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Feature plan: Step 1 · Step 2 · Step 3 · Step 4

Debug mode: enabled

Effort study: railspike-effort / v3/high_traffic_post_refresh; host ledger. Standing P2 enrollment.

Extended estimates: enabled

Cycle estimate: 0.30 (Step 3 projection, reaffirmed at entry)

Branch: feat/high_traffic_post_refresh. Planning commit: a9754ccc.

Step 4 entry

2026-11-09T23:00Z, railspike-effort / v3/high_traffic_post_refresh, Step 4 entry. Step 3 approved by the maintainer on 2026-11-09 ("approved step 3"). Scope v1 unchanged. Projected total 0.30 reaffirmed. Stage originals copied from Step 3: 0.10, 0.10, 0.05, 0.05, non-additive. Same R1/P2, single exposed Claude rater. Copying is not a new rating.

Starting revision: a2bcc64d (main). No matching item in docs/feedback/items/.

Stage 1 - Refresh or queue after a post

Original estimate: 0.10

Retrospective stage-work assessment: 0.10

  • Changes:

    • HighTrafficRefresh::afterPost(threadId): returns refreshed, queued, skipped or inactive, and never throws. It force-renders a cached thread page with HighTrafficCache::generate. On a refusal (busy page lock, no generator slot) or an error, it queues a write hint.

    • hint(route, changedAt): a write hint carries the write time. It is accepted even when the page looks fresh and replaces an older hint with the later time. Browser hints behave as before.

    • hints(): keeps a write hint while its page is cached, whatever the page's age.

    • forget(route, renderStarted): now runs under the state lock and keeps a write hint newer than the render's start. This closes the race where a cron render that began before the post finishes after it.

    • run(): treats hinted routes as due even when fresh, and passes each render's start time to forget.

  • Verification:

    • Passed: ./v3 test --smoke HighTrafficTest HighTrafficPublicationTest, 453 run, 453 passed.

    • Passed: ./v3 test HighTrafficTest, 8 run, 8 passed. Two new tests: refresh, queue on a held page lock, hint survives a fresh-looking file, forget by render start, mode off; and cron renders a write-hinted fresh route.

    • Full suite not run.

  • Notes:

    • Reuse: generate unchanged; the hint queue extended rather than duplicated.

    • A page not yet cached is skipped; its first reader generates it, as today.

  • Estimate details (extended mode only): original scope as in Step 3; no revision. The locked forget was not in the plan but sits inside this stage's race risk.

— Claude · 2026-11-09 UTC · Model: claude-opus-5-5

Stage 2 - Refresh on every post write

Original estimate: 0.10

Retrospective stage-work assessment: 0.08

  • Changes:

    • LocalWriteService::withTimedWriteLock takes refreshThreadPage. When set, and the write returned ok with a thread ID, it calls the refresh after the write lock is released. Its time goes into timings as high_traffic_refresh, only when the mode is on.

    • Set on createThreadForAuthoringMode, createReply (agent replies too), createPreparedPost, createSignedPost (the frm.py and API path) and createPreparedPostFormat. Tags, likes, retractions and setThreadSubjectIfEmpty are unchanged.

    • HighTrafficSafety::afterPost(repository, database, threadId): builds the cache the same way beforeWrite does, returns inactive without a state file, and never throws.

    • New tests/HighTrafficPostRefreshTest.php, registered in tests/run.php.

  • Verification:

    • Passed: ./v3 test HighTrafficPostRefreshTest, 3 run, 3 passed. A reply replaces the cached thread page with one containing the reply; a tag write leaves it alone; a new thread has no cached page and is skipped; a held page lock leaves the post saved and the route queued; mode off leaves the cache and timings untouched.

    • Passed: ./v3 test --smoke HighTrafficTest HighTrafficPostRefreshTest HighTrafficPublicationTest AgentPostingApiTest LocalWriteServiceTitleDirectiveTest, 463 run, 463 passed.

    • Passed: ./v3 test AgentPostingApiTest LocalWriteServiceTitleDirectiveTest, 11 run, 11 passed.

    • Not tested directly: the signed, prepared and format paths. They share the same flag and result shape (status, thread_id), checked by reading each return. The Stage 4 replay covers the signed path through frm.py.

    • Full suite not run.

  • Notes:

    • One flag on the shared lock wrapper instead of a call in each method, so a new post path needs one argument.

  • Estimate details (extended mode only): original scope as in Step 3; no revision. Smaller than expected because every post path already returned thread_id.

— Claude · 2026-11-09 UTC · Model: claude-opus-5-5

Stage 3 - Docs and render timing

Original estimate: 0.05

Retrospective stage-work assessment: 0.04

  • Changes:

    • docs/runbooks/high_traffic_mode.md (Refresh): a paragraph on post refresh, the queued fallback, and the high_traffic_refresh timing.

    • docs/concepts/static_publication.md: the high-traffic note now says a new post re-renders its thread page, while the board and /threads/ follow cron.

    • docs/reference/v3_cli.md: one clause in the high-traffic section.

    • docs/plans/effort_estimation_trial.md: this cycle's Step 1–3 handoff entries and the Step 4 entry.

  • Verification:

    • Passed: git diff --check; the new runbook anchor #refresh exists.

    • Local render times in the tests: 0.1–0.3 s for the fixture thread.

    • Pending: the maintainer's timing of ./v3 high-traffic refresh /threads/<id>/ on the longest thread on vps22365. If it is over about two seconds, move the render after the response, as Step 3 planned, before merging.

  • Notes:

    • The fixture thread is tiny, so local times say little about production.

  • Estimate details (extended mode only): original scope as in Step 3; no revision.

— Claude · 2026-11-09 UTC · Model: claude-opus-5-5

Stage 4 - Production replay

Original estimate: 0.05

Retrospective stage-work assessment: pending

  • Changes: none in code.

  • Verification:

    • Pending: deploy, then with the mode on the maintainer posts a thread, Claude replies through frm.py, and the maintainer reloads on his phone. Expected: the reply shows, and the thread's cached file time is after the reply.

    • Pending: render timing on vps22365 (from Stage 3).

  • Notes:

    • Main moved during the cycle (PRs #104 and #111). Merged into the branch as 99c46fca; the only conflict was the ledger, where both sides added a cycle section and both were kept. Tests rerun after the merge: ./v3 test --smoke HighTrafficTest HighTrafficPostRefreshTest HighTrafficPublicationTest AgentPostingApiTest LocalWriteServiceTitleDirectiveTest, 463 run, 463 passed.

Closeout

  • Technical status: Stages 1–3 done and committed; Stage 4 pending deploy. Not merged.

  • Final diff review: changes stay inside the files Step 2 named, plus tests/run.php to register the new test. No dependency changes.

  • Retrospective whole-cycle scope assessment: 0.28 (Stages 1–3; Stage 4 pending). Maintainer comfortable-fit judgment: pending.

  • Full suite not run.

— Claude · 2026-11-09 UTC · Model: claude-opus-5-5