OPN-04 · INCIDENT TELEMETRY
SLIDE 01 / 11
2026.05.14 · 04:12Z
44.8404°N · −0.5805°W
⬤ CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
OPERATOR · Q.ALBRECHT
04▌
▮▮▮▮ DECL ▮▮▮▮ SEV · CRITICAL PKT · 04 / 11

# Incident Telemetry — Operation Halcyon

Field debrief for the runtime outage on 2026.05.13 — 03:18Z to 06:41Z. Eleven slides. No friendly icons. Read top to bottom.

Mission
  OPN-04 / OPERATION HALCYON
Operator
  Q. Albrecht · Incident Commander
System
  halcyon-runtime · v 2026.05.06
Cell
  EU-WEST-3 · BORDEAUX-A
Distribution
  internal · oncall · founders

SERIAL OPN-04 / 0731VOL 04ISS 2026.05
PAGE 01 / 11⬤ TRANSMITTING
OPN-04 · BRIEFING
SLIDE 02 / 11
STAGE · 01
SECTION · OVERVIEW
CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
Q.ALBRECHT
02 / mission briefing

## Three hours, twenty-three minutes, sixty-four percent of tier-3 traffic.

window3h 23m03:18Z → 06:41Z
tier hittier-3research-agent
tasks failed14,82017.3% of window
refunded€ 4,840auto · within 24h
root causeDNS cacheupstream provider 04
resolved at06:41Zby Q. Albrecht
postmortemCIRC-04filed 2026.05.14
action items07 open03 critical · 04 medium

A regional DNS provider returned stale records for 3h 23m. Halcyon's resolver pinned to one of three upstream providers; the failover threshold was set too high. Tier-3 (research) clients with aggressive retry policies amplified failure into customer-visible errors. Customers on tier-1 (transactional) saw degradation but no failure.

SERIAL OPN-04 / 0732
PAGE 02 / 11
OPN-04 · OBJECTIVES
SLIDE 03 / 11
STAGE · 02
SECTION · DEBRIEF
CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
Q.ALBRECHT
03 / debrief objectives

## Five lines we will defend in writing this week.

01

#### >>>Resolver failover threshold drops from 600 ms to 180 ms.

Currently we wait until the upstream provider misses six hundred milliseconds of probes before failing over to provider 02. The new threshold ratifies a single missed probe at 180 ms.

CRIT · 14d
02

#### >>>Three independent DNS providers, weighted equally.

The pin to provider 04 was a vestige from the 2025 cost review. We move to a three-way Anycast resolver, weighted equally, with provider failure quarantined for 30 minutes after a missed probe.

CRIT · 21d
03

#### >>>Tier-3 clients get retry budgets, not retry loops.

Research-agent clients amplified failure 4.6× by retrying inside the failure window. We expose a budget — N retries per 60s — and refuse beyond it with an explicit, customer-readable error.

CRIT · 30d
04

#### >>>Refunds are automated, not gestured.

The 4,840 € refund cycle was hand-cranked by two engineers between 04:30 and 09:00. We codify a refund pipeline keyed to tier × failure-class × duration, with an audit log and a postmortem hook.

MED · 45d
05

#### >>>Status page reads like a sentence, not a heatmap.

During the window, the status page showed eight green pills and one yellow chevron. The customer's experience was "everything is on fire." We replace the dashboard with a one-paragraph human summary, updated every 10 minutes.

MED · 30d
SERIAL OPN-04 / 0733
PAGE 03 / 11
OPN-04 · TELEMETRY
SLIDE 04 / 11
STAGE · 03
SECTION · METRICS
CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
Q.ALBRECHT
04 / telemetry · 24h window

## Numbers from the window.

tier-3 · failure rate 17.3% ▲ +14.6 pp vs baseline · CRIT
tier-1 · failure0.04%▲ +0.02 pp · within slo
tier-2 · failure0.61%▲ +0.4 pp · within slo
p99 · resolver3,180ms▲ x 41 vs baseline
retries · 24h68k·×4.6▲ amplification
refunds€4,840manual · 04:30 → 09:00
paged engineers04oncall3 ack < 5min · 1 < 12min
customer tickets37▲ x 11 vs baseline
resolver healthy · 7d 14h
tasks dropped14,820▲ refunded auto-12h
SERIAL OPN-04 / 0734
PAGE 04 / 11
OPN-04 · RISK REGISTER
SLIDE 05 / 11
STAGE · 04
SECTION · POSTURE
CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
Q.ALBRECHT
05 / open risks · halcyon runtime

## Open risks, scored against the runtime.

№
risk
vector
sev
prob
owner / due
R-01
Single-provider DNS resolver pin
infra · routing
crit
0.42
Q.ALB · 2026.05.28
R-02
Tier-3 retry amplification (no budget)
client · sdk
crit
0.31
H.NAI · 2026.06.10
R-03
Refund pipeline manual
finance · ops
med
0.55
P.NWA · 2026.06.20
R-04
Status page is a heatmap, not a sentence
comms
med
0.61
L.ARR · 2026.06.20
R-05
Audit log not subpoena-grade
legal
med
0.18
P.NWA · 2026.07.01
R-06
EU-WEST-3 single-cell deployment
infra · region
lo
0.06
Q.ALB · 2026.Q4
SERIAL OPN-04 / 0735
PAGE 05 / 11
OPN-04 · SEQUENCE
SLIDE 06 / 11
STAGE · 05
SECTION · TIMELINE
CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
Q.ALBRECHT
06 / event sequence · 03:18Z → 06:41Z

## Sequence of events.

03:18:04Z
Upstream provider 04 begins returning stale A records for runtime.halcyon.io.
— PROVIDER-04
03:19:11Z
Resolver retries against pinned provider 04. p99 climbs to 1,840 ms within sixty-seven seconds.
— RESOLVER
03:21:48Z
Tier-3 (research-agent) clients begin retry storm. Failure rate breaches the 5% page threshold; oncall pages four engineers.
— PAGER · CRIT
03:24:02Z
Q. Albrecht acks the page from Bordeaux. H. Naitō from Munich at 03:24:18Z. Two more engineers within nine minutes.
— Q.ALB · H.NAI
03:38:00Z
First public status update posted: "We are investigating elevated errors on the runtime." Status page does not yet reflect the severity.
— STATUS · CRIT
04:01:22Z
Root cause narrowed to provider 04 DNS. Manual failover to provider 02 begins.
— Q.ALB
04:30:00Z
Refund triage begins. Hand-rolled SQL against the audit log identifies 14,820 dropped tasks across 312 customers.
— P.NWA
06:41:09Z
Failover complete. Failure rate returns to baseline. Public status updated. Postmortem CIRC-04 opened.
— ALL · CLEAR
SERIAL OPN-04 / 0736
PAGE 06 / 11
OPN-04 · WIRING
SLIDE 07 / 11
STAGE · 06
SECTION · DIAGRAM
CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
Q.ALBRECHT
07 / resolver · before / after

## Resolver — before & after.

SDKtier-1 client
━━▶
RESOLVERhalcyon · pinned
━━▶
PROVIDER 04upstream · STALE
SDKtier-3 retry storm
━━▶
RESOLVERp99 · 3,180 ms
━━▶
14,820 TASKSdropped · 17.3%

After: resolver is unpinned and weighted across providers 02 / 04 / 07. Failover threshold drops to 180 ms. Tier-3 retry budget caps amplification at ×1.4. The bottom row of this diagram never gets drawn again.

SERIAL OPN-04 / 0737
PAGE 07 / 11
OPN-04 · SPECIMEN
SLIDE 08 / 11
STAGE · 07
SECTION · TYPOGRAPHY
CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
Q.ALBRECHT
08 / single specimen · cause
DNS.

A three-letter root cause for an eleven-slide debrief — set in Archivo Black at clamp(140px, 22vw, 360px), tracking −0.06em, leading 0.82. The hazard period is the only part of this slide that is not phosphor white.

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PAGE 08 / 11
OPN-04 · ALERT
SLIDE 09 / 11
STAGE · 08
SECTION · DECISION
CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
Q.ALBRECHT
09 / single decision · ratify
!!
RTFY

### Ratify the resolver redesign at close of business 2026.05.16.

If we delay the resolver redesign past Friday close, we re-enter the failure window with the same posture we left it in. The new policy is one ticket. The redesign is a fourteen-day commitment from Q.ALB & H.NAI. This deck is the ratification artefact.

Sign-off lines below. Anything not signed by 16.05.2026 17:00Z is escalated to the founders' weekly.

SERIAL OPN-04 / 0739
PAGE 09 / 11
OPN-04 · AUDIT
SLIDE 10 / 11
STAGE · 09
SECTION · LOG
CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
Q.ALBRECHT
10 / audit log · CIRC-04 (excerpt)

## Audit log, verbatim.

2026.05.13 03:21ZPAGERtier-3 failure rate > 5% · 4 engineers pagedsha · 9f3a…b218
2026.05.13 03:24ZQ.ALBRECHTack page · joined #incident-04sha · 14ab…a022
2026.05.13 03:38ZQ.ALBRECHTstatus page · "investigating elevated errors"sha · 56cf…d971
2026.05.13 04:01ZH.NAITOroot cause narrowed · provider-04 DNS stalesha · 04bb…f110
2026.05.13 04:12ZQ.ALBRECHTmanual failover provider-04 → provider-02 initiatedsha · 17ee…0ad4
2026.05.13 04:30ZP.NWACHUKWUrefund triage opened · 14,820 tasks queuedsha · ab21…8312
2026.05.13 06:41ZQ.ALBRECHTall-clear posted · CIRC-04 openedsha · cc09…b745
2026.05.14 09:00ZP.NWACHUKWUrefund pipeline complete · €4,840 across 312 customerssha · 1a37…ee08
2026.05.14 14:22ZQ.ALBRECHTpostmortem CIRC-04 published · 11 action itemssha · 4f12…c399
SERIAL OPN-04 / 0740
PAGE 10 / 11
OPN-04 · COLOPHON
SLIDE 11 / 11
STAGE · 10
SECTION · SIGN-OFF
CLASSIFIED · INTERNAL
Q.ALBRECHT
11 / colophon & sign-off

## Eleven slides, three names, one decision.

Operator
  Q. Albrecht · Incident Commander · Bordeaux, FR
Witness
  H. Naitō · Resolver Owner · Munich, DE
Counsel
  P. Nwachukwu · Customer Refund Pipeline · Lagos, NG
Distribution
  Internal · oncall · founders · CIRC-04

System
  halcyon-runtime · build 2026.05.06
Set in
  Archivo Black · JetBrains Mono · IBM Plex Mono
Press
  Internal — 11pp · 16:9 · 2026.05.14 14:22Z
Classification
  INTERNAL — do not redistribute outside oncall
Hash
  OPN-04 · sha-256 · 4f12c399ab21d971...

SIGNED Q.ALBRECHT · 2026.05.14 14:22Z END OF TRANSMISSION ///
SERIAL OPN-04 / 0741
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