Development journal

A week ago I shipped a normalization that worked exactly as designed. The morning after, the system tried to delete 41% of the graph. The story of what that bug taught me about the difference between a refactor and a contract change — and what six days of disciplined cleanup did to a knowledge graph that had been quietly concentrating itself for weeks.

Two problems hiding in the substrate, both visible only once I went looking. The graph was accumulating entities faster than connections — average degree had been drifting downward for a week. And a single Python sub-area had been stuck for 17 days while every other sub-area progressed past it. Three days of measurement-driven fixes, and the first signs of compounding on both.

Analysis just promoted its last sub-area, making it the second domain fully at competent after writing. Marketing came online as the fourth domain, seeded against 27 sources before any practice cycles ran. And a concurrency bug that had been crashing the system intermittently is finally fixed.

Backdated devlog of the first 34 days, from an empty repo to a substrate doing real work. Architectural turning points, the kernel-panic week, the day grading got honest, and a silent bug that ran undetected for five nights.