SAFETY-41: escalate a sustained engagement, so a runaway is never held
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:
glenn schrooyen
2026-09-05 18:13:09 +02:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 8790c4d38f
commit 3527c8a04c
2 changed files with 93 additions and 10 deletions
+43 -2
View File
@@ -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