026-09-22: do NOT tell the 17 consuming handles that
keep has stopped being the way to say "waiting on an answer". No broadcast.
Same posture he took on U5, and the same instrument: adoption gets told apart
from design because nobody was primed.
⚠ THIS CHANGES HOW THE 2026-10-06 RE-COUNT MUST BE READ, and a session that misses this will draw the wrong conclusion from a true number.
U4 has two halves and they do NOT have the same adoption cost:
- The hold rides for free. A session that runs
booth askgets its booth held with no knowledge of anything. The operator answering releases it. No peer has to learn a thing for the mechanism to work. - NOT PRESSING
keepHAS TO BE LEARNED. U4 makes the sentinel unnecessary for the "not yet" case; it does not make it unavailable, and nothing stops a habit. An agent that has always pressedkeepwhile waiting will keep pressing it.
So a flat .forever rate on 2026-10-06 does NOT falsify the diagnosis. It
is exactly what "the mechanism works and nobody was told" looks like — the U5
shape, one unit later. Reporting a null result without this caveat would retire
a correct diagnosis on the strength of an uncontrolled measurement.
Use these instead, and report all three. The raw rate stays as context, not as the verdict:
-
The overlap — booths with an open pick AND
.forever. Was 3 on 2026-09-22, which is the positive control for the whole diagnosis. It falls only if peers learn; it is the adoption number.comm -12 <(grep -l '"shape": "pick"' ~/booth-data/*/.marks.json | xargs -n1 dirname | sort) \ <(dirname ~/booth-data/*/.forever | sort) | wc -l -
Did the hold ever bind? Count booths that were held past their TTL and therefore survived a sweep they would otherwise have lost. This needs no peer to change anything, so it is the honest test of whether the mechanism is load-bearing at all. If it is ZERO over a fortnight, the diagnosis was wrong about VOLUME — the "not yet" case is rarer than the sentinel rate suggested — and that is a real finding. The sweeper logs what it wipes; nothing yet logs what it spares, so this counter does not exist and would have to be added before it can be read. Say so rather than guessing.
-
The raw
.foreverrate — 17 of 24 (70%) on 2026-09-22. Context only, now that the no-notice decision has made it a measurement of habit rather than of need.
⚠ Sensitivity floor, stated because a bare "no effect" is unfalsifiable:
only 4 of 24 booths carried marks at all on 2026-09-22. The hold cannot
bind on a booth with no marks, so at that population the mechanism can touch at
most a sixth of the fleet, and an effect smaller than one or two booths is not
resolvable by any of these counts. Related: [[2026-09-22-forever-had-a-live-positive-control]].