The Hard Clock

Definition

The Hard Clock sets a maximum duration for every system state. No process stays in a state past that limit without escalation or resolution.

The Violation

The Infinite Wait: Users are trapped in “pending,” “processing,” or “reviewing” states with no deadline, escalation path, or exit option.

The Spec

• Every system state must declare a maximum duration in minutes or hours.
• When the maximum duration expires, the system must fail safe or escalate to a human.
• Users must see the declared duration before committing to the process.
• Timeouts must be logged and reviewed monthly by a named steward.

Related references

The library entry for this mechanism, with steps, requirement text to copy, and anti-patterns, is at MEC-04 The Hard Clock.

Use this mechanism alongside the standards, latency audits, and failure examples to check that the clocks hold in production workflows.

Assets

All automated requests must declare a maximum processing duration and provide a human escalation
path when the declared duration is exceeded. Requests exceeding the declared duration will fail safe
and preserve user state for re-entry.