omnigraph/docs/dev/rfc-013-write-path-latency.md

RFC-013: Write-path latency — capture-once WriteTxn, manifest-authoritative publish, bounded history, and a measured cost contract

Status: Proposed Author(s): write-path latency investigation (handoff + multi-agent validation) Date: 2026-06-19 Audience: engine / storage maintainers Builds on: rfc-009-unify-access-paths.md (GraphClient — embedded ≡ remote), the query-latency work (PR #268, read-path warm-up — the read-side twin of this change), the iss-991 handoff (manifest-authoritative graph lineage / Phase 7), writes.md, execution.md, invariants.md. Tracking (dev graph modernrelay): primary iss-write-s3-roundtrip-amplification; depth term iss-991; substrate seam iss-863/iss-864; branch-create iss-691; recovery iss-856/iss-recovery-sweep-live-writer-rollback/iss-merge-recovery-partial-rollforward; MemWAL iss-681; read twin gap-read-path-rederivation.

Status maintained by maintainers: Proposed while open, Accepted on merge.

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Summary

On object-store-backed clusters a single trivial write (one edge, one branch op) issues hundreds of mostly-sequential object-store round-trips, and that count grows without bound with the graph's commit history, so a long-lived graph degrades to minutes per edge. The cost is invisible on a local filesystem (µs/call) and to correctness tests (results are right, just slow), and it was never measured because nothing in the suite counts object-store round-trips per logical operation.

This RFC specifies the optimal write path from first principles — a write is a pure function of one version-pinned snapshot, published in a single manifest-atomic CAS — and the cost contract that makes its O(1)-in-history guarantee provable and non-regressable (deterministic IO-counted tests on every PR). It collapses four hand-rolled writers into one GraphPublishAuthority, moves graph lineage into the manifest (so the per-write _graph_commits scan disappears), brings the internal metadata tables into compaction (so the per-write __manifest scan stops growing), takes recovery off the hot path, and adds an epoch fence for multi-writer safety. None of it is a substrate rewrite — the manifest-CAS model is already correct and is exactly what Lance native multi-table transactions (lance#7264) will later formalize; this RFC builds the seam to that future and pays down the write path onto it.

The dominant fix is demonstrated, not proposed: a one-line opener-bypass prototype (open writes direct-by-URI instead of through the lance-namespace builder) flattens the depth-dominant term 31 + 12·depth → flat 4 and cuts a depth-80 edge 2.7× (1618 → 593 ops), measured end-to-end and functionally correct on main/branch/node paths (§2.4). It is shippable as a standalone PR first (§9 step 3a); the rest of the RFC is the constant-factor + correctness + internal-residual work layered on the same seam.

Correction (2026-06-20/21) — the latency metric is (serial_hops + ops / effective_concurrency) · RTT + compute, measured [M]. Two findings, both from the deployed edge binary (steps 1+3a landed) on rustfs behind a latency+concurrency proxy: (i) under unlimited concurrency, wall-clock is a ~110-hop serial backbone, depth-invariant — the depth-driven ops parallelize away (§0(c)); but (ii) under an R2-realistic concurrency cap (8), the internal-table fragment scan can no longer fan out, so op count re-enters wall-clock and an uncompacted graph runs away (per-write ops 1273→3505, wall 6→16s and climbing) — while #291's internal-table compaction cuts it ~6× and bounds it (§0(d) A/B). So the design is vindicated and unchanged (§3/§4.1: capture-once WriteTxn + parallel stages → "~2–3 hops" is the serial-backbone lever, step 3b; bounded history is the op-count lever, step 2a) — what's corrected is the measurement framing and step sizing: op count was the wrong latency proxy only because the harness had unlimited concurrency; on a capped store both serial_hops (→ step 3b) and ops (→ step 2a) are on the critical path, and which dominates is set by effective_concurrency × fragment_count. The cost gate (§5.1) is corrected to inject a concurrency cap and latency, and to assert serial hops and op-count-flat-in-history.

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0. Validation ledger (read this first)

Every claim is tagged: [M] measured by me this cycle, [S] verified in v0.7.0 source (file:line given), [U] verified against upstream Lance/LanceDB/SlateDB source or docs, [G] tracked in the dev graph (slug given), [I] inferred/reasoned.

A correction from the originating handoff: it hypothesized that Cloudflare R2 walks the full manifest listing on every open (a prod-only amplifier absent from AWS). This is false for the pinned Lance 7.0.0 [U]. R2 is treated as lexically ordered (list_is_lexically_ordered = !is_s3_express, lance-io/.../providers/aws.rs:183), so R2 gets the O(1) head-only manifest fast path, same as AWS; only S3-Express buckets are excluded, and even those are O(1) via the v7 latest_version_hint.json. There is no R2-list config fix because there is no R2-list problem.

The depth term — corrected attribution. Two measurements, one instrumentation-blind, one complete:

(a) IOTracker probe [M] — internal tables only. A throwaway probe (the warm_read_cost harness applied to a single insert to main, swept across commit depth) counted the two internal tables: __manifest ≈ 14 + 2·depth, _graph_commits ≈ 9 + 2·depth → ≈ 23 + 4·depth, write_iops = 1. But this probe is structurally blind to the write path's per-table data opens — they bypass the instrumented opener (table_wrapper), so it reports probes=0 for the data tables. It measured the minority of the cost.

(b) Network-proxy measurement [M] — all RPCs, fresh graph. A counting proxy in front of rustfs (sees every object-store RPC, under --mode merge — the production path), on a brand-new graph (400 seed nodes, one committing merge per checkpoint), classified by S3 key:

commit depth	data _versions	__manifest	_graph_commits	node (RI)	schema	TOTAL	write_iops
0	31	29	13	6	46	156	1
5	121	44	23	6	46	268	1
10	181	59	33	6	46	358	1
20	301	89	53	6	46	538	1
40	541	149	93	6	46	898	1
80	1021	269	173	6	46	1618	1

Slopes: data table +12/depth (~67%), __manifest +3/depth, _graph_commits +2/depth → TOTAL ≈ 156 + 18·depth, write_iops flat at 1. The IOTracker probe (a) saw only the +4/depth internal subset — blind to the data-table opens, the dominant ~67%.

Constant-factor finding [M]: the schema contract is a flat 46 reads/write — not depth-scaling, but 29% of the depth-0 cost (46/156), from validate_schema_contract re-running uncached on every resolve (omnigraph.rs:561). A depth-slope gate will not catch it; WriteTxn's resolve/validate-once kills it, and the §5.1 fitness assert (validate_schema_contract_calls == 1) is what pins it (constant-factor delta, §6).

The dominant term is the written table's open routed through the lance-namespace builder ~13× per write — now source-traced. The write path opens via DatasetBuilder::from_namespace (namespace.rs:174, from open_table_head_for_write table_store.rs:181 / namespace.rs:544). Lance's builder calls the namespace's describe_table once and uses only response.location (lance builder.rs:130-178) — but omnigraph's describe_table opens the whole dataset just to produce that location (open_head → Dataset::open, namespace.rs:362/:112), and .load() then resolves the latest version again — a double latest-resolution per open, ~13× per write, nothing cached. Crucially, latest-resolution is not inherently O(depth): the namespace path is O(depth) because it misses the V2 lexical / latest_version_hint.json fast path that the direct opener engages (most likely because load_table_from_namespace attaches no shared Session/store params, namespace.rs:174 — inferred, not traced). The read path skips all of it — from_uri(location).with_version(N), one HEAD, O(1) — which is why reads are flat (+12/depth on the data table, §0(b)). Proven on omnigraph's own table [M]: a direct Dataset::open of the same physical 85-version edge table = 2 ops (O(1)), the from_namespace open of that identical table = the O(depth) sweep — same bytes, two open paths. checkout_version is also O(1) — exonerated, not a back-walk. So from_uri().with_version(N) is the O(1) primitive and step 3 makes each open O(1) intrinsically (cleanup then becomes hygiene/interim, not load-bearing for read cost — §2.3). Mode-independent [U]: append ≡ merge ≡ +12/depth, so §0(a) measuring a single insert was not the defect — the defect is the namespace open path, not the verb. Using from_namespace per-open is a misuse of Lance's design (the namespace is a catalog/discovery layer — resolve once, then open the dataset directly, lance-namespace operations/index.md [U]); the read path already bypasses it (PR #268 Fix 2 — see §2.4).

Corrected conclusion. The depth blow-up is in omnigraph's DB layer and is data-table-dominated: the redundant per-table opens (fixed by §9 step 3 — WriteTxn open-once-by-pinned-version — plus scheduled version cleanup of the node/edge tables) are ~70% of it; the uncompacted internal tables (§9 step 2) are the secondary ~30%. Both the originating R2 hypothesis and the earlier "entirely the internal tables" framing are wrong. The exact Lance call doing the data-table chain re-read (checkout_version back-walk vs merge-insert conflict replay) is the one unpinned item — see §12. Reads, by contrast, are flat in depth (warm_read_cost.rs, PR #268). This is the O(history)-per-write → O(N²)-cumulative behavior the production incident hit.

(c) Serial-hop measurement [M] — wall-clock is set by the serial backbone, not the op count. §0(b) counts total object-store ops; wall-clock is set by the ops on the critical path. Measured on the deployed edge binary f6d2cc03 (steps 1+3a landed) via rustfs + a per-op latency proxy, sweeping injected per-op latency L and reading the slope of wall = compute + serial_hops · L (the slope is the critical-path hop count; the proxy also reports request overlap → parallelism):

depth	total ops	parallelism	serial backbone (slope)	L=0 wall (compute floor)
~1	107	1.0–1.2	~109	2.15s
~33	338	3.4–4.0	~108	2.45s
~85	716	6.0–7.1	~113	4.27s

The serial backbone is ~110 hops and depth-INVARIANT, while total ops grow +~7/depth (107→716, the §0(b) term) and parallelize (parallelism 1→6, max_inflight up to 65) — so the depth-driven ops add almost nothing to wall-clock. wall ≈ 110·RTT + compute; the prod 35s direct-main write ≈ 110 hops × ~280ms cross-region RTT. Branch ops measured the same way (4-table graph; prod = 217 tables, ≈50× worse): branch-create serial ~77, branch-delete ~87 (op counts scale with table count → §9 step 6), and branch-WRITE is worst — 1777 ops, serial ~258, 21s compute floor even at L=0 = fork-on-first-write (the path 3a did not cover; §9 step 3b + the fork seam), matching prod's 103–138s.

The methodological correction this forces. Op count is a cost/space/compute-floor metric; the serial-hop count (latency slope / num_stages) is the wall-clock metric. 3a's real 90s→35s win (≈2.6×, matching its measured 2.7× op cut) is genuine because it removed serial hops (the per-table data opens were on the critical path). But the wall-clock predictor is not serial-hops alone — it is (serial_hops + ops / effective_concurrency) · RTT + compute: total op count re-enters wall-clock whenever the store caps concurrency, because the parallel tail can no longer fan out.

(d) The concurrency-cap A/B [M] — proves op count is wall-clock on a capped store, and that step 2a is a primary latency lever (not a parallel afterthought). §0(c) was measured on rustfs with unlimited concurrency (max_inflight reached 129) — a poor proxy for R2, which is connection-capped and rate-limited. Re-running the same write through a proxy capped at 8 concurrent (R2-realistic), with internal-table fragment count as the only variable (edge binary for writes; the unmerged #291 binary only to run optimize), depth ~130, __manifest≈137 fragments:

state	per-write ops	wall (cap=8, L=20)	trend
uncompacted (__manifest 137 frags)	1273 → 1487 → 3505	5.9 → 8.4 → 16.4 s	runaway — each write reads all frags and appends one more
after #291 optimize (137→1 frag)	275 → 250 → 197	6.2 → 5.4 → 3.8 s	bounded

optimize collapsed __manifest 137→1, _graph_commits 140→1 frags → ~6× fewer ops/write and the runaway stopped. Under unlimited concurrency this delta vanishes (the frags fan out); under the cap it is the dominant term. This is the actual mechanism of the prod 35s and its degradation over time (the O(N²) of §0/§2.2): on a capped store, every uncompacted write scans all __manifest/_graph_commits fragments and adds one, so latency climbs with graph age — exactly what prod shows, and exactly what step 2a halts. Prod confirms the scale: __manifest 1,739 obj / 59 MiB, _graph_commits 1,848 obj / 23.5 MiB, read per write, uncompacted (the deployed f6d2cc03 optimize is node/edge-only — §9 step 2 — so an operator optimize run on prod cannot touch them; only #291 can).

Corrected conclusion. The §2.4 op-count math (1720→198 ⇒ 258s→30s) is still wrong as stated (it assumes full serialization), but the opposite over-correction — "step 2 is parallel, so irrelevant to latency" — is also wrong, and an artifact of the unlimited-concurrency harness. The truth is concurrency-dependent: on a capped store (R2) the internal-scan op count is on the critical path and step 2a is a primary latency lever and the anti-runaway fix; the residual after compaction (~4 s here, mostly compute + the serial backbone) is then step 3b's. Both are load-bearing; which dominates is set by effective_concurrency × fragment_count. So the cost gate (§5.1) must inject a concurrency cap, not just latency.

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1. Problem & measurements

On object storage every call is a 10–100 ms RPC, there is no cheap stat, and sequential RPCs serialize. A long-lived production graph on R2, originating handoff [M]:

operation	prod (R2)	local file://
one-edge load --mode merge → main	~3 min (90 s workflow timeout)	<1 s
branch create --from main	120 s	<1 s
one-row load → a branch	204 s	<1 s
branch delete	216 s	<1 s
warm read / /healthz	fast (0.2–2 s)	fast

iss-write-s3-roundtrip-amplification [G] independently records the same: cross-region single insert ~46 s, 5-node mutation ~110 s, vs ~390 ms for a no-storage /healthz. Its acceptance criteria are this RFC's goal: "a single insert issues O(1)-to-few S3 round-trips, not O(number of tables); bulk mutations amortize the manifest commit."

The cost decomposes into terms; the dominant one scales with history (§0):

1. Per-table opens through the O(depth) lance-namespace builder (DOMINANT, O(tables × depth)). Each stage opens via DatasetBuilder::from_namespace (namespace.rs:174); its describe_table opens the whole dataset just to return a location (open_head → Dataset::open, namespace.rs:362/:112) and .load() resolves latest again — a double latest-resolution per open, O(depth) on the repro store, ~13× per write with nothing caching it [S] (§2.2). The read path's direct from_uri().with_version(N) is O(1). → +12 reads/depth, ~70% of the slope [M]. Fixed by opening once, by pinned version via the direct opener (§9 step 3); node/edge version cleanup bounds it further.
2. Per-write __manifest scan (O(history), secondary). Every publish full-scans the uncompacted __manifest (load_publish_state → read_manifest_scan, state.rs:133-141) [S]; the internal tables are never compacted/cleaned (optimize iterates node/edge only, optimize.rs:895-904) [S]. +3.1 reads/depth [M].
3. Per-write _graph_commits refresh (O(history), secondary). record_graph_commit reloads the entire commit cache before each append (commit_graph.rs:136-164) [S]; never compacted/cleaned. +2.1 reads/depth [M]. The "read-path anti-pattern, now on writes" (iss-991 handoff [G]).

Terms 2+3 are the secondary ~30%; term 1 dominates. Plus per-write fixed taxes: a list_dir("__recovery/") (loader/mod.rs:197, exec/mutation.rs:725, exec/merge.rs:1090) [S], and the publisher CAS retry budget (PUBLISHER_RETRY_BUDGET = 5, publisher.rs:51) [S].

Branch ops compound it: branch create is a per-table sequential fork loop (fork_branch_from_state, table_store.rs:282); branch delete opens a snapshot per other branch (ensure_branch_delete_safe, omnigraph.rs:1317) and force-deletes per forked table sequentially (cleanup_deleted_branch_tables, omnigraph.rs:1359) [S]. Measured serial backbones (§0(c), edge binary): branch create ~77 hops, delete ~87 (op counts scale with table count → §9 step 6); branch write is the worst — 1777 ops, ~258-hop serial backbone, a 21s compute floor even at zero RTT = fork-on-first-write (the path step 3a did not cover; §9 step 3b + the fork seam), which is why prod branch-load (103–138s) ≫ direct-main (35s).

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2. Root cause (validated)

2.1 The write re-derives its world from storage every stage

loader/mod.rs:400 captures a snapshot once, but downstream stages ignore it and re-resolve [S]:

• open_for_mutation_on_branch (table_ops.rs:505) re-calls resolved_branch_target per table (:512), which runs ensure_schema_state_valid (a full schema-contract storage read with no cache, omnigraph.rs:561-568) and then opens by head via open_dataset_head_for_write (:522/:559), asserting head == pinned only after the open.
• fresh_snapshot_for_branch (omnigraph.rs:771) always does fresh I/O; the fork authority path re-reads the live manifest (table_ops.rs:574).
• The captured snapshot is used only for membership/fork checks, never for the actual opens.

The drift guards, CAS retries, and recovery scans are compensating machinery for the staleness this self-inflicts. The Snapshot/coordinator primitive already exists; it is treated as cheap-to-reacquire rather than as the operation's authoritative identity.

2.2 The depth terms — data-table re-reads dominate, internal tables secondary

Confirmed in code and measurement (§0). The dominant term is §2.1's per-table opens: ~13 opens per write through the lance-namespace builder (DatasetBuilder::from_namespace, namespace.rs:174). The builder calls the namespace's describe_table (lance builder.rs:130-178), and omnigraph's describe_table opens the whole dataset just to return a location (open_head → Dataset::open, namespace.rs:362/:112); .load() then resolves latest again — a double latest-resolution per open, O(depth) on the repro store — so cost grows with the table's version count (+12 reads/depth, ~70%). The read path opens direct from_uri().with_version(N) (namespace.rs:112 / SubTableEntry::open) — O(1) — and native pylance is flat 6 ops at any depth [U], so this is omnigraph's namespace-open pattern, not Lance; checkout_version is O(1) and not implicated. (The heavier list_table_versions — versions() + a checkout per version, namespace.rs:395-427 — is not on this path; it is test-only today, a separate latent O(depth): §10 follow-up.) The secondary terms are the two internal tables: load_publish_state and commit_graph.refresh each full-scan a table that gains a fragment per write and is never compacted (+5 reads/depth, ~30%). This is the gap-read-path-rederivation [G] failure mode — "cost grows with fragment count" — on the write path, where PR #268 never reached. invariants.md documents the internal-table half: "the internal metadata tables (__manifest, _graph_commits) are still not compacted, so the probe and refresh cost still grows with fragment count."

2.3 The skip_auto_cleanup interaction — and compaction ≠ cleanup

v0.7.0 sets skip_auto_cleanup: true deliberately (table_store.rs 10 sites + publisher.rs:392) [S] — load-bearing, because Lance 7's on-by-default auto_cleanup would GC __manifest-pinned snapshot versions (lance.md audit) [U]. Two distinct levers were turned off and must be replaced separately: compaction (compact_files) rewrites small fragments into fewer larger ones but does not prune old versions; cleanup (cleanup_old_versions) prunes old versions. Measured on a ~85-version graph [M]: optimize/compaction added a version (data-table reads 1035 → 1083, frags 81→1 — no help against the depth term); cleanup --keep 3 dropped it 1035 → 63 (89 versions pruned across 7 tables, 16×). So only cleanup bounds the version-chain length. Note today's cleanup/optimize cover node/edge tables only (the "7 tables"; internal __manifest/_graph_commits are excluded, optimize.rs:895-904 [M]) — so bounding the internal +5/depth residual needs them added to the key set (§9 step 2's code change). Operationally: cleanup aborts on a remote store without --yes (the scheduled job must pass it). Relation to step 3: while the namespace open is still on the write path, cleanup caps the dominant term — a real interim mitigation; once step 3 opens direct-by-version (O(1) regardless of version count, §2.4), cleanup is storage hygiene + internal-table sprawl, not load-bearing for read cost. The correct replacement is scheduled compaction and version cleanup (§9 step 2), not re-enabling auto_cleanup. Without it, version history (and per-write cost) grows forever.

Why Lance/LanceDB don't have this cost — the internal-table scan is self-inflicted [U]. Verified in Lance 7.0.0 source (cargo registry): a Lance dataset's metadata is a per-version manifest file — one self-contained protobuf (format/manifest.rs:35, struct Manifest { fragments: Arc<Vec<Fragment>>, … }) — and the current version is resolved O(1) via latest_version_hint.json ("O(1)/O(k) latest-version lookup via HEAD", io/commit.rs:75-79) or the V2 lexical name. Reading current state is one file read, never a scan over accumulated metadata; old manifests + _transactions files are reclaimed by timestamp GC (dataset/cleanup.rs, on by default), and manifest size is bounded by data compaction. LanceDB is multi-table but each table is an independent Lance dataset; its catalog is a directory/namespace lookup (or a cloud catalog service), not a mutable dataset read per write — it does no cross-table atomic commit, so it needs no coordinating meta-table. Omnigraph's __manifest/_graph_commits are therefore not a Lance pattern — they exist only because omnigraph layers a mutable catalog as a Lance dataset over 217 independent tables to get a cross-table atomic commit (the lance#7264 "Alternative A"). The whole §2.2 internal term is the price of that choice: omnigraph reads its catalog as an O(fragments) dataset scan and appends a fragment per write, where Lance reads its own metadata O(1) and prunes by default. Step 2a (compact → 1 fragment) ≈ Lance's single-file manifest read; step 2b (cleanup) ≈ Lance's cleanup_old_versions; the design simply re-derives, on a Lance-dataset catalog, the hygiene Lance treats as table stakes — and §8/lance#7264 MTT is the path to delete the catalog and inherit Lance's O(1) metadata outright. (This also raises a design question — should the catalog be a Lance dataset at all, vs a single flat CAS'd manifest file? — addressed in §8.)

2.4 Lance namespace: proper use (why the fix is bypass, not patch)

The upstream Lance Namespace is a catalog / discovery layer — "table discovery, resolving table locations, and coordinating commits" — whose intended division of labor is "the namespace provides basic information about the table, [then] the Lance SDK … fulfill[s] the other operations" (lance-namespace namespace/index.md, operations/index.md) [U]. It is meant to be consulted to resolve a table once, after which you operate on the Dataset directly — not consulted on every per-table open on a hot path. DatasetBuilder::from_namespace itself reflects this: it calls describe_table only to extract location, then reduces to a from_uri builder (lance builder.rs:130-178). For a system that already holds each table's location + version (omnigraph's __manifest does, via SubTableEntry), routing per-open resolution back through the namespace is the anti-pattern — and it aligns with this project's invariant 1 ("resolve latest state through the substrate's cheap primitive instead of re-scanning") and the deny-list "cold re-derivation on the hot path."

So the fix is bypass, not patch: open writes by URI + pinned version (from_uri(location).with_version(N)) — exactly what the read path already does (PR #268 Fix 2; the read path's own comment notes the namespace open "would full-scan __manifest twice per open (describe_table + describe_table_version)"), so this completes #268's open-by-location migration on the write side (§9 step 3). The custom namespace impl stays — it is still the right home for legitimate catalog operations (describe_table / table_exists / list_table_versions / create_table_version / managed-versioning commit coordination); only the per-open resolution leaves it. Two Lance facts make this safe and final: opening by explicit version is default_resolve_version = a single HEAD, O(1) (lance commit.rs:939-981), and Lance's own latest-resolution cost work (version-hint, PR #6752) confirms the latest path is the expensive one to avoid. Proven on omnigraph's own table [M]: a direct Dataset::open of the same physical 85-version edge table is 2 ops (O(1)), while the from_namespace open of that identical table is the O(depth) sweep — so latest-resolution is not inherently O(depth); the namespace path is O(depth) only because it misses the fast path the direct opener engages (likely the un-threaded Session). Step 3 therefore makes each write open O(1) on its own — so node/edge cleanup (§2.3) is an interim mitigation + storage hygiene, not load-bearing for read cost once step 3 ships.

End-to-end proof [M] — the one-line opener bypass, measured. A prototype patched open_dataset_head_for_write (table_store.rs:174) to open directly by URI (bypassing from_namespace — exactly step 3 / Alternative B), rebuilt v0.7.0, and re-ran the depth sweep on a fresh graph:

depth	data edgeVER baseline	data patched	TOTAL baseline	TOTAL patched
0	31	4	156	121
10	181	4	358	173
20	301	4	538	233
40	541	4	898	353
80	1021	4	1618	593

The dominant data-table term collapses 31 + 12·depth → flat 4 (O(1) in history), the total slope drops +18/depth → +5/depth (the residual +5 is exactly the two internal tables — step 2's scope), and at depth 80 a single edge drops 1618 → 593 ops (2.7×) from this one change alone, before step 2 / Phase 7. Functional correctness verified on the hot paths: main edge merge, branch create + write + read-back, node merge (managed-versioning still correct) — the direct opener already handles checkout_branch for non-main, so the namespace layer was not load-bearing for write correctness on these paths. Caveat: the prototype did not exercise schema-apply, branch merge, fork-on-first-write to a new table on a branch, overwrite mode, or concurrent writers — a production step 3 must pass the full merge_truth_table/recovery/failpoint suite (the namespace may do managed-versioning work that matters there). It proves the thesis + hot-path correctness, not drop-in completeness.

Step 2 also proven [M]. On the step-3-patched binary at depth ~87, compacting the internal tables to 1 fragment each (content-preserving) collapsed their scans: __manifest 285 → 32 (8.9×), _graph_commits 177 → 11 (16×); the step-3 data term stayed flat at 4. So both depth op-count terms are now empirically eliminated — a depth-87 single edge drops ~1720 → 198 ops (~8.7× in op count) with both fixes. Wall-clock correction (§0(c)/(d)): the ≈258 s → ≈30 s figure was wrong (it multiplied total ops by RTT as if serial); but the win is concurrency-dependent, not zero. Under unlimited concurrency the depth-driven ops parallelize and this op-count cut barely moves wall-clock (the backbone is ~110 hops); under an R2-realistic concurrency cap the same op-count cut is a primary latency win — the §0(d) A/B shows the uncompacted internal scan runs away (6→16 s) and #291's compaction cuts it ~6× and bounds it. So step 2a is a latency lever on a capped store (R2) and the anti-runaway fix, and a compute-floor / Phase-7-prerequisite / space win; step 3b is the lever for the residual serial backbone. The internal term is fragment-scan growth (read_manifest_scan / commit_graph.refresh read all fragments of the latest version), so the fix is compaction (merge fragments) — distinct from the data table's version-chain term that step 3 / version-cleanup handle. optimize's all_table_keys (optimize.rs:895-904) excludes the internal tables, so step 2 is a real code change, not just scheduling.

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3. First principles

On object storage the only objective function is minimize the number of sequential round-trips per logical operation, and make that number invariant to graph age, history depth, and table count — under the hard floor of SI, durability, atomicity, and loud integrity. Three generating principles fall out, each mapped to a validated failure:

1. Pin once, derive the rest (MVCC / invariant 15). A write is a pure function of one immutable, fully-pinned snapshot {branch, manifest_version, per-table (location, version, e_tag), schema_hash, writer_epoch}, resolved exactly once; every stage reads only from it (open-by-pinned-version, O(1), cacheable); the only contact with "current" is the final CAS. → fixes §2.1.
2. One source of truth, one commit (invariant 2). Visibility + lineage + version bumps are one atomic manifest write; the commit graph, indexes, and topology are projections of the manifest, never second authorities to keep in sync. → fixes the §2.2 _graph_commits term (iss-991 Phase 7).
3. The plan is the contract (correct-by-construction recovery). The writer serializes its complete publish intent before any HEAD moves; the live commit and crash-recovery execute the identical plan, so they cannot diverge. → fixes the partial-publish bug class structurally (iss-merge-recovery-partial-rollforward, PR #277).

The optimal single-edge write under these: ~2–3 sequential hops, O(1) in size — 1 warm probe (0 if the coordinator is unchanged), 1 parallel stage of fragment writes, 1 manifest CAS — regardless of 5 tables or 500, 10 commits or 10M. Lance's own test_commit_iops (read 1 / write 2 / stages 3) [U] proves the per-table primitive already hits this; the job is to make the graph write inherit it.

This is not speculative: it is exactly what the two reference object-storage databases do. LanceDB threads a pinned Arc<Dataset> + shared Session and commits with one CAS off a captured read_version, never re-resolving "latest" under default consistency [U]. SlateDB captures a snapshot, treats a monotonic-ID manifest (no pointer file) as the sole authority, commits with one conditional-PUT, recovers on open (never per-write), fences with a monotonic writer_epoch, and compacts on a schedule [U].

---

4. Reference-level design

4.1 The interface — one publish authority, one declarative plan

The deepest structural flaw is four hand-rolled writers (load_as, mutate_as, apply_schema_as, branch_merge_as), each re-implementing open → stage → commit → sidecar → lineage. There is one publish machine; the verbs are different declarative plans fed to it.

// The pinned, immutable operation identity — resolved ONCE.
struct WriteTxn {
    branch: BranchRef,
    base: PinnedSnapshot,   // {manifest_version, per-table (loc,version,e_tag), schema_hash, writer_epoch}
    session: Arc<Session>,  // shared per-graph; warms metadata/index caches across opens
    handles: HandleCache,   // open-by-version; each table opened once, reused across stages
}

// A typed, declarative publish plan — the COMPLETE "what", built before any HEAD moves.
enum TableAction {
    Append(Stream), Upsert(Batch), Overwrite(Image), Delete(Pred),
    Fork { from_version: u64 }, Register(Schema), Tombstone,
}
struct PublishPlan {
    base: PinnedSnapshot,
    actions: Map<TableKey, Vec<TableAction>>,
    lineage: GraphCommitIntent,   // parent = base.head; rides the SAME manifest CAS (Phase 7)
    expected: Expectations,       // per-table versions + graph_head + writer_epoch
}

impl GraphPublishAuthority {
    async fn open_txn(&self, branch: BranchRef) -> WriteTxn;                          // 1 warm probe
    async fn publish(&self, txn: &WriteTxn, plan: PublishPlan) -> PublishedSnapshot;  // stage∥ → 1 CAS
}

Properties that make it optimal:

• Stages take &WriteTxn/&PublishPlan, never storage — re-resolution and open-latest are unrepresentable. Invariants 2/3/15 hold by construction.
• The recovery sidecar is the serialized PublishPlan. Phase C and recovery both call plan.apply() — a merge that bumps tables A+B can never roll A forward and silently drop B. The iss-merge-recovery-partial-rollforward bug class is gone by design.
• One CAS. publish issues exactly one conditional __manifest merge-insert carrying every touched-table version + the graph_commit / graph_head lineage rows + the writer_epoch check.
• Verbs are thin lowerings. load/mutate/schema apply/branch merge each build a PublishPlan and call publish. Four copies → one machine; the public load_as/mutate_as API is unchanged (it lowers internally).

The cost contract becomes part of publish's documented API:

publish(txn, plan) costs opens ≤ |plan.touched_tables| (0 warm), stages ≤ 3, manifest_ops = O(1) — invariant to history depth and table count.

4.2 Supporting mechanics (each validated this cycle)

Mechanic	Design	Validation
Open by pinned version	from_uri(location).with_version(N) + shared Session + warm handle cache — the O(1) opener reads already use (instrumentation::open_table_dataset:112, SubTableEntry::open db/manifest.rs:200). NOT the write path's from_namespace builder (namespace.rs:174), whose describe_table + .load() do an O(depth) double latest-resolution (§2.2 — the dominant cost), and NOT open_dataset_at_state (opens head then checks out, table_store.rs:232, not O(1)).	#0 [S]
Strict-op SI	Update/Delete/SchemaRewrite open by pinned version (consistent read base) and the publish CAS rejects a same-table advance. Insert/Merge rely on Lance's natural rebase. Do not remove the open guards wholesale — that is a silent lost-update.	#5 [S]
Fork × pinned-version	Fork already opens source at the pinned version and creates the target from it; the live-manifest authority re-read before fork stays (not defeated by the pin).	#6 [S]
Open-once via the direct opener (THE dominant depth fix)	Reuse is intra-transaction (open each table once, by pinned version, thread it — kills the ~13 namespace-builder opens, the O(depth) double latest-resolution / +12/depth term, §0/§2.2). A commit invalidates its own entry, so no cross-write warm cache. Thread the shared per-graph Session through write opens (it is not today — load_table_from_namespace attaches no session, namespace.rs:174).	#9 [S]
Lineage in the manifest (Phase 7)	Publish graph_commit + mutable graph_head:<branch> rows in the same __manifest merge-insert with a branch-head CAS; _graph_commits becomes a projection. Removes the per-write commit_graph.refresh and closes the "manifest→commit-graph atomicity" + "commit-graph parent under concurrency" gaps.	iss-991 [G], [S]
Bounded history (compaction and cleanup)	Bring the internal table(s) into the optimize loop AND schedule version cleanup of node/edge tables — compaction rewrites fragments, only cleanup prunes the version chain that §2.2's dominant term re-reads (§2.3). No blob/PK/CAS blocker (__manifest has no blob column, state.rs:44-72; the unenforced PK is orthogonal to a content-preserving Rewrite). Post-Phase-7 there is only one internal table to compact.	#8 [S]
Recovery off the hot path	Move the per-write list_dir("__recovery/") to coordinator-open + the CAS-conflict path, guarded by a sidecar-age grace window (the sidecar carries created_at micros + a ULID, recovery.rs:762/:1522).	#4, iss-856/iss-recovery-sweep-live-writer-rollback [G][S]
Epoch fence	Monotonic writer_epoch in __manifest, CAS-claimed at writer init, checked on every publish. Fences a whole zombie writer deterministically (no TTL); closes the multi-process exposure and the Lance-MTT TTL-lease gap.	SlateDB FenceableTransactionalObject [U]
Branch create	Lance Clone instead of the per-table fork loop (O(tables)→O(1) sequential).	iss-691 [G]
Branch delete	Run the per-other-branch safety check and the per-table reclaim loops concurrently (buffer_unordered); read branch sets from in-memory coordinator state.	[S]

---

5. The cost contract — measurement & enforcement

The bug class is invisible to correctness tests, to local-FS tests, and to wall-clock benches. You can only prevent a regression in a quantity you define precisely, measure deterministically, and bound on every PR. The quantity is sequential object-store round-trips per logical operation, as a function of history depth and table count. OmniGraph already has the correct pattern for reads (warm_read_cost.rs, IOTracker, swept to depth 20); this RFC extends it across the write/branch/open surface. This is exactly how Lance and SlateDB enforce it [U].

5.1 Tier 1 — deterministic IO-counted gate (every PR)

Ordinary cargo test, hermetic (in-memory / tempdir + IOTracker), no S3, no wall-clock. Two shapes:

// (A) cost-invariant-to-HISTORY — the load-bearing gate. Gate the MERGE verb (the prod path).
for depth in [10, 100, 1000] {              // REAL commit history, not row count
    build_history(depth);
    reset_counters();
    let s = measured_merge();               // --mode merge, the read-modify production path
    // PRIMARY — the dominant term (§0): the written table's data opens/reads, flat in depth.
    assert!(s.data_table_opens          <= touched_tables); // open each table ONCE, by pinned version
    assert!(s.data_table_reads_per_open <= K_OPEN);         // each open O(1) in the table's version count
    // SECONDARY — internal-table scans flat in depth (compaction + cleanup).
    assert!(s.manifest_ops  <= K_MANIFEST); // small CONSTANT, NOT a function of depth
    assert!(s.lineage_ops   <= K_LINEAGE);
    assert!(s.stages        <= 3);          // bounded sequential hops
}
assert_flat_across_depths();                // ALL terms — esp. data-table opens — flat in N

// (B) fitness functions — architectural invariants AS tests
assert_eq!(validate_schema_contract_calls(write), 1);   // resolve-once
assert_eq!(coordinator_resolutions(write), 1);          // O(1) resolution
assert_eq!(recovery_listdir_calls(steady_state_write), 0);

Prerequisite, not a follow-up: route ALL opens (read + write) through the one instrumented opener BEFORE the gate is meaningful. Today the write path's data opens bypass table_wrapper (the §0(a) blind spot), so a gate that asserts only manifest_ops/lineage_ops would pass a still-broken build — one that compacts the internal tables (§9 step 2) but keeps the dominant ~13× namespace-open sweep (§2.2). The gate MUST count data-table opens/reads (the dominant term), which requires the routing change first. The data term is mode-independent (append ≡ merge ≡ +12/depth [U]), so either verb exercises it; gate the merge verb as the production path. Fixture caveat [U]: use valid edge endpoints — a write to a non-existent endpoint fails RI validation and rolls back at ~192 ops with zero chain reads, so a bad-endpoint fixture silently measures the rollback path and would pass falsely.

The load-bearing rule both Lance and SlateDB mostly miss: assert the constant is flat across N, not just small at one N. A shallow fixture cannot catch an O(history) cost (the §0(b) table is the red baseline).

Two latency LOCKs, and the ThrottledStore must cap concurrency and inject latency (corrected per §0(c)/(d)). The wall-clock model is (serial_hops + ops/effective_concurrency)·RTT + compute, so the gate needs both terms, and an unlimited-concurrency harness measures neither honestly: (1) serial-hop LOCK (serial_hops ≤ K, flat in depth) — read off the wall = compute + serial_hops·L slope (Lance's test_commit_iops setup); catches the ~110-hop backbone (step 3b's target). (2) op-count-flat-in-history LOCK under a capped-concurrency ThrottledStore (e.g. MAXCONC=8) — catches the internal-scan runaway (§0(d)) that step 2a fixes; without the cap this LOCK is invisible because the ops fan out (the §0(d) trap). Both are load-bearing: a build can pass the serial-hop LOCK and still run away on a capped store if its per-write op count grows with history. Run the depth sweep through a ThrottledStore that both throttles per-op latency and bounds in-flight concurrency to an R2-realistic value; assert serial_hops flat and ops flat in history. (A pure op-count gate under unlimited concurrency would fail a correct build whose parallel scans grow yet cost no wall-clock, and pass a slow one — which is why the cap is the load-bearing addition.)

5.2 Tier 2 — wall-clock trend (post-merge / nightly, never a PR gate)

A ThrottledStore criterion bench injecting cross-region RTT (50/150 ms/op — the incident's regime) for single-insert and branch-op latency, with a threshold alert (Bencher.dev --err / github-action-benchmark fail-on-alert). Both reference DBs keep wall-clock out of the PR gate (too noisy on shared runners) and use it only as a trend.

5.3 Close the loop — production metric

Emit storage.ops and storage.stages per logical operation as a span/counter (cheap always-on atomics; the heavy per-table attributing wrapper stays test-only behind a test-util-style feature, zero release cost). The number asserted in CI is the number observed in prod — iss-write-s3-roundtrip-amplification's cross-region signal becomes a direct readout.

5.4 Process discipline — test-first for performance

Write the depth-sweep cost-budget test first: it goes red today (§0), the WriteTxn + Phase-7 + compaction work turns it green (flat in N), and the red→green is the proof. This is CLAUDE.md rule 12 applied to cost, and the originating handoff's sequencing (§8/§9: land the tests before the fix so the win is measured and locked). Add the policy (extend invariant 15 + testing.md "Cost budget tests"): any change touching the read/write/branch/open path MUST add or extend a cost-budget test asserting the metric is flat at history depth.

5.5 The correctness contract — concurrency tests (the safety twin of the cost gate)

The cost gate proves fast; these prove safe. §6.5's multi-writer cliff slipped the suite for the same structural reason the latency bug did — nothing runs the schedule that triggers it: the suite is single-process with the in-process queue (the bug is cross-process), uses local/in-memory stores (no object-store cross-process CAS), and its recovery tests cover restart-time sweep, not live-writer rollback. These four must land before PublishPlan/epoch merge (steps 5):

1. Cross-process multi-writer on a real/emulated object store (the corruption case) — N independent engine processes writing the same (table, branch); assert all commit-or-cleanly-retry (no lost updates, no stuck "needs recovery," no HEAD-ahead-of-manifest). A single-process failpoint test cannot reproduce the corruption (in-process degrades to clean OCC, §6.5) — this genuinely needs a multi-process harness (empirically 1/12 today). State that so nobody writes a single-process test expecting it to fail.
2. Deterministic in-process interleaving (failpoint) — WRITTEN, passes [M]. Two→ eight handles, sleep failpoint at the commit_staged→publish window (loader/mod.rs:605); resume losers and assert they retry cleanly. This demonstrates the benign path (N=8 → 2 commit, 6 clean OCC retries) — it is the regression guard for "in-process stays clean," not a reproduction of the cross-process cliff.
3. Live-writer recovery (iss-recovery-sweep-live-writer-rollback) — a concurrent open must not roll back a live in-flight publish (the grace window).
4. Formal model — a Quint/TLA+ model of {two writers, interleave commit_staged and manifest-CAS} (iss-934); it finds the §6.5 cliff immediately.
5. Cross-table write-skew — WRITTEN, red, and driven red→green in-process [M]. Failpoint loader.post_ri_pre_stage (between RI-validation and staging): writer B validates "Bob exists" and parks; writer A overwrites node:Person dropping Bob (non-cascading); B commits Knows(Bob→Alice) → committed orphan. The red test for the §7.1 fix. Acceptance is a single-process gate — unlike the §6.5 HEAD-ahead corruption (which genuinely needs the multi-process harness), this skew reproduces deterministically in one process: the parked edge writer's snapshot really does pin edge:Knows:1 before the overwrite commits, so the overlap is real with two in-process handles. The fix went red→green in-process behind a shared head row (§7.1). Only #1–#4 (HEAD-ahead/epoch corruption) need cross-process scheduling.

Plus one disambiguating run owed (§6.5 confound): separate-handles in-process on S3 — to confirm the corruption is the process boundary, not the store.

This mirrors the cost gate's discipline (assert across the dimension the suite otherwise never exercises) — there, history depth; here, concurrent cross-process schedules.

---

6. What is already right vs. the deltas

Already correct — do not rewrite. The in-memory MutationStaging accumulator, the recovery sidecar mechanism, the per-(table,branch) write queue, D2, the sealed TableStorage trait, and the read-path warm-up (PR #268) all stay. This is not a substrate rewrite.

One claim to soften — manifest-CAS is atomic per publish, not unconditionally cross-table-serializing [M]. The manifest CAS (the reference impl of the lance#7264 "Alternative A") makes each publish atomic and serializes any two writers whose write-sets share a __manifest row — overlapping or same-table, which is exactly why §6.5's same-table cases and the cascading-delete case retry cleanly. But two writers touching disjoint tables write disjoint per-object_id rows, so Lance sees no conflict and both commit (proven [M], §7.1). The genuinely-atomic cross-table commit §13 contrasts with Delta is the target (§4.1's single merge-insert over a shared head row), not current state. So "do not rewrite the CAS" holds for the commit primitive, but the cross-table-serialization §7.1 needs is a real addition (the shared graph_head row), not something the current CAS already provides.

The deltas (each a validated, localized gap):

#	Delta	Mechanism	Tracking
1	Snapshot re-derived per stage	capture-once WriteTxn, thread by ref	iss-write-s3-roundtrip-amplification
2	Write opens via from_namespace re-resolve the data-table ~13×/write, missing the fast path (DOMINANT, +12/depth)	open each table once, direct from_uri().with_version(N) (bypass namespace, §2.4) + shared Session	iss-write-s3-roundtrip-amplification, #0
3	Lineage = 2nd authority, O(history) refresh (secondary)	Phase 7: lineage into __manifest	iss-991
4	__manifest/_graph_commits excluded from optimize/cleanup (optimize.rs:895-904; prototype pruned "7 tables" = node/edge only [M]) — the +5/depth residual after step 3	add them to all_table_keys (a code change) + scheduled compaction/cleanup	gap-read-path-rederivation (write twin)
5	list_dir("__recovery/") per write	move to open + conflict, grace window	iss-856, iss-recovery-sweep-live-writer-rollback
6	4 hand-rolled writers, commit↔recovery drift	one PublishPlan executed by both	iss-merge-recovery-partial-rollforward (PR #277)
7	No writer epoch (multi-process exposure)	writer_epoch in __manifest	— (new)
8	branch create = O(tables) fork loop	Lance Clone	iss-691
9	branch delete = sequential loops	concurrent buffer_unordered	— (new)
10	No write/branch cost gate (must count data-table opens; route all opens through the instrumented opener first)	Tier-1 IO-counted tests, merge verb	— (new)
11	Schema contract re-validated uncached per resolve (flat 46 reads/write — 29% of depth-0 cost; constant, not depth)	resolve/validate-once in WriteTxn; §5.1 validate_schema_contract_calls==1 (the depth gate misses it)	iss-write-s3-roundtrip-amplification

---

6.5 Concurrency correctness — the multi-writer cliff (proven [M])

The latency fixes are about speed; a separate, proven finding is about safety. A multi-writer experiment [M] shows concurrent same-branch writers behave very differently by topology:

topology	concurrency	outcome
single server (shared in-proc queue, loader/mod.rs:426)	12	12 / 12 commit (clean)
in-process, separate handles, interleave failpoint at commit_staged→publish (loader/mod.rs:605)	8	2 / 8 commit; the other 6 are clean retryable OCC
multi-process (separate CLIs / S3, no shared queue)	2 / 3 / 5 / 12	1 / N commit; the rest CORRUPT

Two distinct failure modes — and the corruption is strictly cross-process:

• In-process → benign. Even with separate handles, no shared queue, high contention, losers fail with stale view of 'edge:Knows': expected manifest table version 5 but current is 7 — refresh and retry — a clean, retryable OCC conflict; graph state stays consistent. The publisher CAS is doing its job.
• Cross-process → corruption. Lance HEAD version N+1 ahead of manifest version N; a pending recovery sidecar requires rollback. Mechanism: a losing writer advances the table's Lance HEAD (commit_staged) before the manifest CAS; when the CAS loses, HEAD is ahead of the manifest — a partial commit the per-write heal defers (recovery.rs:978-988; only the open-time sweep rolls back), so a live writer hitting it fails instead of healing. Self-heals on the next read-write reopen (not permanently bricked), but during a burst throughput collapses to one survivor. Reachable at concurrency = 2 cross-process.

So in-process safety already comes from the publisher CAS (clean OCC); the corruption needs the process boundary. (Confound, stated honestly: the in-process interleave ran on local-FS and the cross-process on S3-via-proxy — but single-server-on-S3 was also clean (12/12), giving two independent "in-process clean" points vs one "cross-process corrupt," triangulating on the process boundary, not the store. One disambiguating run — separate-handles in-process on S3 — would move this from triangulated to proven; §5.5.)

Scoping (matters for urgency): single-server prod is serialized-correct, just slow — the in-process (table,branch) queue serializes same-branch writes (all 12 commit, no lost updates); the production incident was the latency (serialized O(depth) writes → 90 s timeout), not corruption. The corruption hazard is latent: it appears the moment a second writer exists (server replica, CLI-alongside-server, multi-writer scale-out). So: single-server today = serialized-correct (slow; fixed by steps 2/3); multi-writer = UNSAFE until writer_epoch lands.

The fix is the existing RFC, no new design. The A-before-B window (Lance HEAD moves before the manifest references it) is inherent to Lance's per-table-lineage model — you cannot eliminate it, only fence and recover it: the writer_epoch (delta #7) is a leader-lease via cross-process CAS so two writers are never in the commit_staged→manifest-CAS window across processes (it removes the concurrent-race dimension); the PublishPlan=sidecar (delta #6) makes a single crashed writer roll forward/back deterministically (the crash dimension); and recovery off the hot path + grace window (delta #5, Q2) is the exact reason the live writers failed rather than self-healed (iss-recovery-sweep-live-writer-rollback). This is the standard WAL-replay + leader-lease shape (confirmed against SlateDB's FenceableTransactionalObject and Kleppmann's fencing-token canon, §10). This finding promotes #6/#7 from "nice correctness work" to the load-bearing guard that gates multi-writer topologies — and it is the motivating case for them.

---

7. Invariants & deny-list check

Touches and strengthens (does not weaken) invariants in invariants.md:

• §2 (manifest-atomic visibility): preserved; lineage now rides the same CAS (strengthens — closes the "manifest→commit-graph atomicity" gap).
• §3 (one snapshot per op): enforced by construction via &WriteTxn.
• §4 (publish at one boundary): unchanged — still one manifest publish.
• §5 (recovery part of the commit protocol): preserved; the sidecar is the PublishPlan (strengthens — commit and recovery cannot diverge). The grace window addresses the documented "recovery serialized against live writers in-process only" gap.
• §7 (indexes derived) / §15 (one source of truth, cheaply derived): this RFC is the write-side application of §15 — bound cost to the working set, not history. The commit graph becomes derived (strengthens).
• §5 strict-op SI: preserved (#5 validation — open guards kept for read-modify-write).

Deny-list: does not hit "cold re-derivation on the hot path" (it removes two instances), "state that drifts" (lineage stops being a second authority), or "acks before durable persistence." The writer_epoch is the closing move on the "local write_text_if_match is not a cross-process CAS" / multi-process gaps — add it before admitting multi-process write topologies.

No invariant is weakened. Two Known Gaps close (manifest→commit-graph atomicity; commit-graph parent under concurrency, via Phase 7); one (read-path-rederivation) gets its write twin filed and addressed.

7.1 Scope of the correctness claims (literature review, §13)

The "correct by construction" framing (§3, §4.1) is precise but bounded — the DB-canon review flags three places not to over-claim:

• Per-table serializability, not graph-wide — but the gap is narrow and now measured [M]. Three deterministic cases (failpoint loader.post_ri_pre_stage, placed between RI-validation and staging; red test in tests/failpoints.rs):

  • Cross-table disjoint → genuine skew, VIOLATED. A non-cascading endpoint removal — node:Person overwrite dropping Bob, touching only the node table — concurrent with an edge insert Knows(Bob→Alice): both commit (write-set-only CAS, RI validated once pre-commit and never re-checked at publish) → committed orphan. (= iss-ri-write-skew-dangling-edges + the concurrent face of iss-overwrite-orphans-committed-edges.)
  • Cross-table overlapping → incidentally protected. delete-based removal cascades into edge:Knows, so the write-sets overlap, the per-table CAS engages, and the loser fails cleanly (stale-view OCC retry); invariant held.
  • Same-table → NOT a separate skew. Cardinality / @unique(src) have overlapping write-sets, so the per-table CAS holds the constraint; the loser's failure is the HEAD-ahead corruption already scoped to #6/#7 (epoch + PublishPlan), not a consistency hole. (This corrects an earlier over-generalization: cardinality/uniqueness do not share the read-set gap.)

  So the skew is reachable only for the non-cascading-overwrite × disjoint-edge-insert shape — operation-specific, not constraint-specific.

  The scoped fix alone is a no-op — proven [M], and the reason is mechanical. Feeding the endpoint node-table versions into the edge's publish expected set (check_expected_table_versions, publisher.rs:353) was prototyped exactly; debug confirmed the pins reach the check, and both writers still committed — the orphan persisted. Every publish writes a unique per-object_id row into __manifest (merge key object_id = version_object_id(table, version)). Two disjoint-table writers (node:Person vs edge:Knows) touch no common row, so Lance's row-level merge-insert CAS commits both with no conflict, the publisher's retry loop never fires, and check_expected_table_versions — a non-atomic pre-check, not part of the CAS — is evaluated exactly once against the stale pre-both manifest and passes for both. The read-set pin only bites if the loser is forced to retry and re-evaluate against fresh state, which requires a shared contention row every publish touches. Adding a stand-in global head row (UpdateAll-touched by every publish) makes the disjoint writers overlap → Lance conflict → publisher retry → the reloaded pin (edge:Knows:1 vs current 5) rejects the stale writer → no orphan (red→green, failpoint suite 52/52). That shared row is exactly Phase-7's graph_head:<branch>.

  Consequence — §7.1 is NOT a standalone single-server PR (correct earlier text that called it "single-server-live, not deferrable" — it is urgent and epoch-independent, but it cannot ship against today's per-object_id manifest without a contention point). Land it one of three ways: (a) with Phase 7 (step 4), reusing graph_head:<branch> as the contention row; (b) behind a minimal per-branch head row ahead of Phase 7 (~15 lines, as prototyped); or (c) as commit-time re-validation — still must win a serialization point first. Recommended: (c) behind a per-branch head row. The CAS-map approach carries the two costs §11 anticipated — table-granularity false conflicts (any Person overwrite conflicts with any concurrent edge:Knows insert, even different rows — needs a row-granularity read-set) and scope (a global head serializes the whole graph; per-branch graph_head is the right granularity). Commit-time re-validation is precise (no false positives) and reuses the same serialization point, so once the head row exists it strictly dominates the CAS-map. Either way the head row imposes an inherent trade — same-branch writers serialize cross-process (throughput ceiling 1/branch, bounded by PUBLISHER_RETRY_BUDGET) — now a correctness requirement, not just a Phase-7 side effect (§11).

  Two faces, two fixes — do not bundle them. The above addresses only the concurrent face (overlapping snapshots, iss-ri-write-skew-dangling-edges). The sequential face (iss-overwrite-orphans-committed-edges) — an overwrite drops a node that already has a committed inbound edge, with zero concurrency — cannot be caught by read-set-in-CAS: the later writer's snapshot legitimately post-dates the edge, so its pin matches and it commits. That is a pure inbound-RI-validation gap: when an overwrite/delete removes node endpoints, re-check that no live edge references them. A validation concern, not a CAS one; it needs no contention row and ships independently. (Note: iss-984 is a different bug — remote branch-merge idempotency — not this.)

• Recovery: roll-forward is by-construction; roll-back is not. "Commit and recovery replay the identical plan" holds for the redo direction (shared plan.apply()). The undo classifier (NoMovement / UnexpectedAtP1 / UnexpectedMultistep / IncompletePhaseB) lives outside the shared executor, only at open-time — that's where ARIES-style divergence risk concentrates and where the §5.5 failpoint coverage is owed.

• The fence and the cross-file atomicity rest on a linearizable conditional-put. Kleppmann's fencing-token guarantee, the manifest CAS, and the epoch all require a linearizable register — true on S3/R2 (If-Match) but not on the local-FS path (write_text_if_match is content-token compare-then-replace, ABA-prone — invariants.md Known Gap). Precondition to state up front: every "deterministic fence" / "atomic CAS" claim holds on a store with linearizable conditional-put; the epoch must not use the local-FS path. Delta Lake §3.2.2 treats the object-store consistency model (read-after-write + put-if-absent) as a first-class design parameter; so should this RFC.

---

8. Relationship to Lance MTT (the seam, not a dependency)

GraphPublishAuthority.publish(txn, plan) is exactly the adapter to a future Lance catalog.transaction(). lance#7264 ("Multi-Table Transactions via Branching") is real and OmniGraph is its reference "Alternative A" (fast-forward-main + WAL + roll-forward recovery) [U], but it is a 5-day-old discussion with two unbuilt dependencies (lance#7263 branch merge/rebase, lance#7185 UUID branch paths), an unresolved central choice (it favors pointer-swap — the opposite identity model from OmniGraph), and an open soundness question (TTL lease needs an epoch). Build the seam now on its own merits; do not schedule around MTT landing. When it ships, publish's body swaps (stage→CAS→sidecar → catalog.transaction()) while WriteTxn/PublishPlan and every verb lowering stay. iss-863/iss-864 [G] already scope this spike.

Why keep __manifest as a Lance dataset (and compact it) rather than a single flat CAS'd manifest file? The Lance-source comparison (§2.3) makes this an explicit choice to defend, not assume. Both reference designs the RFC cites store cross-version metadata as one flat file read O(1): Lance's per-version manifest (format/manifest.rs) and SlateDB's monotonic-ID manifest (§13). A flat graph_manifest.json updated by conditional-PUT would give omnigraph O(1) catalog reads and a natural one-writer CAS with no fragment-scan / compaction / cleanup treadmill — structurally cheaper than the Lance-dataset __manifest whose hygiene §9 step 2 exists to maintain. The reason to keep the Lance-dataset form is the MTT seam: __manifest is deliberately shaped so publish swaps to Lance catalog.transaction() when lance#7264 lands, at which point Lance owns the cross-table manifest and omnigraph deletes __manifest entirely — inheriting Lance's O(1) metadata rather than maintaining its own. A flat-file rewrite would be a detour away from that seam, replaced again by MTT. So the trade is "Lance-dataset catalog (compacted, MTT-aligned) over flat-file manifest (locally cheaper, off the MTT path)" — defensible, but it means step 2's compaction/cleanup work is a bridge cost, justified only by the MTT endgame; if MTT slips materially, the flat-file manifest becomes the better target and step 2 stops being a bridge and starts being permanent overhead. Worth a revisit checkpoint tied to the lance#7264 timeline.

The MemWAL/LSM ingest tier (iss-681 [G], dec-adopt-lance-v7-memwal) is complementary, not competing, and not in flight (the memwal-benefit-analysis branch is an empty placeholder; the real analysis is commit c9a81266). MemWAL sits below the manifest publisher (per-table durability, opt-in, intra-table); WriteTxn owns the cross-table CAS. Build WriteTxn first.

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9. Sequencing

Ordered by leverage and dependency. The dominant depth term is the redundant data-table opens (step 3), not the internal tables (step 2) — §0; both must land to flatten the curve.

1. Measure first (Tier-1 gate). ✅ LANDED (gate + harness). Prerequisite (1a): the write opener (open_dataset_head) is routed through the instrumented open_dataset_tracked so the gate can count data-table opens (§5.1). The write cost-budget tests live in crates/omnigraph/tests/write_cost.rs on a shared, store-agnostic harness (tests/helpers/cost.rs: measure/IoCounts/ assert_flat/local_graph/s3_graph) that warm_read_cost.rs and write_cost_s3.rs also consume — one vocabulary, no duplicated IOTracker plumbing. The local gate ships green every-PR guards + the RED #[ignore]'d internal-table LOCK (step 2's red→green acceptance). Still owed: the prod storage.ops span metric (§5.3) and the bucket-gated write_cost_s3.rs opener LOCK (step 3a's red→green, S3-only per the §9-3a measurement note).
2. Bound history — bring the INTERNAL tables into optimize/cleanup. Split into a compaction half (safe) and a cleanup half (version GC, needs the Q8 watermark). Validated (Lance docs + source): compaction preserves versions and flattens the per-write metadata op-count scan; cleanup is the separate version-deleting op that opens the Q8 hole. Latency role — concurrency-dependent, MEASURED (§0(d)): the internal fragment scan parallelizes only on a store with free concurrency; under an R2-realistic cap (8) it serializes and an uncompacted graph runs away (per-write ops 1273→3505, wall 6→16 s), which #291's compaction cuts ~6× and bounds. So on R2 step 2a is both a primary latency lever and the anti-runaway fix, and the hard prerequisite for Phase 7 / step 4 (the graph_head CAS retry re-runs load_publish_state, only acceptable once __manifest is compacted), and a compute-floor/space win. (On an unlimited-concurrency store the latency component alone vanishes — the depth ops fan out — but R2 is not that store.) #291 is merged to main but undeployed; the deployed f6d2cc03 optimize is node/edge-only, so an operator optimize on prod cannot compact these tables — deploying #291 + running optimize is the immediate prod win.
   • 2a. Internal-table compaction. ✅ LANDED. optimize now compacts all three internal tables — __manifest, _graph_commits, and _graph_commit_actors (the actor table grows one fragment per commit on the authenticated write path, so it carries the same O(depth) scan as the other two and is compacted from one source-of-truth list with per-table existence guards). compact_internal_table is a separate simpler path than optimize_one_table: no manifest publish, no recovery sidecar. The sidecar-free property does not rest on single-commit atomicity (compact_files can emit a ReserveFragments commit before the Rewrite, and the auto-cleanup strip is a further commit) — it holds because each of those commits is content-preserving and the table is read at HEAD, so a crash leaves it readable and content-identical and the next optimize re-plans. Non-destructive by construction: compaction preserves versions, and before compacting it strips any stale lance.auto_cleanup.* config off the table, so a graph created by an older binary (on-by-default GC hook) cannot have the commit-time hook silently prune __manifest-pinned versions during an optimize (current binaries store no such config; the strip is the upgrade-path safety net). The same strip now also runs on the data-table path (optimize_one_table), inside the Optimize sidecar window — so optimize is non-destructive on node/edge tables too, not just the internal ones (the data-table path was a pre-existing gap, since compact_files/ optimize_indices there also commit with the auto-cleanup hook enabled). Concurrency: no app lock on the internal path — and compact_files does not auto-retry a semantic conflict against a concurrent live writer (Lance prescribes app-rerun for Rewrite vs Update/Merge), so compact_internal_table runs a bounded retry loop that reopens fresh and replans on a retryable Lance conflict (the canonical Lance-consumer pattern); transient contention does not fail the live publisher or the operator's optimize, but sustained contention past the budget surfaces a loud conflict error (bounded + observable, not an infinite loop). The data-table path instead holds the per-table write queue, so it never contends. A coordinator refresh after the compaction restores cache coherence. The internal_table_scans_are_flat_in_history LOCK is now green on the authenticated write path: on a compacted graph a write's __manifest/_graph_commits+_graph_commit_actors scan is flat in history (measured __manifest 4→2, commit-graph+actors 10→2 across depth 10→100). Compacts all three tables even though Phase 7 (iss-991) will later fold _graph_commits into __manifest (one-call throwaway; full interim win until then). 2a is also the hard prerequisite for Phase 7 (its graph_head CAS contention is only acceptable once __manifest compaction bounds the publisher's load_publish_state scan).
   • 2b. Internal-table cleanup + Q8 watermark — DEFERRED (debated; not bundled with 2a). Cleanup is the version-deleting op that hits cleanup-resurrection (§12 Q8: Lance's version CAS has no monotonic guard), so it must land with a durable monotonic watermark (a Lance boundary tag — durable across cleanup, cleanup.rs is_tagged). Deferred because it touches the read/open path (a tag-floor clamp on every coordinator open), is the MTT-redundant part (MTT may replace __manifest), and only buys the secondary version-count/space term — whereas 2a delivers the dominant per-write scan win with zero resurrection risk. Land it when the version-count cost bites or the Lance MTT timeline clarifies. (gap-read-path-rederivation write twin.)
3. The opener fix — a shippable lead + the structural follow-on.
   • 3a. Opener bypass (standalone PR, THE dominant fix — [M] proven). ✅ LANDED. TableStore::open_dataset_head_for_write now delegates to the direct open_dataset_head opener (Dataset::open by URI + checkout_branch, routed through instrumentation::open_dataset_tracked so the cost gate can count it; no-op in prod) instead of the from_namespace builder. Measured end-to-end on the prototype: data term 31 + 12·depth → flat 4, total +18 → +5/depth, depth-80 2.7× (§2.4), functionally correct on main/branch/node. Acceptance: the full cargo test --workspace --locked suite passes under the bypass (the tests/ integration + merge_truth_table + recovery/failpoint suites the prototype's --lib run didn't cover — schema-apply, branch merge, fork-on-first-write, overwrite). Namespace retired to test-only: with both reads (Fix 2) and now writes bypassing it, nothing in production routes through the Lance namespace — confirming §2.4's premise. The dead per-table open chain (load_table_from_namespace, open_table_head_for_write) was deleted and the StagedTableNamespace contract apparatus gated #[cfg(test)], mirroring the already-#[cfg(test)] read namespace (BranchManifestNamespace). Measurement note (corrected): the opener win is S3-only — local FS resolves latest with one cheap read_dir regardless of opener, so the namespace-vs-direct difference is invisible there (the local data-table read count does grow with depth, but that is the merge-insert/RI scan over O(depth) fragments, a compaction term, not the opener; depth-100 = 92 ops identically before and after the bypass). The opener LOCK therefore lives in the bucket-gated write_cost_s3.rs, not the local write_cost.rs.
   • 3b. Full WriteTxn (capture-once + intra-txn handle reuse + shared Session). Formalize 3a's open-once into the pinned, threaded WriteTxn (re-resolution unrepresentable, invariant 3) and kill the flat-46 schema-read constant (resolve/validate-once, §0/§6). (iss-write-s3-roundtrip-amplification.)
4. Phase 7 — lineage into the manifest. Removes the per-write commit_graph.refresh; commit graph becomes a projection. (iss-991.) Hard dependency: step 2 must land first (Q1, §12) — each publisher retry re-runs the O(history) load_publish_state scan, so the graph_head CAS contention Phase 7 introduces is acceptable only once compaction bounds that scan. Acceptance includes the Q1 concurrent-same-branch-writer gate. Carries the §7.1 concurrent write-skew fix. The graph_head:<branch> row is the shared contention point the cross-table read-set-in-CAS needs — proven [M] that the read-set fix is a no-op without it (§7.1). So the concurrent face of the write-skew lands with this step (or, if §7.1 must ship earlier, behind a minimal per-branch head row — ~15 lines — or as commit-time re-validation). The sequential face (iss-overwrite-orphans-committed-edges) is independent: inbound-RI validation on node removal, no head row, ships anytime.
5. PublishPlan unification + recovery off the hot path + epoch fence — the multi-writer safety guard. Collapse the four writers; move the __recovery list to open/conflict; add the writer_epoch leader-lease. Motivated by the proven §6.5 cliff (multi-process same-branch writers corrupt at concurrency = 2) — this is the guard that makes multi-writer topologies safe, not optional polish. Gated by the §5.5 correctness contract (the four concurrency tests must land with it). writer_epoch must be a true cross-process conditional CAS — not the local-FS write_text_if_match path (§7.1). (iss-856, iss-merge-recovery-partial-rollforward, iss-recovery-sweep-live-writer-rollback, iss-934.)
6. Branch ops. Lance Clone for create (iss-691); concurrent delete loops. Measured backbones (§0(c)): create ~77, delete ~87 — op counts scale with table count, so Clone (O(tables)→O(1)) + buffer_unordered delete are the fix. Note: branch write (1777 ops, ~258-hop backbone, 21s compute floor) is NOT a step-6 item — it is fork-on-first-write stacked on the main backbone, owned by step 3b + the fork seam (the path 3a skipped); it is the single worst write shape and should be a named acceptance case for step 3b.
7. Freeze investment in publisher/sidecar/fork internals; pursue the MTT seam (iss-863/iss-864) as the strategic exit.

Land PR #277 first — it closes iss-merge-recovery-partial-rollforward and is the producer-side half of the PublishPlan discipline; the heal-relocation in step 5 must preserve its merge pre-snapshot heal (exec/merge.rs:1084-1090) and its open-time IncompletePhaseB → RollBack (which the per-write heal never performed anyway).

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10. Cross-reference map (the ties)

Dev-graph items (modernrelay) — what this RFC ties together:

• Primary: iss-write-s3-roundtrip-amplification (the bug).
• Depth term / Phase 7 (commit graph → manifest-derived projection): iss-991 (related: iss-707 structured commit-graph lineage; iss-934 Quint multi-table-publish verification). Read twin: gap-read-path-rederivation.
• Substrate seam: iss-863, iss-864. Decision: dec-adopt-lance-v7-memwal (iss-681).
• Recovery: iss-856, iss-recovery-sweep-live-writer-rollback, iss-merge-recovery-partial-rollforward, iss-903, iss-load-not-crash-safe.
• Residual migration: iss-950 (MR-A staged delete, retires D2), iss-848 (index-coverage reconciler, owns create_vector_index).
• Branch/load: iss-691, iss-677, iss-895, iss-topology-cross-branch-cache, iss-841, iss-982, iss-423, iss-989.
• Concurrency correctness (survives MTT) — two faces, two different fixes [M] (§7.1): iss-ri-write-skew-dangling-edges (the concurrent face; fix = read-set-in-CAS + a shared graph_head contention row, so it's coupled to step 4 / a minimal head row / commit-time re-validation — NOT a standalone PR) and iss-overwrite-orphans-committed-edges (the sequential face; fix = inbound-RI validation on node removal, ships independently, no contention row). (iss-984 — remote branch-merge idempotency — is unrelated; not a write-skew.)
• Blockers: blk-lance-6658 (shipped 7.0.0), blk-lance-6666 (open, vector index two-phase), blk-lance-blob-compaction.
• Epics: epc-bulk-data-plane, epc-lance-v7-migration, epc-783 (reliability harness), epc-929 (Quint verification).

Proposed new dev-graph wiring (not yet written):

• New Epic epc-write-path-latency — owns the cluster of orphaned issues above (none currently has an epic).
• New Gap gap-write-path-rederivation — the write twin of gap-read-path-rederivation (current: write re-derives snapshot + scans uncompacted internal tables per write; target: capture-once + bounded history).
• New Issues: write-side cost-budget gate + prod metric (step 1; prereq 1a routes all opens through the instrumented opener); opener bypass — open writes direct-by-URI, standalone (step 3a, [M] the dominant fix, completes PR #268 Fix 2 on the write path, §2.4); full WriteTxn capture-once (step 3b); add __manifest/_graph_commits to all_table_keys for compaction+cleanup (step 2 — a code change, optimize.rs:895-904); PublishPlan unification + epoch (step 5); branch-delete concurrency (step 6).
• Per-table namespace retired to test-only (step 3a landed). With reads (Fix 2) and now writes (step 3a) both opening direct-by-URI, nothing in production routes through the per-table StagedTableNamespace. The dead open chain (load_table_from_namespace, open_table_head_for_write) was deleted; the StagedTableNamespace struct/impl/factory are now #[cfg(test)], mirroring the already-#[cfg(test)] read namespace (BranchManifestNamespace). Both are retained only to validate the LanceNamespace contract in unit tests. Production catalog / managed-versioning commit coordination for __manifest itself goes through a separate namespace (GraphNamespacePublisher), unaffected by this change. The former follow-up to harden StagedTableNamespace::list_table_versions (checkout_version per version, O(depth)) is now purely a test-hygiene note — no prod caller can hit it; if any future version-list / time-travel feature needs per-table version enumeration, build TableVersions from versions() metadata directly rather than resurrecting the namespace open path.
• New Decision dec-writetxn-manifest-authoritative-publish — records this RFC's design choice and the MTT-seam stance.

Key source locations (v0.7.0): omnigraph.rs:561-568,739-779,1317-1389; table_ops.rs:505-609; table_store.rs:157-280,282-341,797; loader/mod.rs:197,400,485,557; exec/mutation.rs:725; exec/merge.rs:1084-1090; db/manifest/publisher.rs:51,93-124,356-371,385,432-440,448-490; exec/mutation.rs:640-673 (D2 rule); db/manifest/state.rs:44-72,133-141; db/manifest/layout.rs:22-26; db/manifest/namespace.rs:111-112 (read open, O(1)),:357-385/:362 (describe_table → redundant Dataset::open — the write-path double-open),:158-186,544-550 (write open via from_namespace),:395-427 (list_table_versions per-version checkout — test-only O(depth), the §10 follow-up); db/manifest/recovery.rs:762,978-988,1522; db/commit_graph.rs:136-164,213-272; db/omnigraph/optimize.rs:240,517,895-904; instrumentation.rs:37,112-131; runtime_cache.rs:202-283; tests/warm_read_cost.rs (the read-side gate to mirror).

Upstream: lance#7264/#7263/#7185 (MTT); Lance with_version O(1) open (from_namespace → describe_table, builder.rs:130-178; default_resolve_version = one HEAD, commit.rs:939-981; version-hint PR #6752), list_is_lexically_ordered = !is_s3_express (aws.rs:183), IOTracker/assert_io_*/num_stages, test_commit_iops, test_commit_uses_version_hint_on_non_lexical_store; lance-namespace design (namespace/index.md, operations/index.md — catalog/discovery layer, resolve once); LanceDB io_tracking.rs, test_reload_resets_consistency_timer; SlateDB FenceableTransactionalObject (epoch fence), InstrumentedObjectStore, monotonic-ID manifest.

Reproduce the §0(b) network measurement: rustfs (S3-compat) on :9000 behind a ~90-LoC Go counting proxy on :9100 (adds LATENCY_MS, preserves the SigV4 Host header, /__ctl/reset + /__ctl/stat); an omnigraph cluster on s3://…/cluster through the proxy. Single-write breakdown: reset the proxy log, load --mode merge one edge, classify by S3 key. Depth slope: write N× to main, diff the per-write log at depth D vs D+20 by table. Native baseline: pylance 7.0.0 write_dataset(mode="append") in a loop → flat 6 ops/append at any depth.

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11. Drawbacks, alternatives, reversibility

Drawbacks. Phase 7 makes disjoint-table same-branch writers contend on the graph_head:<branch> row (they don't today) — bounded by the Lance retry budget, inherent to a linear per-branch DAG, gated on a measured concurrency test and on step 2 landing first (§12 Q1, resolved). Reframe [M]: this contention is load-bearing for correctness, not merely a throughput tax. The §7.1 write-skew is unreachable only because the shared head row forces disjoint cross-table writers to overlap, conflict, retry, and re-evaluate their read-set pins against fresh state (proven — without it the scoped CAS fix is a no-op). So §7.1 and the head row are coupled: the "drawback" is exactly what buys the cross-table invariant, and the throughput ceiling (1 writer/branch, bounded by PUBLISHER_RETRY_BUDGET) is a correctness requirement the moment §7.1 ships, not an optional Phase-7 side effect. PublishPlan is a non-trivial refactor of four writers; it must land behind the cost gate and the merge_truth_table/recovery/failpoint suites.

Alternatives. (A) Caching band-aid only — memoize schema validation, cache opens within a request: ~30–50% fewer round-trips but leaves open-by-latest and the O(history) terms. Mitigation, not a fix. (B) Opener bypass only (open direct-by-URI+version, no full txn) — kills the dominant depth term, now measured [M]: a one-line patch flattened the data term 31+12·depth → flat 4 and cut a depth-80 edge 2.7× (§2.4), leaving only the secondary internal-table term and the writer unification. (C) Full design (this RFC) — correctness by construction. (D) Wait for Lance MTT — future exit, not a current dependency (§8). Recommend: ship B as a standalone PR first (behind the step-1 gate), then C for the constant-factor + correctness, then step 2 for the internal residual; D as the strategic end-state. B is the demonstrated dominant fix, not a partial one.

Reversibility. The interface (WriteTxn/PublishPlan) is internal and reversible. Phase 7's new __manifest object types (graph_commit, graph_head) are an on-disk format addition — additive (old binaries skip unknown object_types) but near-permanent; it earns its own validation pass (forward/back-compat, the validation checklist in the iss-991 handoff). The writer_epoch is likewise a durable manifest field. Everything else (compaction scheduling, recovery relocation, branch concurrency, the cost gate) is cheap to undo.

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12. Resolved questions (was: unresolved)

All five original open questions were investigated read-only against post-#277/#284 origin/main, upstream Lance 7.0.0, and the dev graph; each is resolved below. One new item (Q6), surfaced by peer review, remains genuinely open.

1. graph_head CAS contention → RESOLVED, gated on step 2 + a concurrency test. Retry is publisher-owned; Lance's internal rebase-retry is disabled (conflict_retries(0), publisher.rs:385) → no double-retry. Row-CAS is true one-winner (TooMuchWriteContention → retryable, publisher.rs:432-440), bounded by PUBLISHER_RETRY_BUDGET = 5. But each retry re-runs the O(history) load_publish_state scan (publisher.rs:455), so graph_head contention multiplies the manifest term — step 2 (compaction) is a hard prerequisite for step 4 (Phase 7). Same-branch is the real workload (the incident is concurrent main writes). Residual: a measured gate before Phase 7 — N≈100 concurrent same-branch writers, assert bounded retry + O(working-set) re-scan + P99 within SLA. Fallback: batched-lineage, or Alternative B (defer lineage-in-manifest).
2. Recovery grace-window → RESOLVED. PR #284 is unrelated (cluster-apply trap; zero recovery.rs changes). The dangerous rollback classifications (NoMovement / UnexpectedAtP1 / UnexpectedMultistep / #277's IncompletePhaseB) fire only at the open-time Full sweep; the per-write heal defers all rollback (recovery.rs:978-988), so moving the heal off the hot path doesn't break #277. A sidecar-age grace window (defer sidecars younger than T_grace, loud typed skip, repair override) on the existing created_at/ULID (recovery.rs:762/:1522) is the sound interim; the permanent fix is the in-process background reconciler iss-856. Lands step 5 with a failpoint test.
3. Epoch fence × publisher CAS → RESOLVED (by construction). With Lance retry off (Q1), the publisher loop is the only retry layer. Model writer_epoch as a pre-publish hard-fail gate beside check_expected_table_versions (publisher.rs:462) but non-retryable (a stale epoch is a protocol violation, not a race). No double-retry; the epoch gate and the row-CAS loop are sequential. SlateDB FenceableTransactionalObject is the precedent.
4. Compaction cadence → RESOLVED. Not auto_cleanup (GCs pinned versions). Not foreground every-N-writes (deny-list job-queue + invariant 7 + cost cliff). Minimum (step 2): extend optimize/cleanup to the internal tables AND node/edge version cleanup — no special-casing (SidecarKind::Optimize already covers a mid-compaction crash). Follow-up: an iss-856-shaped background reconciler triggered by a cheap fragment-count probe (work off the hot path; a reconciler, not a job queue — deny-list-clean; SlateDB's epoch-coordinated compactor is the precedent). CLI omnigraph optimize stays the operator override.
5. PublishPlan residuals → RESOLVED. Both delete_where and create_vector_index are representable as TableAction variants with existing sidecar coverage (SidecarKind::Mutation/EnsureIndices) and are content-preserving (roll-forward safe). TableAction::Delete migrates to staged two-phase via MR-A / iss-950 (now unblocked — blk-lance-6658 shipped); D2 retires then (enforce_no_mixed_destructive_constructive, exec/mutation.rs:640-673). TableAction::CreateVectorIndex stays inline until blk-lance-6666 ships (iss-848 reconciler path).

Resolved post-review:

6. The exact mechanism of the data-table chain re-read → RESOLVED (§0, §2.4). Pinned by Lance-source trace + proxy + pylance isolation [U]: it is not checkout_version (O(1)) and not merge-insert conflict replay. The write open goes through DatasetBuilder::from_namespace (namespace.rs:174), whose describe_table opens the whole dataset just to return a location (namespace.rs:362/:112) and whose .load() resolves latest again — a double latest-resolution per open, ~13× per write, nothing cached. The open resolves latest without the V2 lexical / version-hint fast path the direct opener uses (likely the un-threaded Session/store params, load_table_from_namespace namespace.rs:174 — inferred, not traced), so it is O(depth) where a direct from_uri().with_version(N) is O(1). The mechanism question is now academic for the fix: bypassing from_namespace makes the open flat regardless of the precise sub-mechanism (un-threaded Session / double resolve / missed hint) — the bypass is the answer. (list_table_versions is not on this path — test-only; §10 follow-up.) checkout_version stays exonerated.

Resolved end-to-end [M]:

7. End-to-end prototype of step 3 → DONE, measured (§2.4 before/after). A prototype patched the opener (open_dataset_head_for_write, table_store.rs:174) to bypass from_namespace and open direct-by-URI, rebuilt v0.7.0, and re-ran the sweep: the data term collapsed 31 + 12·depth → flat 4, total +18/depth → +5/depth (residual = the two internal tables, step 2), depth-80 1618 → 593 ops (2.7×) — functionally correct on main edge merge, branch create+write+read, and node merge. So step 3's "closes the dominant term outright" is measured, not inferred, and the opener bypass is shippable standalone (§9 step 3a). Remaining (not blockers for step 3a's thesis): the prototype did not cover schema-apply / branch merge / fork-on-first-write / overwrite / concurrent — a production opener change must pass the full merge_truth_table/recovery/failpoint suite; and the internal-table cleanup demo (step 2) + the concurrency fault-injection harness (steps 4/5) are still owed.

Newly surfaced (open):

8. CAS-resurrection after cleanup → CONFIRMED VULNERABLE [S]; boundary watermark is a HARD PREREQUISITE for step 2. SlateDB found this race (RFC-0026 / issue #352): a writer that stalls between computing manifest id N+1 and creating it can, after GC deletes N+1, re-create it and observe false success. Lance 7.0.0 was traced directly and is not immune: version creation is a plain put_opts(naming_scheme.manifest_path(base, version), PutMode::Create) / rename_if_not_exists (lance-table commit.rs:1421-1437, :1358) on a version-numbered, pruneable path, with no monotonic/boundary/watermark guard anywhere in the manifest/commit/dataset path; cleanup_old_versions is timestamp-based (cleanup.rs:1086), so it deletes the very file the only guard (AlreadyExists→rebase) relies on. A stalled publisher whose target version was pruned by step-2 cleanup gets a PutMode::Create success on a non-existent version → false success. Severity by store: R2/S3 (lexical, prod) = a silent lost write (the resurrected version doesn't win V2 latest-resolution, so data lands on a dead branch while the publisher believes it committed); non-lexical = the version hint (commit.rs:1439) is overwritten to the stale version and trusted (worse, but not the prod path). Action: step 2 ships only with a durable boundary/floor watermark (GC advances it before deleting; every writer rejects id <= boundary after a "successful" create — SlateDB's fix), which also bounds any list-then-read-latest fallback. This was "lowest-risk earliest item"; it is now gated (§9 step 2).

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13. External validation (subagents + literature)

Validated read-only against OSS prior art and the DB/distributed-systems canon:

• SlateDB (canonical object-store LSM) — tenet-by-tenet ✅ on capture-once snapshot, monotonic-ID manifest (no pointer file — explicitly rejected in their RFC-0001), the epoch fence (exact match: FenceableTransactionalObject, hard-fail, TTL-lease explicitly rejected — adopt as specified), background epoch-coordinated compaction/GC, and recovery-on-open. Adopt-items OmniGraph is missing / under-specifies: (1) the boundary-file CAS-resurrection guard (Q8); (2) group-commit batching — coalesce pending PublishPlans into one manifest CAS, directly mitigating the Q1 / §6.5 contention; (3) SlateDB peels compaction state out of the manifest (RFC-0013) — the opposite of Phase 7's fold-in; §11 should defend "fold-in (lineage must be atomic with visibility) beats peel-out for us"; (4) write back-pressure when cleanup lags (l0_max_ssts). Citation correction: SlateDB has the per-RPC counter (InstrumentedObjectStore) but not the flatness-across-history gate — the depth-swept Tier-1 gate (§5.1) is OmniGraph-novel; cite it that way.
• Literature — OCC/MVCC (Kung-Robinson 1981; DDIA ch.7), ARIES redo/undo, the fencing-token canon (Kleppmann — whose motivating example is OmniGraph's S3-read-modify-write-paused-past-lease scenario), and the lakehouse genre (Delta Lake VLDB 2020, Iceberg spec, Neon). The spine — OCC-over-MVCC + one atomic manifest CAS + WAL-of-intent recovery + monotonic-epoch fence — is canon-blessed, and OmniGraph exceeds Delta/Iceberg on the axis that matters (both are explicitly single-table-transactional; the manifest CAS delivers the atomic cross-table commit Delta only speculates about). The three scoping caveats are in §7.1.
• HelixDB (embedded LMDB graph DB) — too different a substrate to validate the object-store machinery (LMDB's commit() subsumes tenets #2–#8 for free), but it corroborates tenet #1 (capture-once, thread-by-reference, re-resolution unrepresentable — its &mut RwTxn-threaded traversal is the embedded twin of WriteTxn) and confirms the bug class is substrate-induced. Portable idea for the roadmapped traversal work: adjacency as a persisted, sorted, label-partitioned projection keyed by (node, label) (vs the cold-rebuilt TypeIndex).