Steady state recycles resources

Growing logs, retained rows, caches, and objects need a counter-mechanism. Normal operation should not depend on repeated manual cleanup.

The Steady State pattern says, for every mechanism that accumulates a resource, some other mechanism must recycle that resource.

Source: Q0833; B433.

Failure it prevents

Memory, storage, or latency fails after enough otherwise-successful operations.

Our Effect 4.0.0 reading

Cache and Scope34 cover runtime lifetime. PersistedQueue.layerCleanup handles retained queue records. Durable domain data still needs a storage policy and maintenance owner.

Source: packages/effect/src/Cache.ts, packages/effect/src/Scope.ts, packages/effect/src/persistence/PersistedQueue.ts.

How to check

Inspect growth over repeated work. Check retention against replay and dedupe requirements before deleting recovery evidence. This check is our proposal. The books do not prescribe it.

Continue with Queries need result bounds7, Dead letters need a return path14.

Connect this to the existing rat-stack guidance34.

Use the durability skill for the full review. Return to the durability index34.

Sources

  1. Nygard, Michael T. Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software. Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2007.. Pragmatic Bookshelf. §4.4 Unbounded Result Sets; Chapter 5 Stability Patterns: §5.1 Timeouts, §5.2 Circuit Breaker, §5.3 Bulkheads, §5.4 Steady State, §5.5 Fail Fast, §5.6 Handshaking, §5.7 Test Harness, §5.8 Decoupling Middleware. Accessed 2026-10-23.
  2. Effect contributors. Effect 4.0.0. Cache.ts. Effect-TS. Pinned source for our Effect mapping, not a claim from the book. Accessed 2026-10-23.
  3. Effect contributors. Effect 4.0.0. Scope.ts. Effect-TS. Pinned source for our Effect mapping, not a claim from the book. Accessed 2026-10-23.
  4. Effect contributors. Effect 4.0.0. persistence/PersistedQueue.ts. Effect-TS. Pinned source for our Effect mapping, not a claim from the book. Accessed 2026-10-23.

Last changed 2026-10-23 in 58dc623. Source on GitHub. Change log.

Linked from

  1. Agent guide. An Effect stack so pure (aspirational) Kit Langton will blush.

    Steady state recycles resources — Every accumulation needs a deliberate recycling policy.

  2. Change log. What changed in the files served here, newest first.

    Steady state recycles resources — new page: docs(lore): land the durability wiki pages and bibliography

  3. Durability bibliography. Books, checked short quotations, source limits, and Effect mapping provenance.

    4 Steady State¶

  4. Durability starts with a recovery record. A reading order for storage, replay, worker ownership, overload, and recovery tests.

    Steady state recycles resources: Every accumulation needs a deliberate recycling policy.¶

  5. Full agent guide. An Effect stack so pure (aspirational) Kit Langton will blush.
  6. Queries need result bounds. Limit result cardinality before the driver materializes an oversized response.

    Continue with Steady state recycles resources, Bulkheads isolate scarce capacity.¶

  7. Rat Stack lore | rat-stack. Short, source-grounded notes on the ideas and decisions behind rat-stack.

    Steady state recycles resources — Every accumulation needs a deliberate recycling policy.

  8. Scopes release resources when work ends. Acquire resources lazily, keep their use inside the owner, and release them after success, failure, or interruption.

    Steady state recycles resources covers growth that outlives one Scope.¶

  9. Source change history (log.md). The generated change log as Markdown.

    Steady state recycles resources — new page: docs(lore): land the durability wiki pages and bibliography