PathruleVerification and lifecycle
How Pathrule Signals groups events, what each group status and verification state means, the evidence a fix needs before it counts as verified, and how long Local keeps groups.
On this page
Signals separates two questions: what keeps happening, and whether a fix actually held. The first is answered by grouping, the second by verification, and only runtime evidence can answer the second one.
Groups
Every event belongs to one group per environment, kind (error or event) and fingerprint. The fingerprint is derived from the event's label, flow and code path, so the same failure in the same place is one group however often it happens, and the same error in production and in preview stays separate. Each envelope carries an id that stays the same on every retry, so a retried envelope is stored once.
Status and verification
A group has a status:
active: it is happening, or it came back.declared: an instrumentation point was announced but nothing has been reported yet.resolved: verification proved the fix held.archived: it went quiet and was closed. Archived is not resolved.
And a verification state:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
unobserved | No fix recorded, or no newer release seen yet. |
observing | A newer release is running and evidence is being collected. |
quiet | 24 hours and at least 3 envelopes from the newer release without a recurrence. The best a group with no flow can reach. |
verified | The fix held: the evidence below was met. The group becomes resolved. |
recurred | It happened again in a newer release. The group is active again. |
What counts as evidence
A fix is verified when all three hold for a release newer than the one the fix was recorded against:
- at least 60 minutes of observation,
- at least 3 envelopes from that newer release,
- at least 3 successes of the group's own flow, reported with
meta.outcome: "success".
Some things never count: the baseline release, events with no release identity, and anything observed before the fix was recorded. A newer release starts observation over. If the newer release goes silent for 45 minutes, a quiet state goes stale. Without a release identity verification is blocked and the SDK reports no_release.
Recording a fix
When you or your agent fix something, the fix is recorded against the group (see agent integration). Recording is a claim, not proof: it moves nothing to resolved by itself. Only verification does. There is no manual resolve, and any occurrence in a newer release, even after verified, sets the group to recurred and back to active.
Retention in Pathrule Local
- Up to 5,000 groups per workspace.
- An unresolved group expires after 14 days without an occurrence in production, 7 days in development or preview, and 30 days for a declaration.
- Resolved groups and their history are kept for 90 days.
- Envelope ids are remembered for 2 days, which is what makes retries safe.
Cloud retention is on the Cloud Signals page.