A variant record (v2 store, slot 4 [baseKey, overrides], empty payload)
holds top-level Set overrides and is resolved in the admitting hold.
Readers see complete documents. A base edit re-resolves dependents in the
same commit. Rulings honoured: Q1 a plain Upsert at a variant key is
refused; Q4 an override follows the plain-record outcome (a dropped slot
soft-drifts and is shed, an undecodable value refuses); Q5 the v2 header
only with variants; Q6 the directory store and CultNet refuse variants
(after selection, typed, subscriptions withdrawn). Self's defaults:
invalid overrides are refused at write; R6 is extended to indexes (no
variant shares an indexed value with another record). The held index is
truthful (value to holders, smallest key wins among plain duplicates).
A conditional merge onto disk is judged on the merged set.
Soul made five passes. The held index keeping one key per value caused
three rounds of store-bricking findings until the owner was fixed.
Caching 249, Networking 293, Mesh 262, cross-runtime interop 36/36.
Follow-ups: TS/Python plain-duplicate parity, a subscription id on
per-change refusals, a removal-order test.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>