GoKawiilResearcher explores rely-guarantee contracts to model metastable failures in distributed systems
A systems researcher shares an in-progress investigation into building a compositional theory of self-stabilization, using a TLA+ model of a retry storm to study how distributed components' guarantees can break down under large shocks. Finding no recent progress on composing self-stabilizing systems since early-2000s layered stabilization work, they turned to a 2017 control theory paper by Kim, Arcak and Seshia on parametric assume-guarantee contracts, which offers a way to reason about circular dependencies between components without stabilization layering.