complete-system-is-self-correcting
OUT derived (depth 4)
The system actively maintains its own consistency along two independent dimensions: the TMS core handles exceptional conditions (contradictions trigger deterministic resolution, propagation respects lifecycle state), while belief currency management detects and surfaces drift in source material — no inconsistency persists undetected or unresolved.
Summary
This claim says the system keeps itself honest in two ways — the truth maintenance engine resolves logical contradictions automatically, and a separate staleness-checking mechanism flags beliefs whose source material has changed. Together, nothing slips through the cracks. However, this claim is currently unsupported because at least one of its foundations no longer holds, meaning the system cannot fully guarantee this self-correcting property right now.
Justifications
SL — automated contradiction resolution + active currency tracking = self-correction (depth-4 GATE from two depth-3 GATE)
Antecedents (all must be IN):
- tms-handles-all-conditions-safely — The TMS core handles both normal operation (crash-free truth propagation via BFS with stop-on-unchanged) and exceptional conditions (deterministic contradiction resolution via backtracking with least-entrenched selection) through shared propagation infrastructure — no reachable execution state leads to undefined behavior.
- belief-currency-is-actively-managed — The system actively manages belief currency bidirectionally: the production-ready derive pipeline safely introduces new beliefs through defensive validation, while the staleness CI gate detects drift in existing beliefs against source material — together preventing both unsafe additions and undetected obsolescence.
Unless (any of these IN defeats this justification):
- propagate-assumes-dependents-exist — Every ID in `node.dependents` is accessed via `self.nodes[dep_id]` without a membership check; a dangling dependent reference will raise `KeyError` — this is intentional (broken invariant = bug)
- derive-agent-count-bug — `_build_beliefs_section` has a bug: `count += len(belief_ids)` is inside the per-belief loop instead of outside it, inflating the count and shrinking the non-agent budget below intended size
- missing-source-file-is-silent — If a node's source file no longer exists on disk, `check_stale` silently skips it; callers cannot distinguish "file deleted" from "file never tracked."
- hash-truncation-is-16-hex — Source hashes are SHA-256 truncated to the first 16 hex characters (64 bits), reducing collision resistance to ~32 bits for birthday attacks compared to the full 256-bit hash.
Dependents
These beliefs depend on this one:
- backend-independent-self-correction — The complete self-correction pipeline — contradiction resolution through dependency-directed backtracking, staleness detection through source hash comparison, and ongoing belief currency management — operates identically across all storage backends, making the system's self-maintaining properties a deployment-independent guarantee rather than a backend-specific capability.
- dual-quality-enforcement-spans-automated-and-explicit — Belief quality is enforced by two independent mechanisms that cannot interfere: automated self-correction autonomously maintains consistency through contradiction resolution and staleness detection, while explicit quality review independently evaluates derived beliefs with read-only fault tolerance — dual enforcement ensures quality even when one mechanism is insufficient.
- query-resilience-serves-self-correcting-knowledge — All query access paths — interactive LLM synthesis, batch search, and compact summarization — degrade gracefully with deterministic output while operating against a knowledge base that actively self-corrects through contradiction resolution and staleness detection, ensuring degraded queries still return data from a consistency-maintained belief network
- self-correction-is-resource-sustainable — The system's self-correction capability — contradiction resolution at derivation time and staleness detection at maintenance time — is resource-sustainable: accurate bidirectional token budgets support continuous belief derivation and maintenance, ensuring the correction loop can operate indefinitely without resource exhaustion.
- self-correction-requires-no-external-dependencies — The system's self-correction capabilities — contradiction resolution through dependency-directed backtracking and staleness detection through source hash comparison — operate entirely within a self-contained, safely-layered architecture with zero external dependencies, ensuring maintenance is never blocked by unavailable services, network failures, or broken supply chains
- system-autonomously-converges-and-self-corrects — The system autonomously reaches and maintains consistent states through two complementary mechanisms: passive convergence ensures every modification path (import, retraction, dedup) reaches a deterministic stable state, while active self-correction (contradiction resolution and staleness detection) ensures consistency is preserved over time — combining equilibrium-seeking with consistency-maintaining.
- system-is-externally-controlled-and-internally-self-correcting — The system achieves dual-layer assurance: external interfaces are fully controlled through bidirectional token bounds and defensive belief ingestion, while internal consistency is actively maintained through contradiction resolution at derivation time and staleness detection at maintenance time.
- system-is-self-correcting-and-exception-proof — The system is both actively self-correcting (maintaining consistency through the derive pipeline for new beliefs and staleness detection for existing ones) and passively exception-proof (handling contradictions through deterministic backtracking and challenges through reliable dialectical transformation) — providing comprehensive fault tolerance that covers both anticipated maintenance and unanticipated disruptions.