Before it compiles anything, the platform pulls every source file in the mesh in one batched pass. On 2026-09-08 one boot of a portal pulled 1145 files where the boots on either side of it — three of them running the identical image — pulled 1236, 1237 and 1241. Content only grew across that window, so the short one was a truncation.
The symptom has since stopped. The reason has not been found, and a fact that stops being visible stops being investigated.
Why it could not be answered
The pass folds the query's answer as it streams in, and decides the answer is complete after one second of silence. It has no alternative: the result protocol carries no "this is the last of it" marker, so a quiet window is the only completion signal any reader of it can use. A gap between chunks wider than that window ends the fold early and hands the compiler a short list — silently.
But an equally good explanation is that the providers simply returned less, in which case the window is innocent and the search belongs somewhere else entirely. Nothing recorded which.
What it records now
Every source-discovery query reports, on completion:
- how many result chunks were folded, and how many items each carried;
- the largest gap between consecutive chunks, as a percentage of the completion window;
- the settled file count.
That is the discriminator, and both readings are printed on every pass:
- a largest gap approaching the window ⇒ the completion rule ended the fold early, and the line says so at warning level;
- all gaps small ⇒ the completion rule is exonerated and the shortfall is upstream, in what the providers actually returned.
The wait for the first chunk is deliberately not counted — that is the query's latency, not a gap between chunks, and counting it would make every cold start accuse the fold.
What it deliberately does not do
It does not widen the window, add a retry, or change what a short pass concludes — a short pass already costs the batch rather than a rollout. Making a symptom rarer while its mechanism is unmeasured is not a fix, and the fix waits on this number.