fix(process): bound retained trace ordering state

Prove total orders with Kahn traversal and use ranks; stream forward and reverse reachability for general partial orders instead of retaining every closure. Aggregate unordered conflicts by declaration while preserving missing-pair counts and independent malformed-input diagnostics.

Validation: 33 focused trace domain and CLI/MCP boundary tests passed. Six bounded Flameox executions preserved answer digests and cycle rejection; combined median peak RSS fell from 391.13 to 127.72 MiB. General partial-order traversal costs more CPU; the experiment records that tradeoff. Full suite and real-provider lanes were not run.

experiments/analysis-efficiency/process-trace-validation.md

@@ -2,13 +2,19 @@
 
 A 6,000-event directed cycle previously overflowed the JavaScript stack inside
 the schema refinement. Cycle detection now uses iterative topological traversal.
-Reachability is computed once per queried origin; cyclic inputs retain
-independent declaration diagnostics without expanding all event pairs. Unordered
-declarations retain group membership, with one diagnostic per overlapping group,
-instead of allocating a pair set and repeating the same error for every pair.
-Valid partial orders still receive complete pair validation.
+Cyclic inputs retain independent declaration diagnostics without expanding all
+event pairs. Unordered declarations retain group membership, with one diagnostic
+per overlapping or conflicting group, instead of allocating a pair set and
+repeating the same error for every pair.
 
-## Bounded comparison
+A unique topological order proves that every event pair is ordered, allowing
+rank comparisons without retaining transitive closure. Other acyclic graphs
+retain only one origin's forward and backward reachability sets at a time.
+Complete pair validation preserves the missing count and first declaration-order
+missing pair. General partial orders still require quadratic pair examination
+and repeated graph traversal; they trade CPU time for bounded retained state.
+
+## Initial cycle fix comparison
 
 Flameox ran three randomized paired blocks (seed 917), each limited to 20 seconds
 and 512 MiB. Node 24.18.0 used a 384-MiB old-space limit on macOS arm64. Each
@@ -17,7 +23,8 @@ known 6,000-event cycle failure with per-event not-before constraints and one
 unordered group containing every event. All six executions passed the embedded answer
 digest and expected rejection checks.
 
-The baseline source is from `bb540826d`; the candidate includes this trace fix.
+The baseline source is from `bb540826d`; the candidate is the initial cycle fix
+in `10935b7b1`, which still memoized reachability sets for every queried origin.
 Both modules had TypeScript annotations removed with Node's identical built-in
 transform and used the same copied runtime dependencies. This isolates schema
 validation rather than comparing complete packaged CLI/MCP processes.
@@ -44,8 +51,8 @@ the process but create fresh per-validation graph state. Whole-process elapsed
 includes startup, imports, all four validations, the cyclic-input check, token
 estimation and reporting. CPU includes startup through metrics publication;
 peak RSS covers the complete single-process workload, with no children. Host
-caches were not flushed. Peak memory increased in this cohort. The remaining
-valid-order closure and pair validation can still require quadratic resources.
+caches were not flushed. Peak memory increased in this cohort. Its retained
+valid-order closure still required quadratic memory, prompting the follow-up.
 Three pairs describe this fixture only.
 
 Preserved Flameox evidence:
@@ -57,3 +64,50 @@ isolated runtime copy. Source-module SHA-256 values are
 `a7729faa2183b0e493b9ac4fc55f6feaee5b2e5294be13d1b29b57a44b899788`
 (baseline) and `725409ce84902125941251037a8a214ccc3c1eec577e484c164c361ca580d693`
 (candidate).
+
+## Bounded retention follow-up
+
+Flameox compared `10935b7b1` with the rank/streaming implementation in three
+randomized paired blocks (seed 624), under the same host, Node, heap, memory and
+20-second execution bounds. Each execution validated the chain above four times,
+then a 1,200-event partial order with 600 unordered two-event layers and all four
+edges between consecutive layers four times, then the same cyclic failure.
+All six executions passed both parsed-answer digests and the cycle diagnostic.
+Runtime dependencies were copied and isolated from concurrent checkout builds.
+
+| Median measurement                       | Memoized closure | Rank/streaming |
+| ---------------------------------------- | ---------------: | -------------: |
+| Chain first elapsed milliseconds         |           166.11 |          11.37 |
+| Chain warm elapsed milliseconds          |           154.25 |           5.32 |
+| Chain first CPU milliseconds             |           210.13 |          24.38 |
+| Chain warm CPU milliseconds              |           184.76 |          16.84 |
+| Partial order first elapsed milliseconds |            49.44 |         116.54 |
+| Partial order warm elapsed milliseconds  |            50.67 |         110.29 |
+| Partial order first CPU milliseconds     |            72.47 |         137.69 |
+| Partial order warm CPU milliseconds      |            70.65 |         121.77 |
+| Capture process elapsed milliseconds     |           901.24 |         557.30 |
+| Process CPU milliseconds before report   |         1,101.12 |         665.03 |
+| Peak process-family MiB                  |           391.13 |         127.72 |
+
+First samples exclude module import and fixture preparation. Partial-order first
+samples follow four chain validations, so they are first use of that fixture
+within an already running process. Warm medians pool the three subsequent samples
+from each of three processes. CPU and peak RSS cover the combined workload;
+capture elapsed additionally includes Flameox capture startup and overhead.
+Host caches were not flushed. The partial-order fixture is slower after this
+change; these results establish a retention tradeoff, not universal acceleration.
+
+The partial-order input is 165,590 JSON bytes, estimated at 52,783 tokens by tokenx
+1.3.0; its parsed-answer SHA-256 is
+`41d06e593813e497221c36793bf00d5fece7055081895b5f6c123ba6ad9a8227`.
+Chain bytes, token estimate and answer digest remain unchanged. Actual agent
+tokens, transport, catalog injection, model reasoning and provider costs remain
+unmeasured. Both cohorts are component measurements, not complete investigations.
+
+Preserved evidence:
+`e29086af99afd8e67cbbd92e43d960ea40f73b4d318ea0cbca60f493575462b8`;
+analysis `086133516f2acf031032d357a3ddb1ac611ce4f12556a24065a2becd567c5f7b`.
+The baseline module SHA-256 is
+`725409ce84902125941251037a8a214ccc3c1eec577e484c164c361ca580d693`;
+the candidate module SHA-256 is
+`2109f1096406e9ecac8bbf4f7ae8abb5113404790a9382487285d2831fcddf26`.