frontend-patterns/research/catalog/PatternCandidateCatalog.md

Pattern Candidate Catalog

This file tracks concepts before promotion into canonical pattern files.

Candidate	Family	Scale	Status	Main force
Server Authority	authority	L2	seed	authoritative consistency
Local Authority	authority	L2	seed	offline usability
Replicated Authority	authority	L2	seed	collaborative concurrency
URL as Application State	address	L3	seed	addressability
Server Projection	projection	L3	seed	client compute / delivery
Client Projection	projection	L3	seed	interaction locality
Streaming Projection	projection	L3	seed	first-content latency
Islands of Interactivity	projection	L3	seed	client execution cost
Local Interaction State	affordance	L6	seed	responsiveness
Optimistic Overlay	affordance	L6	seed	interaction latency
Invalidate and Reproject	synchronization	L3/L6	seed	freshness
Persistent Subscription	synchronization	L3	seed	update latency
Vertical Feature Slice	composition	L4	seed	change locality
Independent Feature Boundary	composition	L4	seed	team autonomy
Progressive Enhancement	quality	cross-scale	seed	resilience/accessibility
Failure Boundary	quality	L5/L6	seed	fault containment

seed means "worth researching", not "accepted into the canon".

First investigation dispositions — 2026-09-24

See AuthorityPilot. These are manual source-review outcomes, not successful bench extraction or canonical admission.

Candidate	Evidence reference	Disposition / question
Server Authority	SRC-0001, Carniato review C01	Retain; identify precisely which data and decisions it governs
Immediate Feedback	SRC-0001, Carniato review C02	Add seed; feedback should distinguish tentative from durable/accepted state
Local Authority	SRC-0002, local-first review C01	Retain; test primary ownership versus cache behavior
Scoped Authority	Cross-source interpretation in AuthorityPilot	Defer new pattern; may belong in context requirements instead

No recurrence, established maturity, known uses or required dependency edges are claimed by these dispositions. Other seed candidates remain unassessed.

2026-09-25: the completed local-first -06 investigation found no pattern justified by its single-fragment packet. Local Authority remains a manual seed hypothesis; no generated candidate IDs or relations were admitted. The missing evidence is persistence, concurrency, recovery and located independent uses. See editorial review.

Located conflict-handling uses — 2026-09-25

Conflict Copy is a new research draft (synchronization, L2/L6, hypothesis). It merges the Joplin and Obsidian workspace P01 candidates. Two independently published application guides document the narrow mechanism; no runtime tests or universal no-loss guarantee. Invalid generated requires edges were rejected. See evidence/dispositions.

The expanded evidence also refines Local Authority: local persistence, remote-version selection, semantic resolution and backup are separate concerns. A primary local copy does not make every local edit globally authoritative.

Application-driven drafts — 2026-09-25

VC-02 connects Conflict Copy with three new hypothesis research drafts: Local Commit Boundary, Pending Synchronization, and Explicit Reconciliation. Their exact transaction/retry/UI contracts are proposed, not inferred implementation guarantees. No FEP IDs or canonical edges. Test whether Explicit Reconciliation deserves a separate pattern; full admission remains open.

Transactional expansion — 2026-09-25

Four additional hypothesis drafts: Local Draft State, Version-Checked Mutation, Mutation Outcome Tracking and Invalidate and Reproject. The last elaborates the existing seed name. Eight developed research drafts now exist; none has canonical admission. Server Authority remains context; Optimistic Overlay remains deferred. See dispositions and evidence.

Presentation pilot — 2026-09-26

Six-pair pilot: initial masked editorial scoring found 21/24 obligations met with named patterns versus 19/24 with equivalent prose, and two unsupported claims in each. Inconclusive; human review pending. Retain all eight hypotheses, no new pattern or promotion. Do not mistake a small presentation difference for proof of recurrence or improved architecture decisions.

2026-09-26 adjudication: the user-submitted model-assisted worksheet supports four rating corrections; both presentations now meet 18/24 obligations. The original 21/24 versus 19/24 figures above are historical. Adjudication retains all eight hypotheses and the unfulfilled independent-human evidence gate.

Navigation/rendering expansion — 2026-09-26

URL-addressable State develops the URL as Application State seed; Progressive Enhancement develops its existing seed. Ten developed hypothesis drafts now exist, none admitted. VC-03 adds a provisional synthetic case; documentation mechanisms do not establish full-pattern recurrence or decision benefit. Six existing drafts received shared guidance corrections outside the frozen pilot. Stop adding drafts for this slice; next gather implementation evidence and challenge the proposed contracts.

Broader decisions — 2026-09-26

The user's request to broaden supersedes the previous slice's pause on candidate addition. Six further developed hypotheses bring the current total to sixteen:

Draft	Family / scale	Decision
Presentation Model	composition, affordance / L4, L6	Separate presentation decisions from widget APIs
Derived State	projection, affordance / L3, L6	Compute values instead of maintaining competing mutable copies
Vertical Feature Slice	composition / L4	Organize a capability behind a public module interface
Islands of Interactivity	projection, execution / L3, L5	Activate selected document regions
Failure Boundary	quality, composition / L5, L6	Contain a declared failure class and define recovery
Focus Return	quality, affordance / L6	Resume keyboard work after modal interruption

Breadth review records primary claims, non-overlap, counterexamples, synthetic probes and deferred candidates. Initial seed rows above are historical inventory, not additional developed records. No canonical admission, proven recurrence or demonstrated presentation benefit is claimed.

Partial boundary execution — 2026-09-26

Browser experiment adds partial evidence for Failure Boundary and Focus Return. Seven of eight immediate-run assertions met; a separate 100 ms nested-settling condition met eight. Removed-trigger default behavior is a negative control, and immediate nested dismissal remains unresolved. Sixteen hypotheses retained, no admission or full-pattern recurrence claim.

Source/build/release distinction — 2026-09-26

Independent Feature Boundary develops the existing seed around separate release/activation contracts (composition/execution, L1/L4). Seventeen developed hypotheses now exist; none admitted. Pinned example sources support partial mechanisms, not verified production release independence. Vertical Feature Slice gains a source-layout example and a contrast with deployment. Evidence and provisional VC-06 distinguish module, artifact, activation, runtime-failure and organizational boundaries.

Independent Feature Boundary follow-up: native-module release cases add bounded execution for publication, activation, session-scoped rollback and artifact retention. Corpus remains seventeen hypotheses; synthetic host behavior is not an independent application use or production release guarantee.