Auto-start: Implementation and reliability

Specifies native bridges, storage, synchronization, security, testing, telemetry, and recovery for auto-start. This reference fixes the adoption boundary, failure behavior, and observable evidence while leaving environment-specific limits configurable.

Package status: reference context ready for human review. The contract and test scenarios are complete, but no claim is made that an adopting implementation has passed them.

Decision

For Auto-start, adopt a platform-neutral domain contract with explicit native adapters. Implement the behavior through one authoritative write path, typed interfaces, explicit state, and idempotent side-effect handling. This package is a reference contract: the adopting team must choose numeric limits, providers, jurisdictions, and operational owners from evidence in its own environment.

Scope

• The Auto-start actors, inputs, outputs, states, policy or schema versions, and externally visible outcomes described by this implementation block.
• Primary and alternate interfaces, background work, caches, integrations, support paths, and evidence that can exercise the same boundary.
• Adoption-specific configuration, rollout, recovery, and verification responsibilities needed to apply the reference safely.

Outside this block

• Choosing a universal vendor, framework, jurisdiction, numeric threshold, retention period, or service-level objective for every adopter.
• Claiming that packaged scenarios have run against a downstream implementation or that this reference grants legal, security, or accessibility certification.

Contract

• Model foreground, background, terminated, offline, restored, signed-out, and permission-denied states where the feature depends on them.
• Treat operating-system callbacks and external links as untrusted input and re-authorize the resulting domain action.
• Store sensitive keys only through platform-protected facilities and minimize values copied to notifications, logs, backups, and clipboards.
• Make synchronization operations idempotent with durable versions or operation identifiers rather than elapsed-time assumptions.
• Validate inputs once at the boundary and preserve the normalized representation used by downstream logic.
• Persist the business transition before or atomically with an outbox record; consumers deduplicate by durable operation identity.
• Enable operating-system auto-start only through an explicit user or administrator choice and expose the effective state, scope, and platform-specific startup location.
• Startup work is bounded, deferrable, observable, and safe when the network, credentials, workspace, or update state is unavailable; disabling it removes the registration completely.

Implementation guidance

• Ship additive storage and interface changes first, backfill observably, then retire old paths after compatibility evidence.
• Model Auto-start inputs, outputs, actors, states, invariants, side effects, and evidence before selecting framework or vendor details.
• Store the applicable Auto-start contract or policy version with material state so migrations, replay, and support decisions remain attributable.
• Introduce the path behind controlled rollout, compare expected and observed outcomes, and keep a tested recovery route until adoption evidence is complete.

Failure handling and safeguards

• Interrupted native work resumes from a durable checkpoint or returns to a safe visible state without duplicating side effects.
• Invalid or contradictory Auto-start state is rejected or quarantined; the implementation never guesses a value that broadens authority or duplicates an effect.
• Retries are bounded and use durable identity; after exhaustion, work reaches an inspectable terminal state with an accountable owner.

Verification and operations

• Inject dependency failure before and after persistence and prove that retry converges on one externally visible outcome.
• Monitor Auto-start success, denial, validation failure, dependency failure, retry exhaustion, and recovery by contract version without sensitive payload dimensions.
• Re-run paired positive and negative fixtures after policy, schema, dependency, migration, or boundary changes and preserve the resulting evidence.

Adoption assumptions

• Names and values in the example are a concrete fixture, not universal defaults; adopters replace them through documented evidence and ownership.
• The adopting system can provide authenticated identity, durable operation or record versions, bounded telemetry, and a controlled path for change.

The executable-looking examples in this package are fixtures and acceptance contracts. Run the collection validator to check structure and metadata, then translate and execute the scenarios in the target repository before recording implementation evidence.