Outbox: make an effect a crash left uncertain findable

[nishanthvonteddu]

A run parked by a crash mid-side-effect waits on an event nothing ever sends, and nothing records that it is stuck.

What breaks

execute() meets a record left started — the process died between dispatching an effect and learning whether it landed — and parks:

if record["status"] == "started":
    return Deferred(key, "outbox.reconcile", {"uncertain": True})

Refusing to guess is right. Repeating an effect that may already have happened is worse than waiting.

But "outbox.reconcile" appears exactly once in the package — where it is created. No producer emits it. The only way out is an operator completing the handle by hand through /completions, and they cannot:

• nothing lists the stuck keys
• started carries no timestamp, so an effect in flight looks identical to one abandoned weeks ago
• nothing says the recovery path exists

The run waits forever and no surface admits it.

The fix

Not a reconciler — the answer genuinely requires a person checking whether the effect landed. What was missing is the means to act:

• started records carry started_at
• uncertain() lists parked effects, oldest first
• resolve(key, receipt) closes one with what the person found, stored in the shape execute returns so the next call does not re-park on an answered question
• the module docstring states the contract, which a reader previously had no way to discover

Test

test_outbox_can_list_what_a_crash_left_uncertain — parks an effect, finds it via uncertain(), resolves it, confirms the receipt is reused afterwards. Fails before, passes after.