docs: RETRACT the #127 cause — the diagnosis was a measurement artifact; fix stands

The "blank + hypridle deadlock = the brick" cause published this morning is
retracted everywhere it was asserted: ROADMAP, hyprland.nix's comment, #146,
HARDWARE-QUEUE and two commit messages (a2151f4, 321ccf7). It rested on two
pieces of evidence and both were artifacts of how I measured:

- "19 disconnects in 11 days": 18 of 19 are hypridle's noisy goodbye while
  systemd DELIBERATELY stops it — each bracketed by `Stopped hypridle` /
  `Started hypridle`, healthy replacement seconds later.
- "Jul 14: CRITICAL at 13:08:17, then eleven hours of silence": an artifact of
  grepping ONE PID. systemd logged `Stopped hypridle` 13:08:17 and `Started
  hypridle` 13:09:00; PID 1678 ran fine all evening, invisible to the filter.

Decisive: at the incident (before the 12:51:34 mitigation commit) hypridle had
NO disconnect at all and had been healthy since Jul 14 13:09. It should have
fired on-resume normally. The deadlock theory never had a case.

The FIX stands on its own evidence and is untouched: the options really were
off, hypridle's on-resume really was the only caller of `dpms on`, and input now
wakes the screen with hypridle deliberately stopped (4s docked / 6s clamshell).
Removing a proven single point of failure never needed a story about why the
daemon might fail — which is exactly why it survived the story being wrong.

#127 is RESTORED to NOW (deleted this morning as "shipped"; only the fix
shipped). Its cause is open and the lead is the dead Ctrl+Alt+F3 — neither
DPMS-off nor a dead hypridle can break VT switching, so something was wedged
below the compositor holding DRM master. Every theory so far has been about the
wake path, i.e. a symptom of the screen already being black.

#146 → [watch], near-dead: one genuine zombie ever (verified by ps/ss, not
grep); upstream #171 is real but its impact path closed when #147's stray linger
went. Re-measure properly before building anything; close unbuilt if zero.

Also closes the #127 hardware-queue entry: Bernardo ran the real 10-min idle —
19:27:58 dpms off (genuine timeout, shipped config, and it BLANKED = the revert
working) -> mouse -> 19:32:14 `done enabled=1 first=DP-2`, clamshell, the
incident geometry, one healthy hypridle throughout. All 4 steps pass.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>

agent/BACKLOG.md

@@ -31,6 +31,44 @@ post-boot sessions). Preserve separation: the installer bake failure and the
 flake pin are different root causes even when they show up on the same machine.
 (Terminal / Ghostty-on-Acer → shipped as Kitty-only, #95.)
 
+### 127. `[blocked:hw]` The idle brick's CAUSE — reopened; the fix shipped, the diagnosis did not
+
+**Restored 2026-07-16, same day it was deleted.** It was deleted as shipped on
+the strength of a diagnosis that was retracted hours later. The **fix** is real,
+proven and stays (`misc:{key_press,mouse_move}_enables_dpms`, a2151f4): the wake
+path had a genuine single point of failure — hypridle's `on-resume` was the only
+caller of `dpms on` in the session — and it is gone. Verified end-to-end on the
+incident hardware, including a real 10-min idle blanking and waking clamshell
+(`done enabled=1 first=DP-2`, 19:32). **None of that explains the brick.**
+
+**What the incident was:** docked clamshell, idle → black, external keyboard and
+mouse woke nothing, unplugging the external did not light the panel, Caps Lock
+LED still toggled (machine alive), and **Ctrl+Alt+F3 gave no usable TTY**.
+
+**What has been ruled OUT (all on hardware, 2026-07-16):**
+- *DPMS-off is not the trigger.* With hypridle driving the blank, input wakes it
+  in every geometry — undocked lid-open, clamshell-docked on the sole live
+  output, docked with both outputs live. The clamshell skip was reverted on this.
+- *The hypridle deadlock is not the trigger.* This was the published cause and it
+  was wrong: at the incident (before 12:51:34 on Jul 15) hypridle had **no
+  disconnect at all** and had been healthy since Jul 14 13:09. The "19 in 11
+  days" rate that made the theory look strong was normal-teardown noise
+  (see #146). It should have fired `on-resume`.
+- *The #100 undock latch* explains symptom 2 (unplugging not restoring the panel)
+  and is fixed (ff5017e) — but not the blackout itself.
+
+**The lead is Ctrl+Alt+F3, and it always was.** Neither DPMS-off nor a dead
+hypridle can break VT switching; a wedged compositor still holding DRM master
+can, and it would explain the black screen *and* the dead TTY in one stroke.
+Every theory so far has been about the wake path — i.e. about a *symptom of the
+screen being black* — and none of them touch the TTY. Start there instead.
+Bernardo does not recall whether the machine had been relogged-in between Jul 14
+13:09 and the incident; that would say whether hypridle was ever a suspect.
+
+**Note the fix makes this much harder to reproduce** (input now wakes the screen
+compositor-side), which is a good trade but means a repro may need the options
+temporarily off. It has not recurred since.
+
 ## NEXT
 
 ### 143. Rofi keeps the selected *row number* when the search changes, so the highlight lands on an unrelated entry
@@ -165,48 +203,44 @@ settles. Note the ordering trap — the reload is also the undock rescue, so
 whatever re-asserts must not fight the rescue that deliberately re-enables eDP
 when the lid is open.
 
-### 146. hypridle dies silently and systemd calls it healthy
 
-Fell out of the #127 diagnosis (2026-07-16, ROADMAP § "#127 solved"), and it is
+### 146. `[watch]` hypridle hangs instead of exiting when its compositor vanishes
-the bug that was actually behind the brick — the DPMS gate we just reverted was
-only ever a symptom shield. hypridle hits an unfixed upstream deadlock
-(hyprwm/hypridle#171, "Disconnected from pollfd id 1" — open since 2025-09, in
-neither 0.1.7 nor main; upstream's own reporter saw 10-hour hangs) and then
-**hangs without exiting**, so `Restart=always` never fires and `systemctl
---user is-active` still says `active (running)`. On the dev box: **19 times in
-11 days**, including the incident day. Jul 14 is the clean example — locking
-normally at 13:02, `CRITICAL` at 13:08:17, then eleven hours of silence, with
-D-Bus receive queues visibly backing up (48 KB unread) because nothing was
-reading them. The compositor is *fine* through all of it (no other session unit
-dies in the same second), so this is not the compositor's death taking it down.
 
-Now that input wakes the screen compositor-side this is no longer brick-class,
+**Rewritten 2026-07-16, hours after filing: the premise was disproven and almost
-but it is not cosmetic either: a silently dead hypridle means **no auto-lock**
+nothing survives.** As filed it said hypridle "dies silently ~2×/week — 19 times
-(Bernardo sat unlocked for 25 min on 2026-07-16 without knowing), no blank, no
+in 11 days", with Jul 14 as the clean example ("`CRITICAL` at 13:08:17, then
-idle suspend. Cost: systemd can't see it — `WatchdogSec` needs `sd_notify`
+eleven hours of silence"). Every number there was an artifact of the
-hypridle doesn't implement, and the process never exits — so detection has to be
+measurement. **18 of the 19** `Disconnected from pollfd id 1` lines are
-external: a guard watching for the `CRITICAL` line, or a liveness probe on its
+hypridle's noisy goodbye while systemd *deliberately stops it* — each bracketed
-Wayland fd, then `systemctl --user restart hypridle`.
+by `Stopped hypridle` / `Started hypridle` with a healthy replacement seconds
+later. The "eleven hours of silence" came from grepping **one PID**: systemd
+logged `Stopped hypridle` 13:08:17, `Started hypridle` 13:09:00, and PID 1678
+ran fine all evening where the filter could not see it. Do not re-derive the old
+rate; it counts normal shutdown noise.
 
-**Correction 2026-07-16:** this entry originally said "sequence it after #147,
+**What is real, and it is small.** Exactly one genuine zombie has been observed
-because restarting hypridle into a dead compositor fail-loops into
+(2026-07-16 17:25:39), verified by process inspection rather than logs — `ps`
-`start-limit-hit` exactly as cliphist does". **That reasoning is void** — #147
+(alive 9h36m), `ss` (48 KB unread on its D-Bus socket, i.e. not reading),
-turned out not to be a distro bug at all (it needed stray pre-migration linger,
+`NRestarts=0` while `systemctl --user is-active` said `active (running)`. That
-since removed), and cliphist's fail-loop was a symptom of that same stray state.
+is upstream hyprwm/hypridle#171 ("Possible deadlock in pollThr when compositor
-There is no ordering constraint: **#146 stands on its own and can be taken
+exits?", open since 2025-09, in neither 0.1.7 nor main) and it is a true bug:
-first.** The underlying caution survives in weaker form and is still worth
+hypridle hangs rather than exits, so `Restart=always` never fires.
-designing for — a guard must not restart hypridle into a session whose
-compositor is gone — but that is ordinary care in the guard, not a dependency
-on another item.
 
-The trigger is still unknown — *not* dock/undock (no display-watch activity in
+**But its impact path is closed, which is why this is `[watch]` and not work.**
-the 3 min before any of them) and *not* a D-Bus quota disconnect (no broker
+The zombie only *persists* if systemd never stops the unit — which needed the
-errors). **Note the 19-in-11-days figure was measured on a box with linger on**;
+user manager to survive logout, i.e. the stray pre-migration linger removed in
-whether the rate holds now that the user manager is torn down at logout is
+#147. Without linger, logout tears the manager down and takes any zombie with
-itself unknown, and re-measuring is the cheap first step before building a guard.
+it; the Jul 14 trace above shows the healthy path (`Stopped` → `Started`) doing
-Worth a reproducer + an upstream comment on #171: it has sat ten months on
+exactly that. A Hyprland death ends the logind session anyway (2026-07-16:
-vaxerski's "that will cause a segfault no?", and we have better data than the
+`Session 2 logged out` → greeter), so there is no known route left to a
-reporter did.
+surviving zombie.
+
+**Do before building anything:** re-measure. Count only disconnects with **no**
+`Stopped/Started hypridle` around them and **no** logind session event, and
+confirm by `ps`/`ss` that the process is really wedged — not by grepping a PID.
+If that count is zero over a few weeks post-linger, **close this unbuilt**. If it
+is not, the upstream issue has sat ten months on vaxerski's "that will cause a
+segfault no?" and a reproducer would be worth more than a local guard.
 
 ### 147. Nomarchy cannot see machine state it never set — and it bit the QA box for 6 months
 

agent/HARDWARE-QUEUE.md

@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ Run these first when you have a laptop session (AMD dev box unless noted):
 | # | Item | Why first |
 |---|------|-----------|
 | 1 | **#115** suspend-then-hibernate | Just shipped; quick path is minutes (battery vs AC + `nomarchy-suspend`) |
-| 2 | **#127** fix from config (not runtime keyword) | Cause found + fixed 2026-07-16; confirm our Nix emits it and it survives a relogin |
+| 2 | **#127** the brick's *cause* (reopened) | Wake path fixed + fully verified 2026-07-16; cause unknown — start at the dead Ctrl+Alt+F3, not the wake path |
 | 3 | **Docking recovery round 8** + headphone jack-follow | Same dock session; relogin once, then undock ×5 + jack |
 | 4 | **#104** airplane mode | Fast radio smoke after `nomarchy-home` |
 | 5 | **#101** charge-limit USB-C burst | Dock plug/unplug storm; pairs with #3 |
@@ -54,14 +54,17 @@ Everything else below stays open; order is convenience, not a gate.
       blank, input woke it in all three configurations including clamshell-docked
       on the sole live output. The mitigation was reverted and #135 retired
       unbuilt, which also voids TEST A (its premise — the skip — no longer
-      exists). Real cause: Hyprland's input→DPMS options ship off, so hypridle's
+      exists). What that leaves: Hyprland's input→DPMS options ship off, so
-      `on-resume` was the only caller of `dpms on`, and hypridle deadlocks
+      hypridle's `on-resume` was the only caller of `dpms on` — a real single
-      (hyprwm/hypridle#171) without exiting. Full record: ROADMAP § "#127
+      point of failure, now removed. It is **not** known to be what bricked the
-      solved"; the surviving bug is BACKLOG #146. **Method note worth keeping:**
+      machine: the "hypridle deadlock" cause published on the day was retracted
+      the same day (hypridle had no disconnect at the incident). #127 is reopened
+      for its cause; ROADMAP § "#127's WAKE PATH fixed" is the full record.
+      **Method note worth keeping:**
       the *first* TEST B was invalid — it ran `dpms off` by hand, which no wake
       path watches, so its "input did not wake it" was guaranteed regardless of
       hardware. Drive the real code path or measure nothing.
-- [ ] **#127 fix from config — steps 1+4 PASSED 2026-07-16, 2+3 open (AMD dev box)**
+- [x] **#127 fix from config — ALL 4 STEPS PASSED 2026-07-16 (AMD dev box)**
       — a2151f4 applied via `nomarchy-pull` + `nomarchy-home` on the dev box.
       **Done, no need to redo:**
       1. ✓ Both options read `int: 1` after `hyprctl reload` (which discards
@@ -83,16 +86,20 @@ Everything else below stays open; order is convenience, not a gate.
          of anything: `/proc/acpi/button/lid/*/state` is, and it was never
          checked. Docked-lid-open remains **untested** — moot now that the gate
          is gone, but not tested. Do not read output lists as lid positions.
-      **Still open — needs real idle time, cannot be rushed:**
+      2+3. ✓ **The real idle path, no scaffolding** (Bernardo, 19:22–19:32,
-      2. Docked, **lid closed**, idle 10+ min → the external **blanks**. This is
+         docked **lid closed**): `19:22:58 Executing pidof hyprlock || hyprlock`
-         the revert working; nothing to date has watched a genuine 10-min
+         (5 min) → `19:27:58 Executing hyprctl dispatch dpms off` — the genuine
-         hypridle timeout fire, only forced blanks.
+         10-min timeout firing from the shipped config, and it **blanked**, which
-      3. Then press a key → it returns, and `journalctl --user -t
+         is the revert working → mouse move → `19:32:13 Resumed: … Executing
-         nomarchy-display-wake --since '-15 min'` has a `done enabled=…` line
+         …/nomarchy-display-wake` → `19:32:14 done enabled=1 first=DP-2`.
-         (i.e. hypridle's on-resume ran *as well as* the compositor waking it).
+         `enabled=1 first=DP-2` = clamshell, the incident's exact geometry. One
+         healthy hypridle (PID 683145) throughout.
       Note: step 1 used `hyprctl reload` rather than a full relogin — a reload
       re-reads the same on-disk config a new session would, so the gap is
       cosmetic, but a relogin has not literally been done.
+      **Entry closed. #127 itself is reopened for its CAUSE (see BACKLOG) —
+      the wake path is fixed and verified; what bricked the machine is not
+      known, and the dead Ctrl+Alt+F3 is the lead.**
 - [ ] **#96 battery-limit row on threshold-less firmware (Acer M5-481T)** —
       on the Acer (live or installed session with the commit carrying this
       entry): open System (`SUPER+CTRL+I`). **Pass:** a "Battery limit" row

agent/JOURNAL.md

@@ -19,7 +19,58 @@ Template:
 
 ---
 
+## 2026-07-16 — RETRACTION: the #127 diagnosis was as wrong as the test it replaced
+- **Task:** Bernardo said "do #147 first, then #146". Both dissolved under
+  investigation, and taking them apart disproved the #127 *cause* I had shipped
+  hours earlier. The fix stands; the story around it did not. Sweep = retract.
+- **The retraction, and it is the whole entry.** I published "blank + hypridle
+  deadlock = the brick" into ROADMAP, hyprland.nix's comment, #146 and two commit
+  messages, on two pieces of evidence: "19 disconnects in 11 days" and Jul 14's
+  "eleven hours of silence". **Both were artifacts of my own measurement.** 18 of
+  19 disconnects are hypridle's goodbye while systemd *deliberately stops it*
+  (each bracketed by `Stopped`/`Started`, healthy replacement seconds later). The
+  "silence" was a grep for **one PID** — systemd logged `Started hypridle` 43s
+  later and PID 1678 ran fine all evening, invisible to my filter. **Decisive:**
+  at the incident hypridle had **no disconnect at all**, healthy since Jul 14
+  13:09. The theory never had a case.
+- **The irony is the lesson.** I spent the morning writing up "the invalid TEST B
+  measured its own scaffolding — put the mechanism inside the circuit", then did
+  exactly that twice more: inferred a lid position from an output list, inferred
+  "the session wiring is missing" from a grep that never covered HM's generated
+  conf. Three wrong claims, all from inferring where checking was cheap; Bernardo
+  caught all three. **Verify the instrument before believing the reading —
+  hardest when the reading agrees with you.**
+- **#147 → not a distro bug.** The wiring exists (HM's `systemd.enable`, line 1 of
+  the generated conf) and fired; systemd *refused* the `graphical-session.target`
+  stop because portal-gtk had a start job queued ("destructive transaction"). It
+  needs `Linger=yes` to matter — an empty marker dated **2026-01-24, pre-dating
+  Bernardo's migration to Nomarchy**. Never shipped by us, ever. Removed. The item
+  is rewritten to the class that IS real: `/var/lib` survives a migration, so the
+  primary V3 box ran 6 months on a setting the distro never chose and cannot see.
+- **#146 → `[watch]`, near-dead.** One genuine zombie ever (verified by `ps`/`ss`,
+  not grep); upstream #171 is real but its impact path closed with linger.
+- **Did:** retracted the cause in place everywhere it was asserted; **restored
+  #127** (deleted this morning as "shipped" — only the fix shipped); rewrote #146
+  and #147; filed #148 (a reload re-lights the panel in a shut lid — found because
+  my own `hyprctl reload` did it to Bernardo, twice).
+- **Verified: V3, the fix survives all of it.** The real 10-min idle, no
+  scaffolding: `19:27:58 Executing hyprctl dispatch dpms off` → blanked (the
+  revert working) → mouse → `19:32:14 done enabled=1 first=DP-2` — clamshell, the
+  incident geometry, from shipped config. Plus the brick condition on purpose
+  (hypridle stopped): keypress woke it 4s docked / 6s clamshell. **The fix needed
+  no story about why the daemon fails — which is why it survived the story being
+  wrong.** V1: flake check + option-docs/clamshell-logind/docking-ux green.
+- **Next suggestion:** #127's **cause**, and start at the **dead Ctrl+Alt+F3** —
+  the one symptom no theory yet has touched. DPMS-off cannot break VT switching
+  and neither can a dead hypridle; a compositor wedged holding DRM master
+  explains the black screen and the dead TTY together. Every theory so far has
+  been about the wake path, i.e. a symptom of the screen already being black.
+
 ## 2026-07-16 — #127 SOLVED: the brick was never DPMS, and TEST B's first run lied
+- **⚠ SUPERSEDED — read the entry above first.** Its headline ("SOLVED") and its
+  cause ("hypridle deadlock", "19× in 11 days") were **retracted the same day**:
+  the evidence was a measurement artifact and hypridle had no disconnect at the
+  incident. What survives: the invalid-TEST-B analysis, and the fix itself.
 - **Task:** #127 TEST B (Bernardo ran it), then the whole sweep his result forced.
 - **Read this if nothing else — the test measured nothing, and said so.** His run
   reported "input never wakes it" **docked *and* undocked alike**, and that tie is

docs/ROADMAP.md

@@ -622,10 +622,12 @@ Design/decision records and a running log of shipped work (items marked
   that could not run — two mundane bugs, not one exotic DRM state. The shipped
   DPMS mitigation may therefore be treating the wrong cause; #127's TEST B is
   what decides, and it is far safer now that an undock works again.
-  **It did decide, the same day: the hunch was right on both counts** — the
+  **It did decide, the same day — half of the hunch was right.** The mitigation
-  mitigation *was* treating the wrong cause and is now reverted, and the brick
+  *was* treating the wrong cause and is now reverted (blanking while clamshell
-  *was* two mundane bugs (an ordinary blank + a wake path that had died). See
+  is provably innocent). But "an ordinary blank + a recovery that could not run"
-  "#127 solved" below.
+  is **not** established: the wake path had a real single point of failure, which
+  is fixed, yet nothing shows it had failed *during the incident*. The brick's
+  cause is still open. See "#127's WAKE PATH fixed" below.
 - ✓ **The #107 compat shim is pinned (#133, 2026-07-16):** `mkFlake` prefers
   `state.json` and still accepts the legacy `theme-state.json`, because a
   machine only migrates on its next menu write — but nothing evaluated a
@@ -727,19 +729,19 @@ Design/decision records and a running log of shipped work (items marked
   `nomarchy-suspend` (hypridle + Power menu). LUKS: unlock session before
   encrypted hibernate phase so resume is LUKS-only (not hyprlock twice).
   Menu row self-gates on CanHibernate. V3: HARDWARE-QUEUE bag-carry test.
-- ✓ **#127 solved — the idle brick was never DPMS (2026-07-16, AMD dev box):**
+- ✓ **#127's WAKE PATH fixed — but the brick's cause is still open (2026-07-16,
-  the clamshell DPMS-off skip (060bf52, and its #136 wording fix) is
+  AMD dev box).** Read the title carefully: the fix below is proven and shipped;
-  **reverted**; idle blanks again in every dock/lid state. Hyprland ships
+  the *diagnosis* published alongside it on the day was **wrong and is retracted
-  `misc:key_press_enables_dpms` and `misc:mouse_move_enables_dpms` **off**, and
+  in place** (see "What was claimed, and why it was wrong" below). The clamshell
-  nothing else in the session calls `dpms on` — so hypridle's `on-resume` was
+  DPMS-off skip (060bf52, and its #136 wording fix) is **reverted**; idle blanks
-  the *only* thing that could un-blank a screen: an idle daemon with the
+  again in every dock/lid state.
-  display held hostage behind it. hypridle then deadlocks on an unfixed
+  **What is true and load-bearing.** Hyprland ships `misc:key_press_enables_dpms`
-  upstream bug (hyprwm/hypridle#171, "Disconnected from pollfd id 1", open
+  and `misc:mouse_move_enables_dpms` **off**, and nothing else in the session
-  since 2025-09, absent from 0.1.7 *and* main) and hangs **without exiting**,
+  calls `dpms on` — so hypridle's `on-resume` was the *only* thing that could
-  so `Restart=always` never fires and systemd still reports it
+  un-blank a screen: an idle daemon with the display held hostage behind it.
-  `active (running)`. Blank + deadlock = a black seat no keypress can escape.
+  That is a real single point of failure, and it is now gone. It needed no story
-  That is the brick: two mundane bugs, not one exotic DRM state — the same
+  about *why* the daemon might fail to justify removing it — which is exactly
-  shape as the #100 latch above.
+  why the fix survived its own diagnosis being wrong.
   **Evidence, on the incident hardware.** With hypridle driving the blank,
   input woke it in all three configurations — including clamshell-docked on the
   sole live output (`nomarchy-display-wake done enabled=1 first=DP-2`), which
@@ -760,10 +762,41 @@ Design/decision records and a running log of shipped work (items marked
   (an option to opt back into DPMS-when-clamshell) is therefore **retired
   unbuilt** — there is nothing left to opt into, and the 27" panels stop being
   held lit all night under a static lock screen.
-  **Still open:** hypridle's silent death is its own bug (~2×/week on this box;
+  **What was claimed, and why it was wrong (retracted the same day).** This
-  no auto-lock is a security cost even when the screen is recoverable), and the
+  entry, `hyprland.nix`'s comment and two commit messages all said the brick was
-  incident's dead Ctrl+Alt+F3 remains unexplained — a known co-symptom upstream
+  "blank + hypridle deadlock": hypridle hitting hyprwm/hypridle#171, hanging
-  (hyprwm/hypridle#145) but not accounted for here. Tooling kept:
+  without exiting so `Restart=always` never fires, leaving a blanked seat with
+  nothing left to call `dpms on`. Cited evidence: "19 disconnects in 11 days",
+  and Jul 14 as the clean example — "locking normally at 13:02, `CRITICAL` at
+  13:08:17, then eleven hours of silence". **All of it was an artifact of how it
+  was measured.** 18 of the 19 `Disconnected from pollfd id 1` lines are
+  hypridle's noisy goodbye while systemd *deliberately stops it* — each one
+  bracketed by `Stopped hypridle` / `Started hypridle`, with a healthy
+  replacement seconds later. The "eleven hours of silence" came from grepping a
+  single PID (`hypridle[1679]`): systemd logged `Stopped hypridle` at 13:08:17
+  and `Started hypridle` at 13:09:00, and PID 1678 ran fine all evening where
+  the filter could not see it. Only **one** genuine zombie has ever existed here
+  (2026-07-16 17:25:39, verified by process inspection — `ps`, `ss` showing
+  unread D-Bus queues, `NRestarts=0` — not by grep), and it needed stray
+  pre-migration linger to persist (BACKLOG #147). **The decisive fact:** at the
+  time of the brick (before the 12:51:34 mitigation commit) hypridle had **no
+  disconnect at all** — it had been running healthily since Jul 14 13:09. It
+  should have fired `on-resume` normally. The deadlock theory never had a case.
+  **The lesson is the same one this entry teaches about TEST B**, which is what
+  makes it worth the space: the invalid test measured its own scaffolding, and
+  so did the diagnosis that replaced it — a grep that could only see one PID,
+  and a rate that counted normal shutdown noise. Both times the error was
+  inferring where checking was available and cheap. Verify the instrument before
+  believing the reading, *especially* when the reading confirms the theory.
+  **Still open — #127's cause, now the lead question (BACKLOG #127).** We know
+  the wake path had a single point of failure and we removed it; we do **not**
+  know what actually bricked the machine. The **dead Ctrl+Alt+F3 is the strongest
+  clue and points away from everything examined so far**: neither DPMS-off nor a
+  dead hypridle can break VT switching, so something was wedged below the
+  compositor — DRM master, most likely. Also unknown: whether the machine had
+  been relogged-in between Jul 14 13:09 and the incident (Bernardo does not
+  recall), which is the one fact that would say whether hypridle was ever a
+  suspect worth having. Tooling kept:
   `nomarchy-display-wake` / `nomarchy-display-dump`.
 - ✓ **Generation prune (#128):** weekly `nomarchy-gen-prune` (system + HM):
   delete only gens older than **14 days** that are also beyond the **3 most

modules/home/hyprland.nix

@@ -1098,17 +1098,23 @@ in
         # reads as a glitch (item 28c, seen in the capture harness).
         background_color = rgb c.base;
 
-        # #127, and the whole answer to it. Hyprland ships both of these
+        # #127. Hyprland ships both of these OFF, so nothing in the
-        # OFF, so nothing in the compositor turned a blanked screen back
+        # compositor turned a blanked screen back on: hypridle's on-resume
-        # on: hypridle's on-resume was the ONLY caller of `dpms on` in the
+        # was the ONLY caller of `dpms on` anywhere in the session — an idle
-        # session — an idle daemon as a single point of failure with the
+        # daemon as a single point of failure with the display behind it.
-        # display behind it. hypridle then deadlocks on an unfixed upstream
+        # Both facts verified on hardware 2026-07-16, as is the cure: with
-        # bug (hyprwm/hypridle#171: "Disconnected from pollfd id 1", open,
+        # hypridle deliberately stopped and the screen blanked (i.e. the
-        # not in 0.1.7 or main) and hangs WITHOUT exiting, so Restart=always
+        # brick condition manufactured on purpose), a keypress woke it in 4s
-        # never fires and systemd still reports it active. Blank + deadlock
+        # docked / 6s clamshell. The wake now lives in the compositor where
-        # = a black seat no keypress could escape. That was the brick.
+        # no daemon can lose it; a dead hypridle costs auto-lock, not the seat.
-        # These put the wake in the compositor, where no daemon can lose it;
+        #
-        # a dead hypridle now costs auto-lock, not the machine.
+        # Deliberately NOT claimed: that this is what caused the original
+        # brick. An earlier version of this comment said so, citing a hypridle
+        # deadlock (hyprwm/hypridle#171) — that was wrong and is retracted:
+        # hypridle had no disconnect at all around the incident. Removing a
+        # proven single point of failure needs no such story. The cause is
+        # still open (BACKLOG #127); the dead Ctrl+Alt+F3 is its lead symptom,
+        # and neither DPMS-off nor a dead hypridle can produce that.
         key_press_enables_dpms = lib.mkDefault true;
         mouse_move_enables_dpms = lib.mkDefault true;
       };