Retro report — window 2026-10-21T23:19:38Z → 2026-10-23T23:32:23Z

Window covered

48h window, data source boucle/metrics (fetched: yes). Metrics blackout, second consecutive window: 0 metrics rows in window, 0 on branch, last metrics row: never. metrics_coverage 0/1 (1 closed issue in window, no usable row). The digest's own WARNING is cited verbatim: "metrics blackout — 0 metrics rows for 1 closed issue(s) in window; the retro evidence layer is missing (collector unwired, or its rows dropped before the window query)."

Counts

• Closed issues in window: 1 — and it is the previous window's blackout report itself ("Second consecutive metrics blackout: collector never produced a row (up-to-date path never converges it)"). No consumer delivery is observable this window.
• Aggregates: empty ({}) — correctly NOT read as zero activity (lesson #123 held).
• Upstream proposals open: 5 (#155, #158, #159, #163, #170).

Findings

1. Failure (recurring class): the metrics evidence layer has never produced a row on this consumer. "Last metrics row: never" plus a second consecutive blackout means this is not an outage that started at date X — the collector was never wired or never converged. This is the exact class of open upstream #163 (bin/update up-to-date path must converge consumers) and #170 (persist the publish outcome so a blackout is a diagnosis, not an absence). Two consecutive windows of blackout with zero diagnostic payload is direct evidence for both.
2. Success (mechanism, not issue): the digest degraded gracefully. Empty aggregates were reported as a gap with a verbatim WARNING and coverage 0/1, not as "no activity" — lesson #123's rule was applied by the digest machinery itself. The retro could still form findings from the gap shape ("never ran" vs "stopped at date X").
3. Limit: with 0 metrics rows, all four retro families (failures, successes, limits, need-vs-delivered) are unobservable for consumer work this window. The only deliverable signal is the blackout report issue. Any consumer work that closed silently in this window is invisible to the retro — the cost of the blackout is retro blindness, not just missing numbers.

Upstream posts made

• Enriched #163 with this window's evidence (second consecutive blackout, last row: never — convergence never happened on this consumer).
• Enriched #170 with the same evidence (the blackout still ships zero diagnosis payload two windows running).

Anonymisation note

All consumer identifiers in the source digest were already replaced by retro_scrub ([consumer], [host], [user], [email], boucle/N-). This report quotes only those generics and the digest's own WARNING text. No project name, host, username, path, e-mail or IID appears here.