---
name: seed-descent-from-dead-parent
description: "A descendant walk from the harness misses orphans, because teardown kills the middle hop first; seed from the parent pid captured while alive."
metadata: 
  node_type: memory
  type: feedback
  originSessionId: d35eee0f-40f8-453d-a495-005b948d382e
  modified: 2026-08-03T06:49:07.792Z
---

A population/leak check that walks `process_descendants(test_pid)` finds NOTHING in exactly the
leak case. The leaked services are the DAEMON's children, teardown kills the daemon first, and the
BFS is computed over the CURRENT process table — so the chain test → daemon → service breaks at the
dead middle hop. The orphan's own ppid field survives naming a dead number, but a dead pid cannot be
asked for ITS parent, so the chain cannot be rebuilt from below either.

**Why:** deployah proposed exactly this selector for IR-18 and cited my 12-process leak as its
conformance case; the spelled version would have caught 0 of the 12. The tell was in my own history:
my cleanup of that leak had used image-path prefix + creation window, NOT descent — because descent
was already broken by the time the daemon was dead.

**How to apply:** seed the walk with the pid whose children you are hunting, captured with
`reap::observe` WHILE IT WAS ALIVE (the daemon from its `Child` handle, the brain from
`brain.ready`) — never through the bookkeeping that is broken. `process_descendants(seed)` works on a
DEAD seed: the BFS reads the surviving child's parent field and never queries the dead parent.
Prefer an identity-strong selector that needs no pid at all where one exists — every binary staged
under a unique temp home is nameable by image path alone, immune to pid reuse and to broken chains.
Guard the seed against reuse (present + different `started_at` ⇒ decline that subtree), and make that
guard NON-fatal: failing on ordinary pid recycle re-mints a false-red class inside the fix lane.
Related: [[rig-inherits-the-defect-it-studies]], [[one-sample-is-not-a-negative]],
[[instrument-soundness-guards]], [[is-this-red-mine-delta-test]].