propagation-is-safe-under-graph-inconsistency
IN derived (depth 3)
Truth propagation achieves correctness even when the dependency graph contains dangling references: missing nodes are skipped with structured warnings rather than crashing, dangling IDs are excluded from both the changed and visited sets, and this graceful degradation composes with the underlying termination and lifecycle-awareness guarantees for all reachable nodes.
Summary
The system can safely update truth values across the network even when some references point to nodes that no longer exist. Instead of crashing on broken links, it skips them with warnings and continues working correctly for everything else. This matters because it means the graph can be in a partially inconsistent state — nodes deleted, references stale — and propagation still produces correct results for all the nodes that do exist.
Justifications
SL — Dangling-reference containment composes with propagation safety to handle graph inconsistency gracefully
Antecedents (all must be IN):
- dangling-dependents-are-safely-contained — Dangling dependent references are safely contained across all propagation dimensions: BFS skips missing nodes with structured warnings, the changed set never includes ghost IDs, and the visited set excludes dangling IDs so later-created nodes propagate normally.
- propagation-is-safe-and-terminating — Truth propagation is both lifecycle-safe and guaranteed to terminate: retracted nodes are skipped, trigger nodes are never recomputed, BFS prevents stack overflow, and stop-on-unchanged prevents oscillation — propagation respects every node state it encounters.
Dependents
These beliefs depend on this one:
- justification-addition-is-robust-across-graph-states — Adding a justification to an existing node achieves fully consistent multi-dimensional propagation — truth values, dependents index, and access tags — even when the dependency graph contains dangling references or lifecycle-marked nodes, because propagation safely handles both graph anomalies and node lifecycle states.
- propagation-is-topology-complete-and-inconsistency-safe — Truth propagation is both topologically complete — reaching all transitively dependent nodes including those connected through outlist entries, not just antecedent references — and safe under graph inconsistency, skipping dangling dependent references with structured warnings rather than crashing, ensuring correct cascading even in networks with imperfect structural integrity such as nodes deleted without full reference cleanup.