Failure Containment
The platform shall isolate failures to the smallest practical coordination boundary.
Failures shall remain local. Confidence shall remain global.
What must remain true
Failures shall remain local.
Confidence shall remain global.
The platform shall isolate failures to the smallest practical coordination boundary.
A localized failure shall not unnecessarily degrade unrelated executions, diagnostic knowledge, or evidence.
Why the principle matters
Every coordination system experiences failure.
The quality of a coordination system is determined not by the absence of failure, but by its ability to contain failure before it propagates.
When failures spread beyond their natural boundary, confidence in the entire system begins to erode.
Failure Containment preserves confidence by ensuring that localized failures remain localized while the integrity of the broader coordination system remains intact.
Observing Failure Containment
Failure Containment can be evaluated by examining the observable condition of the coordination system.
Healthy Signals
- Failures remain isolated to a single execution or coordination boundary.
- A malformed Diagnostic Definition does not affect unrelated definitions.
- An execution failure does not compromise historical evidence.
- AI failures do not invalidate deterministic evaluation.
- Document generation failures do not corrupt Alignment Results.
- Engineers can clearly identify the boundary within which a failure occurred.
Degrading Signals
- Local failures cascade into unrelated runtime responsibilities.
- One execution compromises another.
- Runtime failures corrupt diagnostic knowledge or historical evidence.
- AI failures alter deterministic outcomes.
- Small implementation defects require broad system recovery.
- Engineers cannot determine the boundary of a failure.
Degrading signals do not necessarily indicate failure.
They indicate that this dimension should be examined before confidence in the platform begins to erode.
Engineering Guidance
When designing or extending the platform:
- Design clear failure boundaries.
- Preserve independent execution wherever practical.
- Isolate deterministic execution from probabilistic reasoning.
- Protect historical evidence from execution failures.
- Fail predictably and recover intentionally.
- Never allow localized failures to silently propagate across unrelated coordination boundaries.
Architectural Review Questions
Before approving an implementation, ask:
- What is the natural boundary of failure?
- If this component fails, what else fails?
- Could this failure affect unrelated executions?
- Does this implementation preserve the integrity of historical evidence?
- Can the platform recover without compromising confidence?
- Would this implementation strengthen or weaken Failure Containment?