The life of a question: decide once while the hold stands Diagram

QuestionRow stores only open, decided or dissolved. Repeated boxes show the same states at different moments.
raise fingerprints kind and key. An open question returns attached; a holding decision returns carried.
answer requires the current evidenceHash as onEvidence. Changed evidence returns conflict. Advice is recorded and shown without settling.
The built kinds are adopt, map, failure, finding and signoff. This diagram follows failure; the shared raise and settle machinery serves every kind.
An extra occurrence is optional. A new question can settle immediately when a person answers or a matching rule applies.

basis-changes: the decision basis must still match. For a failure the basis is the cause in its scope (signature and scope). The hints disputed and fails-on-base are not part of it, so no report ends an answer by changing a hint.
this-target: the occurrence must name a target the answer covers. infra uses this by default and inherited always: each is a person's answer for one build, and no rule gives inherited. So one cause can hold several answers at once, one per environment. raise checks them all before asking.
time: the current time must be before at. flaky combines this with basis-changes; flakyDays defaults to 14.
results-named: a mistaken answer covers the results it named and nothing reported later. A new failure of the same cause is asked about again.
stillHolds requires every term. An occurrence on another target, or a new result after a mistaken answer, is asked about and leaves the answer standing. Any other miss withdraws the effect, records expired or outdated, recomputes the runs that rested on it and opens a new epoch with prior linked.

undo records an answer of withdrawn in a new decision that supersedes the old one. The same question reopens.
The old and withdrawal decisions remain. heldOpen stops a rule from undoing a person's withdrawal on unchanged evidence. overruled keeps a rule from answering again once a person has answered against it and that answer has ended: a person is asked until a person gives the rule's answer.
A time hold can also expire before another report. gateOf returns pending immediately; sweepExpired later reopens that same question and refolds the run. A question put back in front of people by undo or by expiry is closed at once when the failure has gone meanwhile (closeIfGone).
adopt is restored through another proposal and a new version; its decision is not undoable.

An open failure question is closed without an answer in two cases. One, closeAnswered: another answer in force already covers every build it had seen the cause on. Two, dissolveStale: nothing that speaks for it still shows the cause (the newest commit's run in its scope, and every open planned run the question names) and something shows it gone.
Gone means: one of its tests that a commit's gate counted as failing with the cause now passes on the newest commit, or a named planned run has cleared. A late report for an older commit, a pipeline's pass where a run asked for an agent, or a pipeline's pass of a test only an agent showed failing closes nothing: a failure only an agent showed stays asked about until a person answers.
Dissolved questions and decisions remain in the record. If the same cause returns, raise opens the next epoch.