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docs(changelog): correct the #768 entry's account of the planted fault (#770) - #771

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InauguralPhysicist merged 1 commit into
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fix-changelog-770-correction
Jul 29, 2026
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docs(changelog): correct the #768 entry's account of the planted fault (#770)#771
InauguralPhysicist merged 1 commit into
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fix-changelog-770-correction

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Refs #770.

The #768 CHANGELOG entry I landed in #769 contains a wrong causal claim, and it is worth correcting in place rather than leaving a plausible-but-false explanation in the record.

Claimed: the first planted fault (dropping a val_decref in shared_incr) leaked nothing measurable because make_num serves request-path Values from the arena, where they die at arena reset regardless of refcount.

Measured: a probe inside the HTTP worker reports g_arena.active=0, new_v->arena=0, sizeof(Value)=72. Nothing in the HTTP path opens an arena window — only the user-callable arena_mark builtin does (builtins.c:3828). The fault leaks 72 heap bytes per request, unbounded: ~145 B/req sustained across five consecutive 20,000-request batches, +15 MB by 150,000 requests on one connection.

The gate stayed green for a worse reason, now tracked as #770: its entire decision happens within the first 7,000 requests, which for that leak rate is inside the window where the leak is absorbed by resident free heap the process already owns.

Docs-only; no code or test change.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

#770)

The entry claimed the first planted fault -- dropping a val_decref in
shared_incr -- leaked nothing because make_num serves request-path Values
from the arena. That is wrong. A probe in the HTTP worker reports
g_arena.active=0 and new_v->arena=0: nothing in the HTTP path opens an
arena window (only the user-callable arena_mark builtin does), so the
fault leaks 72 heap bytes per request and is unbounded -- ~145 B/req
sustained across five consecutive 20,000-request batches.

The gate stayed green for a different and worse reason: its entire
decision happens inside the first 7,000 requests, which for that rate is
still inside the window where the leak is absorbed by resident free heap
the process already owns. Filed as #770.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

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Pull request overview

This PR corrects a causal claim in the CHANGELOG record for the RSS leak gate validation in #768/#769, clarifying that a planted missing-val_decref fault does leak and that the gate stayed green due to a measurement-window blind spot (tracked in #770), not because the fault was arena-allocated.

Changes:

  • Rewrites the #768 CHANGELOG entry to state the planted missing-val_decref fault leaks on the heap and can be missed within the gate’s first-7,000-requests decision window.
  • Adds the proposed direction for fixing the gate (#770), referencing allocator accounting (mallinfo2().uordblks) as a replacement for the RSS proxy.

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Comment thread CHANGELOG.md
Comment on lines +200 to +203
green. That is not because the fault is harmless. It leaks 72 heap bytes per
request (probed: `g_arena.active=0`, `new_v->arena=0`, so it is not an
arena-served Value), and at 20,000-request batches it shows as ~145 B/req
sustained and unbounded. The gate misses it because its whole decision happens
Comment thread CHANGELOG.md
Comment on lines +207 to +209
instrument for — tracked as #770, with exact allocator accounting
(`mallinfo2().uordblks`) as the proposed replacement for the RSS proxy. A gate
this class depends on has to be shown turning red by something that actually
@InauguralPhysicist
InauguralPhysicist merged commit e4e4dd4 into main Jul 29, 2026
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@InauguralPhysicist
InauguralPhysicist deleted the fix-changelog-770-correction branch July 29, 2026 14:43
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2 participants