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1 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
eb9aa00816 docs: guide agents/humans toward Naming API for mutable logical identity
Applications built on laconicd repeatedly pick the Record + attribute-
scan pattern for data that has mutable logical identity (game state,
user profiles, inventories). The query cost then grows linearly with
per-entity version count, and the fix reached for (cache, pagination,
compaction) hides the design mistake rather than correcting it. AI
agents hit this failure mode especially reliably: they pattern-match
the existing client's queryRecords usage as canon and never discover
the Naming API.

This commit adds four pieces of documentation that surface the right
primitive *before* a wrong one is committed to:

  * docs/PATTERNS.md — primitive decision tree with concrete
    anti-patterns (queryRecords-as-KV, compaction-for-latency,
    cache-the-slow-query) and a worked example (mutable game state).
  * AGENTS.md — explicit for AI coding agents; names the failure mode,
    lists six rules, and tells agents to read PATTERNS.md before
    writing their first queryRecords call.
  * gql/cerc-io/laconicd/schema.graphql — prescriptive comments on
    queryRecords (warning against mutable-identity usage),
    getRecordsByIds (point-lookup clarification), and the Naming
    API section (USE THIS for current-state lookups).
  * README.md — new 'Designing state that lives on laconicd' section
    between Usage and Tests, linking both new docs.
2026-04-24 16:04:31 +00:00