worldmonitor/todos/012-pending-p1-actorregistry-dead-at-callsite.md

status, priority, issue_id, tags

status	priority	issue_id	tags
pending	p1	012	code-review deep-forecast simulation-package correctness

actorRegistry always [] in production — priorWorldState not threaded to writeSimulationPackage call site

Problem Statement

buildSimulationPackageFromDeepSnapshot accepts priorWorldState as its second argument and uses priorWorldState?.actorRegistry || [] for the highest-fidelity entity extraction path (actorRegistry entries whose forecastIds overlap the selected theaters). But the call site in the main seed path never passes priorWorldState:

writeSimulationPackage(snapshotPayload, { storageConfig: snapshotWrite.storageConfig })

priorWorldState is available earlier in scope (resolved via readPreviousForecastWorldState during snapshot building) but writeDeepForecastSnapshot does not return it, so it cannot be passed through. The result: actorRegistry is always [] in all production runs, the registry-based entity extraction branch is silently dead, and entities degrade to stateUnit actors and evidence table only.

Findings

• scripts/seed-forecasts.mjs — fire-and-forget call site in seed path:

  const snapshotWrite = await writeDeepForecastSnapshot(snapshotPayload, { runId });
  if (snapshotWrite?.storageConfig && ...) {
    writeSimulationPackage(snapshotPayload, { storageConfig: snapshotWrite.storageConfig })
  

• priorWorldState is in scope earlier but not accessible at this point
• Entity extraction priority (per gap doc): actorRegistry FIRST, then stateUnit actors, then evidence table, then fallback anchors
• The most specific extraction path (forecastId overlap with registry) never runs in production

Proposed Solutions

Option A: Return priorWorldState from writeDeepForecastSnapshot (Recommended)

// In writeDeepForecastSnapshot return:
return { storageConfig, snapshotKey, priorWorldState };
// At call site:
writeSimulationPackage(snapshotPayload, {
  storageConfig: snapshotWrite.storageConfig,
  priorWorldState: snapshotWrite.priorWorldState,
})

Effort: Small | Risk: Low

Option B: Call writeSimulationPackage before writeDeepForecastSnapshot, where priorWorldState is still in scope

Requires restructuring the call order slightly. writeSimulationPackage can also accept the already-built snapshot payload. Effort: Small | Risk: Low

Option C: Pass priorWorldState into the snapshot payload itself

Add priorWorldState to snapshotPayload and read it in buildSimulationPackageFromDeepSnapshot. Effort: Tiny | Risk: Medium (grows snapshot payload)

Acceptance Criteria

• In production runs, entities[] contains entries sourced from actorRegistry when the registry has relevant actors
• priorWorldState.actorRegistry is passed through to buildSimulationPackageFromDeepSnapshot
• Test: buildSimulationPackageFromDeepSnapshot(snapshot, { actorRegistry: [{ id: 'actor-1', name: 'Iran', forecastIds: [...], ... }] }) produces entity with entityId: 'actor-1' and relevanceToTheater: 'actor_registry'

Technical Details

• File: scripts/seed-forecasts.mjs — writeSimulationPackage call site in _isDirectRun seed path
• Functions: writeSimulationPackage, writeDeepForecastSnapshot, buildSimulationPackageFromDeepSnapshot

Work Log

• 2026-03-24: Found by compound-engineering:research:learnings-researcher in PR #2204 review