SAFETY-41: escalate a sustained engagement, so a runaway is never held
checks / unit (pull_request) Successful in 4m59s
checks / unit (pull_request) Successful in 4m59s
Review found the case I asked it to construct, and it is not a corner case. The rate limit alone DELAYS A RUNAWAY: a benign one-cycle clamp that spends the budget, then a continuous §10.3-shaped runaway, held the runaway's first notification for up to 140 s - one REASSERT_S minus a cycle. On the live install, where ordinary railing spends the budget essentially all the time, a runaway arriving during normal operation would be delayed with near-certainty. That is the "benign noise suppresses the bug signal" shape this module's docstring is written against, and the family the first attempt at this card died of. THE ESCALATION. An episode that has not yet spoken because an EARLIER, unrelated episode spent the budget speaks anyway once it has engaged SUSTAINED_CYCLES = 3 times in a row. The discriminator is run length and the two populations genuinely differ: the live flood was runs of length ONE (engage, de-assert, engage), while a runaway engages every cycle. Measured, and it costs nothing it was protecting: live scatter flood (305 cycles, 1-in-6) 11 -> 11 notifications chatter 1-engaged/3-clean over 8000 s 50 -> 50 notifications pinned 900 s quarter (floor is 5) 6 -> 6 alarms runaway delay after a benign episode 140 s -> 10 s ⚠️ MY COUNTERFACTUAL CHECK COULD NOT FAIL FOR THE DEFECT IT NAMED, and review caught that too. It read `ClampWatchdog().note(True, ...) is True` - a FRESH object, which only exercises the `last_alarm is None` branch, the trivially-true one. A fresh watchdog has no earlier episode to be held back BY. It now SPENDS THE BUDGET FIRST: benign clamp, gap past CLEAR_CYCLES, then a continuous runaway, and asserts the delay is well under REASSERT_S. That is the third instance in this file of the family recorded at line 216 and at the 224 s sweep, and it was guarding the most safety-critical property in the change. Also pinned: `last_alarm` SURVIVING the de-assert. Review built the mutation - if the de-assert also refreshed it, chatter collapses from 50 notifications to 1 and the alarm never fires again, with the suite green. That is the "alarm that never fires" class, a different bug from one that fires later. Now caught. Both new checks verified against the mutations they name: removing the escalation -> 1 FAILED; refreshing last_alarm on de-assert -> 1 FAILED. Full suite: 21 passed, 0 failed. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BwRLw7eKYj2byVdwB6kbjU
This commit is contained in:
co-authored by
Claude Opus 5
parent
8790c4d38f
commit
3527c8a04c
@@ -154,8 +154,9 @@ REASON_CODE = "OUTPUT_CLAMP"
|
||||
# and 2 loop-side ones". On the live install the counter reached 48 loop-side
|
||||
# ENGAGEMENTS in ~25 minutes of ordinary operation - roughly one cycle in six,
|
||||
# not a pinned rail, but far more often than a guard sized for 2-in-60 assumed -
|
||||
# and at a 30 s re-assert the owner received a persistent notification about it
|
||||
# all day.
|
||||
# and the owner received a persistent notification about it all day. ⚠️ NOT
|
||||
# because of the 30 s re-assert - see the block below; those notifications never
|
||||
# consulted this constant at all.
|
||||
#
|
||||
# ⚠️ BOTH FIGURES ARE ENGAGEMENT COUNTS; only the regime differs - 2-in-60 was
|
||||
# measured over a §10.3 RUNAWAY, 48-in-305 was ordinary running on the live
|
||||
@@ -210,6 +211,28 @@ REASSERT_S = 150.0
|
||||
# Consecutive clean cycles before the alarm de-asserts (10.2 hysteresis).
|
||||
CLEAR_CYCLES = 3
|
||||
|
||||
# ⚠️ SAFETY-41. Consecutive ENGAGED cycles after which an episode speaks even if
|
||||
# the notification budget is spent. THE ESCALATION EXISTS BECAUSE THE RATE LIMIT
|
||||
# ALONE DELAYS A RUNAWAY, and review measured it: a benign one-cycle clamp
|
||||
# followed by a continuous runaway held the runaway's first notification for up
|
||||
# to 140 s - one REASSERT_S minus a cycle. On the live install, where ordinary
|
||||
# railing spends the budget essentially all the time, a runaway arriving during
|
||||
# normal operation would be delayed with near-certainty. That is the "benign
|
||||
# noise suppresses the bug signal" shape this module's docstring is written
|
||||
# against.
|
||||
#
|
||||
# THE DISCRIMINATOR IS RUN LENGTH, and the two populations genuinely differ: the
|
||||
# live flood was runs of length ONE (engage, de-assert, engage), while a §10.3
|
||||
# runaway engages on EVERY cycle. So a sustained run speaks regardless of budget,
|
||||
# and scattered chatter does not.
|
||||
#
|
||||
# Measured, shipped-without vs shipped-with - it costs nothing it was protecting:
|
||||
# live scatter flood (305 cycles, 1-in-6) 11 -> 11 notifications
|
||||
# chatter 1-engaged/3-clean over 8000 s 50 -> 50 notifications
|
||||
# pinned 900 s quarter (floor is 5) 6 -> 6 alarms
|
||||
# runaway delay after a benign episode 140 s -> 10 s
|
||||
SUSTAINED_CYCLES = 3
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
@dataclass(frozen=True)
|
||||
class ClampResult:
|
||||
@@ -315,6 +338,10 @@ class ClampWatchdog:
|
||||
self.last_alarm: datetime | None = None
|
||||
self.reason = ""
|
||||
self.clean_cycles = 0
|
||||
# SAFETY-41. Consecutive engaged cycles, and whether THIS episode has
|
||||
# spoken yet - the two the escalation clause needs.
|
||||
self.run_len = 0
|
||||
self.spoken = False
|
||||
|
||||
def note(self, engaged: bool, reason: str, now: datetime) -> bool:
|
||||
"""Advance one cycle. True when the caller should raise the alarm.
|
||||
@@ -326,10 +353,12 @@ class ClampWatchdog:
|
||||
self.engagements += 1
|
||||
self.clean_cycles = 0
|
||||
self.reason = reason
|
||||
self.run_len += 1
|
||||
if not self.active:
|
||||
self.active = True
|
||||
self.since = now
|
||||
self.episodes += 1
|
||||
self.spoken = False
|
||||
# ⚠️ SAFETY-41. THE RISING EDGE IS RATE-LIMITED TOO, and it did
|
||||
# not used to be. It fired unconditionally, so a condition that
|
||||
# engages and clears repeatedly raised one notification PER
|
||||
@@ -358,15 +387,27 @@ class ClampWatchdog:
|
||||
if (self.last_alarm is None
|
||||
or (now - self.last_alarm).total_seconds() >= REASSERT_S):
|
||||
self.last_alarm = now
|
||||
self.spoken = True
|
||||
return True
|
||||
return False
|
||||
# ⚠️ THE ESCALATION. An episode that has not yet spoken because the
|
||||
# budget was spent by an EARLIER, unrelated episode speaks anyway
|
||||
# once it has engaged SUSTAINED_CYCLES times in a row. A runaway
|
||||
# engages every cycle and reaches it; the scattered one-cycle
|
||||
# railing that produced the live flood never does.
|
||||
if not self.spoken and self.run_len >= SUSTAINED_CYCLES:
|
||||
self.last_alarm = now
|
||||
self.spoken = True
|
||||
return True
|
||||
# Still engaged: re-assert on the slow cadence, not every cycle.
|
||||
if (self.last_alarm is None
|
||||
or (now - self.last_alarm).total_seconds() >= REASSERT_S):
|
||||
self.last_alarm = now
|
||||
self.spoken = True
|
||||
return True
|
||||
return False
|
||||
|
||||
self.run_len = 0
|
||||
if not self.active:
|
||||
return False
|
||||
self.clean_cycles += 1
|
||||
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user