reverse-skills-max/reverse-skill-repo/CTF-Sandbox-Orchestrator/competition-race-condition-state-drift/references/race-condition-state-drift.md

Race Condition State Drift Checklist

First Pass

• Mutable rows, cache keys, counters, files, queue payloads
• Read-check-write boundaries, lock scope, retry behavior, idempotency handling
• Worker delays, commit timing, stale reads, invalidation timing

Chain To Reconstruct

1. Baseline ordering established
2. Concurrent or reordered flow injected
3. Check or lock boundary is bypassed
4. Conflicting state mutation lands
5. Decisive drift is reproduced

Evidence To Keep Together

• State side: key or row, initial value, final value, commit boundaries
• Timing side: request order, delays, retries, queue timing
• Effect side: duplicated action, privilege drift, balance drift, stale authorization

Common Pitfalls

• Running noisy stress tests without a minimal deterministic sequence
• Mixing several mutable keys without proving which key drives the effect
• Reporting timing sensitivity without final-state parity proof