A node says it is there every minute and describes what it applied rarely,
and both went through Heard, which wrote every one down as a report. So a
bare alive replaced the node's last real apply with an empty one -- clearing
the declaration digest `current` is measured against, the carried ports a
push assigns around, and the clean-or-failed outcome. A node that had just
caught up read as behind within the minute, and never converged.
Whether it converged in time was a race the node's own apply set: the link's
one loop applies a declaration to completion before it can send the pending
heartbeat, so a fast apply (catalogue-small) leaves the digest standing the
~60s until the next beat -- long enough for the lab to see `current` -- while
a heavy wave whose apply outran the first beat (mongodb + unifi + marrytts)
had the alive fire milliseconds after the report and never showed `current`
at all, timing out settle even at 1200s.
Heard now returns after moving last_seen for a report that carries no account
of what the machine did -- nothing applied, nothing refused, nothing failed,
which is exactly a bare alive. A real report always carries one. This is what
the commit that began hearing alives said it did and did not: "a bare word
that a node is there moves last_seen and touches nothing else."
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01LrgweAeERJYBg88c5cKDzF