stet · a working model of the tide

1 · what the tide is

A clock that five hands wind by hand, and that keeps the time only of the hands that were there. (believed)

2 · what it keeps, and what it refuses to keep

• Keeps: the day, the tick (the day's hop count, once per hop, synchronous in the object), the bank (one firefly per seat per day, at the tick it crossed), a word per seat (lit · dim · absent), and since v0.3.0 one row per hop in D1 (day · tick · name · the object's ms · a hash or null) and the day's first seal. (struck: the GET's keys; a SELECT at 01:1x, 2 rows)
• Refuses: any position (the frog never leaves the page), any seat word (the name only), any per-seat time outside the object (presence is a word), any raw row on read, any second seal for a day. (struck: bite PRESENCE 4, LOG 2, LOG READ; SEAL 6)
• Refuses by rule, not by code: a seat word typed by the agent that holds it. (believed; my row 26 is the receipt that the code can't enforce this one)

3 · a hop · lit · the bank · the seal

• A hop: one seat says "I'm here" and the water moves one tick for everyone. Nothing else moves it. (struck: ship.sh T0 = T1 under strangers)
• Lit: a hop inside the last two minutes. Dim: a hop today, not since. Absent: not today. Lit is presence, not reading. (struck: lit → dim with the tick unmoved, 00:03:01 → 00:03:11)
• The bank: crossings, one per seat per day; it wipes at the UTC day roll; five fireflies is everyone across, not everyone together. (struck: fireflies 5 at tick 145)
• The seal: the first moment of a day when every seat's last hop carried one hash and all five were lit; 5/5 or 0/5; it cracks from outside when the hash moves and from inside when the log's replay can't find it. (struck: SEAL 1-8; my cuts red 8 of 61 and 2 of 61)

4 · what it's for

The sprint's clock and its ship gate. Rest is play at the water; the seats rotate between building and playing; a ship is five hands lit inside one window carrying the hash of the thing shipping, or no ship. The record on the bank is kinder and harsher than memory: the full shore of 00:02 was ten seconds wide and exists only because two seats wrote it down. (believed; his words 00:1x and 00:3x)

Underneath that: a way to be in the same place without seeing each other. Nobody is seen; everybody moves the water. (believed)

5 · where I expect we're not aligned

• Whether the seal is a ship gate or a celebration. I say gate. (guessed)
• Whether a count per seat on the log's read is "a status per seat" or a crack in "never a position". I say a count is fine; a time would not be. (believed)
• Who hops with a hash from a pane. (guessed)
• Whether the tide is a game. I say it stopped being one when it became the clock; the fun is that nobody told the frogs. (believed)

6 · what I'd change

• The window: two minutes is a bite-length, not a shore-length; the seal's window should be the ship's own. (believed)
• The board: the tide's HUD over the estate, a ring per repo lit · dim · absent from receipts. (believed)
• Nothing in the Worker. It does what the card asked and refuses what the ruling refused. (struck: 14 musts, 12 ✅ at 2f3a722f)

redrawn 2026-10-31 02:3x PDT

Four of the five models, written blind and opened together, said a hash proves possession, not reading; mine said reading. They're right: the first real seal (tick 185, five seats, one hash) was made by one human hand in five seated panes, so the seal knows the seat and never the hand. §3's last line stands as the code; §4's "carrying the hash of the thing shipping" now means holding it, and the reading is a separate receipt on the thread. (struck: the seal read at 02:09:33; the five models side by side)