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`.forever` was the only way to say three different things — "this is durable",
"I have not answered yet", "I am still looking" — and the census said it was
carrying all three: 17 of 24 live booths (70%, up from 54% the day before).
Three of the four booths in the fleet awaiting an answer had been pinned by
hand as well, and 10 of the 17 were younger than the TTL, so the sentinel had
bought them nothing and was pressed pre-emptively.
Only the first meaning is what `keep` means. The other two are facts the
service already held and did not consult.
KEPT `.forever` present never swept (unchanged)
HELD an open pick, or marks we cannot read never swept (new)
EPHEMERAL everything else 24h (unchanged)
Viewing is activity: a deliberately-served response from a booth's own page
route writes `.viewed`, which is a dotfile and not a `.lock` dotfile, so
`_newest_mtime` already counts it. There is no new arithmetic — `booth_age_seconds`,
`is_expired` and `expires_in` are unchanged. Machine reads are excluded on
purpose: an agent must not be able to hold its own booth open by polling for
the answer it is waiting on.
The hold is unbounded, and what makes that safe is visibility plus two exits
that already existed. Every surface whose chrome the Booth owns says
`held until answered` where the countdown was, and `booth rm` / the UI x /
`DELETE /b/<n>` take a held booth exactly as they take a kept one. A hold is
protection from the timer, never from the operator.
Three cross-frontier panels ran and each found a class the others could not:
* the paraphrase panel found that two reads of one file are not one read of
one state — the contract's `is_held(marks_for(c), read_error(c))` could
resolve to `([], None)`, the pair that deletes. `hold_read` is one read.
* the code-review panel found, 4-of-4, that the booth header's board branch
rendered no lifetime at all; and that five of seven invariant tests passed
under the change that defeats them.
* the bug-hunt panel found four more paths where a failed read still
authorized a delete, and a `record_view` that followed a planted symlink.
`is_held` became `hold_reason`, which returns the reason rather than a bool
beside a string that can disagree with it.
Prediction, to re-count on or after 2026-10-06: the `.forever` rate falls to
the booths that are genuinely durable references. Only 4 booths carry marks at
all, so this rests on both halves of the unit; a null result cannot distinguish
a wrong diagnosis from a habit that outlived its need.
406 tests (341 before). Contract: docs/contracts/u4_derived_lifetime.contract.md
11 KiB
11 KiB
Persistent memory — booth
Last updated: 2026-09-22
Always check for
/tmp/booth-dev-handoff.md— if it exists and itsWritten: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:
- v1 is gated on seven units in
ROADMAP.md, dependency-ordered U1 → U2 → {U3, U4, U5} → U7, with U6 independent. - U1, U2, U4 and U5 are landed. U1
ce598b3; U2c7f9437→v0.2.0,5e41108→v0.2.1,026a1fc→v0.2.2; U5c015a91+95beede→v0.3.0. U4 landed 2026-09-22 — 396 tests green (341 → 396), deployed and verified live, 24/24 booth pages 200, layout probe clean. - U4 IS NOT YET RELEASED — the version bump is an open operator decision.
Recommended v0.3.0 → v0.4.0 (minor): U4 changes what
keepMEANS for 17 agent handles ("stop pressing keep when you are only waiting"), which is release-note-worthy at the pre-1.0 bar and the same tier U2 and U5 took. The defensible alternative is v0.3.1 if U4 reads as internal plumbing, since no CLI verb or URL changed shape. Commits are not releases, so the work is committed unbumped and untagged; the tag waits on his word and nothing is blocked by the wait. - THE NEXT UNIT IS THE OPERATOR'S CALL. U3 (declared embed seam) and U6 (benches) are both unblocked; U7 waits on the rest. U6 is independent of everything and was conceptually unblocked by U5 giving job 5 a home; U3 is where verbatim-booth provenance was deferred to, and U4 added a fourth reason to want it — a verbatim booth has no Booth-rendered header, so its lifetime line lives only on the index card and the marks page.
- No gate is outstanding. All three ran on U4 and were folded in: the
/heid-contract-reviewpanel (01M34VX0SH23Y3VC92E7GM4S70), the/heid-code-reviewpanel (01M34WAFJC3RTERFYBBZJN1SVG) and the/heid-bug-hunt(01M34Y2R0RAJRSN36Q8K4KAB36). All loops closed with heid. The U5 round's three are also closed (01M340PNVRS21HPASZT38PXQPN,01M341E9XAPZEFBSPK9HPGAM0S,01M343SXX27Z47C3STXXRC7M42). - Two dated predictions are pending and must not be forgotten. U5's adoption
re-measure on 2026-09-29 (two counts, see its entry — already at 3 of 24
announced and 2 with a
why, all from peers told nothing), and the.foreverre-count on or after 2026-10-06, a fortnight after U4 landed, which is U4's success criterion. ⚠ Only 4 booths carry marks at all, so the hold's live blast radius is small and the prediction rests on both halves of U4 — see its entry for what a null result would and would not mean. - Three methodology proposals from this session sit with the operator, routed
by heid rather than decided unilaterally: reshaping the paraphrase gate toward
a drift-check for narrative-heavy contracts, a standing
"green-tests-prove-nothing" direction for the code-review gate, and regin's
table-vs-signature consistency pass. They are changes to the
/heid*skills, not to this repo. - The booth set churns hard: 26 → 24 during this session as the sweeper ran. Re-count rather than trusting any number written here.
Recent decisions
[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.foreverdiagnosis 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]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 answergot 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/boothwent 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.jsonwiped 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.jsonper 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-finalistsis 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.foreverdiagnosis 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 fromeshpfiinto 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.foreveris 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