feb535a8fb
Four probes were written from a blank file and each re-learned the same lessons by losing a run: that a flat run cannot be told from a frozen guest without a stall witness, that results held to the end of a run are destroyed by a turn timeout, that a roster count which is not the stage's member count means a different stage loaded and must be discarded, and that a run's witness state has to be read before its numbers. Writing each lesson down did not stop the next probe repeating it, because each probe started from nothing. probeharness.py makes them structural. Probe(baseline=N) discovers the roster, rescans up to five times and refuses to start if the count never reaches the baseline. The witness is calibrated on construction, sampled by tick() and reported by status() and summary(), so a probe cannot forget it, and when no witness is found it reports UNVALIDATED rather than zero stalls. emit() flushes on every line. craft(), strengths(), alive() and heap() supply the roster-to-craft link, per-record liveness and the raw heap, so a new probe writes only its own logic. Verified rather than asserted: deploy_probe.py reimplements the per-record deployment watch on top of it in about forty lines against wave7_probe's hundred and fifty, and its first live run was clean -- 116 roster records, 32 witnesses at 10/s, zero stalled samples, seven losses tracked, and the TSV written incrementally. Nothing about the result is new, which is the point: the harness reproduces a known-good measurement. The existing probes are deliberately not ported. They work, and rewriting them would risk changing results other documents cite. New probes should use the harness; old ones should be ported when they next need a change.
2.8 KiB
A shared probe harness — so the same lessons stop being re-learned
Status: ✅ built and verified on a live run.
Why
Four separate probes were written from a blank file, and each re-learned the same lessons by losing a run:
| lesson | where it was learned | where it was re-learned |
|---|---|---|
| a flat run is indistinguishable from a frozen guest without a stall witness | guest-stalls.md |
3 further probes |
| save incrementally — a turn timeout destroys anything held to the end | guest-stalls.md |
ob_probe2.py, four iterations later |
| a roster count that is not the stage's member count is a different stage — discard | mission-per-record-strength.md |
— |
| read the witness first, before interpreting any number | remaining-ob-hunt.md |
— |
Writing each lesson down did not stop the next probe from repeating it, because
each probe started from nothing. tools/re-capture/probeharness.py makes them
structural instead.
What it provides
p = Probe(baseline=116) # None = accept whatever loads
if not p.ok: sys.exit(p.why) # e.g. "DISCARD: roster settled at 42"
print(p.summary()) # witness count + rate, read this FIRST
p.log('t\tvalue') # opens a TSV, flushed on every emit
while p.tick(every=15, secs=300):
p.emit(...) # written and flushed immediately
print(p.status()) # '' | '*** GUEST STALLED ***' | UNVALIDATED
Probe(baseline=…)discovers the roster, rescans up to five times, and refuses to start if the count never reaches the baseline.- The witness is built in: calibrated on construction, sampled by
tick(), reported bystatus()andsummary(). A probe cannot forget it, and when no witness is found it saysUNVALIDATEDrather than reporting zero stalls. emit()flushes on every line — results cannot be lost to a timeout.craft(),strengths(),alive()andheap()provide the roster→craft link, per-record liveness and the raw heap, so a new probe writes only its own logic.
✅ Verified
deploy_probe.py reimplements the per-record deployment watch on top of it, in
about 40 lines against wave7_probe.py's 150. First live run:
roster 116, definitions 14, 32 witnesses at 10/s, stalled samples 0
t= 249s deployed=40 up=0 down=1 (cum 0/7)
Baseline check passed, witness found and reporting, seven losses tracked,
/tmp/deploy.tsv written incrementally. Nothing about the result is new — that
is the point; the harness reproduces a known-good measurement.
Not done
The existing probes (wave6/7, ob_probe2, ob_by_hud, census, liveness)
are not ported. They work, and rewriting them risks changing results that
other documents cite. New probes should use the harness; old ones should be
ported only when they next need a change.