Explorer

A debugger can tell you what a process remembers now. Explorer answers a harder question: how did this durable instance arrive here? It keeps the answer attached to the exact chart, instance, sequence, and chart version that made it true.

Inspection is a coherence problem

Explorer is a private demonstration application that assembles those authorities around one witness chart. It is not a new engine, a historical simulator, or evidence that a UI package has been published. Its job is to make the contracts visible together.

A workbench is a join, not a bag of widgets

The read model begins with one StepIdentity: chart name, root instance id, sequence, and chart hash. The selected macrostep, statechart model, retained positions, temporal model, and every inspector view must carry that same identity. The accepted layout must additionally match the workbench generation and selected chart hash.

Explorer publishes a candidate only after those facts agree. If storage advances while layout is still resolving, or a pinned row arrives before its inspector projections, the candidate is withheld. Once a coherent render exists, the prior coherent render remains visible rather than flashing through a mixed state.

This is stronger than loading each panel independently. A plausible diagram beside a plausible timeline can still be a false explanation when they refer to different sequences or chart versions. Coherence is part of the product contract, not a polish pass after rendering.

Read four coordinated regions

The workbench gives each question a distinct home:

1. Status names the chart and root instance, exposes the chart hash, reports availability, and says whether selection is LIVE or pinned to an exact sequence.
2. Macrosteps orders the retained committed diary. Rows keep event cause and result summaries attached to their sequence coordinates.
3. Topology resolves the chart version for the selected step and paints authored model or observed runtime state over accepted geometry.
4. Inspector presents Now, Step, or JSON. Now explains the selected configuration and state-owned facts. Step explains cause, transition selection, microsteps, effects, and the resulting change. JSON exposes the selected Snapshot without replacing the structured explanations.

Selecting a state or transition can open its authored anatomy. The diagram emits a renderer-neutral command; the host changes workbench state and supplies the resulting view. The renderer never gains storage authority merely because it drew the chart.

Move through retained facts without changing them

At the coherent head, Explorer follows LIVE. Selecting a row, using previous or next, moving the scrubber, or starting playback emits a typed workbench command for another retained selection. The host resolves an exact committed window and republishes the topology, position, and inspector views as one unit.

Pinning macrostep 2 while the durable head is macrostep 12 does not rewind the instance. It does not send an old event, replay an Action, or create an alternate branch. ReturnToLive changes selection again; it does not advance the statechart. Explorer inspects the history that exists.

Use Simulation & Trace when the question is “what would this chart do?” Use Incidents & Parking when an operator must choose a durable recovery disposition. Explorer deliberately does neither job by implication.

Let the host own readiness and commands

Mounting the Solid workbench is not evidence that its data is ready. On arrival, Explorer first waits for provider registration and recovery to settle. It then joins a committed projection with an accepted layout. A first visit asks the user to create a scenario because no durable head exists; a later visit can report the exact retained steps restored from browser storage.

Until that join is ready, the workbench is covered, aria-hidden, and inert. Arrival failure stays visible with an explicit retry. A partial workbench never masquerades as a usable one.

The host also owns command effects. UI components emit WorkbenchCommand values such as SelectMacrostep, OpenAnatomy, SelectMode, and ReturnToLive. Explorer's application chart decides how those commands change selection and availability, while committed inspection performs the reads. Another host may connect the same renderer-neutral contract to a different transport or storage implementation, but it must establish the provenance of every supplied fact itself.

What Explorer is for

Explorer is the capstone for Observability: a proof that engine recovery, committed inspection, chart-version geometry, renderer-neutral projection, and application-owned interaction can form one honest operational surface.

The current Explorer application is private. Package metadata in the workspace is not a registry availability claim, so this guide gives no installation instructions. Treat the app as an executable demonstration of boundaries worth preserving:

• reveal nothing until arrival is coherent;
• show identity wherever a reader could mistake one fact for another;
• keep durable evidence separate from selection and layout projections; and
• make every control honest about whether it reads, rehearses, or changes the running world.

Previous: Provenance, Causation & Tracing establishes the durable causal coordinates every region projects.

Next, Operations uses exact retained authority to make deliberate state-changing decisions.