2.1 KiB
status, opened, located-in, fixed-by, amended-design
| status | opened | located-in | fixed-by | amended-design | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| resolved | 2026-09-02 |
|
mesh-host | 03-DESIGN/01-to-be/05-the-node-host.md |
031 — A machine becomes each thing it was told, in turn
Symptom
A machine that was pushed several declarations in quick succession applies every one of them, oldest first, at the better part of a minute each. Under the lab's suite — twenty-odd pushes in fifteen minutes — the anchor machine ran minutes behind the newest declaration, and a test that waited for it honestly timed out while the machine was busy becoming things nobody wanted any more.
Only visible since caught-up became an equality: each report now names the declaration it applied, and the reports arriving were about ever-older ones. Before that, the same backlog hid inside timestamp comparisons that happened to pass.
Why it is wrong, and why it is also right
Each declaration is complete — the whole machine, not a delta — so applying an old one is never incorrect, only wasted: the machine converges to a state the mesh has already moved past, then does it again. The queue keeps a disconnected machine's instructions safe, which is right. What is wrong is only the order of consumption: a machine asked to be five successive things should become the last one.
The shape of a fix
On waking with a queue, drain it and apply only the newest declaration; acknowledge the superseded ones without applying them. Whether a superseded declaration deserves a report — and what its outcome should be called — is the real question for the link's vocabulary: silence reads as a machine that ignored an instruction, and "applied" would be a lie.
What it costs today
Nothing on a real mesh at rest: pushes are far apart. It costs the lab about a doubling of one test's wait, and it will cost a real mesh exactly when things are busiest — a flurry of changes is when a machine can least afford to replay history.