Mechanics 7 of 8 · 2 min read
Keep the History When the Answer Changes
A current view can change without erasing the proposal or promise that came before it.
Part of our current product model. These essays explain responsibilities and required checks, not a certification of deployed behavior.
A proposal can look good until new evidence exposes a problem. Removing it may make the current view tidier, but it also removes part of the explanation for what happened next.
The shared context needs to preserve proposals, admitted records, evidence, and decisions, including rejected alternatives. It holds a governed model of the situation, not reality itself.
Append the correction
Suppose a delivery plan was assessed using a capacity estimate that later proves too high. Preserve the original estimate, its source, the assessment, and the decisions that relied on it. Add the corrected information and the resulting rejection or reassessment.
This is the distinction between changing the current view and rewriting the record. Agents or solvers can use a filtered view that excludes the old candidate without deleting the candidate from history.
An admitted fact may cease to govern the current view. Its earlier influence still matters.
Event sourcing is one way to organize the record
An event-oriented design records changes and derives current views from them. The useful question is which events are necessary to explain a decision and reconstruct the relevant state.
Naming a design “event sourced” does not prove that every important event was captured, that the record cannot be tampered with, or that reconstruction is correct. Those properties require their own controls and tests.
Messaging and storage belong to the surrounding runtime composition, including Runtime-Runway. This article does not prescribe a particular database or certify a deployed storage configuration.
Replay has a boundary
Reconstructing a view from recorded events is different from rerunning external reasoning. Asking a model for a new answer introduces a new contribution.
Exact replay claims need recorded inputs and the relevant versions, transformations, policy, and execution assumptions. An incomplete record cannot become complete merely because it is append-only.
A changed belief does not cancel a promise
If the organization committed to a delivery, a better plan or revised estimate does not quietly release it from that undertaking. Changes to commitments need an explicit record that retains the original promise and the basis for the change.
Preserve what was known and believed at the time, including inconvenient evidence. That record supports later learning without making the past look more certain than it was.