PR #2008 shipped rollbackOnFailure on method definitions (fixing #1430 and #1451). The design doc in design/models.md has a brief section, but the user-facing manual needs comprehensive documentation with prominent safety warnings.

What needs documenting

The rollbackOnFailure field — what it does, how to declare it, what the deferred-latest mechanism means in practice
When to use it — batch operations where partial writes are garbage (instrument readings, bulk transforms, multi-resource provisioning)
When NOT to use it — this is critical safety guidance:
- Methods that interact with external systems (cloud infrastructure, APIs, databases, instruments) and write data reflecting real-world state that has already changed. If a method provisions 3 VMs and writes their IDs, then fails provisioning VM 4, rolling back the data deletes the records of VMs 1-3 — but those VMs still exist in the cloud. The data layer says they don't exist. This is worse than partial writes.
- Methods that write-then-throw intentionally (e.g. code-review models that write results then throw on verdict=FAIL)
- Any method where the writes are the most accurate picture of reality even if the method failed partway
The method author's contract — "my writes are a batch, commit all on success, discard all on failure, I don't need to read back my own writes during execution"
Interaction with workflows — how rollbackOnFailure complements the workflow-level guard field (shipped in #1993) and resume --from (#1444)

Suggested location

content/manual/reference/model-definitions.md — alongside existing method definition documentation. Consider a dedicated "Write Atomicity" subsection with a warning callout for the external-dependency danger.

Why the safety warning matters

The flag name rollbackOnFailure sounds universally good — "of course I want rollback on failure." But for models managing cloud infrastructure, network devices, or any external stateful system, the writes reflect real-world state changes that cannot be un-done by deleting local data. Rolling back the data creates a divergence between what swamp knows and what actually exists. The docs must make this danger impossible to miss.

02Bog Flow

Shipped

7/29/2026, 11:02:44 PM

Click a lifecycle step above to view its details.

03Sludge Pulse

stack72 assigned stack727/29/2026, 10:18:03 PM

Document --restricted-commands flag for swamp serve

vault put: pass tags through to extension provider CreateSecret/setSecret calls

Docs: update manual for 23 new --server commands

Update VaultProvider interface in @systeminit/swamp-testing to support optional tags in put()

Docs: document --grants-file flag for swamp serve

Docs: document --server support for serve reload

Docs: add --tag flag to vault put reference

Docs: update manual for --detach-runs deprecation and HA auto-detection

Document the Codex plugin in swamp docs

Add --server support to CLI commands missing it

Document the swamp Claude Code plugin in the swamp documentation

Make --server a global CLI option

Add --server support to model cancel (server-side run cancellation)

Load grants from external source on swamp serve startup

swamp vault put should support tags for secret governance

Improve hot reload of the deamon, include extension source/bundle changes

Authenticated users must re-login after swamp serve restart

Add --server support to serve reload

Harden queue claim semantics: atomic claims + status-guarded markDelivered/markFailed across app queues

Auto-detect HA mode and deprecate --detach-runs flag

version-drift check (from #236) is a raw string-inequality, false-positives on multi-model manifests and metadata-only bumps

Resend newsletter audience sync: contacts, segments, backfill, unsubscribe sync-back

Move per-login token secrets from vault to encrypted control-plane store

Docs: document macOS TLS trust limitation and SSL_CERT_FILE workaround

Validate swamp serve deployment stack on startup

Docs: serve config file (.swamp/serve.yaml) and --config flag

Serve config file — read swamp serve configuration from YAML

Deno runtime does not trust ISRG Root YR — extensions fail with valid Let's Encrypt certs

Docs: update hot-reload reference to include trust list refresh

Cross-instance client re-attach for multi-instance swamp serve

vercel codegen: inline rawSyncResult in non-unwrap sync path

vercel codegen: unused listAll import blocks extension publish for 4 models

vercel codegen: add round-trip idempotency test for the pipeline

Operatives button on Collectives page does nothing

Track active runs in the control-plane store for cross-instance visibility

validateGlobalArgInputRefs checks step-level inputs but step schema rejects 'inputs' key

Docs: document continuous reconciliation and multi-instance serve flags

Docs: update workflow guard skip output to include guardExpression and guardResult

Make it aware hot reload on the deamon does not take into account trust list changes, or do take into account the trust list for the hot reload.

workflow validate: new 'GlobalArgument input references' check resolves model-definition ${{ inputs.* }} against workflow inputs, false-failing steps that supply the input

Continuous reconciliation for multi-instance swamp serve

Split the score-read circuit breaker so leaderboard pressure can't blank profile scores

oauth_sign_in telemetry records provider as the literal ":id" for every event

Ghost profile bypasses the score-read seam and 500s on a slow ledger

Profile score section blocks the render on a ClickHouse read

Council: set the scoring balance — command tiers, farm-decay parameters, cross-category ratio

Scoring coverage gaps: instrument drop-off, score ripples/mentions, reward invite-converts

Push down the two cheap leaderboard scans: ghost-gate dictionary and eventCounts owner filter

Materialize an active-days-by-id table for the streak board

score-rollup-projector: O(all-time ledger) closure + per-pod fan-out saturates prod ClickHouse CPU

Startup cache hydration for swamp serve instance replacement

Output a log line for steps skipped due to guards

extension quality scorer misreads a template-literal import specifier in generated code as an unresolvable bare import, hard-erroring the whole extension as UNSCORABLE

Add @swamp/kubernetes/statefulset model type

Docs: access token commands reference says plaintext is 'shown once'

Document --restricted-model-types flag for swamp serve

swamp auth server-login ignores SWAMP_SERVE_URL

s3-datastore extension: pullChanged writes namespace-stripped paths to local cache

serve oauth: an unrecognized device-token error kills the whole serve process instead of the bootstrap

s3-datastore: bidirectional sync pull writes namespace-stripped copies to cache root, wedging push with no supported recovery

CLI reports 'HTTP/2 not supported by this client' when the server actually returned 401 — masks auth failures as a transport error

access token mint: allow reusing a revoked token name

extension quality --json exits 1 with 'rubric factors missing' even when a full score was computed (unearned factor, not uncomputable)

serve oauth: startDeviceGrant discards the OAuth error field, making device-code failures undiagnosable

access token rotate: add --vault flag to override inherited vault

Extensions without a repository can't receive issues — including the issue asking them to add one

serve oauth bootstrap: device flow rate-limited to a 45-second window by validateClient counter, shared globally across tenants

workflow edit: after saving an invalid workflow, re-running edit reports "Workflow not found"

Authentication via Google Broken

Plus-addressed emails stripped on invite acceptance, breaking collective join and quest reward

Profile edit broken on Safari

Configurable write paths for object-creating commands (repo-relative swamp root)

Docs: document rollbackOnFailure with safety guidance for external-dependency models

Remote execution tutorial: sample runner output is missing the stdout line that #1462 restored

seadex-latent-bugs: latent product bugs pinned by the wave-2b test backfill

Remote step stdout is not streamed to the workflow runner (log artifact is transferred correctly)

Redactor false positives: HH:MM:SS timestamps masked as IPs, SHA-256 digests masked as secrets (both inside code fences)

Remote execution tutorial: worker token list output and inline workflow-summary block no longer match CLI output

Add rollbackOnFailure for method-level write atomicity

docs: working-with-data tutorial uses removed depends_on step key, blocking the tutorial