self-correction-is-resource-sustainable
OUT derived (depth 5)
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.
Summary
The system's ability to fix its own mistakes and detect stale information was supposed to run indefinitely without running out of resources, because token budgets were thought to be accurately tracked in both directions. This claim is currently retracted, meaning something in its supporting chain broke down — either the resource management isn't actually sustainable, or the self-correction mechanism isn't working as described, so there's no guarantee the correction loop can keep running without exhausting its budget.
Justifications
SL — Self-correction requires sustainable resources; resource management requires correction targets that consume budgets; the gate inherits all deficiency conditions from both antecedents' dependency chains.
Antecedents (all must be IN):
- resource-management-supports-belief-currency — Active belief currency management — sustainable derivation of new beliefs and staleness detection for existing ones — operates with accurate bidirectional token budget control, ensuring derivation rounds allocate resources correctly per agent and output fits context-limited consumer constraints.
- complete-system-is-self-correcting — 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.
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:
- self-correction-is-structurally-and-resource-sustainable — The system's self-correction is doubly sustainable: resource-sustainable through accurate bounded token budgets that prevent exhaustion, and structurally sustainable through operation on architecture free of hidden fragility — neither resource scarcity nor architectural decay can undermine the self-correction loop.
- self-correction-sustains-lifecycle-indefinitely — Resource-sustainable self-correction operating within a deterministic, architecturally-grounded, structurally-sound lifecycle means the system can maintain belief quality indefinitely — resource efficiency prevents degradation while structural soundness prevents architectural drift.
- system-sustainably-grows-and-self-corrects — The system simultaneously grows its knowledge base through exhaustive deterministic reasoning and LLM-driven derivation with guaranteed termination, while sustainably self-correcting through contradiction resolution and staleness detection — all within bounded resource consumption managed by accurate bidirectional token budgets