# UV execution priority ladder — HJ's A–G adapted to our subsystems

**Status:** doctrine. Supersedes the ad-hoc P0–P4 mapping in
`asex_kernel_executor.py:_intent_priority`.
**Origin:** HJ's generalized ladder (2026-07-13), adapted to DOLPHIN/UV subsystems.
**Occasion:** the 2026-07-13 orphan incident, which is a textbook violation of it.

---

## The law

Work is ranked by **what is irrecoverable if it is late**. Truth outranks action;
safety outranks profit; profit outranks permission; research outranks nothing.

A tier may never be starved by a lower tier. A lower tier may never *destroy* a
higher tier's work — which is precisely what happened on 2026-07-13, when tier-G
telemetry annihilated a tier-B fill.

---

## The ladder, mapped to our subsystems

### A — Exchange / session safety  *(nothing is true if the pipe is lying)*
| HJ's item | Our subsystem | State |
|---|---|---|
| heartbeat | MHS (market-health sensors), HZ client death detector | **not ranked work** — lives outside the queue |
| disconnect | `LiveEFeed` WS lifecycle, HZ client isolation doctrine | **not ranked** |
| sequence gap | `EEvent.venue_seq`, scanner dedup ratchet | **not ranked** (ratchet bug bit us 2026-06-22) |
| trading halted | — | **MISSING** |
| stale price / book | `E-TRIPWIRE` (e_feed), staleness labels | logs only, **not ranked** |
| kill switch | `rm /root/uv-wt/prime-live/UV_PROMOTED.arm` (two-man arm) | **P0 ✓** |

**Gap:** only the kill switch is ranked. Every other A-item is a log line or a
startup gate (`VenueReadiness`, M4), not pre-emptive ranked work. A feed that has
silently died outranks every trade decision — today it outranks nothing.

### B — Execution truth  *(you cannot manage what you do not know you hold)*
| HJ's item | Our subsystem | State |
|---|---|---|
| fills / partial fills | `EEvent.FILL` → `EKBridge` → kernel | **P4 — LAST** |
| cancels / rejects | venue events → FSM | P4 |
| open order state | `bingx_venue.reconcile()` | kernel-out only (cannot discover) |
| true position | `/user/positions`, `AccountProjection` | **no adopt path at all** |

**THE INVERSION — the single most important finding.**
`asex_kernel_executor.py:319` enqueues account events at **priority=4**, the lowest
tier — *below ENTER (P3)*. Under queue pressure UV will open a new position **before**
applying the fill that tells it what it already owns.

Tonight is the proof, and it is exact: the venue filled 6 orders (tier-B truth), and a
tier-G telemetry exception erased the record of every one of them. UV then believed it
was flat while holding 6 live SHORTs. **No SL, TP, or ADVSL can save a position the
kernel does not know exists** — which is why B ranks above C and D, not below them.

**Required:** account/fill events re-rank to **tier B (immediately below A)**, with a
bounded drain batch so B cannot starve C.

### C — Price-triggered capital preservation
| HJ's item | Our subsystem | State |
|---|---|---|
| hard SL | catastrophic floor 0.0120, scan tighten-only | **P1 ✓** |
| max adverse excursion | ADVSL (5 gates, `ASL_PRESSURE_CONT_STRESS`) | **P1 ✓** |
| liquidation distance | — | **MISSING** |
| daily / session loss | — | **MISSING** |
| symbol loss | — | **MISSING** |
| account leverage | leverage read for `tp_curve` only | **not a trigger** |
| reduce-only emergency exit | P0 catastrophic EXIT | ✓ (used tonight to flatten) |

### D — Profit preservation
| HJ's item | Our subsystem | State |
|---|---|---|
| TP | `tp_curve` (0.0020 base + cubic), OB ×1.40/×0.60/×0.75, TP_FLOOR ratchet | **P2 ✓** |
| trailing stop | — | **MISSING** |
| giveback stop | TP_FLOOR ratchet is a partial analogue | partial |
| time stop | MAX_HOLD (250 base × regime) | **P2 ✓** |
| reprice / cancel stale resting exit | PINK `ExecutionRouter` maker/taker | **not ranked** |

### E — Existing-order maintenance
| HJ's item | Our subsystem | State |
|---|---|---|
| prevent duplicate orders | `TpSlHandler.submit_decision()` reservation boundary | ✓ (not ranked) |
| cancel bad quotes / amend exits | `ExecutionRouter` | **not ranked** |
| prevent self-cross | — | **MISSING** |

### F — Entry permission  *(the only tier allowed to be slow)*
| HJ's item | Our subsystem | State |
|---|---|---|
| DOLPHIN regime | regime/posture feed | ✓ upstream of queue |
| SHEKHINAH / HD prediction | EFSM overlay, HD/TSF | ✓ |
| OBF imbalance | OBF mid-injection | **double-dead** (hook-10 orphaned; runner steps pre-hook prices) |
| spread / depth / slippage | — | **MISSING as a gate** |
| funding / external | `FUNDING_FEE` events | accounted, not gated |
| time-slot weighting | — | MISSING |
| risk budget | capital/leverage | partial |

`ENTER` sits at **P3 ✓** — correctly below every exit. The *gates* themselves run in
decision code upstream of the queue, which is fine: permission may be slow.

### G — Persistence / research  *(outranks nothing; may never block anything)*
| HJ's item | Our subsystem | State |
|---|---|---|
| replay log / CH spool | M6 journal lane (durable spool + batcher) | ✓ off-path |
| dashboards / telemetry | `bingx_venue` telemetry lane | ✓ **off-path as of today** |
| LMDB | — | n/a |
| model updates | MALKHUT / research | off-path |

**2026-07-13:** telemetry was inline on the exec path and able to raise. It is now a
bounded non-blocking ring (`deque(maxlen=4096)`, drop-oldest, drops counted) drained by
a daemon lane. Measured: 3.65 µs/call on the exec path against a plane that blocks for
2 s per publish; inline that was a 2000 s stall.

---

## Standing rules that fall out of the ladder

1. **Truth before action.** Tier B is applied before any tier C/D/F work is
   *decided*. A decision taken on a stale book is not a decision, it is a guess.
2. **Nothing below tier B may ever mutate or veto tier B.** Telemetry, journals and
   dashboards observe; they do not get a vote on whether a fill happened.
3. **Non-blocking below tier C.** Anything at D or lower that touches I/O does it via
   a bounded ring with drop-oldest. Loss of research data beats backpressure on capital.
4. **Every tier is either ranked work or an explicit, documented exemption.** "It's
   handled somewhere upstream" is how heartbeat, halt, and stale-book ended up
   ranking below a dashboard write.