Build Log

Engine: Reconciliation + Deferral Decay

June 22, 2026

The OS crossed from recording pain to forcing its resolution — spin reconciliation, deferral decay, and a disposition vocabulary, all enforced as invariants.

EngineOSEnforcement

invariants added

files changed

validator paths tested

proposal written, not built

Timeline

Start

Engine-health critique

OS records pain but never forces resolution

Mid

Three fixes chosen over the Council

Plumbing before the shiny object

Mid

Count reconciliation rejected

Zeb: counts are fakeable — use IDs

Late

Validator exercised 7 ways

Grandfather, block, escape hatch, decay all verified

Committed; retro miss surfaced

The session that hardened the loop nearly skipped it

What shipped

ID-based spin reconciliation in build-session.mjs — every spin id lands in exactly one disposition bucket, hard-fail with escape hatch, legacy sessions grandfathered

Deferral decay ledger in build-trends.mjs — 3rd deferral of a key blocks unless human_accepted, ledger persisted to public/build-log/deferral-ledger.json

Disposition vocabulary in _SCHEMA.md and gates.md — resolved | converted | accepted | deferred; deferred is no longer terminal

Emergent-behavior watch — read-only instruments for spin-recording avoidance, human_accepted overuse, and thin satisfy-the-validator dispositions

Legacy 'Other' decay key discharged (resolved by existing traps; 2 of 3 deferrals covered zero spins)

docs/forge-journal/crucible-proposal.md — Crucible phase + six-role Council (incl. Steward) written but deliberately not built

“The OS records pain, but does not reliably force pain into resolution. It's a net, not a lock.”
— Engine-health critique that opened the session