---
type: caveat
summary: A connection attempt that finds no account returns silently and leaves its abandoned run joinable, so a later legitimate attempt does nothing
last_checked: 2026-08-11
---

# A connection run that gives up stays joinable

In `emulated-verifier/connect.ts`, a connection attempt that finds no account for the acting identity **returns silently** — no restore, no drain — and it has already registered itself as the in-flight run for that identity. Any concurrent caller joins that run and resolves having done nothing.

That is exactly how sharing broke once (see `knowledge_settling-is-not-connecting`): the trigger was fixed, this mechanism was not.

**It is still live.** Any future caller that starts connecting before its session can answer will reproduce the same silence: work skipped, promise resolved, no error anywhere. The trap is documented on the setter that fires the connection, but a comment is not a mechanism — nothing prevents it.

Two things make it nasty: giving up is indistinguishable from succeeding at the call site, and the memoization spreads the damage to callers that did nothing wrong.

To validate the state of this: look at what the connection routine does when the account lookup answers nothing, and at whether the in-flight registration happens before or after that decision.

Fixing it properly means deciding what an attempt that cannot answer should be — a failure, a retry, or something never memoized — and that decision has its own blast radius, which is why it was deliberately left out of the fix that closed the symptom.