One fact, placed both ways: where its commit sits on the run branch, and
what clock stamped it (epoch seconds). Every recency question in the
derivation table is a comparison of two of these (#346).
The branch is the authority — state.yaml commits and artifact landings are
linear on it, and no machine's clock can contradict a parent-child edge. The
timestamp is the fallback for a fact the branch cannot place: an observation
built by hand in a test, a source that offers no history, an escalation
resolved in a commit the run directory never saw.
One fact, placed both ways: where its commit sits on the run branch, and what clock stamped it (epoch seconds). Every recency question in the derivation table is a comparison of two of these (#346).
The branch is the authority —
state.yamlcommits and artifact landings are linear on it, and no machine's clock can contradict a parent-child edge. The timestamp is the fallback for a fact the branch cannot place: an observation built by hand in a test, a source that offers no history, an escalation resolved in a commit the run directory never saw.