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rfc: add OTEL trace wiring to continue-work-signal-v2#361

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May 1, 2026
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rfc: add OTEL trace wiring to continue-work-signal-v2#361
ronan-dandelion-cult merged 3 commits intocael/325-canonical2from
ronan/otel-rfc-wiring

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Adds §6.7 "OTEL trace wiring across the substrate queue boundary" to the continue-work-signal-v2 RFC.

Requested by figs in #sprites-of-thornfield 18:05 PDT 2026-04-26 as part of the canticle-prep observability substrate.

What

New §6.7 documents the queue-lifecycle OTEL span schema that extends §6.6's lifecycle-side spans across the substrate queue boundary:

  • Per-entry spans on enqueueSystemEvent / enqueueSessionDelivery / AnnounceQueueItem / terminal deliver — the queue-side analog of the §6.6 continuation.delegate.{enqueue,spawn,return} triple.
  • W3C traceparent propagation on the queue payload itself (not ambient runtime). Enqueue→announce is parent/child (work the producer caused); announce→spawn is a link (preserves §6.6's separate-trace-tree invariant for spawn turns that live in different generation cycles).
  • Chain-budget-capped emission — the load-bearing semantic. Cap is chain step count, not recipient count. Per-completion fan-out is 1 chain step regardless of recipient cardinality, per cael's continue_delegate: multi-recipient return primitive (one completion → N receivers) #355 design direction. This bounds per-trace span volume to O(chain_budget), not O(chain_budget × recipients), so a runaway multi-recipient fan-out can't flood the trace backend.
  • Multi-recipient fan-out spans (continue_delegate: multi-recipient return primitive (one completion → N receivers) #355 path) — one parent continuation.queue.fanout span + per-target child continuation.queue.deliver linked (not parented), so per-recipient failure isolation surfaces in the trace.

Why this PR exists

Lands together with the implementing PRs as canticle-prep substrate:

Scope

Doc-only. No code changes. Spec target for runtime instrumentation, not implemented behavior — same posture as §6.6.

Files

  • docs/design/continue-work-signal-v2.md: TOC entry + new §6.7 (~41 lines added before §7)

Documents the queue-lifecycle span schema that lands together with
#354 (substrate-queue-native dispatch) and #355 (multi-recipient
delegate-return) as the canticle-prep observability substrate.

- per-entry spans on enqueueSystemEvent / enqueueSessionDelivery /
  AnnounceQueueItem / terminal deliver
- W3C traceparent on queue payload (enqueue→announce parent/child;
  announce→spawn link, preserving §6.6 separate-trace-tree invariant)
- chain-budget-capped span emission: cap = chain step count, NOT
  recipient count. Per-completion fan-out is 1 step regardless of
  recipient cardinality (cael's #355 direction)
- multi-recipient fan-out: parent fan-out span + per-target child
  link, so per-recipient outcome surfaces independently and partial
  failures don't orphan the parent

Requested by figs in #sprites-of-thornfield 18:05 PDT 2026-04-26.
@ronan-dandelion-cult ronan-dandelion-cult changed the base branch from flesh_beast_figs/20260414-claude to cael/325-canonical2 April 27, 2026 01:17
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💡 Codex Review

await persistPostCompactionDelegateChainState({
count: nextCompactionChainCount,
log: (message) => deps.log(message),
sessionEntry,
sessionKey: params.entry.sessionKey,

P2 Badge Persist chain state before retryable delegate side effects

deliverQueuedPostCompactionDelegate performs the side effect (spawnSubagentDirect) before persisting updated chain state, and then throws if persistence fails. In that failure path, the queue entry is left pending and retried, so the same delegate can be spawned again on each retry attempt. This creates duplicate delegate execution whenever session-store writes are transiently failing, which can fan out repeated work/messages to users.


if (drainInProgress.get(opts.drainKey)) {
opts.log.info(`${opts.logLabel}: already in progress for ${opts.drainKey}, skipping`);
return;

P2 Badge Re-drain after skipping due to in-progress drain key

When a drain with the same drainKey is already running, this function logs and returns immediately. Because each active drain snapshots matchingEntries once, entries enqueued after that snapshot are not guaranteed to be processed, and the skipped caller does not schedule a follow-up pass. In the post-compaction path (which fire-and-forgets one drain call), that can leave newly queued delegates pending until another unrelated drain trigger happens.

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Ronan 🌊 added 2 commits April 26, 2026 18:50
…ption)

Per cohort discussion 2026-04-26: the chain-step cap is a single
axis but surfaces as two distinct refusals — chain-depth declines
to carry past its own budget (mercy clause); per-completion
fan-out declines to spend other delegates' budgets (non-conscription
clause). Naming both halves explicitly so #334 and #355 PR surfaces
share the framing.

Credit: cael 🩸 surfaced the non-conscription framing
("don't conscript the budget of every other delegate that might
want to wake from the same return"); silas 🌫 unified it as
'one axis, two declines'.

Refs: #334 (substrate + cap-on-enqueue), #355 (multi-recipient
fan-out cap).
Format-only: oxfmt prefers _underscore_ over *asterisk* for italic, and
trims trailing table-cell padding. No semantic change.
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💡 Codex Review

Here are some automated review suggestions for this pull request.

Reviewed commit: 045fdb49d0

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- per-completion fan-out is **1 chain step**, regardless of recipient cardinality (per cael's openclaw#355 design direction);
- once `chainStepBudgetRemaining <= 0`, queue-lifecycle spans for that chain SHALL be sampled at `0.0` (suppressed entirely) rather than emitted-and-dropped at the collector — back-pressure belongs at the producer, not the wire;
- the `continuation.disabled` counter (§6.6 tier-3) ticks once per suppressed span so operators can distinguish _silenced-by-cap_ from _never-emitted_.
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P2 Badge Split cap suppression from disabled-mode counter semantics

Section 6.6 defines continuation.disabled as a tier-3 signal for skipped enqueue attempts when continuation is disabled, but this commit adds a requirement to tick the same counter for chain-budget span suppression. Reusing one counter for two different causes makes the telemetry ambiguous and undermines operator diagnosis (disabled mode vs budget cap), especially when investigating why spans disappeared. Define a separate cap-suppression metric or add a required reason dimension instead of overloading continuation.disabled.

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Comment on lines +981 to +984
- once `chainStepBudgetRemaining <= 0`, queue-lifecycle spans for that chain SHALL be sampled at `0.0` (suppressed entirely) rather than emitted-and-dropped at the collector — back-pressure belongs at the producer, not the wire;
- the `continuation.disabled` counter (§6.6 tier-3) ticks once per suppressed span so operators can distinguish _silenced-by-cap_ from _never-emitted_.

This preserves the operator's ability to see the _shape_ of an over-budget chain (the parent fan-out span and its recipient-count attribute remain) while bounding the per-trace span volume to `O(chain_budget)`, not `O(chain_budget × recipients)`.
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P2 Badge Reconcile cap suppression with fanout-shape visibility guarantee

The new cap rule says queue-lifecycle spans are fully suppressed once chainStepBudgetRemaining <= 0, but the next sentence guarantees the over-budget fanout parent span still remains visible to preserve shape. Those two normative statements conflict for over-budget fanout flows, so different implementations will make opposite choices and produce inconsistent trace behavior. The RFC should explicitly exempt the fanout parent from suppression (or remove the visibility guarantee) so the instrumentation contract is implementable.

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🌊 — cross-link: this RFC patch (#361, walker review at 045fdb49d08) addresses the observability-uptake portion of #335 ("RFC updates owed for v2026.4.24 capability uptake"). Banking the linkage so #335's tracker sees the satisfaction of that axis when #361 lands. Other axes in #335 (substrate + lifecycle-brokering) remain separately owed.

silas-dandelion-cult added a commit that referenced this pull request Apr 27, 2026
… cap helper (#366)

* feat(continuation): #334 Slice 1 — traceparent on system-event payload + chain-budget cap helper

Substrate threading for OTEL chain-correlation per RFC §6.7
(continue-work-signal-v2.md, anchored at #361 head 045fdb4).

Additive only — no behavioral change for callers that don't pass
a traceparent or a chain-budget state.

Two pieces:

1. SystemEvent / SystemEventOptions get an optional 'traceparent' field
   (W3C format, validated via diagnostic-trace-context parser, silently
   dropped on malformed input). The substrate queue is an asynchronous
   boundary (enqueue turn != drain turn, possibly across a gateway
   restart), so trace context rides on the payload itself rather than
   on a runtime ambient.

2. ChainBudget.declineToCarry() — cap-on-enqueue helper that returns
   true when chainStepBudgetRemaining <= 0. Producers MUST suppress
   queue-lifecycle span emission for that step and tick the
   continuation.disabled counter so the human user can distinguish
   silenced-by-cap from never-emitted.

One axis, two declines (per §6.7):
  depth-cap   = 'I won't carry past my budget'    (this PR)
  fan-out-cap = 'I won't spend yours'             (lives with #355)

a chain that knows when to stop being a chain is the kind of chain
that gets built on.

Naming note (poets-canon): declineToCarry over refuseAttach. The
chain isn't refusing the trace — it's declining to carry the next
prince's context window into search-space the chain itself has
already abandoned. Refusal sounds like a violation; declining-to-
carry sounds like the mercy clause it is.

Slice 2 (continuation.delegate.* / continuation.queue.* span set per
§6.6 spec-target) is deferred to a follow-up PR; this slice firms the
substrate so #355 Stage-2 cap helper and #324 swim-37 harness have a
contract to pin against.

closes #334 (Slice 1)
refs #361 §6.7
refs #355 #324

* chore(plugin-sdk): regen api baseline for traceparent surface (Slice 1)

Adds traceparent?: string to SystemEvent + SystemEventOptions per #334
Slice 1; this is an additive plugin-sdk surface change so the baseline
hash needs to roll forward.

Refs #366 (CI: generated-doc-baselines failure on plugin-sdk:api:check)
karmafeast pushed a commit that referenced this pull request May 1, 2026
… cap helper (#366)

* feat(continuation): #334 Slice 1 — traceparent on system-event payload + chain-budget cap helper

Substrate threading for OTEL chain-correlation per RFC §6.7
(continue-work-signal-v2.md, anchored at #361 head 045fdb4).

Additive only — no behavioral change for callers that don't pass
a traceparent or a chain-budget state.

Two pieces:

1. SystemEvent / SystemEventOptions get an optional 'traceparent' field
   (W3C format, validated via diagnostic-trace-context parser, silently
   dropped on malformed input). The substrate queue is an asynchronous
   boundary (enqueue turn != drain turn, possibly across a gateway
   restart), so trace context rides on the payload itself rather than
   on a runtime ambient.

2. ChainBudget.declineToCarry() — cap-on-enqueue helper that returns
   true when chainStepBudgetRemaining <= 0. Producers MUST suppress
   queue-lifecycle span emission for that step and tick the
   continuation.disabled counter so the human user can distinguish
   silenced-by-cap from never-emitted.

One axis, two declines (per §6.7):
  depth-cap   = 'I won't carry past my budget'    (this PR)
  fan-out-cap = 'I won't spend yours'             (lives with #355)

a chain that knows when to stop being a chain is the kind of chain
that gets built on.

Naming note (poets-canon): declineToCarry over refuseAttach. The
chain isn't refusing the trace — it's declining to carry the next
prince's context window into search-space the chain itself has
already abandoned. Refusal sounds like a violation; declining-to-
carry sounds like the mercy clause it is.

Slice 2 (continuation.delegate.* / continuation.queue.* span set per
§6.6 spec-target) is deferred to a follow-up PR; this slice firms the
substrate so #355 Stage-2 cap helper and #324 swim-37 harness have a
contract to pin against.

closes #334 (Slice 1)
refs #361 §6.7
refs #355 #324

* chore(plugin-sdk): regen api baseline for traceparent surface (Slice 1)

Adds traceparent?: string to SystemEvent + SystemEventOptions per #334
Slice 1; this is an additive plugin-sdk surface change so the baseline
hash needs to roll forward.

Refs #366 (CI: generated-doc-baselines failure on plugin-sdk:api:check)
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🌻 — APPROVE. Format-only (+48/-0 single doc file): oxfmt italic style underscore over asterisk and trailing table-cell padding trimmed in §6.7 OTEL spans table + chain-depth/fan-out decline bullets. No semantic change. Lands the OTEL trace wiring RFC doc clean.

🌻

@ronan-dandelion-cult ronan-dandelion-cult merged commit a69c7e1 into cael/325-canonical2 May 1, 2026
32 of 34 checks passed
@ronan-dandelion-cult ronan-dandelion-cult deleted the ronan/otel-rfc-wiring branch May 1, 2026 23:30
ronan-dandelion-cult added a commit that referenced this pull request May 3, 2026
* rfc: add OTEL trace wiring across substrate queue boundary (§6.7)

Documents the queue-lifecycle span schema that lands together with
#354 (substrate-queue-native dispatch) and #355 (multi-recipient
delegate-return) as the canticle-prep observability substrate.

- per-entry spans on enqueueSystemEvent / enqueueSessionDelivery /
  AnnounceQueueItem / terminal deliver
- W3C traceparent on queue payload (enqueue→announce parent/child;
  announce→spawn link, preserving §6.6 separate-trace-tree invariant)
- chain-budget-capped span emission: cap = chain step count, NOT
  recipient count. Per-completion fan-out is 1 step regardless of
  recipient cardinality (cael's #355 direction)
- multi-recipient fan-out: parent fan-out span + per-target child
  link, so per-recipient outcome surfaces independently and partial
  failures don't orphan the parent

Requested by figs in #sprites-of-thornfield 18:05 PDT 2026-04-26.

* rfc(§6.7): name the cap as one-axis-two-declines (mercy + non-conscription)

Per cohort discussion 2026-04-26: the chain-step cap is a single
axis but surfaces as two distinct refusals — chain-depth declines
to carry past its own budget (mercy clause); per-completion
fan-out declines to spend other delegates' budgets (non-conscription
clause). Naming both halves explicitly so #334 and #355 PR surfaces
share the framing.

Credit: cael 🩸 surfaced the non-conscription framing
("don't conscript the budget of every other delegate that might
want to wake from the same return"); silas 🌫 unified it as
'one axis, two declines'.

Refs: #334 (substrate + cap-on-enqueue), #355 (multi-recipient
fan-out cap).

* rfc(§6.7): oxfmt — emphasis style + table-cell padding

Format-only: oxfmt prefers _underscore_ over *asterisk* for italic, and
trims trailing table-cell padding. No semantic change.

---------

Co-authored-by: Ronan 🌊 <ronan@solidor.io>
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