GP6: Treat strand, braid, and suffix topology as WAL-backed intents

[flyingrobots]

Contract

Topology-changing operations must become admitted causal history, not side-channel runtime state.

The next braids/strands hardening goalpost is to make strand forks, braid lifecycle events, braid settlement, retained braid shells, and replica suffix import cross the same accepted-intent / WAL / retained-evidence boundary that tick receipts already use.

Why now

AION Paper VII frames tick execution, braid lowering, and replica suffix import as the same WARP optic shape:

Lower(F, P) -> (R, W, theta)

where P is a rewrite bundle, braid, or transported remote suffix family. Echo already has strand structs, braid event logs, settlement provenance entries, retained braid shells, and replay/audit optics. The remaining release-grade gap is durability and recovery: topology itself needs first-class receipts and WAL/WSC recovery posture.

Child issues

• GP6-S1: Add WAL-backed strand fork and drop intent receipts #605 GP6-S1: Add WAL-backed strand fork and drop intent receipts
• GP6-S2: Persist braid event logs and retained braid shells through WAL/WSC #606 GP6-S2: Persist braid event logs and retained braid shells through WAL/WSC
• GP6-S3: Model replica suffix import as a witnessed WARP optic intent #607 GP6-S3: Model replica suffix import as a witnessed WARP optic intent
• GP6-S4: Rebuild topology indexes from WAL/WSC recovery evidence #608 GP6-S4: Rebuild topology indexes from WAL/WSC recovery evidence

Scope

• Add WAL-backed accepted-intent records for strand fork/drop or equivalent topology lifecycle operations.
• Add WAL-backed braid lifecycle records for creation, member weave, settlement, and collapse.
• Retain braid shells as explicit durable retained material, not only in the in-memory provenance service.
• Model replica suffix exchange as transport-to-comparable-basis plus import-shell lowering, not a special merge path.
• Rebuild strand registry, braid event logs, retained shell indexes, and import idempotence indexes from WAL/WSC recovery evidence.

Existing anchors

• docs/design/braids-and-strands-roadmap.md
• docs/design/braids-and-strands-hardening/goalpost-03-historical-membership-and-replay.md
• docs/design/braids-and-strands-hardening/goalpost-04-witness-receipts-and-sealed-capabilities.md
• docs/topics/WAL.md
• docs/design/work-item-sequencing-and-prioritization.md
• Related WAL/WSC issue: WAL/WSC Storage Relationship #521

Exit criteria

• Echo has named intent/receipt types for topology operations.
• WAL record naming distinguishes topology records from tick receipt records without weakening WAL authority.
• Braid shells have an explicit retained-material or equivalent WSC recovery path.
• Recovery tests rebuild topology state after restart without pre-existing in-memory registries.
• Duplicate network suffix delivery is idempotent re-introduction of a witnessed transport object.
• Docs state that Git branches/worktrees are on/off ramps, not the live topology substrate.

Non-goals

• Do not add jedit/editor nouns to Echo core.
• Do not make Git the source of topology truth.
• Do not treat WSC graph facts as WAL bootstrap authority.
• Do not collapse braid geometry, settlement, and admission into one ambiguous merge operation.

[coderabbitai]

🔗 Related PRs

#546 - Adopt braids and strands hardening roadmap [closed]
#550 - Expose braid membership history [merged]
#582 - docs: define the Echo 1.0 release contract and move live planning to GitHub [merged]
#598 - feat(warp-core): add filesystem WAL failure atomicity [merged]

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