Standing-session custody and recovery
Disposition: live repair under direct Human direction. Delivery: one-session import, job-session bulk backfill, and the bounded REQ-290 standing repair are fulfilled; broader session catalog work remains outside this cut. Last observed: 2026-08-26T16:55:33-04:00. Evidence: the recent exact tranche contains 26 standing executions mapping to 22 native artifacts. REQ-290 completed that bounded backfill; it does not establish a universal historical boundary.
This entry answers a narrow recovery question: when a standing office signs out, where is the native session that actually carried its work, and which repair can recover it without inventing custody?
What survived
The native provider artifacts still exist. FIND-809 established the visible symptom: recent standing-office closes had no native session pointer even though several sign-outs occurred. FIND-811 then matched every one of the 26 recent null closes to a birth receipt, spanning 22 distinct native artifacts. Some native threads legitimately carried more than one standing execution.
No transcript loss was proved. The loss was at the joining surface: a later reader could see a close but could not follow it to the acting artifact.
Where the join failed
tools/print_session_open.py emits host session identifiers at birth, but the
standing-session resolver did not consume the Codex acting-thread environment
identifier. The standing execution was therefore born without its native
pointer. Sign-out could only close the execution; it did not have an exact
artifact relation to preserve.
This distinction matters. Root lineage and acting artifact are not the same
thing. PROP-178, enacted through REQ-290, binds the acting Codex artifact from
CODEX_THREAD_ID, while any root-session lineage remains separate. It also
allows several standing executions to refer to one artifact when exact birth
receipts prove that cardinality.
Instruments and their standing
| Instrument | Standing | What it can honestly do |
|---|---|---|
tools/session_import.py |
shipped public mouth | Import one named native session into the archive |
corpus.py ops session-backfill |
shipped public mouth | Backfill the job-session archive through the supported job path |
backfill_standing_office_rows() |
shelved internal helper | Historical lower-confidence standing matcher; unsafe as the repair for this tranche |
| PROP-178 | enacted contract | Bind standing executions to their exact acting artifact at birth and recover the bounded witnessed tranche |
| REQ-290 | fulfilled bounded repair | Preserve acting-artifact identity, shared-artifact cardinality, and reviewed historical evidence |
FIND-813 explains why the old helper is not merely hidden functionality waiting for a prettier command. Its time-window and one-artifact-per-row assumptions would reject four witnessed rows or force a false history. It remains evidence and salvage, not the route to run.
Movement
- REQ-022 shipped the single-session import route.
- FIND-245 exposed the broader session-recovery need.
- PROP-140 and REQ-254 established the first standing-office recovery shape.
- PROP-161 and REQ-272 shipped the supported job-session bulk backfill.
- FIND-809 found that standing-office sign-outs were still closing without native pointers.
- FIND-811 recovered exact birth-receipt matches for the recent tranche.
- FIND-813 refused the legacy helper as a truthful backfill for that evidence.
- PROP-178 was enacted and REQ-290 fulfilled the bounded forward and reviewed historical standing repair; broader session-catalog work remains separate.
Boundary and next cut
REQ-290 performed only its bounded reviewed repair. The 26/22 evidence remains the exact witnessed boundary for that tranche; older null rows remain unknown until they gain equally strong evidence. Shared artifacts should be copied once into the archive and referenced by every proven execution, not duplicated to satisfy a job-era exclusivity rule.
Reopen this account when REQ-290 is contradicted or materially recut, when a broader session catalog is authorized, or when new evidence changes the acting-artifact, shared-cardinality, archive, or unknown boundaries. The owning execution rows, provider receipts, and archive bytes remain the authority. This entry preserves the reading and the route back to them.