Diagnosis of the "packed history is damaged" narration that fires on every
run of the affected stores. It is a WRITER defect, and the reader's refusal
was the symptom rather than the cause.
A sealed segment declares one contiguous range [firstGeneration,
lastGeneration], and every reader treats that range as containment:
coveringSegment is an interval test, hasGeneration returns true for anything
inside it, and open() seeds committedRanges from it.
repackHistory handed fold() a SPARSE batch. Three filters punch holes in its
candidate list mid-run — a generation absent from committedRanges never
appears, one still in the pending buffer is skipped, one whose tx.json will
not read is skipped — and fold() then computed the range from the first and
last survivor, claiming every generation in between. The next open merged
that mis-declared range back into committedRanges, re-admitting the hole as
committed history, so the following auto-compaction pass asked the packed
tier for a frame that was never written and failed. Re-merged at every open,
which is why it repeated on every run.
Confirmed against a forensic fixture: generation directories 1..2503 present
except exactly one, 1416; and its fact-log segment already showed the tell —
seg-...1410.bfl declaring 1410..1940 (531 generations) while recording 530
facts.
Three changes:
- repackHistory folds each contiguous RUN as its own segment
(`contiguousRuns`), so ranges describe exactly what the segments contain.
- fold() REFUSES a non-contiguous batch, naming the gap and its width. The
density law is now mechanical, so no future caller can reintroduce it. A
refusal loses nothing: the generations stay live and readable.
- Stores already carrying the damage heal instead of wedging. A segment
whose declared span exceeds its frame count is SPARSE; `actualRanges()`
reads the real generation list from its sidecar so open() never re-admits
the holes, and readFrame reports such a hole as unpacked with a narration
naming the segment, rather than throwing. A DENSE segment missing a frame
is still loud damage — that one means the manifest and sidecar disagree.
Pins: nine unit cases (refusal and its message, honest ranges for separately
folded runs, a reconstructed pre-fix sparse segment serving its real frames
while reporting holes as unpacked, holes excluded from actualRanges, and the
dense-segment damage path still throwing) plus an end-to-end case that
deletes a generation directory and drives the real sequence — ordinary
close()-time repacking folds over the hole, then reopen and compact must both
complete. Verified red without the fix: the segment declared an
11-generation span while holding 10 frames.
Prepares the repo for its new home at soulcraftlabs/open-brainy ahead
of the Forgejo transfer: package name, publish registry, release
script, and every install/import reference across docs, src, tests,
examples, and integrations now point at @soulcraftlabs/brainy on
The Source. The npmjs storefront leg and byte-identity pair
verification are stripped from the release script — The Source is
now the only publish target. README gains an Open Brainy explainer
and a registry note for consumers.
@soulcraft/brainy 10.4.2 was the last release under the old name.
validateAddParams() treated '' as falsy and rejected it with "Missing
required field 'data'" — so a legitimate empty file's first write always
failed. Only null/undefined data (with no vector either) is genuinely
absent; '' is real content. Fixed the check, plus the identical bug in
validateUpdateParams() (truncating a file to empty via overwrite hit the
same falsy check) and in update()/transact()'s update planner, where a
plain `Boolean(params.data)`/truthy check on the resolved vector would have
silently skipped both the deferred-embed marker and the eager re-embed for
an emptied value — a stale vector with no path to ever correct itself.
Verified end-to-end: vfs.writeFile('/empty.txt', '') now succeeds,
readFile() returns '', the file lists, and stat() reports size 0; the
existing "should reject empty string as data" tests (unit + integration)
asserted the old buggy behavior and are updated to assert the fixed
contract instead.
vfs.readdir()'s ReaddirOptions.recursive was typed but silently ignored: a
recursive request behaved identically to a non-recursive one. Implemented
properly: recursive listing walks every descendant (files and directories,
any depth) via the same graph-traversal + one-batch-fetch path
getTreeStructure()/getDescendants() already use, and reports each entry as
a path relative to the queried directory (Node's fs.readdir(dir,
{ recursive: true }) convention) — 'sub/file.txt', not just 'file.txt'.
With withFileTypes: true, each VFSDirent.name carries that same relative
path when recursive (matching the string-array form byte for byte);
VFSDirent.path stays the absolute VFS path either way, so no information is
lost. Filter/sort/pagination compose unchanged, now over the full recursive
set. Non-recursive behavior (direct children, named by basename) is
unchanged.
A production restart storm measured 90,017ms for a single brain init vs
1,117ms quiet (~80x contention multiplier), traced to performInit() eagerly
awaiting the process-global WASM embedding engine before the VFS root even
existed. Every writer's open() queued on the one throttled model compile
(90-140s on throttled CPUs).
- VirtualFileSystem.doInitializeRoot() no longer embeds '/'. The root is
system-tier plumbing nothing ever searches; when the default WASM engine
is active it now gets an explicit all-zero placeholder vector
(cosineDistance returns max distance for a zero vector, so it never ranks
ahead of real content). deferEmbedding was considered and rejected: its
landing path kicks the embed worker synchronously right after commit,
which would still force the cold compile within milliseconds — just off
the awaited path, not avoided. A registered native 'embeddings' provider
(no cold-start cost, possibly a different dimension) still embeds the
root for real, via the new Brainy.usesDefaultWasmEmbedder() seam.
- performInit()'s eager-embedding step now only STARTS the WASM engine warm
in the background instead of awaiting it inline. embed()/embeddingManager
already serialize concurrent callers on one shared init promise, so the
first real embed() converges correctly either way; a failed warm narrates
loudly instead of surfacing as a silent latency spike or an unhandled
rejection. eagerEmbeddings: false still means no warm at all.
- FileSystemStorage.init() batches its ~8 independent bootstrap mkdirs
(each creates its own full subtree via recursive:true, so none depend on
the others existing) into one Promise.all. The restore-completion step
and initializeCounts() stay strictly sequential — they have real order
dependencies on rootDir and systemDir respectively.
- performInit() now times five phases (storage init / generation-store
open+fold / index init+gate / VFS bootstrap / embedding-warm-started) and
logs one warning with the per-phase breakdown when total open exceeds
2000ms; silent otherwise.
The auto-detection "not installed" heuristic accepted any resolution failure
whose message merely CONTAINED the package name, unterminated — so a missing
platform-binary sibling package (what a deploy replacing node_modules
mid-restart leaves behind) read as "the accelerator is not installed", and
brainy silently served the default WASM engines with zero journal lines. A
production restart storm paid 90 seconds of throttled WASM compile behind
exactly that hole. The name must now terminate where it ends (quote,
whitespace, punctuation, end) — a sibling package, an inner file path, or a
dependency failure is a broken install and init() throws, as the guard's own
law always stated.
Second door: activate() returning false (the documented graceful decline)
warned on console.warn, which `silent: true` patches away — an invisible
degrade. The decline now narrates via the always-on channel.
Also exports CanonicalCounts from the public surface (the coverage-ledger
denominator type consumers read through getCanonicalCounts()).
Pinned in tests/unit/plugin-activation-loudness.test.ts (five error shapes;
the decline warn under silent: true).
Three cures on the JS metadata index, one seam:
- THE CATCHUP WIRING. The index computed its three-way watermark verdict at
open and nothing consumed it — after a crash + adopt reopen, find() served
the pre-crash index while canonical reads and counts recovered (caught by
the lifecycle lane's first run). The open path now consumes the verdict:
'adopt' is a no-op, 'catchup' folds the fact window (stamped, committed]
through the index legs — nouns and verbs, remove-then-add, one mechanism
for add and update — and 'rescan' runs the explicit rebuild, each narrated.
The lane's Ch4–6 release-blocking marker comes off: the contract holds.
Bonus root-cause: close() never stamped the projection watermarks (only
flush() did), so any close without a prior flush verdicted a needless
'rescan' on reopen — both doors now stamp.
- THE LIVE VERB PATH. Verb rows entered the metadata index only via rebuild
walks, so every rebuilt store minted phantom/stale verb postings from its
first live relate(). relate()/unrelate()/updateRelation() and remove()'s
cascade now post/retract the verb's row in the same commit as the graph
leg — transact() planners mirror identically — using the exact record
shape the rebuild walk uses, so live and rebuilt populations agree.
- THE ONLINE REBUILD. rebuild() was clear-then-walk — every metadata read
empty for the duration. rebuildMetadataIndexOnline builds a fresh manager
beside the serving one (shared identity, in-memory build, dual-write via
a shadow seam with zero call-site changes), atomically swaps the
reference, and persists exactly once post-swap. A find() polled ~200x
during a 2k-noun rebuild never dropped below its baseline.
repairIndex({ rebuild: ['metadata'] }) uses it automatically.
The read gate stops consulting the unnamed isReady() boolean: every provider
may expose healthReport() (sync, O(1), composed from exact ledgers —
HealthReport with a monotonic generation, per-invariant source
ledger|deep|unledgered, missing {count, sample}), and one readiness
authority (assessProviderHealth) derives the verdict. Unledgered families
are UNKNOWN — never healthy, never broken; a report that throws is a loud
not-ready, never a shrug. Reads at the four index choke points refuse with
the typed NotReady errors, narrated once per (provider, generation) — a
read NEVER starts a store walk:
- the first-read lazy build retires (open builds instead, regardless of
size — the ≥10k deferral and the "lazy loading on first query" branch go;
disableAutoRebuild is re-meant honestly in its docs);
- the verify*Live read-path rebuild triggers retire (refuse-or-serve);
- the read-time consistency probe that could launch a dark rebuild from an
ordinary find() retires;
- repairIndex({ rebuild: ['metadata'|'graph'|'vector'] | 'all' }) is the
one explicit door: rebuilds the named leg unconditionally and reports
rebuilt per family; bare repairIndex() stays report-driven.
test(lifecycle): the biography lane — a store's whole life, refereed
tests/lifecycle/: an independent shadow model referees every read after
every chapter (founding, a working day, clean restart, crash, repair,
second life). Chapters 1-3 green. Chapters 4-6 assert the true contract and
are marked .fails as a release-blocking finding (the kill-matrix
convention): after a crash + adopt reopen the metadata index computes its
'catchup' watermark verdict and nothing consumes it — find() serves the
pre-crash index while canonical and counts recover. The catchup wiring is
the cure; a passing .fails will force the marker's removal. The lane runs
in the integration gate (config + coverage guard).
A validateInvariants() that threw was re-synthesized by the host's catch as
heal:'rebuild' with serving:false — a rebuild lever one transient exception
away, while the native provider's own composer reports the same event as
heal:'none'. Two components disagreeing on what a thrown check means is how
a flaky probe becomes an outage. Both now agree: the report is named
('validate-invariants-threw'), loud (healthy:false, the error in detail),
unverified — and it never buys a rebuild and never withholds serving; the
provider's serving verdict is the provider's to compose, not inferred from a
probe that failed to run. The synthesized report also carries the provider's
name instead of 'unknown'.
RepairFamilyReport gains `missing: {count, sample}` (an exact count plus a
capped id sample — a verdict, not a dump), `rebuilt` (a full generational
rebuild ran, as opposed to an incremental heal) and `reason`, aligning the
receipt's shape with the provider-side health report.
Pinned in tests/unit/validate-invariants-delegation.test.ts.
Seven micro-budget tests were calibrated on one fast desktop and failed on
other honest iron with zero functional failures (bisect-proven pre-existing;
David-waived for 10.1/10.2 with this recalibration filed as the cure). Every
budget is now at least 3x the worst measurement observed across three
machines, each with a comment naming its calibration basis; the find-unified
micro-comparison of two sub-millisecond timings becomes a ratio assertion
(absolute equality of microsecond pairs can never be stable). The
inference-bound trim-history correctness test gets a timeout covering its
slowest observed run (174s) — its assertions are exact and untouched.
These remain order-of-magnitude guards; real perf enforcement lives in the
dedicated perf lanes with iron-specific budgets, per the gate-speed standard.
Known non-test artifact, documented not hidden: on slow-inference machines a
minutes-long awaited-embed loop can trip vitest's worker-RPC 60s tolerance
('Timeout calling onTaskUpdate') — all tests pass, vitest exits 1 on the
unhandled orchestration error. The CI lanes on faster iron exit clean; if a
lane ever trips it, the test moves to deterministic embeddings (its
assertions are size-bookkeeping, not embedding quality).
An adopter's full suite found two v2 write-path defects on fresh brains,
reproduced with stacks; both cured and both pinned with their exact
production shapes:
1. PAD-FRAME CONSTRUCTIBILITY: a single msgpack bin filler steps its
header by one byte at each size class (bin8→bin16→bin32), leaving one
unreachable payload size per boundary — the sealer requested a
291-byte pad, the encoder threw 'not constructible', and sync() died
whole. Construction is now TOTAL: the class-boundary holes bridge with
a trailing fixint beside the bin ({bin(n)} ∪ {bin(n)+fixint} covers
every size ≥ minimum). Pinned exhaustively: every size from the
minimum through a full sector plus boundary spill constructs
byte-exact and decodes as reader-invisible filler.
2. THE NON-MONOTONIC REFUSAL LOOP: the append-failure compensation
rewound the generation counter on ANY throw — including a covering
SYNC failure after a SUCCESSFUL append. The log carried generation N
while the counter re-minted N, and every later append refused
'non-monotonic (N ≤ head N)' — the write path wedged in a refusal
loop through deferred-embed retries and flush backoff. The
compensation now splits by phase: an append failure (log never took
the fact) fully compensates — un-buffer and rewind; a sync failure
after append earns the rewind ONLY if the appended fact is provably
dropped, otherwise the generation stays consumed and buffered — the
counter never re-mints a number the log may carry. Pinned: an
injected one-shot sync failure fails its write loudly and the very
next write mints fresh and succeeds, with the log scanning strictly
ascending end to end.
Also probed against the adopter's carried report: the 9.0 vfs.rename
stale-ghost shape does NOT reproduce on this head (old path cleanly
unresolvable on exists/stat/readdir after rename).
Gates: unit 2067/2067 (160 files) · integration 833 (97 files) ·
conformance 36/36.
A first adopter's namespace migration went 341 red on one class: the
never-carried-field refusal firing on CORRECT filters against fresh and
sparse stores — a freshly provisioned tenant refused its own first
filtered read, with the did-you-mean built for typos firing hardest on
day-one stores where nothing is wrong.
The ruled cut: a WHERE filter naming a field no row carries is SERVED
OPERATOR-TRUTHFULLY — eq/in/range/contains answer [] (nothing carries
it, nothing matches); ne and exists:false answer ALL rows (the equally
true complement — a blanket empty here would be silently wrong, which is
why the simpler cut was rejected); exists:true answers []. Served from
the field registry, with the did-you-mean demoted to a once-per-field
WARN. orderBy and genuinely ambiguous addresses KEEP their hard typed
refusals: no truthful order exists over an uncarried field, and
ambiguity is a contract error while absence is data.
Mechanics: the negative operator absorbs the FIELD_NOT_INDEXED throw as
its empty exclude set (the clause-level catch correctly zeroes positive
operators only); the egress matcher already agreed. Plus the
provider-seam belt: a field refusal thrown by a replacement metadata
manager is normalized to THIS package's UnresolvableFieldError at every
filter call site — one class identity for consumers, instanceof works
(a first adopter's cross-package finding).
Conformance: tests/conformance/sparse-store-cut.test.ts — the shared
operator rows both engines run (positive-empty, negative-all,
fresh-tenant day-one, orderBy refusal kept, compound composition).
Gates: unit 2065/2065 · integration 832 · conformance 36/36.
The quiet-loss cure regressed recovery: the new typed torn-record error
was correct at identity-read time but threw inside init-time recovery
walks, killing opens that previously survived. The boundary, redrawn:
- IDENTITY READS (get-by-id of a specific record, CAS blob point-get):
typed TornRecordError, unchanged — a caller who asked for THAT record
can act on the answer.
- SET-SHAPED READS AND WALKS (enumeration, pagination, batch hydration —
the paths recovery rebuilds and finds page over): HEAL PAST the torn
victim. The adapter's loud floor (error log + counted gauge) fires at
the encounter; the walk serves the remaining rows. One crash casualty
can no longer kill every query on its shard — or the open itself.
- WRITES OVER TORN RECORDS ARE THE CURE: the save path's read-merge, the
commit path's before-image capture, and the operations' rollback
captures all treat a torn prior as the create sentinel, narrated — the
incoming bytes replace the unreadable ones, and history for the id
honestly restarts at that generation. Corruption can never block its
own heal.
- THE NaN SOURCE: torn mapper state (nextId/entries carrying garbage)
discards with narration and re-derives via the existing rebuild path;
the mint gains a source guard healing a non-integer counter from the
live map. The reopen and first-write RangeError shapes are dead at the
source, both authority branches.
Pinned with the exact fault-injection scenarios: a torn entity record
(including the VFS root) no longer kills the open — walks heal past it,
the keeper rows serve, and the identity read of the victim itself is
typed-or-healed; a torn mapper reopens and mints sanely on the first
post-recovery write.
Gates: tsc 0 · unit 2065/2065 · integration 828 · conformance 31/31.
THE DEFAULT FLIP (ruled on proven evidence — at-ack survived 301/301
acked-writes-through-power-cut in block-layer fault injection; deferred
tree authority demonstrably loses flush-covered acks): a brain with NO
stored authority artifact now ADOPTS LOG AUTHORITY AT OPEN. The oracle
gates the flip exactly as the guarded adoption path always did — curable
divergences baseline-backfilled, the flip lands ONLY on a green verdict —
and a brain that cannot verify STAYS tree-authoritative loudly, with the
refusal recorded on the switch artifact so subsequent opens are cheap.
config logAuthority: 'defer' is the explicit documented opt-out (no
automatic adoption; declared flush-window loss; adoptLogAuthority() flips
later). A stored artifact always wins. RELEASES.md carries the posture.
Two standing .fails debt pins FLIP TO HOLDING under the default: the
at-ack crash-survival gap and the ack-at-log durability target — both now
permanent asserted truths, not aspirations.
POWER-CUT THROW SITES (fault-injection findings, brainy-alone config):
- A manifest-listed-but-unloadable column segment QUARANTINES at
discovery (loud once, counted always, quarantinedSegments() exposed for
the heal) and the field serves its remaining segments DEGRADED — never
a raw throw killing every query on the field. Real storage faults still
propagate untouched.
- Torn generation artifacts (NaN/garbage in manifest or counter) DISCARD
with narration at the store's open and recovery re-derives — plus a
defensive finite-integer guard at the init consumer. Never a RangeError
killing an open.
THE LOUD TORN-RECORD CONTRACT: an existing-but-unparseable stored record
now surfaces as a typed, counted TornRecordError on every entity-read
surface (including fifteen previously-blind per-item batch catches);
ENOENT stays clean-absent; artifact readers with designed absent-recovery
keep null-tolerance behind the loud floor. Disk corruption can no longer
read as silent data invisibility.
Suite migration: the default's pins inverted deliberately, generation
baselines made relative, quarantine-contract pins rewritten to the ruled
behavior.
Gates: tsc 0 · unit 2065/2065 (159 files) · integration 826 (93 files) ·
conformance 31/31 · kill-matrix 15/15 · torn-open guards 2/2.
An internal report from cross-engine write-path instrumentation: with
individual writes slower than the idle window (a contended disk), every
inter-write gap looked idle and fired a background full flush — 15 extra
flushes during 100 contended adds, amplifying the very pressure that
slowed the writes. The law now: an idle fire landing within the spacing
floor of the last flush DEFERS to the floor boundary instead of flushing;
the floor is min(interval, 10× the CONFIGURED idle window) — scaled to
caller intent (a tiny idle window keeps fast idle-driven durability;
default 2s/30s config gets a 20s floor), derived from the configured
idle, never from a deferred re-arm delay (which would compound into
runaway deferral). Deferred is never dropped: a lone write on a
then-quiet store still persists at the floor without any further write
arriving.
Pins: the contended-shape pin (six slow-spaced writes fire ≤2 idle
flushes, not one per gap; then still persist) + the original quiet-store
idle pin unchanged. Unit 2055/2055.
The generic reprojection engine (pure TS; the twin of the native
implementation — same frozen contract, one shared conformance intent):
register any ProjectionAdapter; advance(family, {budgetMs}) folds facts
from the adapter's own watermark to the head in installments ≤50ms with
real macrotask yields; foreground door traffic bumps the DoorSignal and
an in-flight advance yields within one installment ('preempted');
advanceAll round-robins families fairly. swap(family, buildAdapter) is
the doors-open migration primitive: the OLD projection keeps serving
while the new one builds beside it, the flip is atomic at parity, and a
concurrent second swap refuses typed. A fact the fold cannot apply
(typed ProjectionApplyError) is QUARANTINED — skipped, ledgered,
narrated per-doubling, exposed for refuse-affected-reads — the service
class law's fourth answer: never a wedged rebuild, never a silent skip.
The engine never writes stamps: each adapter owns its durability and its
stamp-after-data discipline. Upgrade, heal, and rebuild are now the same
machinery behind open doors.
FactLogSource wires any host's fact scan in one line
(factSourceFromHost(brain)); window-contract violations are loud.
Pins: 23 unit (budget resume without refold · preemption within one
installment · round-robin fairness under a skewed backlog · build-beside
visibility mid-swap · atomic flip · single-flight refusal · quarantine
skip/ledger/doubling · non-typed throw aborts · losing adapter
discarded) + 3 integration on a real brain (fold matches ground truth ·
doors answer mid-fold with the preemption path exercised · crash
mid-fold resumes from the stamp, never refolds).
Gates: unit 2054/2054 (157 files) · integration 820 (93 files) ·
conformance 31/31.
The private recovery discipline, applied to its own machinery: pending-
embed markers stop being sidecar files and become first-class log records
riding the write's OWN commit fact — embed.pending lands in the same
atomic append as its after-image (a marker can never be orphaned from its
write, or vice versa; in durable-at-ack mode it shares the write's
covering fsync — zero extra syncs), and the worker's landing commit rides
embed.landed with the inline vector. Crash recovery is now a FOLD of the
log (pending without a matching landed = recovered), skipped wholesale on
brains with no v2 history; the one-time legacy bridge folds existing
sidecar files in, migrates them as one fact, and deletes them —
idempotent under a crash mid-bridge. No code path writes the sidecar
again.
Plus the ENTITY-TRUTH digest law, found by this train's own pins:
canonical vector wrappers denormalize HNSW residue (connections + the
randomly-assigned node level) that the log deliberately does not carry —
the verification oracle digested it and would have reported false
state-differs on ~any nonzero-level node (a ~15% flake in the cutover pin
was the symptom). Both sides of every oracle comparison now normalize to
entity truth (nounEntityTruth); index residue has its own rebuild path
and is not entity state.
Pins: embed-markers-in-log 5/5 (same-generation marker, landed+fold-to-
zero, crash recovery via the log with the sidecar prefix EMPTY on disk,
legacy bridge, VFS hung-embedder ack) · deferred-embedding 5/5 unchanged
(the contract outlived its mechanism) · kill-matrix 11/11 · cutover 5/5
×10 runs (flake dead) · unit 2031/2031.
- Watermark stamping fans out at flush: all three projections stamped
with the committed generation before their flushes persist.
- waitForIndexed(path?, {generation, timeoutMs}) — the one honest read
barrier for write-then-recall consumers; typed timeout error carries
the pending count and names the gauge; getIndexStatus() gains
per-projection gauges. awaitPendingEmbeds() unchanged underneath.
- adoptLogAuthority() self-backfills curable divergences (pre-log
records, witness drift) by identity re-commit before flipping — a
fresh brain flips clean; log-ahead divergences still refuse loudly.
- The verification oracle gains VERB legs (all four divergence classes;
unwired = honest verbsChecked: 0, never a scope claim).
- find({where: {}}) match-all serves (was silent-empty, warm AND cold;
same fix in count/streaming/subgraph seeding); removeMany({where:{}})
refuses typed — a match-all bulk delete must be explicit.
- Aggregation native envelope stamped via noteSourceGeneration before
serializeState; the native-blob restore gates through the same
adoption verdict as caller-side state (the unconditional adopt dies).
- LC8 pinned: a wholesale directory move opens and serves identically
across all three intelligences, with history traveling.
Gates: unit 2031/2031 (156 files) · integration 812 (91 files) ·
conformance 27/27.
Every persisted projection artifact (metadata field indexes + column
segments, HNSW node records, graph adjacency LSM trees) now carries a
stamp asserting 'this state reflects every committed generation ≤ W,
atomically' — written LAST in each owner's flush (stamp-after-data: a
crash between data and stamp = unstamped = rescan, never trust). At load,
each owner computes the three-way verdict: stamped==committed → adopt
(zero work) · behind → catchup (gap reported) · above/unstamped → RESCAN,
loudly. Legacy artifacts re-derive once, then are stamped forever. Shared
law in projectionWatermark.ts (the aggregation verdict machinery,
generalized); vector artifacts carry model dimensions. Verdicts are
computed and exposed (watermark()/watermarkVerdict()/watermarkGap());
rebuild triggers unchanged — acting on 'catchup' is the fold train.
Pins: 22 unit (7 metadata · 8 hnsw · 7 graph, incl. spy-order
stamp-after-data) + the end-to-end reopen-adopts pin.
The cutover: new tail segments write format v2 (per-record [type, version,
cipherFlag, keyId] envelope; noun/verb after-images carry dense ints
MINTED AT APPEND from the id mapper — a rebuilt mapper reproduces
assignments exactly; log.genesis opens every new log with the id-space
width + a minted brain id; sync() seals to the header-declared sector
boundary with reader-invisible pad frames). Existing v1 segments are
never rewritten — per-segment decoder dispatch reads both formats and v2
facts map to the exact CommitFact shape all consumers already read.
Cutover on a live v1 log: an empty v1 tail re-heads in place; a non-empty
one is sealed by rotation, byte-identical. Records reserve the encryption
fields (cipherFlag 0 / keyId nil are the only legal values; anything else
refuses typed naming the needed newer reader) — crypto-ready with no
future bump on the compat surface. Empty-records facts are legal (an
all-deduped batch is a real generation — v1 semantics preserved; the
refusal there tore a column-store flush mid-commit in the full suite, the
consistency guard caught it loudly, and the root is fixed).
Golden byte vectors pinned for the second (native) reader implementation.
Pins: cutover 5/5 · codec 54 · kill-matrix stays 11/11.
Two release-blocking findings from the durability kill-matrix, both fixed
in the owning layer:
1. LOG-AUTHORITY REPLAY AT OPEN: durable-at-ack fsynced the fact before
the ack, but open() truncated every fact above the manifest — after a
power loss that takes the un-fsynced tmp+rename canonical bytes, the
acked write's ONLY durable copy was discarded. Now: under 'log'
authority, open() REPLAYS intact facts above the manifest into
canonical (FactLog.peekFactsAbove — CRC-gated, order-sorted) and
advances the manifest to cover them; tree-authority brains keep the
truncate contract they were promised. Pinned end to end: the power-loss
row constructs the exact disk state (fsynced log, vanished canonical
rename) and the acked write lives.
2. NO SILENT COMMIT: commitSingleOp buffered the generation BEFORE the
fact append; an append failure (ENOSPC) rejected the caller but the
next flush durably committed the generation with NO fact — a permanent
silent log gap. Now the failure path un-buffers and returns the counter
reservation: nothing commits, the log stays gap-free, and the canonical
execute-residue orphan is the documented crash-equivalent.
Plus: the kill-matrix itself (11 rows — every commit-path fault point ×
reopen-as-crash recovery contract, at-ack variants, disk-full row; five
new zero-cost faultPoint sites), the log-authority pin suite (oracle
green/red/state-differs, flip refusal, switch survives reopen, 9/9), and
the group-commit covering pins (5/5).
Gates: unit 2002/2002 (152 files) · integration 785 · conformance 27/27.
The provider contract (metadata addToIndex/removeFromIndex, vector
addItem/removeItem, id-mapper getOrAssign/remove) gains an optional
trailing generation — evaluated lazily at operation execute time (the
graph surface's thunk pattern, generalized), threaded from all 17
construction sites: undefined during generation-0 bootstrap, the real
committed generation everywhere else. Optional = additive: no existing
provider or caller breaks; native delta logs that stamped literal zero
start hearing truth. JS twins accept the parameter with parity notes.
Pins: provider doubles capture and assert nonzero monotonic generations
across add/update/remove on both surfaces.
The two-implementation contract surface as one pure module (no I/O):
segment header v2 (formatVersion 2 + sealSize in the reserved bytes),
per-record [type u8, version u8] envelope killing the unknown-kind
misclassification trap, the 12-type registry (after-images with minted
ints, tombstones, batch.meta, embed.pending/landed, blob.manifest,
projection.note, bootstrap.baseline, log.genesis with id-space width and
TYPED width-mismatch refusal), vectorLeg inline|{sameAsGeneration} with
writer-enforced single-hop, sector-sealed groups with pad frames, torn-tail
discipline, and GOLDEN BYTE VECTORS pinned so a second (native) reader
implementation can conform byte-for-byte. 50 format pins + a
fault-injecting storage wrapper (tear/drop-sync/fail-append) with 13
self-tests. v1 segments remain readable; nothing writes v2 yet — the
live-format cutover is its own commit.
DP6/DP8 of the Path Registry (BRAINY-PROD-LATENCY-TRIAD, the proven flicker
mechanism): update paths staged RemoveFromVectorIndex then AddToVectorIndex
as two separately-awaited transaction ops — between them a live row was in
NEITHER index (dark to semantic recall, fine in metadata list). The native
pair widened that window to seconds in production before their side's
visibility-commit fix; the structural cure lands here:
- hnswIndex.updateItem: absent → add; SAME vector → pure no-op (the
production shape — a type-only update re-indexed an unchanged vector,
remove+add did pure damage); changed vector → the node NEVER leaves the
index: synchronous vector swap first (every query from that instant sees
correct distances), then unlink/relink at the node's existing level via
shared internals (linkNode/unlinkNodeEdges refactored out of add/remove;
entry point and maxLevel provably unchanged).
- ReplaceInVectorIndexOperation: ONE transaction leg; feature-detects
provider updateItem (native seam flagged — their side ships updateItem,
then the adjacent remove+add fallback is dead code). Both update staging
sites swapped; delete sites untouched.
- LAZY-OPEN GATE (fleet adoption find, SELF-ENGINE-PAIR-STANDARD): under
disableAutoRebuild, ensureIndexesLoaded assessed ONLY the vector index —
a not-ready native METADATA provider never blocked the completion latch
and every find() silently returned [] on a populated store. All three
providers now vote; any not-ready report falls through to the rebuild.
- docs/path-registry.md: brainy's twin table for the 32 shared path IDs —
service class, budgets, lifecycle, narration, and the cited pin per row;
owed rows named (LC4 doors-open migration, MT4 yielding heals, LC7
downgrade contract) per the lifecycle-sprint choreography.
Pins: update-item-atomic 9/9 (visibility-atomic swap, reverse-index parity
vs fresh rebuild, entry-point invariants) · lazy-notready-honor 2/2.
Gates: unit 1928/1928 (148 files) · integration 760 · conformance 27/27.
A4 of the service-class pair (SELF-ENGINE-LIFECYCLE-SPRINT, David-directed:
'why do we need manual flushes at all?'). The production disease: 829
caller-scheduled per-write flushes convoying into 45-66s write walls —
cadence hand-rolled a layer above the only layer that can see dirty-node
counts and IO pressure.
- BrainyConfig.persistence: policy 'auto' (DEFAULT) | 'manual', with
flushEveryWrites (512) / flushIntervalMs (30s) / flushOnIdleMs (2s)
triggers. Auto = the engine kicks ONE single-flight BACKGROUND flush at
a threshold or when the store goes quiet; write acks NEVER await it (a
hung flush cannot block a write — pinned); a failed background flush is
LOUD and re-arms the trigger. 'manual' restores caller-owned cadence.
- Triggers wired at both write chokepoints (single-op post-commit +
transact post-commit); idle timer unref'd; close() tears the timer down
and drains the flight before its own final flush.
- RECOVERY SEMANTICS documented on the config: canonical records are
durable per-write regardless of policy — a crash between background
flushes loses derived state only, which converges at next open (epoch
machinery + the new incremental aggregation catch-up), bounded by the
un-flushed window. Never data loss.
Pins: write-count trigger fires one background flush with zero caller
calls · idle trigger · manual never self-flushes · THE ACK LAW (writes
acknowledge under a never-resolving flush). Gates: unit 1917/1917 ·
integration 760 · conformance 27/27 — green WITH auto as the default.
SELF-ENGINE-LIFECYCLE-SPRINT + BRAINY-PROD-LATENCY-TRIAD, the four asks:
(a) brain.flush() persists aggregation state stamped at the committed
generation. The stamp used to advance only at close(), so a long-lived
writer that flushes but never closes — the primary production shape —
left every write window behind the stamp, and ANY unclean exit forced a
whole-store backfill walk (per-entity work, measured >60s and
door-starving on a 9k-row production brain) on the first stats call.
(b) BEHIND-stamp adoption becomes adopt + INCREMENTAL CATCH-UP: the exact
missing window (stamp, committed] resolves its affected-id set from the
fact log and reconciles each entity with time-travel before/after reads
(asOf at both window bounds) through the same delta algebra the live
hooks use — cost bounded by writes since the last flush, never store
size, and exact under interleaving because reconciliation targets the
FIXED window end while later writes chain through hooks. Oversized
windows (>5000 affected) and unreadable windows demote to the announced
rescan — never a silent partial serve.
(c) The native provider's parallel rebuildAggregate — on the contract since
8.x but never invoked anywhere — is now the backfill walk's preferred
door: one call per aggregate with source-matched entities, replacing
the per-entity FFI stream.
(d) A delete whose before-image is unavailable can no longer SKIP the
aggregation hook silently (counts drifted upward forever): both delete
paths (remove() and transact) flag an exact rescan, loudly.
Pins: integration (flush stamp; unclean-exit reopen → exact counts through
an add + group-move + delete window with the walk spy proving ZERO
whole-store walks) + unit (provider rebuild invoked once with filtered
entities; flagAllForRescan; reconcile delta algebra). Gates: unit 1913/1913
· integration 760 · conformance 27/27.
BRAINY-PROD-LATENCY-TRIAD Track A1 (David-approved plan): the sort path's
value resolution goes BATCHED — one chunked metadata-record batch pass
serves any N, replacing the serial per-row getNoun loop (62-98ms x 3,224
rows = the measured 199-317 second silent scan on self prod). The
metadata record carries every sortable value: system scalars EXACT
(bucketed-index precision loss can never force a per-row disk read
again) and the user bag via the shape-aware split, both record eras.
- resolveOrderValuesBatch: the one sanctioned value source for ordered
reads (batch door: getNounMetadataBatch -> getMetadataBatch -> chunked
parallel; never serial).
- Column top-K page re-sort and the no-column fallback both rewired.
- B2 down-payment: the no-column fallback ANNOUNCES itself once per
field past 500 rows - silent degradation is illegal.
- THE CALL-SHAPE PIN (tests/unit/utils/metadataIndex-sort-callshape):
zero vector-record reads, batch calls only, latency-blind so it holds
on any machine - the serial loop cannot quietly return. Ordering
contract re-pinned through the batch path (nulls last both directions,
ties by id, never drop).
(! = perf contract change only; no API change. Gates: unit 1904/1904,
integration 758, conformance 27/27.)
The write side of the law, ruled 2026-08-03: data is either in main space
where developers can use anything, or it is in system.*.
- The reserved-name write door DIES: add/update/relate/updateRelation
metadata bags accept EVERY name (confidence, type, id, data, level,
content, ...) as ordinary user fields — indexed, filterable, sortable,
aggregatable, identical to any other field. The remap/enforce/warn
machinery, the reservedFieldPolicy config (now a typed init refusal),
and the compile-time metadata key bans are all removed. The one write
refusal left: keys spelled 'system.*' (namespace forgery), now enforced
on all four write doors.
- STORED RECORDS GO NESTED (v2): engine fields top-level, the user bag
nested verbatim under 'metadata', sealed by a format stamp — by-name
storage discrimination is unsound once colliders are admitted. Legacy
flat records stay readable forever through the shape-aware splitters
(sound for them: the old door refused colliders). Time travel rides the
same split (generation store snapshots whole records).
- Name-based index exclusions DIE: user frame indexes every name; the
excludeFields/indexedFields knobs and their silent-[] holes are gone;
bulk-payload protection is value-shape only, uniform across names.
- Consumer-sweep findings fixed in the same wave: per-type counts read
the frozen 'system.type' column (addToIndex sort, affinity tracking,
cold-count rehydration, VFS type bitmaps — legacy 'noun' fallback for
pre-rebuild reads); resolveHiddenIds addresses 'system.visibility'
(bare 'visibility' was a silent no-op under the law — VFS/system
entities leaked into default reads).
- Fidelity fallout fixed in the owning layers: readEntityFieldAddress
reads the bag first (colliders were absent-shadowed by its own guard)
and never serves system addresses from the bag; blob history refs read
the bag shape-aware; migration transforms now receive ONE normalized
view (engine fields + nested bag) regardless of stored era, and stray
flat-habit keys refuse with the fix in the message.
- THE REOPEN-COLLIDER CONFORMANCE CASE (required before any RC counts as
gates-green): all ten collider names + plumbing names written as user
fields, verified verbatim + queryable across live reads, flush+reopen,
a forced epoch rebuild, and asOf time travel; relation mirror; forgery
refusals; legacy flat-record compat. 8/8 green.
Gates: unit 1901/1901 (exit 0) · integration 758 (exit 0) · conformance
27/27 (exit 0) · consumer test sweep migrated (10 files).
Also completes the v8.10.2 write-granularity law for the transact() plan
path: a metadata-only batch update never rewrites the vector-bearing noun
record (planUpdate staged the unconditional save the update() fix removed).
Seven pins in tests/integration/level-field-shadow.test.ts including the
reporting consumer's exact repro rows; orderBy JSDoc documents the ordering
contract and the announced field-addressing law.
A production deployment's warm report showed metadata: 'unavailable' under a
native metadata provider. brain.warm()'s metadata leg only duck-typed the
built-in JS manager's hydrateAll() method, which a native provider has no
reason to implement.
- MetadataIndexProvider (src/plugin.ts) gains an optional warm?(): Promise<void>
hook, mirroring the existing vector and graph provider hooks. brain.warm()
now checks the active provider's own warm() FIRST, falls back to the JS
manager's hydrateAll() when absent, and reports 'unavailable' only when
neither exists -- never init() as a stand-in, since a native provider's
init() may be a cheap verify rather than a real warm.
- Tests (tests/unit/brainy/warm.test.ts): a live provider instance shaped to
have warm() reports 'warmed' and the hook called with no hydrateAll
fallback; shaped to have neither hook reports 'unavailable' (pins the
honest branch); the unmodified built-in JS manager still reports 'warmed'
via hydrateAll(), unchanged.
Additive scope agreed mid-flight with the native-provider team: a
maintenance-debt observability seam so an operator sees a grind coming
instead of discovering it as a CPU storm.
- New optional maintenanceDebt?(): Promise<ProviderMaintenanceDebt> hook on
all three provider contracts (vector, metadata, graph -- the same three
warm?() lives on). ProviderMaintenanceDebt is fields-all-optional: a
provider reports only what it truly measures (pendingBytes, pendingItems,
lastPassCompletedAt, lastPassOutcome, converging), never an estimate
dressed as fact.
- New public brain.maintenanceDebt(): a pure passthrough -- for each surface
it calls only the active provider's own hook and reports the payload
verbatim, or 'unavailable' when absent. No thresholds, no polling, no
JS-side estimation; the provider owns the numbers, the operator owns the
policy.
- ProviderMaintenanceDebt, MaintenanceDebtReport, and MaintenanceDebtOutcome
are exported from the package root.
- Tests (tests/unit/brainy/maintenance-debt.test.ts): hook present reports
'reported' with the exact payload passed through; hook absent reports
'unavailable' on every surface; mixed surfaces resolve independently of
each other.
RELEASES.md gains the 8.10.1 entry covering both fixes above and this
feature, including the no-hot-retry contract from the prior commit.
A production incident: a native-provider op ground 38-40s inside a transaction,
blew the apply-phase budget, rolled back, and a downstream pipeline hot-retried
the identical operation into a 6-minute CPU storm. Brainy itself never
auto-retried the timeout; the gap was that TransactionTimeoutError only said
"retryable" in prose, with nothing machine-readable for a caller to branch on.
- TransactionTimeoutError gains two typed, always-true fields: retryable
(a later attempt may succeed once the slowness resolves or the budget is
raised) and hotRetryUnsafe (an immediate identical retry re-pays the full
cost that just timed out and can cascade into a CPU storm -- callers must
latch and back off, never loop). context's existing telemetry fields
(timeoutMs, operationIndex, elapsedMs, totalOperations, operationName) are
now documented as the caller's backoff inputs.
- Updated the "retryable" doc-prose sites (transact()'s timeoutMs option,
transactionBudgetFloorMs, Transaction.execute()'s contract) to point at
the new fields instead of bare prose.
- Regression pin (tests/unit/transaction/timeout-never-internally-retried.test.ts):
an execution counter proves the engine never re-drives a timed-out
operation, through both the single-op engine TransactionManager/Transaction
drives for every single-record write, and add()'s upsert-race retry loop
(which must exit on the first TransactionTimeoutError, never treat it like
the lost-insert-race signal it retries on).
- Removed TransactionManager.executeTransactionWithResult -- zero callers
anywhere in the codebase.
Reconciles the vector-index rename to the ruled three-layer naming: the
provider contract's identity field is now a REQUIRED readonly name (was
optional providerId), self-reported and truthful, rendered as
[vector-index:<name>] where the index identifies itself and stamped into
the op-name strings journals already parse (AddToVectorIndex(<name>)).
The built-in JS engine names itself hnsw-js. A runtime provider instance
compiled against the previous optional contract is tolerated - never
crashed on, never silently mislabeled: it stamps unknown-provider and
emits one loud warning naming the missing field. Graph index operations
keep their static names (they never interpolate provider identity), and
no public API exports a provider-routed hnsw-carrying name, so no
deprecation shim is required.
Three pieces addressing the cold-restart-write incident where a production
deployment's first writes after every restart (33-35s each on a cold page
cache) blew the op-count-scaled transact budget mid-batch: every write is
itself a multi-op transaction, so one cold operation consumed the whole
budget, the gate before the next operation tripped, and the write rolled
back atomically - refused, retried, and refused again until the page cache
warmed passively.
- The budget's start-gating contract is now explicit and pinned: it gates
STARTING the next operation, never rolling back completed work for
elapsed time (the shipped schedule since 8.7.0, now stated in contract
JSDoc, guarded by code for operation 0, and enforced by regression
tests). The 30s floor is configurable via transactionBudgetFloorMs for
stores whose cold operations legitimately run long.
- New brain.warm() eagerly loads the vector index, metadata index, and
graph adjacency so first operations after a cold restart run at
steady-state cost. Returns a WarmReport with an honest per-surface
outcome (warmed / probed / unavailable) - never reports a probe as a
warm. warmOnOpen: true runs it during init(). New optional provider hook
warm() on the vector and graph plugin contracts.
- Vector-index transaction op classes renamed from the backend-specific
AddToHNSWOperation / RemoveFromHNSWOperation to backend-neutral
AddToVectorIndexOperation / RemoveFromVectorIndexOperation, stamping the
active backend into the emitted op-name string (AddToVectorIndex(js-hnsw)
vs a native provider's own identity) so journals never misdirect an
operator toward an index that isn't running.
First stage of the co-frozen D1+D3+repacking unit: the format core,
self-contained under _generations/segments/.
- seg-<firstGen,20pad>.bgs: append-once packs of consecutive
generations (magic BGS1; frame = u32 len + u32 crc32c + msgpack
[generation, timestamp, delta, records, flags]; flags reserves
compressed-payload evolution without a format break). Sealed
segments are immutable — fold refuses overlap with sealed ranges.
- seg-<firstGen>.idx: DERIVED sidecar (per-generation frame offsets +
per-id generation postings + checksums); lost/corrupt sidecars
rebuild from their segment loudly; a damaged segment (frame CRC
mismatch) fails loudly, never serves wrong bytes.
- manifest.json: the one discovery path — open() reads it and never
lists the packed backlog (the scan-wedge class's cure); refuses a
newer manifest version rather than serving partial history.
- D3 semantics: dropSegmentsBelow reclaims WHOLE segments at
boundaries only and bumps compactedBelow durably; archival-profile
enforcement stays with the caller per the co-freeze.
- D8 rider: digestThroughPacked(g) — deterministic crc32c chain over
sealed-segment checksums (+ frame-level prefix mid-segment),
O(segments), reopen-stable.
Also fixes a cross-adapter contract bug the suite caught: memory
storage's deleteObjectFromPath ignored the raw-bytes store, so
deleteRawObject on a raw-bytes path (fact-log or segment files)
silently no-op'd — deletes now match filesystem unlink semantics.
Six pins. Wiring into GenerationStore (two-tier reads, the repacker,
cold-open manifest path) lands with the rest of the unit before its
release; cortex's fact-record/stamp shapes reconcile the sidecar
keying when they post.
Stage-2 D1 contract item (co-frozen): a fact scan may be slow, never
silent. batches() now races its FIRST pull against
SCANFACTS_FIRST_BATCH_MS (10s, exported; test-overridable) — a wedged
or unreadably slow store produces a loud abort naming the contract
instead of a consumer hanging indistinguishably from progress (the
production shape: a heal against a generations-backlogged brain
wedged silently on the first segment read).
Only the first pull is raced: the bound is time-to-first-batch (proof
the producer is alive), not per-batch pacing, and it runs only while
a pull is pending — consumer think-time between pulls never counts
against the producer (pinned).
Three pins: wedged-store loud failure within the bound, healthy scan
untouched end-to-end, slow-consumer immunity.
flush() is durability work: it must cost what the current window's
deltas cost, never what the history backlog costs. Under adaptive
retention the byte budget derives from free memory, so bulk-load
pressure shrank the budget exactly at peak write volume and flush paid
actual reclaim inline — a production deployment measured single writes
blocked 25-191s behind reclaim-on-flush.
- flush() no longer calls autoCompactHistory(); close() is THE
auto-compaction site (already ran there; now alone).
- Every auto pass is time-bounded (CLOSE_COMPACTION_BUDGET_MS = 5s):
reclamation is oldest-first, so an early stop is a consistent prefix
and the next pass resumes. Explicit compactHistory() gains an
optional timeBudgetMs for caller-chosen maintenance windows.
- Documented trade stated where operators read: a long-lived writer
that never closes accumulates history until its next explicit
compactHistory() — predictable writes, explicit maintenance.
Pins: flush-never-reclaims + close-reclaims-durably (db-mvcc), bounded
pass stops-then-resumes as a consistent prefix (generationStore unit).
Four fixes from a consumer conformance report, one root disease — two
field-resolution regimes where there must be one:
- The delete/update aggregation hooks fed the engine a partial entity
view (type/service/data/metadata only), so a reserved-field groupBy
(subtype, visibility, ...) resolved to a nonexistent group on the way
down: counts drifted upward forever after deletes, and updates moving
an entity between reserved-field groups double-counted. The hooks now
pass the full-fidelity view via entityForAggFromRawRecord (every
reserved field top-level, mirroring the add path); the update sites
pass the full get() view instead of a hand-rolled subset.
- Aggregation source.where resolved fields only against the custom
metadata bag, so where on a reserved field silently matched nothing.
The matcher now resolves each filtered field through
resolveEntityField — the same single source of truth groupBy uses.
- removeMany() with no usable selector (bare array passed positionally,
empty params, ids: []) resolved successfully having deleted nothing.
All three now throw; the two legacy tests that pinned the silent
no-op as 'graceful' now pin the refusal.
- find() where keys accept both spellings: a metadata.-prefixed key
falls back to its flattened spelling when the prefixed one is not
indexed (metadata is flattened at index time). A literal nested custom
key named metadata still wins when indexed as spelled.
Five regression pins in aggregate-reserved-fields.test.ts (4 of 5 vary
red on the unfixed code).
Under default adaptive retention, every flush() recomputed total history
bytes by walking EVERY committed generation's delta — O(all generations)
with disk re-reads past the 4096-entry delta-cache bound. On a production
brain with 70,000+ accumulated generations this turned every write into a
full-tail scan (60-100s writes, escalating with history growth), even
though the free-RAM budget never tripped and nothing was ever reclaimed
(SELF-GENERATIONS-GROWTH).
historyBytes() now maintains a running total: seeded by one walk on first
use, then updated incrementally at both commit paths (+bytes) and the
compaction reclaim loop (−bytes), dropped on reopenAfterRestore. The
adaptive retention check on every flush is O(1). Invariant regression-
pinned: running total ≡ fresh walk through transact commits, single-op
group commits, and compaction.
New brain.historyStats() (exported HistoryStats): read-only generation
count / bytes / generation+timestamp range / horizon / retention mode /
effective budget — the one-call per-brain fleet audit for retention
exposure.
- New src/utils/osLimits.ts: reads RLIMIT_NOFILE (soft/hard, from
/proc/self/limits) and vm.max_map_count at open — once per process,
Linux-only, measurement-only — and warns loudly when either sits below the
pool-scale floors (soft NOFILE < 65536, max_map_count < 262144), with the
exact raise commands. On stock defaults the failure otherwise arrives as
EMFILE or a failed mmap deep inside an index open, long after the cause
stopped being visible. An unreadable limit produces NO warning — no
measurement, no claim — so non-Linux platforms stay silent.
- Exported for ops doors: checkOsLimits() returns the full OsLimitsReport;
floors exported as constants. Wired fire-and-forget in performInit after
storage init; the check can never affect open.
- Unit tests pin the parser (incl. 'unlimited'), the floor thresholds, the
null-never-warns rule, and the off-Linux silent path.
