Skip, never fight

This section is a scaffold: the full pattern write-ups are drafted and approved at the source and land here as they clear. This first entry is real but deliberately short — it exists so the section, its feeds, and the essay cross-links have one true thing to render.

The pattern. When a scheduled worker picks up a piece of work and finds the work already claimed, it skips that piece and moves on. It does not inspect the rival claim, negotiate with it, or write anyway and let the last writer win. The claim is the whole answer.

Why. Two unattended workers that both “helpfully” proceed produce silently interleaved writes — the last one to flush erases the other’s work, and nothing errors. Refusing to act on a held claim turns that corruption into a one-line skip anyone can read in a log.

The incident. The nightly runner this pattern comes from walks away from a target for five logged reasons — someone else’s claim among them — under a one-line rule: the night never contends with the day, contention is what mornings are for.