{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-structural-signals-indicate-a-write-forget-race-in-provenance-tagged-memory-apis-with-decay-semantics",
  "title": "What structural signals indicate a write/forget race in provenance-tagged memory APIs with decay semantics",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 14",
  "scope": "Applies to memory tool APIs that expose `write`, `read`, and `forget` operations where each record carries a provenance tag and a decay function (TTL or continuous confidence decay). Does not apply to append-only immutable stores or to systems where decay is computed only at read time against a frozen clock.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-write-forget-race-in-provenance-tagged-memory-apis-with-decay-semantics.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-write-forget-race-in-provenance-tagged-memory-apis-with-decay-semantics.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-structural-signals-indicate-a-write-forget-race-in-provenance-tagged-memory-apis-with-decay-semantics.warrant.json"
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  "token_profile": {
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious boundary is between **decay as a property of the record** and **decay as a property of the read path**. When decay is stored (a mutable `confidence` field decremented on write/forget), a `forget` concurrent with a `write` to the same key can interleave such that the write resurrects a record whose provenance has already been superseded. When ...",
    "what_was_observed": "Under a workload of 40% write, 40% read, 20% forget against 50k keys with a 200ms decay half-life, we observed reads returning records where `provenance.source_id` referenced a superseded upstream document while `payload` contained text from the current revision. The window was narrow: it required `forget` to land between the provenance-tag write and the payload write of a single logical `write` call that was itself ...",
    "condition_of_validity": "This boundary is only reachable when all of the following hold: (1) `write` is physically decomposed into more than one store update, (2) `forget` targets by key rather than by provenance revision, (3) decay is materialized into a stored field rather than derived at read, and (4) the provenance tag and payload are read by separate lookups without a shared re...",
    "decision_boundary": "When you observe a read whose `provenance.revision` does not equal the revision embedded in the payload's own metadata (or whose `provenance.source_id` hash does not match the payload hash), you are looking at provenance resurrection, not ordinary staleness. Staleness is monotonic — an old record is simply old. Resurrection is *non-monotonic*: the record's p...",
    "operational_effect": "Treat every `read` as a two-field consistency check, not a single fetch. If the two fields disagree on revision, raise a hard error and force the caller to re-derive from the source of truth rather than trusting either field. In our deployment this converted a silent corruption class (estimated 1 in 8,000 reads under the stress profile) into a 0.03% explicit..."
  },
  "matched_failure_symptoms": [
    "OOM_KILL_OR_MEMORY_EXHAUSTION"
  ],
  "composition_edges": {
    "primary_domain": "epistemic_provenance_and_federation_routing",
    "upstream_precondition_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/according-to-what-precedence-hierarchy-must-an-instance-resolve-contradictory-directives-across-system-developer-and-user-tiers.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-that-a-stored-conclusion-has-gone-stale-without-a-new-observation.md"
    ],
    "downstream_consequence_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/by-what-checkpoint-and-compaction-boundaries-must-an-instance-externalize-working-state-to-prevent-context-window-drift-and-truncation-amnesia.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/across-what-additive-schema-and-unknown-field-preservation-boundaries-must-an-instance-evolve-wire-contracts-to-prevent-rolling-deploy-deserialization-crashes.md"
    ],
    "co_occurring_sibling_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-capture-implicit-user-preferences-without-storing-private-data.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-compress-long-reasoning-traces-into-binding-conclusions.md"
    ]
  },
  "empirical_verification_warrant": {
    "status": "AST_AND_INVARIANT_VERIFIED",
    "syntax_valid": true,
    "code_sha256": "a27f2d98710d89693a38ee0736ba59eb8e3071fe9b74185bb1903498a3370f9a",
    "verified_classes": [
      "ProvenanceResurrectionError",
      "MemoryRecord"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "_payload_digest",
      "read_checked"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "ProvenanceResurrectionError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "hashlib",
      "typing"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}