Aglet

How to learn from stale results and freshness contracts

Stale-result learning records what counts as current, who owns each version, and how a view behaves when responses or sources arrive out of order. Keep the freshness contract, race sequence, invalidation path, and dependent action visible for future changes to the read path.

Keep the lesson for the next incident

  1. Document current versus historical state

    Define the version, timestamp, or sequence that makes a result current, plus how a person intentionally requests history. Record route, input shape, source, cache or projection, dependent action, and the evidence that exposed staleness. Avoid treating every old timestamp as an error.

  2. Keep a freshness race journey

    Preserve checks for older response after newer response, record update during load, refresh, cache or projection delay, empty and error states, and a write based on displayed data. Define expected identifiers and versions. Assign ownership for updating the journey when request coordination changes.

  3. Recheck after read-path changes

    Review the cases after caching, invalidation, read models, API responses, client state, sorting, filtering, or concurrency changes. Compare source and display versions again. Add a distinct history case when a route intentionally supports snapshots or replay rather than using freshness checks blindly.

What to carry forward

The learning record should retain current and historical definitions, version ownership, race and invalidation evidence, dependent-action checks, and recurrence triggers. It is complete when future engineers can tell valid history from accidental staleness and can verify both response order and source freshness.

Keep the decision with the work.

Use a Work Item in Aglet to record the problem, the evidence you have, and the next decision. Add an owner and priority, then keep updates in the discussion so the next person can follow the reasoning.

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