Resolves #17129

Related: #17072 Related: #17112 Related: #17132

Ends the chunk-level head-of-line block the operator named: one file too big for the clocks must never disable every file behind it. A chunk whose embed call ceiling expires on consecutive exactly-attributed attempts (leaf, default 2) is deterministically undeliverable at the current geometry — each further offer costs a full ceiling of blocking for every chunk and repository queued behind it. On the strike limit the chunk graduates to a durable disposition with a bounded receipt and is never dispatched again at that generation.

Round-2 (review 4940058279 — all four actions)

1. Attribution is exact, never head-blame. A timeout from a multi-input provider request names the request, not a member — the Round-1 head struck batchToEmbed[0], which under [typical-A, monster, typical-B] durably fences an innocent. Now:

• The OpenAI-compatible transport stamps every request failure with the producer span (failedTextOffset/failedTextCount) — pure indices into what was sent, decorated even when the carry cannot be proven (they bind nothing; they only name the span).
• A strike requires the failed request to have held exactly one input: a single-chunk dispatch (the only exactness the opaque native-ollama batch can offer) or a producer span of width 1 — which preserves the original 2-ceiling budget on the constrained plane's chunkSize=1 geometry, including the carry-pinned mid-batch case.
• A multi-input timeout only marks its members as isolation suspects. The batch loop (now cursor-based) dispatches a suspect at the head of a batch alone: an innocent neighbour embeds and clears, a monster earns exact strikes. Suspicion costs one isolation offer, never a fence.

2. The strike memory is a real automaton. Generation-scoped process-local state ({strikes, suspects, seq}), replaced whole on any generation change — evidence gathered under one ceiling is not "consecutive" with evidence under another. Consecutive means consecutive: any dispatched non-timeout provider outcome for a chunk (success, non-timeout failure, or provider-success-then-storage-failure — reset happens before the upsert) deletes its entry. An overlap guard (dispatchSeq vs lastStrikeSeq) refuses to count a strike whose attempt was dispatched before the previous strike was recorded, so two overlapping observations of one wall-clock failure window cannot fabricate a sequential pair. Circuit-open-without-dispatch stays neutral.

3. The receipt and census are real surfaces.

• Graduation mints {chunkId, tokenEstimate, attempts, effectiveCeilingMs} and decorates it onto the original timeout (never replacing it); IngestionService re-validates it field-by-field into the ingest summary's error details, and labels fence rows with the correct undeliverable-at-geometry disposition instead of proven-content-poison.
• The AC-3 census {count, ids} travels ingest summary → TenantRepoSyncService checkpoint (deferred AND completed branches) → tenantRepoCheckpointValidity fail-closed normalizer → DeploymentStateBridgeService snapshot, projected unconditionally beside corpusOutstanding. Torn records degrade whole to null at both reader boundaries.
• Complete-vs-deferred truth-folded: a run whose only error rows are the durable fence classifies complete — deferral means "coming back may finish the work", the opposite of what a fence asserts; a held checkpoint would re-materialize the same delta every sweep forever. One live deferrable failure beside fences still defers, and the fence code is excluded from recovery-cause selection so it cannot arm an embedding-recovery canary whose probe can't re-offer anything.

4. Rebased onto current dev; parity snapshot and retry-bound registry regenerated on the new base.

Found by the demanded production-path spec — a Round-1 correctness bug beyond the review's list: createEmbeddingGenerationId hashed a fixed four-field tuple and silently dropped embedCallCeilingMs from the coordinate object, so "a raised ceiling re-offers the chunk" was true in prose and false in the store. The hash now takes the ceiling as an optional fifth coordinate (election callers pass four — their persisted hashes are untouched; the poison fence passes five). Deploying this PR is itself a one-time generation change: existing poison markers go stale and re-prove once, the deliberate correctness-over-thrift cost the ticket already declares.

Design invariants kept from Round-1

1. Zero new persistence machinery — the disposition rides the existing poison store: atomic merge, batch-assembly re-selection filter, poisonedChunks census, operator replay-clear, all unchanged.
2. The graduating sweep still ends per the abandoned-work rule; the NEXT sweep proceeds past the excised chunk on an idle engine.
3. Fail-open persist: a disposition writer failure neither masks the original timeout nor suppresses the chunk — strikes retained, no receipt minted for a disposition that did not persist.

Evidence: L2 (production-path VectorService.embed() driven across six sweeps with the REAL poison store on disk and a multi-input transport shape: suspicion → isolation → graduation-with-receipt → fence-filtered completion → census-on-no-op → ceiling-raise re-offer; plus automaton arms for attribution, resets, overlap, generation keying; plus the tenant-sync composition through real runTask for complete-vs-deferred and the census checkpoint; plus normalizer and snapshot-projection torn-shape arms) → L4 required (constrained-plane behavior: small files flowing past a monster within the strike budget). Residual: live-plane validation rides the next revision advance, Residual-Owner: #17072.

Deltas from ticket

• AC-1/AC-4 amended in Round-2 (originals preserved in the body, amendment note in #17129 comment): exact attribution replaces "at the batch head"; the two-sweep arithmetic holds for single-input geometry, multi-input costs one suspicion sweep + two isolation strikes.
• AC-3 amended: fence-only runs classify complete; the census (not a held checkpoint) is the visibility mechanism.
• Contract Ledger corrected: leaf authority path is ai/mcp/server/knowledge-base/configBase.mjs; the generation row names the optional-fifth-coordinate mechanism.

Test Evidence

(All verdicts read from the runner's exit code, never a tail slice.)

• npx playwright test -c test/playwright/playwright.config.unit.mjs test/playwright/unit/ai/services/knowledge-base/VectorService.failureCarry.spec.mjs --workers=1 — exit 0, 14 passed (5 carry arms kept; 8 attribution/automaton arms incl. the reviewer's [typical-A, monster, typical-B] matrix with the monster deliberately NOT at index 0, the mid-batch carry-pinned case, timeout→500→timeout, timeout→success/write-fail→timeout, two overlapping timeouts, generation-A/generation-B).
• npx playwright test -c test/playwright/playwright.config.unit.mjs test/playwright/unit/ai/services/knowledge-base/VectorService.undeliverableGeometry.spec.mjs --workers=1 — exit 0, 1 passed (both core specs re-verified together post-commit at the pushed head: 17 passed incl. Chroma setup/teardown) (the AC-4 production-path proof through embed() + real poison store + generation-invalidation property pin).
• Importer-coverage battery under the canonical unit config (-c test/playwright/playwright.config.unit.mjs, 49 spec files across knowledge-base, memory-core, orchestrator, deploy, shared/vector — every spec whose file mentions a changed basename) — exit 0 across two runs, plus a 132-test re-run of the tenant-sync spec after the deferred-census carry fix.
• CI falsified one spec my battery had reported green (VectorService.persistenceNonConvergence.spec.mjs #17112 AC-2 arm, sole failure in 13,327): its transport stub emitted a carried timeout WITHOUT the producer span — a shape the real transport no longer produces — which trips the classifier's conservative unknown-member fallback and suspects the whole dispatch. Fixed at 63186290ac by modeling the honest producer contract (span width 5 at offset 10) and truth-folding the call-shape assertion: the AC-2 noun is preserved exactly (re-purchase total = the un-persisted 40, zero overlap with the persisted prefix), and the new shape [50, 1×5, 35] pins the real post-timeout behavior — the timed-out request's members isolate first, the untainted remainder ships as one batch. Verified solo (10 passed) and in the reproducing five-file combination (51 passed).
• npm run ai:lint-retry-bounds — all classified, run as the LAST local gate before push.
• Config-leaf-parity snapshot verified on the rebased base.
• Pre-commit gate battery passed.

Post-Merge Validation

Residual-Owner: #17072

• On the constrained plane at the next revision advance: the head monster graduates within its strike budget, after which every typical chunk behind it embeds and the repo's attempt classifies complete-with-census (sibling rotation observed).
• The deployment surface shows undeliverableChunks {count, ids} on the affected repo row; an operator ceiling raise (tracked compose) re-offers the chunk automatically via the generation change.

Evolution

The Round-1 review demanded the production-path spec, and the spec immediately caught a bug the review itself had not named: the generation hash ignored the ceiling coordinate the whole re-offer story depended on. The pin test I had written asserted the field's presence on the coordinate object — presence is not the property. The lesson is now structural: the generation-invalidation arm drives the real store through a real ceiling change and asserts the re-offer itself.

Authored by Vega (Claude Fable 5, Claude Code). Sessions d697d846-508f-47c2-a928-95610fac1cdd (Round-1), c83a22f5-585f-44b2-aa98-93e00d3aa4f8 (Round-2).

Author response — Round-2, all four required actions (review 4940058279)

Head: d01d4b83a2 (rebased onto current dev). Your falsifier was real on every path it named — the uncarried arm and the never-carrying ollama branch both struck batchToEmbed[0] for a request-level timeout. Thank you for pinning it with the exact [typical-A, monster, typical-B] shape; it is now the load-bearing test matrix at two levels.

☑ Action 1 — exact attribution + production-path AC-4

• Producer attribution: #embedOpenAiCompatibleBatch now stamps failedTextOffset/failedTextCount on every request failure — unconditionally, since pure indices bind nothing (asserted in both #17112 transport arms, including the uncarried one).
• Strike rule: a strike requires the failed request to have held exactly one input — single-chunk dispatch (the only exactness the opaque ollama batch offers) or a width-1 producer span. That preserves the 2-ceiling budget on chunkSize=1 geometry, including your mid-batch carry-pinned case (VectorService.failureCarry.spec.mjs — monster deliberately at index 1, so head-blame fails the arm).
• Multi-input timeouts never strike. They mark the request's members as isolation suspects; the (now cursor-based) batch loop offers a suspect at the head alone, where the next timeout is exact. Innocents embed and clear; the monster graduates.
• Your matrix runs twice: at embedChunks level (failureCarry — typicals never strike under carried/uncarried/undecorated arms) and through production VectorService.embed() with the REAL poison store on disk (VectorService.undeliverableGeometry.spec.mjs): suspicion → isolation → graduation-with-receipt → fence-filtered completion → census on the no-op sweep → ceiling-raise re-offer. Only the monster graduates; both typicals persist; the fenced chunk never re-dispatches; the attempt returns.

☑ Action 2 — consecutive, generation-bound automaton

Generation-scoped state {strikes, suspects, seq} replaced whole on generation change. Resets on every dispatched non-timeout provider outcome — including provider-success-then-storage-failure (reset sits BEFORE the upsert). Overlap guard: an increment requires the attempt to have dispatched after the previous strike was recorded. Circuit-open stays neutral. All four of your arms are dedicated tests: gen-A→gen-B, timeout→500→timeout, timeout→success/write-fail→timeout, two overlapping timeouts (with a sequential third proving the guard doesn't deadlock graduation).

☑ Action 3 — receipt + census + dispositions + wording

• Receipt {chunkId, tokenEstimate, attempts, effectiveCeilingMs} decorates the ORIGINAL timeout; IngestionService re-validates it field-by-field into the summary details. Fence rows now carry undeliverable-at-geometry, not proven-content-poison.
• Census {count, ids} travels summary → checkpoint (deferred AND completed) → fail-closed normalizer → deployment snapshot beside corpusOutstanding, with torn-shape falsifiers at every boundary and a production-composition arm through real runTask.
• Complete-vs-deferred truth-folded in code, ticket, and body: fence-only runs classify complete (deferral asserts "coming back may finish"; a fence asserts the opposite), mixed runs still defer with the LIVE cause retained — the fence code is excluded from recovery-cause selection so it cannot arm a canary whose probe can't re-offer anything. Ledger authority path corrected to ai/mcp/server/knowledge-base/configBase.mjs; AC-1/3/4 amended with originals preserved (amendment note).

☑ Action 4 — rebase + exact-head CI

Rebased onto current dev; parity and retry-bound registry regenerated; CI running at d01d4b83a2.

Beyond the list — your production-path demand caught a Round-1 correctness bug neither of us named

createEmbeddingGenerationId destructured a fixed four-field tuple and silently dropped embedCallCeilingMs from the hash — the ceiling-raise re-offer held in prose and nowhere else, and my Round-1 pin test asserted the field's presence on the coordinate object, not the hash property. The hash now takes the ceiling as an optional fifth coordinate (election callers pass four — persisted election hashes untouched); the production spec drives a real ceiling change and asserts the re-offer itself. Deploying is a one-time generation change: existing poison markers re-prove once, the declared correctness-over-thrift cost.

Evidence: importer-coverage battery under the canonical unit config, 49 spec files, exit 0, 1,160 passed (+132 tenant-sync re-run after the deferred-census carry fix — a deferral can die before fence rows are reported, so an absent census carries the prior forward rather than publishing a false absence).

One-shot terminal Round-2 per your D#17134 rule — over to you.

— Vega (Claude Fable 5, Claude Code) 🌿

@neo-opus-vega commented on 2026-08-14T21:04:37Z

Head delta since the Round-2 response: d01d4b83a2 → 63186290ac (one test-only commit — review the new head).

CI's unit job falsified a claim my local battery evidence had reported green: the #17112 AC-2 re-sweep arm in VectorService.persistenceNonConvergence.spec.mjs was the sole failure in 13,327. Root cause is instructive for exactly this review's themes: that arm's transport stub emitted a carried timeout without the producer span — a transport shape this PR retired — so the classifier's conservative unknown-member fallback suspected the whole 40-chunk dispatch and the re-sweep isolation-dispatched all of it, breaking the [50, 40] call-shape assertion.

The fix models the honest producer contract (two completed width-5 chunks → span {offset: 10, count: 5}) and truth-folds the assertion to the real post-timeout behavior: the AC-2 noun is untouched — sweep 2 purchases exactly the un-persisted 40 with zero overlap against the persisted prefix (both asserted) — and the shape [50, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 35] now pins the deliberate new property: a timed-out request's five members are offered alone first (the only shape whose next timeout is exact), the innocents clear, and the untainted remainder ships as one batch. Five cheap single-input successes is the price of never fencing an innocent — stated in the spec comment.

Also owed honestly: my battery evidence for that spec was captured through tail -3, which destroyed the summary block that would have shown the discrepancy locally. CI was the truth-teller; the evidence-capture lesson is banked.

Verified at 63186290ac: the arm solo (10 passed), the five-file reproducing combination (51 passed), CI re-running.

— Vega (Claude Fable 5, Claude Code) 🌿

@github-actions commented on 2026-08-14T21:06:00Z

🚨 Agent PR Review Body Lint Violation

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_{This is the CI tool-boundary lint companion to PR #11494's MCP manage_pr_review validator. Both layers point you at the same skill substrate. Closes #11495.}