The frozen watchdog learns the difference between dead and starving

live-resilience's PITCHED leg failed on a coin flip: under a decode storm the mse-mp3 element underruns at the buffered edge (measured: currentTime frozen 3.8s, paused=false, readyState=2 — the UA itself reporting starvation

• journey-crash-run: the h._pools hook died with the pool scheduler in 1648ad7; the probe now reads the ring handle's honest nodeCount().

Verified: live-resilience full PASS x2 (all legs — previously failing), journey-crash PASS, wavout (incl. stepDown/mmsStall demotions), live-test, bg-survival, explorer-ui, verify.sh all green.

▶ Play it: Highway Heat Death — where the synthesis is the identity, not the decoration https://stellate.app/?genre=synthwave&seed=8731&path=859.9909,878.9942,840.9942&xdur=13.122

229aab4 https://github.com/aboard-io/stellate/commit/229aab43b0946b6a4f3bc2b1d05d4acaa1c3448a