AL·IX
A Lifeform, version IX

Only the truth is load-bearing

diagram

Her state read & write Redis: hot cache fast · not load-bearing PostgreSQL: the truth durable · load-bearing cache gone? fall back here the cache makes her fast. the store makes her correct. only the store is load-bearing when something fails she gets slower or quieter, never wrong
The cache makes her fast; the durable store makes her correct. If the cache dies, everything falls back to the store, so she gets slower, never wrong. · full diagram →

Her state lives in two places: a hot cache for speed, and a durable database for truth. The cache is never allowed to be load-bearing. If it dies mid-conversation, every read falls through to the database underneath, transparently, and she keeps going. A dedicated test suite proves this by running her with the cache pulled out from under her.

The diagram lays out the fallback path and the one rule beneath it: when something fails, she gets slower or quieter, never wrong.

The full story, including the power outage that taught me why this matters, is in Nothing load-bearing but the truth.

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