Exit Propagation

Overview

An exit is a matchUp that ended without being played out: WALKOVER, DEFAULTED or RETIRED. A double exit is one where both sides are out — DOUBLE_WALKOVER or DOUBLE_DEFAULT — so no participant advances from it at all.

Recording an exit is not a local edit. It sets off a cascade: a winner may need advancing, a loser may need feeding into a consolation structure, a BYE may need placing where nobody will arrive, and each of those can in turn produce another exit further down the draw. Exit propagation is that cascade.

This page describes what the engine guarantees while propagating, and the shapes a consumer will see in the resulting data. It is distinct from exit profiles, which describe the path a participant took between structures rather than the status that travelled with them.

The pending propagated exit

Two pending shapes exist, and they differ in whether a winningSide is recorded before anyone arrives.

A carried exit. With propagateExitStatus on, a WALKOVER or DEFAULTED follows the loser into the matchUp they are fed to. The exiting participant is present; their opponent may not be. The engine records the exit and points winningSide at the opponent's side, even when that side is still empty: the outcome is already known, and whoever arrives there wins it.

// A carried exit, opponent not yet arrived
{
  matchUpStatus: 'WALKOVER',
  winningSide: 1,                 // side 1 is an empty feed slot
  sides: [
    { sideNumber: 1 },            // no participantId yet
    { sideNumber: 2, participantId: '...' },  // the participant who carried the exit in
  ],
}

A produced exit. A double exit sends nobody forward, so the matchUp it feeds receives a produced WALKOVER (or DEFAULTED) with no winningSide while the opponent has not arrived. The award is made when they do. CA, 2026-09-20: "that is unnecessary if the winningSide will display the checkmark once a participant arrives... so, you don't need to keep it." The one exception is an opponent who is already in place: the winner is then read off their side at once, because no arrival is still coming to resolve it.

A BYE that carries a produced exit on does not change how it lands. CA, 2026-10-03: a produced exit advanced past a BYE is still a produced exit, so it lands pending, as it would without the BYE. A seat that a feed link has reserved for a participant who has not arrived yet is not an opponent in place, even though it already holds a drawPosition.

// A produced exit, opponent not yet arrived
{
  matchUpStatus: 'WALKOVER',
  winningSide: undefined,         // awarded when a participant arrives
  sides: [{ sideNumber: 1 }, { sideNumber: 2 }],
}

Two consequences worth knowing:

A winningSide does not imply a winner is present, and an exit does not imply a winningSide. Code that reads winningSide and dereferences the participant on that side must tolerate both. isActiveMatchUp and isActiveDownstream distinguish a pending exit from a resolved one for this reason.
The matchUp is not finished. It is waiting, and it will change again without any further action from the caller.

Both shapes are measured by the outcome pipeline's differential mode on every exit the suite enters (src/mutate/matchUps/outcome/).

`propagateExitStatus`

Whether an exit status travels into the consolation structure at all is a scoring-policy decision.

Setting	Behaviour
`propagateExitStatus: false` (factory default)	the loser is directed normally; the exit status does not follow them
`propagateExitStatus: true`	the exit status is carried into the target structure

It can be set on the scoring policy or passed per call to setMatchUpStatus. Since 7.5.0 a policy that sets the flag, true or false, wins over the call; the call decides only where the policy is silent (policy ?? param). The USTA scoring policy enables it; the factory default policy is silent on it, so it is off unless the call turns it on.

The flag does not decide whether an exit may stand on a matchUp holding only one participant. Since 7.5.0 a WALKOVER or DEFAULTED can be recorded before the second opponent arrives with the flag on or off; the flag decides only whether an exit is then carried into the loser's next matchUp. A direct double exit needs both seats reached; only the cascade's own write may place one beside a seat nobody has reached. The rules for who may receive the exit are in the outcome pipeline § 2.1.

BYE provenance: `byeFromPropagation`

When a double exit means nobody can arrive in a downstream slot, the cascade places a BYE there. Unwinding that double exit later has to remove the BYEs the cascade placed — and only those.

PositionAssignment.byeFromPropagation records which BYEs those are.

{
  drawPosition: 1,
  bye: true,
  byeFromPropagation: true,   // placed by an exit cascade, not by draw generation or by hand
}

It is a boolean and nothing more: it deliberately does not store the matchUpId that caused it, because a stored reference can dangle once the source is removed and nothing consumes it.

The flag is first-class rather than an extension because removeExtensions: true is a supported option on getState and getTournament — an extension marker would be destroyed by a routine deep copy, and silently, which would return removal to the topology guess it replaced. It is cleared wherever bye is cleared, in the same statement, and a BYE arriving at that drawPosition by any other route clears any marker left behind rather than inheriting it.

Consumers do not normally need to read it. It is documented because it is visible in stored tournament records and in anything that round-trips positionAssignments.

Exit provenance: `sideExitProvenance`

When propagation produces an exit in a downstream matchUp, each side of that matchUp gets there for a reason — one side because an upstream double exit delivered nobody, the other because of whatever happened in its own feeder. matchUp.sideExitProvenance records those reasons, keyed by side.

{
  1: { matchUpStatus: 'WALKOVER',  previousMatchUpStatus: 'DOUBLE_WALKOVER', sourceMatchUpId: '…' },
  2: { matchUpStatus: 'DEFAULTED', previousMatchUpStatus: 'DOUBLE_DEFAULT',  sourceMatchUpId: '…' },
}

previousMatchUpStatus is the upstream status that caused it; matchUpStatus is what this side was given as a result; sourceMatchUpId identifies the matchUp whose exit produced the entry.

Three properties follow from what provenance is — a record of where each side came from:

An arrival records no matchUpStatus. A participant who won their previous matchUp — by playing it, or because the opponent walked over or defaulted — arrives and waits; nothing was decided on their side here, so the entry carries the origin alone: { previousMatchUpStatus: 'DEFAULTED', sourceMatchUpId: '…' }. Only a side on which something was decided records a matchUpStatus: an exit carried over a loser link (the loser of that DEFAULTED, whose opponent wins by default), an exit a double exit produced (nobody arrives; the exit stands pending), or a BYE. Without this, the winner of a DEFAULTED and its loser carried the same entry into their next matchUps, and a reader asking "does this side carry an exit?" could not tell them apart.
An entry is never TO_BE_PLAYED. A side that has not been decided has no origin, so it gets no entry rather than one naming a status that is not an outcome. This matters because readers test the mere presence of provenance to ask whether an exit was produced by propagation.
Origins accumulate. One side's origin can become known before the other's — the second feeder may not have been played yet — so a write that knows only its own side adds to the record instead of replacing it.
An origin sits on the matchUp its source feeds, on its seat's side. Since 7.7.0 an entry naming a source in the same structure is written only on that source's own next matchUp, never on a later round the same participant had reached, and it is keyed to the side the source's position holds there, which roundPosition order does not predict where fed positions interleave with advanced ones. The one entry found further on is an exit relayed past BYEs (below). When the occupants change sides as the seats fill and empty, the entries move with them.

A known limit, since the field is visible in stored records. On a consolation convergence the stored entry can be present for only one of the two sides; the entries that are there are correct. Completing it is the work of making matchUpStatusCodes a projection of this field rather than a parallel record — see migration §12. Read the field per side and treat a missing side as unknown rather than as absent-of-exit.

Why not `matchUpStatusCodes`

Because that array already holds three unrelated element shapes — the scoring policy's code vocabulary, this provenance, and codes wrapped as { code } — and provenance was positional inside it: a side was an array index, padded with ''. That made an entry impossible to address, impossible to attribute to the exit that produced it, and easy for any reader assuming a string to flatten. Keying by sideNumber removes the padding and the ambiguity together.

Why this one carries a matchUpId when `byeFromPropagation` refuses to

The BYE marker is a boolean on purpose: a stored reference can dangle once its source is removed, and nothing needed the identity. Provenance is the opposite case — unwinding one exit while another still stands requires knowing which entry belongs to the exit being removed, and that is precisely what a boolean cannot say.

The dangling risk is answered by symmetry rather than by omission: provenance is cleared at every site that blanks matchUpStatusCodes, and that clear is deliberately not gated on the schema write mode. The write mode decides whether the field is written; it must never decide whether stale state is removed.

Consumers do not normally need to read it. It is documented because it is visible in stored tournament records.

Why a loser seat's BYE is read from the draw

Whether a propagated BYE on a loser seat stands is read from the draw, never from a record of who placed it. It stands while the matchUp feeding the seat across the link will never send anyone: it holds a BYE (a BYE matchUp has no winner or loser), it is a double exit, it was won against an exit and its losing side holds nobody, it is undecided and holds alone the exit a double exit produced along its winner path, or it feeds a FIRST_MATCHUP link that every candidate loser is already ineligible to cross. Under doubleExitPropagateBye: false a double exit's seat shows its produced exit instead of a BYE (CA ruling (A), 2026-10-21), unless the seat is fed in. An exit that came over a loser link waits for the award: the seat is owed its BYE only once the matchUp is awarded.

Until 2026-10-22 each side kept a byeClaims ledger of the matchUps that claimed its BYE, and unwinds asked it whether the BYE still had a reason. The ledger depended on the order results were entered: the same draw could carry a claim in one order and none in another, so the census round trip had to leave such claims out (CA ruling (b), 2026-10-20). Measured before the ledger was retired, the draw-derived reading explained every propagated loser-seat BYE in 2,493,487 census seat observations, where the ledger explained fewer (Mentat P58). The ledger is no longer written or read; byeClaims on a stored record is ignored. The harness holds every step to the draw-derived reading (LOSER_SEAT_DERIVED).

Guarantees

These hold as of 7.0.0, or as of the release each states, and are enforced by the exit-propagation harness.

Re-applying the same double exit does nothing

Asking for the state a matchUp is already in is satisfied, not repeated. Sending the identical double-exit outcome twice returns success and writes nothing the second time.

This matters because it did not always hold: the second call used to re-run the cascade, which then read its own earlier work as a second source exiting into the same target, escalated the produced WALKOVER to a DOUBLE_WALKOVER, and cascaded a round further — with both calls reporting success. A client retry or a double-click corrupted the draw progressively and silently.

A genuine change still propagates. DOUBLE_WALKOVER to DOUBLE_DEFAULT is a change, not a repeat.

A rejected mutation does not alter the draw

A rejected call cannot destroy a result that was already recorded, including a pending propagated exit. The specific defect behind this guarantee is closed: a bare { winningSide } outcome is now validated before any removal runs, where it used to skip the early participant check and be caught only after the existing result had been unwound.

The guarantee is per method, on a direct call, and it does not depend on rollbackOnError. A setMatchUpStatus that returns an error leaves the draw unchanged. The cascade delivers that by itself: it refuses before it writes, and it builds in no snapshot or restore to hide a refusal that comes too late. A refusal returned after a write is a defect, not a design choice.

Be precise about where that stands. Refusals that can only arise part-way through a cascade are being made impossible one root cause at a time; those that cannot be removed in the current pipeline are handed to its successor, which decides before it writes. The exit-propagation census measures the property on direct calls as ERROR_IMPLIES_NO_MUTATION, so a residual case shows up there rather than being assumed away.

rollbackOnError is a separate, queue-level feature: it makes several directives in one executionQueue succeed or fail together, and discards the queued notices of a refused queue. It is not how a single method's error is made clean, and a consumer calling setMatchUpStatus directly does not need it for that.

The cascade reports every error. Since 7.5.0 any write the cascade makes that fails, fails the call, and a refusal raised inside the cascade is returned to the caller rather than dropped behind a success. Before that, a call could report success over a draw the cascade had left half-written.

If you are writing a client, an error response needs no compensating action. It does not mean every rejection is a no-op for your UI: the request was refused, and the reason in the error is worth surfacing.

Which double exit a convergence becomes does not depend on entry order

Two exits can converge on one matchUp — each side arriving because its own feeder produced nobody. The matchUp becomes a double exit, and which one is derived from both sides' origins, not from whichever result was entered last.

both sides originating in a default → DOUBLE_DEFAULT
any other combination, including a default meeting a walkover → DOUBLE_WALKOVER

A mixture takes the weaker claim deliberately. A default is a referee's ruling against a named player; in a mixed convergence one side merely failed to appear, and the collapsed status is a single field shared by both sides — so it states only what is true of both. The per-side origins are kept separately in sideExitProvenance.

This did not always hold. The flavour used to be read from the arriving source alone, which made the stored matchUpStatus a function of the order an operator entered the two results: measured across eight draw types, entering the same two outcomes the other way round produced a different record in 28 of 32 combinations.

What a double exit produces downstream keeps its flavour

A DOUBLE_WALKOVER produces a WALKOVER in the matchUp it feeds; a DOUBLE_DEFAULT produces a DEFAULTED. A mixed convergence is a DOUBLE_WALKOVER by the rule above, so it produces a WALKOVER — and that walkover is not attributable to any one upstream participant, which is the point of choosing the weaker label.

A correction lands where the direct entry lands

Enter the wrong outcome, then correct it, and the draw is the one you would have had by entering the right outcome first — status, winner and seats alike, in every matchUp the mistake could have touched. Enforced since 7.4.0 by the deep-correction oracle: 1,600 cells across seventeen draw types, each playing a twelve-step prefix with exits planted along the way, then taking the deepest exit back and comparing the two routes. The baseline is zero severe divergences; the only cells it does not compare are the four where the engine refuses the correct outcome outright, and those are recorded rather than counted.

Three rules fell out of making this hold, each a defect that only the order of entry exposed:

A seat advanced by its opponent's BYE keeps that advancement when its occupant leaves. A fed seat beside a draw BYE is advanced from generation, before anybody sits on it. The advancement never depended on the occupant, so clearing the occupant — a corrected walkover, a position action — leaves the seat where it was; it is not torn down and the BYE's seat advanced in its place. (This is also why a BYE placed on a seat that is already advanced and alone now feeds the loser link its BYE.)
Clearing a double exit withdraws the BYE it propagated, all the way. Removing a DOUBLE_WALKOVER takes back the BYE it placed on the consolation seat, the BYE's advancement into later rounds, and the byeFromPropagation marker — whether the double exit was in the first round or a later one.
A produced exit arrives on the side its seat already holds. Where fed seat numbers interleave with advanced ones, feeder order predicts the wrong side; when the target already holds both seats, the seat's own side is read.
A convergence a correction dissolves settles as the kept exit alone would leave it. Re-entering an exit as a played win for the same winner withdraws the loser's carried exit, and a double exit it had converged into falls back to the other exit. The withdrawn side's reason code goes with its exit; the kept side's stays. A kept produced exit that reached the matchUp past a BYE, with nobody yet in the seat it would be awarded to, lands pending as it does on the direct path (no winner until somebody arrives); one that came straight down its link keeps its award to that seat. And a participant who has already passed a BYE, carrying no exit of their own, takes the exit that BYE holds with them, whichever reached the seat first: the BYE stays, the exit travels (census policy-off 20466254, 20488568, 20500008 and 20520641 — COMPASS, OLYMPIC and CURTIS_CONSOLATION).
A re-score that keeps the winner rewrites what that winner's arrival says. A winner who reached a produced exit records how they won the matchUp they came from. Correcting that matchUp to another result for the same winner (a default to a played win, say) rewrites the record, so it reads what entering the played win directly would have written (census 20500008, COMPASS 16/16).
A flip rewrites it too. Under allowChangePropagation, a correction to the other winner puts the new winner in the old winner's seat onward, and the arrival record there now reads the new result: a walkover won by one side corrected to a retirement won by the other reads RETIRED (census intgate, SINGLE_ELIMINATION 16/16 9100138: anArrivalTellsTheTruthAfterAFlipOrAPendingExit).

A team dual's double exit is unwound by its lines, or protected from them

Since 7.4.0. In a TEAM event a dual that holds a DOUBLE_WALKOVER has propagated like any other. Scoring one of its lines (tieMatchUps) afterwards takes the dual out of the double exit — so the produced walkover is withdrawn first, and a team that had been awarded it is taken back out of the next round. Once that produced walkover has been played on, a line of the dual is refused with CANNOT_CHANGE_OUTCOME, exactly as a direct re-score of the dual is: a played result is never reset by a score entered elsewhere.

An exit never discards a placement, and says when it kept one

A BYE or a produced exit that lands on a scheduled matchUp keeps that matchUp's court, order and times — the rule the schedule governor states for BYEs, applied to produced exits since 7.5.0. The read side flags both (CONFLICT_BYE_SCHEDULED, CONFLICT_EXIT_SCHEDULED), and the setMatchUpStatus call that left them returns warnings: [{ code: 'SCHEDULE_PRESERVED_ON_EXIT', matchUpIds }] so the client can offer to release the slots. Enforced over the drawSize-8 matrix cells with every matchUp scheduled first: no slot moves under any cascade.

A produced exit awards no empty seat, on any path

A produced exit is never awarded to a seat that holds a drawPosition but no participant and no BYE, such as one a BYE advanced forward to wait for a loser fed from another structure. That seat is not an opponent in place, and the exit stays pending until a participant arrives; an empty position arriving does not resolve it. 7.5.0 applied this past a BYE; since 7.6.0 it holds on every path that writes a produced exit. Since 7.7.0 it also holds when a position is cleared out of a matchUp: a produced exit on the other side stands, pending, rather than being won by the emptied seat. And an empty position advanced into a matchUp holding a pending exit takes its seat; it is not moved on as that exit's winner. Nor does it take back an award already standing there: a carried exit awarded to the side nobody had reached stays awarded when the empty position reaches that side, as it is when the empty position arrives first, and the loser it sent on stays where it went (census run-17 baseline, COMPASS under doubleExitPropagateBye: false).

An award kept this way names a seat, not a side. In a fed round a lone position sits on its bracket side and two positions sort by drawPosition, so the empty position's arrival can move the participant already there to the other side; the award moves with the seat. Before this it stayed on its old side and named the participant who had walked over, whose win was then read as never advanced (census run 18, FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP, CURTIS_CONSOLATION, FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION and DOUBLE_ELIMINATION: WINNER_NOT_ADVANCED, and a result refused after it had written when the reservation behind that seat was later withdrawn).

The same holds for every fact written before the positions it describes. A carrier arriving past a BYE beside a lone position records its exit for the seat it takes, in the frame the matchUp is still in, so that the re-keying of the arrival carries it there; written in the new frame, it overwrote the lone position's own exit and was then moved onto that position's side, so the carrier won the matchUp on the walkover it had brought (census run 18, FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 8/5 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: WINNING_SIDE_ADVANCEMENT_MISMATCH). And a removal clears the side the removed position held in the frame the record is in after the position has gone: read in the frame before, a produced exit leaving with its position was kept as the survivor's, the matchUp stayed a pending exit, and the seat the exit had awarded stayed in the next round (census run 18, FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION 16/11: ADVANCED_FROM_UNDECIDED).

The side a removed position held is read before the removal takes anything. A lone position's side is read through the feeder that delivered it, and the removal walks the rounds in order, releasing that feeder first; read afterwards, the side came back empty and the removal dropped the exit standing on the other side as well (census run 18, MODIFIED_FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 32/27 under allowChangePropagation: a produced walkover lost from a matchUp its arrival then passed undecided, ADVANCED_FROM_UNDECIDED).

A pending exit's reservation goes with it

Since 7.9.0. A pending produced exit can advance an empty seat ahead of it — a reservation for the arrival it awaits. When the exit is withdrawn the reservation is released with it, even once a BYE has taken the seat, and a BYE-held opponent who was owed that seat goes on as soon as it is free. A standing reservation is not disturbed by a double exit re-entered beside it. Pinned by the named tests of census seeds 20178071, 20163074 and 20139307 (FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP and FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION 8/7 and 8/8).

Since 7.10.0 two more cases hold. A reservation goes with its exit past a BYE it crossed: a reservation advanced through a BYE into a matchUp still holding a pending exit (an exit status and no winner yet) is released from that matchUp too when its exit is withdrawn; the pending exit itself stands for whoever arrives (census 20278127, FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION 16/16, doubleExitPropagateBye: false). And an ineligible loser's BYE survives the opponent's arrival: in FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION the BYE placed for a round-2 loser who already holds a win (and so cannot be fed) is a decision about a decided matchUp, and is no longer withdrawn when that loser's opponent arrives afterwards and takes the walkover (census 9700053 and 9700084, the early-exit arm).

A produced exit can also be replaced rather than withdrawn: when its double exit dissolves and a carrier passes a BYE into the matchUp, the carrier's own exit takes the produced exit's place there. That exit is awarded to the seat nobody has reached, and an award to an empty seat advances nobody, so the reservation the produced exit made is released just as a withdrawal releases it (census run 18, COMPASS 32/30, 20715025: South|3|1 kept the reservation and the carrier, going on past a BYE later, met it there).

An exit that meets a BYE leaves a BYE behind

Since 7.5.0. An exit carried or produced into a matchUp whose other side is a BYE moves on with the BYE's advancement; the matchUp it leaves reads BYE, not WALKOVER or DEFAULTED beside a BYE and nobody.

Since 7.7.0 the reverse holds too. When that BYE is withdrawn — the double exit that placed it is re-scored, say — the exit comes to rest where the BYE was, pending, and the copy it carried further on is withdrawn. A relayed copy keeps its origin's id, so it stands only while every matchUp it passed still holds a BYE. That includes a FIRST_MATCHUP consolation reservation withdrawn when the mutation settles: the relays are asked again once it has gone, so the copy beyond its seat goes too (census run 18, FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION 32/32 under allowChangePropagation: a first-round winner flipped by a walkover took the reservation in Consolation|2|1 back, and the DEFAULTED relayed past it into 3|1 stood until the next arrival there cleared it).

Since 7.9.0 two more cases hold. A decided holder is still the BYE it holds: an exit label standing beside a BYE with nobody present is settled to BYE when the mutation settles, whether or not a winner was recorded on it and under either doubleExitPropagateBye setting — a BYE is never won. And a lone BYE is never on the exit's side: when a BYE is taken back from a matchUp holding it alone beside a produced or carried exit, the position it held is read as the exit's opposite, because an exit owns no position — so the exit survives the removal even where the structure can no longer place the position and the BYE's own arrival record is gone (census 20209866, FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION 8/7).

A BYE records no arrival by result. A matchUp holding an exit may record where its other side will come from before anybody arrives. Once the matchUp becomes a BYE, whoever wins that feeder advances through it, so that origin goes; a BYE claim on the side stays (census run 18, COMPASS 16/16, 20672521: South|2|1 kept South|1|2's origin after both of South|1|1's seats became BYEs, where entering either double exit first records nothing on that side).

A carrier a propagated BYE displaces takes their exit with them. A double exit's loser target can be a seat a carrier already holds, sent there by an exit that has since converged into the double exit. The BYE takes the seat, and the exit the carrier recorded on that side of the matchUp leaves with them; only a BYE claim stays. Left behind, the BYE matchUp read as holding two carries, the carrier opposite was never carried past the BYE, and the matchUp they went on to read TO_BE_PLAYED over their exit (census run 18, OLYMPIC and COMPASS 32 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false, 20711322 and seven more). The convergence the BYE matchUp held then settles to the carry that stays, and a carry the cascade has already taken past the BYE into a matchUp it decided is not replayed there: met a second time, it read as an exit already standing and the two converged (census run 17, OLYMPIC 16/16, 20738091).

Two held exits meet past their own BYEs

CA, 2026-10-11 (P54). A held exit is one standing beside a BYE with nobody in it, waiting to be sent on. When the two feeders of a matchUp are both holders, their exits meet there (RULE 4) and the double exit produces onward. A holder's own BYE position can already stand in that matchUp, advanced there while its seat was empty. Two rules keep that BYE from deciding anything:

A BYE the other holder left is not one this exit passes. The exit behind that BYE is coming to the same seat (the BYE stays; the exit travels), so the first exit lands there pending rather than being carried through into the next round.
The target is read again once the holder's BYE has gone. With both positions present a side is read as the lower drawPosition (drawPositions); when the arriving holder's BYE is taken out, the position that stays reads its own side and carries its entry with it. The arriving exit's side, who stands opposite it and whether that opponent is awarded the exit are all read from the target as the release left it: a participant who stands there wins the exit at once, as on any arrival.

The two exits then converge into a double exit with an origin recorded on each side, and its produced exit waits in the next round with no position of its own, whichever of the two arrived first.

The same holds one round on. A holder's BYE that already stands alone in the matchUp its produced exit is sent to is not an opponent there: the exit is not awarded to it and the BYE is not moved on again. It is taken back, and the exit waits there pending for whoever arrives on the other side (census run 18, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 16/14: the BYE in Backdraw|4|1 went on through Backdraw|5|1 into the Backdraw final, and the Main final's loser across the link into the decider, while Backdraw|3|2 had still to be played).

The same holds when it is a participant, not an exit, that arrives opposite the holder's BYE. The holder's exit is gone (its double exit dissolved), the participant goes on past the BYE, and the BYE position standing one round on is taken back out first: a matchUp receives one position from each feeder (census run 18, COMPASS 32/30, 20715025: South|3|1 held both of South|2|2's positions, TWO_POSITIONS_FROM_ONE_FEEDER).

A held exit goes on to a seat awaiting its arrival

A held exit is sent on once the matchUp it feeds can be played, and that includes a matchUp whose other feeder is an exit already awarded to a seat nobody has reached yet: whoever reaches that seat is delivered, so the held exit goes on and waits for them, pending. Before this such a feeder was read as finished, the exit stayed beside its BYE, and the matchUp read TO_BE_PLAYED when the exit came last but held the pending exit when it came first (census run 17, COMPASS and OLYMPIC 32 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false).

More generally, a held exit goes on at once, pending, whenever the matchUp it feeds can still receive an opponent: its other feeder is still to be played, or is an exit awarded to a seat nobody has reached. CA, 2026-09-24: a produced walkover that meets a BYE "SHOULD then propagate" while the opponent's feeder is pending. This holds whichever arrived first, the exit or the BYE beside it, and whether the exit is sent on as it arrives or when the mutation settles; until census S6 the settle held it back until the other side was decided, so the same results left a pending exit in one order and a TO_BE_PLAYED matchUp with the exit held behind a BYE in another (census s14, COMPASS 32/27, 20521366: North|2|1; across every order of the results that pin these shapes, three end states became one). Under doubleExitPropagateBye: false a double exit's loser seat receives the produced exit and never a BYE, in either order of the two exits that converged there; the BYE opposite stays, and the exit travels on. That holds for a double exit two exits converged into as for one entered directly, and a propagated BYE already on the seat gives way to the produced exit (CA ruling (A), 2026-10-21; before it, the seat kept that BYE in some orders and showed the produced exit in others). A fed-in seat takes a BYE whatever the policy, and a BYE the draw placed at generation stays. An entry left on a side that is itself a BYE is no held exit: its carrier went home when the BYE took the seat (census run-17 Class B, COMPASS 32/27, 20641116: entered last, the probe left Southwest|2|1 TO_BE_PLAYED with the exit held back; entered first, the loser seat became a BYE; both now leave the pending walkover).

A correction that re-derives a double exit to the exit it kept applies the same rule as the direct path: a kept exit that reached the matchUp relayed past a BYE lands pending, unless somebody already stands on the seat it would be awarded to. Awarded instead to the empty seat, it was taken by a loser arriving there with an exit of their own, who should have converged with it, and the seat their win would have fed became a BYE nobody could fill (the same seed, East|1|13 corrected from a double walkover to a walkover).

A carry past a BYE a holder takes back comes back with it

CA's rule "the BYE stays; the exit travels" lets a holder's BYE position stand one round on until the exit it holds is sent there. Meanwhile a participant carrying an exit can meet that BYE and pass it (RULE 1). When the holder's exit is sent on and its BYE is taken back, whoever passed that BYE comes back with it, as with any BYE released from a matchUp. A matchUp onward that their carry alone decided, for a seat nobody occupies yet, is released with them: it was no result of its own. An award to a seat somebody holds is left alone, since they may have gone on from it; that is the withdrawn exit's own release.

A carried exit is corrected at its origin

Since 7.5.0. A carried or produced exit is not a result anybody recorded at the matchUp it reached, so it cannot be re-scored there, flipped, relabelled as a played match or cleared: a direct call that would change it is refused with CANNOT_CHANGE_OUTCOME, and matchUpActions offers neither SCORE nor CLEAR_SCORE on it. Clear or re-score the exit's origin, and the exit is re-derived. A relabel at the origin, which keeps the winner and changes what the result says about the loser, is covered in the outcome pipeline § 5, rule 2.

A relabel out of a convergence, and back into one

Since 7.7.0. A relabel keeps the winner and changes what the result says about the loser. Where the loser's carried exit had converged with another exit (a double exit, nobody winning), relabelling the origin as a played result withdraws only that origin's entry; the matchUp re-derives to the kept exit, and what the double exit had produced downstream is withdrawn:

the kept exit was carried by another loser — that carrier is directed on again, as if their exit had arrived alone;
the kept exit was produced by a double exit — the relabelled loser, now simply a participant standing opposite a pending produced exit, wins it and goes on (RULE 2), which is the state forward play reaches when the origin is entered as a played result from the start.

The reverse holds too. A loser who won a produced exit on arrival and is then relabelled as exiting at the origin has that win taken back — it was the cascade's award, not a result a director recorded — and the exit is carried in, converging as it would have had it been entered first. A result the loser then earned onward stands, and the relabel itself is now refused: see the next section. The three states (exit first; played then relabelled; exit, played, exit again) are pinned equal on status, winner, positions and occupants.

Since 7.9.0 a relabel also withdraws a carry that had passed a pending produced exit, and a double exit re-derived to a single one stops producing at once rather than on the next write.

A recorded result downstream fixes the kind of a correction

CA, 2026-10-11 (P52): a result someone recorded in the consolation implies something was really played, and it shouldn't be removed; the person who recorded it simply didn't realise the wrong player had been advanced. Changing the upstream match to a different KIND of outcome is invalid; simply changing the winning side is not.

The kind of an outcome is whether it carries an exit downstream under the draw's settings: WALKOVER and DEFAULTED do, RETIRED only under propagateRetirementAsExit; any other decided result is played. With propagateExitStatus off nothing is carried, every outcome is the same kind, and nothing here applies.
A recorded result is one a director entered, played or not (a recorded double walkover counts), as opposed to what the cascade derived (a carried exit, or the award it gives whoever arrives at a pending exit). It counts in the matchUp the loser stands in, onward from there in a structure their loss there fed, and — when the outcome being corrected is a carried exit — onward from the matchUp that exit decided.
Refused, over an untouched draw (CANNOT_CHANGE_OUTCOME, row 22 of the outcome pipeline): a correction from an exit to a played result or the reverse, by a winner change or a status-only correction alike, once the loser's path holds a recorded result.
One structure on. Where the loser's loss carried their exit into a matchUp it decided for whoever stood opposite, a result that winner then recorded onward counts as recorded on the loser's path. Census 20496362 (OLYMPIC 16/16): Italo's walkover carried into South|1|2 was Uhura's award, and Uhura then beat Nicole in South|2|1. Re-entering East|1|7 as a played win is refused; before, it withdrew the carry and left Uhura in a recorded result over an undecided matchUp.
A bare win is played. A correction naming the same winner with no status and no score records COMPLETED, so a walkover re-entered that way changes its kind, and the guard reads it so.
Accepted: a winner change that keeps the kind — the recorded result becomes the new loser's — and any correction where nothing downstream is recorded. Then the carried exit is re-derived from the corrected result, for the new loser of a winner change as for a status-only correction: an exit that is now one is carried, one that no longer is is withdrawn, and the draw is the one forward play reaches.

An exit arriving at a seat already decided for it is carried past

CA, 2026-10-11 (P51 group 2): a participant carrying an exit into a matchUp that another exit has already decided for the seat awaiting them is carried past it. Two exits meeting would ordinarily converge (RULE 4), but where a result somebody recorded stands below that matchUp, the convergence would take it back. So the arrival takes the seat the decided exit was awaiting, goes on to that matchUp's winner matchUp, and carries their own exit on from there, as past a BYE (RULE 1). The decided matchUp and the results below it stand. Where nothing recorded stands below, the two exits converge as before. Census 20496362 (OLYMPIC 16/16, allowChangePropagation): America's walkover arriving at West|1|4, decided by Italo's walkover, was refused after the draw had been written.

The carry past comes back with its origin. Re-entering the carrier's own exit as a played result withdraws their carry from where it was written, the winner matchUp they went on to, not from the decided matchUp they passed; the draw is then the one the played result entered first leaves (in the same seed, West|2|2 returns to a match to be played and its walkover's winner is released onward).

Two carried exits converge over what they carried

CA, 2026-10-11 (census F2, P51). A carried exit decides the matchUp it reaches for the seat still awaiting its opponent (RULE 2), and its carrier goes on as that matchUp's loser, carrying the exit into the next structure and beyond. When the awaited participant then arrives carrying an exit of their own, the two exits meet (RULE 4): the matchUp becomes a double exit, and what the first exit carried onward is re-derived.

Whether anything downstream blocks that convergence is asked the way a clear asks it (CA, 2026-09-25: only genuinely active downstream blocks, never advanced active), with one difference: a carried exit downstream is inert even when its loser carried it on further. Only a result somebody recorded below the meeting blocks it. Until 2026-10-11 a carry that went one hop further read as a played match, and the second walkover, a main-draw result, was refused although nobody had played anything below it.

The result is the draw that recording the two exits in the other order leaves. A convergence recorded after the first exit's carrier was already sent on as that matchUp's loser takes that loss back: a double exit has no loser, so the carrier leaves the loser seat and the seat is served as a double exit's loser target is (census run-17 baseline, COMPASS 16/13 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false). A CLEAR of either exit's origin keeps the stricter reading: an origin whose carried walkover an unrelated arrival has since won is not clearable.

A withdrawn exit releases the seat it won

Since 7.5.0. A carried exit awards its seat to whoever stands opposite, and that winner may advance. When the origin is re-scored and the exit withdrawn, the advancement is released, including where the next matchUp was itself decided by an exit carried in on the other side. The seat is emptied and the exit there stands pending the next arrival.

The release follows the award across its own winner link. In DOUBLE_ELIMINATION the Backdraw final's winner goes on into the Main structure; when the exit that decided the Backdraw final for them is withdrawn, they are taken back out of the seat the link gave them too, so the re-derived winner can take it (census 20506968, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/6).

When the Backdraw final itself becomes a double exit, the exit it produces into the Main final is awarded to the finalist left standing there, on the side they now hold. Taking the Backdraw finalist out leaves the Main finalist alone, and a lone position sits on its own bracket side, so the side can change with the release. Before this the award was read from the draw as it stood before the release and named the empty side: the Main final read WALKOVER won by nobody, with its only finalist on the other side, until a later result rewrote it (census F2, 20506968, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/6 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false).

A carried exit follows the link too (CA ruling 2026-10-23; census 9304724, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/6). When the Main structure's final is recorded as a WALKOVER, its loser drops into the Backdraw final. If that matchUp holds a BYE, the loser passes it across the link into the grand final, and their exit goes with them (RULE 1): the grand final is a WALKOVER won by the Main final's winner. RULE 1 re-propagates onto wherever the carrier lands, and a structure's last round has nowhere further in its own structure, so the carrier is found where the holder's winner edge leads.

A BYE in the Backdraw final follows the link too. A BYE there carries the other finalist into the Main structure, and when it is taken back (a double exit corrected, its loser arriving for the seat) the finalist it carried is taken back out of the Main final with it (census run-17 baseline, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/5). A Backdraw finalist in the Main final under the Main position of a semi-final that now has no result came across the link, not by advancing within Main, and is taken back the same way (DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/4).

A carrier taken back out of the Backdraw final leaves the grand final too, with the exit they carried there. A walkover's loser can carry it through the Backdraw on a double exit's produced exits, across the link and into the grand final, which the Main side then wins by that walkover. When the double exit is re-scored to a single result, its loser meets the carrier in the Backdraw and the carrier stops there. The grand final was decided only by the carry leaving with them, a walkover now awarded to a seat nobody holds, so it is released with them and waits for the Main final's winner and the Backdraw champion. Before this it kept the carrier, and the next Backdraw champion could not be seated there (Phase C closure gate, openings policy off, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/4 seeds 21117689, 21124430, 21128630, 21129654 and 21157227: aCarrierLeavingTheBackdrawLeavesTheGrandFinal). The same holds wherever a participant leaves the structure that sent them across a link: a matchUp decided only by the carry that leaves with them, its award naming an empty seat, is released with them, as it is when a BYE they passed is taken back.

It also takes back the BYE the award placed. A matchUp won over a carried exit has that exit as its loser, and where the loser link leads to another structure the seat there becomes a BYE nobody can fill. When the withdrawal leaves that matchUp undecided, its loser is a participant again, and the BYE goes unless another exit still claims it (census run-17 baseline, COMPASS 16/13 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false).

A BYE claimed further on goes the same way. A double exit's produced exit can decide a matchUp a round on, and the BYE claimed for that matchUp's loser stands on the double exit's account. When the double exit is re-derived to a single exit, the exit it produced is withdrawn and so is that BYE. The re-derived matchUp's own loser seat, which showed the produced exit while it was a double exit, is owed its BYE again when the single exit is awarded, because its losing side is still the produced exit (census run-17 baseline, COMPASS 16/13 and 16/14 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false). A single exit still pending is owed it only where forward play gives a pending exit one: where a double exit produced the exit straight into the matchUp. An exit relayed past a BYE leaves its matchUp's loser seat empty until it is awarded, in every order (census openings policy-off, COMPASS 16/13 21078668: West|2|2).

A seat that becomes a BYE keeps nothing it was awarded. When a correction takes a fed loser back out and the seat they held becomes the BYE nobody can fill, an advancement a produced exit gave that seat is taken back first, and the BYE lands in the fed matchUp beside the exit it now holds; a BYE is never won. Before this the BYE was placed a round on, where the award had carried the seat, in front of the seat owed to the other feeder (census run 18, MODIFIED_FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 32/29 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: Main|2|1 re-scored as a double default left Consolation|3|4 a BYE).

A loser who is nobody holds no seat

A matchUp an exit decided for an empty seat has nobody on its losing side. When that matchUp becomes a double exit, the loser it had sent on is taken back, and there is no participant to take. Before this the removal looked for a participant with no id, which matched every BYE and open seat in the loser structure: each BYE's advancement there was released while the BYEs themselves stood, and an unfilled seed slot was dropped (census run 17, COMPASS 32/30 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: the BYE two BYEs had sent on into South|3|1 was taken back).

A clear takes back only the side it cleared

Clearing a position takes back what that position's side carried, and nothing from the other side. When the cleared position was never in the matchUp and nothing was removed from it, the matchUp can only lose what stood on the side holding no position. The side holding a position keeps its carried exit, and the matchUp re-derives to the pending exit that carry gives it. Before this, an unknown side was cleared as both: a relabel through a DOUBLE_ELIMINATION Backdraw dropped a carried WALKOVER from the occupied side, and the produced exit that arrived next was awarded to the participant carrying it (census 20490105, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 16/13).

The decider holds the final's finalists

In DOUBLE_ELIMINATION the decider is seated from the final as it stands: its first seat holds the final's winner and its second the final's loser, or nobody when the final was an exit with no loser to seat. A participant left there from an earlier result of the final is replaced, so a corrected final seats its decider without refusing (census 20477784, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/4).

A carry comes home with its carrier

Since 7.9.0. A loser carrying an exit into a seat beside a BYE is advanced past it, and the carry is written where they land — including past a BYE that arrives after them, and past consecutive BYEs. When the BYE that advanced them is withdrawn, its double exit re-scored as a played result, the carrier comes back and the carry comes with them: it is merged onto the matchUp they return to and that matchUp re-derives to the pending state their arrival would have written, so whoever arrives next meets an exit, not an ordinary opponent, and two carried exits meeting there converge by the rule above. Only a participant's own carry travels this way: a double exit's produced exit stays where the double exit put it, and a carry whose origin is itself being relabelled as a played result is withdrawn, not re-seated. Before this a carry that stood pending a round on was lost on the pull-back and its carrier won a match they had walked over (census 20057285, FIRST_ROUND_LOSER_CONSOLATION 8/8); a carry that had decided its onward matchUp already came home. This holds however far the carrier went: a carrier who passed more than one BYE is taken back out of every round those BYEs moved them through, and the carry comes home from wherever it was written. Before this, a carry written two BYEs on stayed there, decided over an empty seat, and decided the matchUp against whoever arrived (census de 9300487, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 16/13: a default carried past two Backdraw BYEs stayed in Backdraw|3|1 and was charged to a participant who never defaulted).

Since 7.10.0 two more cases hold. A carry past a BYE in a structure's last round survives the BYE's withdrawal: there is nowhere further for the carrier to land, so the carried exit is recorded beside the BYE, and when the BYE is withdrawn the matchUp re-derives to the exit the carrier holds rather than becoming an ordinary match (census 20318646, COMPASS 8/8 — the South final). Both arrival orders, carrier first or BYE first, now reach the same state. Since A1 (2026-10-17) the carry is recorded beside the BYE in every round, not only the last (below). And a carry written past a late BYE names the exit's origin, as every other hop does, not the BYE matchUp it passed, so a convergence it later dissolves still re-advances its winner (census 20267598, FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP_TO_SF 16/15).

A carrier passing a BYE onto a side a dissolved double exit decided brings its own exit. Two carriers can converge in a matchUp whose produced exit then decides the next one for the participant opposite. When one of them is replaced by a BYE, the convergence dissolves and the other passes the BYE onto the side that double exit had decided. That side now records the carrier's own exit, naming its origin, as it does when the BYE comes first. Before this it kept only the dissolved double exit's record, which was then withdrawn, and the matchUp went back to TO_BE_PLAYED with a defaulted participant in it (census run 17, OLYMPIC 16/16 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false).

The same holds when the matchUp the carrier lands in is held by a BYE or by a double exit rather than decided by one: the side the carrier takes records the carrier's own exit, replacing the record a dissolved double exit left there. The carrier's origin is read from the stored draw, not from the view the cascade started with, so a carrier crossing two BYEs in one cascade still names the matchUp they exited. Before this the South final went back to TO_BE_PLAYED when the late entry came last, and to a walkover when it came first (census run 17, OLYMPIC 32 with 29 and 30 participants, under doubleExitPropagateBye: false).

A carried exit stands only where its carrier stands. A participant's own walkover or default is written in the loser seat they land in and in each matchUp they are carried into past a BYE, always beside them. When a BYE they passed is replaced — a double exit relabelled as a played result, its loser taking the BYE's seat — they come home, and a copy left where they no longer stand is withdrawn when the mutation settles, with whatever it had decided. Before this the copy stayed and decided that matchUp for whoever arrived next (census run 18, FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP_TO_SF and MODIFIED_FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 16/14: a result refused after it had written, and two positions sent on by one matchUp).

A converging exit's carrier leaves with the carry only where nothing was played. When the exit that sent a carrier over its loser link converges, the carrier is taken back out of the loser seat. If they went on from the seat, they are released carry and all, and an award the carry made does not make their position active, where every one of these holds: the seat's matchUp has no score and is a BYE or an exit, and every matchUp they went on to has no score and is a BYE, undecided, or decided by an exit carried into it. Otherwise, where they went on or where the seat's matchUp was decided by anything but exits, the position is cleared, and the clear still refuses an active position (ERR_ACTIVE_DRAW_POSITION). A carrier who went no further from a seat that only exits decided is released in place: they leave the seat, and the seat's award to them goes. No entry reaches the clear's refusal today. The release is reached only where the converging exit met a carried one, and a carried exit decides every matchUp its carrier reaches and is changed only at its origin, so the carrier goes on only past BYEs (census A1 wave 5, COMPASS 32/27 21155795 and 32/30 21063079: aCarrierPastAByeIsReleasedWhenItsExitConverges, aCarrierWhoWentOnOnlyAsACarrierIsReleasedWithTheCarry).

A seat emptied for the winner holds no carry. When a played win is re-entered as a walkover or default the other way, the old winner is taken out of the rounds they reached, and the seat each removal empties is the one the new winner takes next. A single exit decides nothing there: the exit is the new loser's, and it goes with them. Only a double exit, which sends nobody, records a produced exit on that seat. Before this, the empty seat was stamped with the new loser's exit as though they had been carried into it. On a BYE the stamp stood beside the new winner and went past the BYE with them. It then either converged with the exit waiting there into a double exit nobody had entered, or, once the copy was withdrawn as stranded, took the new winner's advancement back with it (census S8, FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 16/11 and COMPASS 32/27: aSeatEmptiedForTheWinnerHoldsNoCarry).

A produced exit supersedes a stale relay on its own side. A produced exit relayed past a BYE waits, on the side its path arrives at, in a matchUp no position has reached yet. When a loser takes that BYE's seat and the matchUp they meet there produces its own exit, it travels the same path onto the same side: it replaces the relay, which came the same way, rather than meeting it. Only an exit standing on the OTHER side converges with it. The draw then equals the one forward play leaves, with the loser's result entered first. Before this the two were read as a convergence, a double exit that produced onward over a matchUp nobody had played (census run 18, FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP_TO_SF 16/13).

An arrival carrying an exit converges with a pending exit

Since 7.5.0. A loser carrying a WALKOVER or DEFAULTED can reach a matchUp that already holds a pending exit, a carried one or one a director recorded before the opponent arrived. The arrival is placed and nothing is awarded to it: the two exits converge into a double exit by the rule above. The participant who exited never takes the exit standing there. Since 7.7.0 this includes a carrier advanced in past a BYE: the convergence stands, rather than reverting to TO_BE_PLAYED.

Since 7.9.0 a convergence written by an arrival produces onward exactly as one written by a carried exit does; a seat held open for an occupant who is leaving is read before the arrival; a held exit that meets a seat a carrier was awarded converges there, and the converged matchUp serves its loser link; and a double exit landing in a consolation target withdraws the stale advances its earlier state had left standing there, so its re-derived winner goes on.

Since 7.10.0 an exit carried on from a convergence names no stale winner. With doubleExitPropagateBye: false a double exit produces an exit over its loser link; where that exit meets one already standing, the target converges and carries an exit onward. The onward matchUp is awarded by RULE 2 (the side without the exit wins), never to the side the exit came in on, so the participant who arrives there takes it (census 20346401, 20349817 and 20352232 — DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/8, COMPASS 16/11, FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION 16/13).

A position advanced past a BYE that arrives opposite a carrier converges by the same rule rather than being awarded the seat (census 20460396, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 16/14). Whether the occupant carries an exit is read from the side the advancement actually reaches, not the side the caller named (census 20522496, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/7).

Either origin of a converged double exit clears to the kept origin's draw

Since 7.5.0. When two exits have converged into a double exit and nothing downstream is active, either origin can be cleared, and the draw afterwards is the draw the kept origin alone would have produced: the double exit and whatever it produced downstream are unwound, and the kept origin's carried exit is replayed forward.

Rules settled by the census in S6 (2026-10-15)

Each held across every entry order of the census history that exposed it, under doubleExitPropagateBye: false unless stated.

A loser seat already holding a BYE is settled, and nothing is produced onto it. A produced walkover awarded to an empty seat claims the BYE its loser would have taken; when a carrier later converges that matchUp, the double exit's loser seat is that BYE. Owing the seat the produced exit instead was measured and rejected: it opened census seeds and a new order dependence (COMPASS 32/30, 20694910). The BYE a matchUp claimed while it was a single exit, and alone, is taken back when a correction makes it a double exit, and its loser seat receives the produced exit.
A withdrawn origin leaves the kept exit its own label. A mixed convergence is stored as a DOUBLE_WALKOVER; once the walkover side is withdrawn, the double default's produced exit is a DEFAULTED, as direct entry writes it (COMPASS 32/27, 20521366).
A carry's own exit relabels the matchUp whose entry it replaces, and a participant brought home past a BYE takes only their own carry: the carry whose source matchUp they played in (COMPASS and OLYMPIC 32, 20715025, 20779675, 20865978).
A carrier is not carried past a holder's BYE when the draw settles: a BYE the other holder left is not one an exit passes, as for a held exit (FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 16/14, 20833621, a refusal after a write).
An unwind does not walk on through a result it leaves standing; a holder's BYE leaves every round it reached; a dissolved convergence takes back the BYEs it claimed onward, and a re-derived one keeps the BYE claims of others; a relabel into an exit takes back an award over a carried exit too; a convergence produces onto a seat an exit has awarded; a loser-link award survives the withdrawal of its seat's BYE; and a removal walks on only through a real partner (a hole is not a drawPosition, drawPositions § 5). Census s13, s14, s16 and run 19 residuals; each pinned by a named test.

Rules settled by the census in S7 (2026-10-15)

Read from census run 20, under doubleExitPropagateBye: false; each pinned by a named test.

An unwind walks on through a result a dissolved convergence produced. "A result it leaves standing" is one whose exits all come from origins the unwind keeps. An exit produced by a convergence that holds one of the withdrawn origins is not such a result, even before the walk has reached the convergence itself: re-scoring the origin dissolves the convergence, and what it produced goes too (DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8, 20994634 and 20932043: anUnwindWalksOnThroughADissolvedConvergence).
A BYE claim survives the exit withdrawn beside it. One side of a matchUp can hold both an exit an origin sent there and a claim on the BYE the seat now is (a matchUp whose loser is nobody). Withdrawing the exit leaves the claim, so the BYE is taken back when the claimant later gains a real loser (COMPASS 16/13, 20964176: aByeClaimSurvivesTheExitWithdrawnBesideIt).

Rules settled by the census in S8 (2026-10-16)

Read from the S8 closing re-sweep, which replayed the stored schedules of runs 13–20 at one ref. Each seed had passed in its own run and failed at that ref; each was bisected by replay to the commit that exposed it, and each rule is pinned by a named test that fails without it.

A removal walks through a hole into the matchUp it feeds. A lone position's partner is a hole. The removal walks on only into the next-round matchUp its own matchUp feeds, so a carry that passed a lone BYE comes back with the BYE; it does not walk into any other matchUp holding a hole (COMPASS 32/27 20611808, FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP_TO_SF 8/7 20650915: aRemovalWalksThroughAHoleIntoTheMatchUpItFeeds).
A relabel withdraws its carry from every BYE-held matchUp it reached. A carry passing BYEs in consecutive rounds is recorded on each of them; a relabel to a played result takes it back from all of them, not the first (two FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP consolation stalls, 20544709 and 20576342: aRelabelWithdrawsTheCarryFromEveryByeHeldMatchUp).
A seat emptied for the winner holds no carry (above; FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 16/11 20532286, COMPASS 32/27 20585407: aSeatEmptiedForTheWinnerHoldsNoCarry).
An unwind takes back what it sent on through a result it leaves standing. S7's stop at a result whose exits come only from kept origins still holds, but a participant the unwind is taking back who was sent on through that result is taken back too. Across a link the participant is followed, not the drawPosition (DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/6 20590443, and 20701264 into the Decider: anUnwindTakesBackWhatItSentOnThroughAStandingResult).
A withdrawn arrival leaves the award its exit made. A settle re-reads a matchUp's winner only when it withdraws an exit entry; withdrawing an arrival record alone leaves the award (CURTIS_CONSOLATION 16/13 20669990: aWithdrawnArrivalLeavesTheAwardItsExitMade).
A pending exit awaiting an arrival can still deliver. A held exit sent on as a pending walkover, whose other seat holds neither a participant nor a BYE, is a feeder that can still deliver someone, not a dead end; the result no longer depends on whether a later walkover is entered first or last (OLYMPIC 32/30 20609643: aPendingExitAwaitingAnArrivalCanDeliver).
A Decider holds nobody until its final is decided. When the Main final is left with no winner, both Decider seats are cleared; a final decided for a seat its winner has not reached keeps the seats its links made (DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/5 20722665: aDeciderHoldsNobodyUntilItsFinalIsDecided).
A carrier under a stale double exit is not awarded. An occupant carrying an exit is not awarded a produced exit on a matchUp that still reads a double exit from an earlier pass of the same mutation (OLYMPIC 32/30 20625776: aCarrierUnderAStaleDoubleExitIsNotAwarded).
A dissolved convergence owes its loser seat the BYE again. Under doubleExitPropagateBye: false a convergence takes back the BYE its single exit claimed and its loser seat holds the produced exit. When the convergence dissolves back into a single exit over a loser link, with its winner standing, the produced exit is withdrawn and the BYE is placed again, because the losing side is still the produced exit and can never send a loser. A walkover corrected to a played result leaves the draw that the played result alone leaves (COMPASS 8/8 20853116: aDissolvedConvergenceOwesItsLoserSeatTheByeAgain).
A produced convergence crosses the link it reaches. A convergence the settle produces onward can advance a participant through BYEs to the source round of a WINNER link, opposite a BYE; they cross the link as one advanced there by any other route does, because the crossing is asked again after the production and not only before it (DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 16/11 21138954: aProducedConvergenceCrossesTheLinkItReaches).
An exit re-delivered into its own seat is not sent on. A double exit that re-settles (one side's carried exit becoming a produced one) propagates again. Where its produced exit, passed on through a BYE, reaches the matchUp its first pass left pending with that same exit on the arrival side, nothing new has arrived: the pending exit stays pending and is not advanced from as though decided. A double walkover corrected to a default leaves the draw that the default alone leaves (DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 16/11 21030358: anExitReDeliveredIntoItsOwnSeatIsNotSentOn).
A double exit's own position leaves every round it reached. A participant arriving opposite a double exit's produced exit is advanced at once, past any BYE beyond; when their own exit then converges the matchUp, the position is taken back from every round it went on to, a double exit there included, since a double exit advances nobody. When that leaves a single produced exit, it awards no empty seat and stands pending, as forward play lands it. A double default corrected to a walkover leaves the draw that the walkover alone leaves (FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 16/11 21123326: aDoubleExitsOwnPositionLeavesEveryRoundItReached).
A loser seat holding a BYE is not converged. A convergence whose loser seat already holds a BYE leaves that matchUp a BYE, even when the matchUp also holds a pending exit and nobody else: the BYE is the record of the loser who will never arrive, and the pending exit passes through it. A BYE placed in a seat a convergence had produced into therefore reaches the draw the same results reach with the BYE placed first (COMPASS 32/31 20551581: aLoserSeatHoldingAByeIsNotConverged).
A result past a convergence's BYE fixes the kind. A convergence has nobody to lose, so it claims a BYE for its loser seat; what it decided includes that BYE, and a result recorded by the participant the BYE passed on is a result on the loser's path. Re-entering one of the converged exits as a played result is refused (CANNOT_CHANGE_OUTCOME) over an untouched draw; before, the BYE's withdrawal took that participant back out and left their result standing on an undecided matchUp. With nothing recorded past the BYE the correction is accepted (COMPASS 32/27 21027128, under allowChangePropagation: aResultPastAConvergencesByeFixesTheKind).
An exit re-entered as the other exit relabels its carry, even after its winner played on. A walkover re-entered as a default for the same winner (or the reverse) relabels the exit its loser carries, on every route, including the one taken once that winner has played on. The draw is the one the new exit entered directly reaches (COMPASS 16/14 6141627: aRelabelledExitPastAPlayedWinnerRelabelsItsCarry).
A BYE origin waits for its feeder to deliver. A double exit's produced exit records an origin for the other side of the matchUp it reaches, read from the paired feeder. A feeder reading BYE beside a seat that holds neither a participant nor a BYE has delivered nothing: whoever reaches that seat goes on through the BYE, so the side is not decided and records no origin, whether the BYE was placed before the double exit or after it (FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION 8/7 20498521, propagateExitStatus: false, default doubleExitPropagateBye: aByeOriginWaitsForItsFeederToDeliver).
A Decider is not a loser seat a BYE can fill. The Decider is the one target that the Main final's winner link and loser link both feed, and reconcileDecider writes both of its seats from the final. A final won against an exit has no loser, and the Decider is a DEAD_RUBBER holding the champion, under either policy and in every entry order. Before, the BYE owed to the final's loser seat was placed in the Decider, in the seat the champion was owed, in some entry orders only (census R11, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/5 21037067, propagateExitStatus: true: aFinalWonWithNoLoserLeavesItsDeciderADeadRubberInEveryOrder).

Rules settled by the census in A1 (2026-10-17)

Read from the A1 do-undo triage: a probe applied to the scheduled draw and then cleared must leave the draw it found. In each case the scheduled draw is the one forward play reaches from the standing results; each rule is pinned by a named test that fails without it.

A cleared loser seat leaves no award behind. A loser sent into a seat opposite a produced exit is awarded it on arrival. When the result that sent them is re-scored or cleared, their seat empties and the produced exit stands pending again, on the seat's own matchUp and on one reached past a BYE. The advance the award made leaves with the occupant, as direct entry of the exit alone leaves it; an exit that keeps its award keeps its advance, and that reservation goes with the exit when the exit is withdrawn. A carried exit, or a produced one that came straight down its loser link, keeps its award, as direct entry writes it; and a source that becomes a double exit leaves the seat to its own cascade, which places the BYE (CURTIS_CONSOLATION 32/27 9000062, DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/4 20537779: aClearedLoserSeatLeavesNoAwardBehind).
A seat's occupant takes their award's advance with them (A1 int2). The release of a leaving occupant asks of the produced exit beside them whether its award stands with the seat empty (awardStands), and keeps the advance in the next round only then: read before the award was withdrawn, the award looked like the exit's own advance and stayed (FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP_TO_SF 16/11 21041635: aWithdrawnAwardTakesBackTheAdvanceItMade; 116 census rows).
A Main final's exit came over its winner link. A produced exit in a DOUBLE_ELIMINATION Main final is not one that arrived over a loser link, though a walk from its source's loser target leads back to it through the Backdraw's winner links: a double exit converging with it there, once cleared, leaves it awarding no empty seat (DE 8/5 21033335: aMainFinalsExitCameOverItsWinnerLink).
A final decided during the settle seats its champion at once. When a held exit is sent into a final and the final is decided by it, the champion crosses into the decider within the same call (the link advancement is asked again after the settle), not on the next (DE 8/5 21037067: aFinalDecidedByAHeldExitSeatsItsChampionAtOnce).
A released position takes its BYE origin with it; a removed position, its arrival. The BYE origin a released position recorded for its feeder goes with the release, as its arrival does (COMPASS 8/8 21031039: aReleasedPositionTakesItsByeOriginWithIt); and a position taken out of every later round by a cleared first-round result takes the arrival each of those rounds recorded (SINGLE_ELIMINATION 16/14 21137642: aRemovedPositionTakesItsArrivalWithIt).
A standing result keeps what it sent over its loser link. Unwinding a double exit visits a matchUp onward only for what the double exit sent through it; when that matchUp's own result stands, its loser target is not reset, so the carry it sent there stays (COMPASS 16/14 21027146 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: aStandingResultKeepsWhatItSentOverItsLoserLink).
A released position takes its arrival with it. A position released from a round it had won its way into leaves no record of that arrival: the feeder named there is undecided again and sent nobody (FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION 16/13 20483283 under allowChangePropagation: aReleasedPositionTakesItsArrivalWithIt).
A BYE origin goes with the exit opposite it. The BYE origin a produced exit writes opposite itself on meeting a BYE is withdrawn with that exit, so a BYE matchUp reads as it did before the exit arrived (FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 16/11 20532286: aByeOriginLivesAsLongAsTheExitOppositeIt).
A seat emptied further on leaves no award behind. A loser taken back is released from every placement their loss led to, a link further on as well as in the structure they were fed into; a produced exit awarded to a seat they no longer hold stands pending again, and its reservation in the next round stays, as the seat the loser was fed into already did (COMPASS 32/30 20733408 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: aSeatEmptiedFurtherOnLeavesNoAwardBehind).
An exit that has delivered nobody is no origin. A single exit delivers its winner only once someone holds the winning seat. Pending, or awarded to a seat still awaiting its arrival, it records no arrival on the side it feeds, as a BYE matchUp awaiting its other side records no BYE origin (COMPASS 32/31 20551581 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: anExitThatDeliveredNobodyIsNoOrigin).
A dissolved convergence keeps an award that came down its loser link. A convergence a correction dissolves settles as the kept exit alone would leave it, and that includes the award: a produced exit that came straight down its loser link keeps its award to the seat still awaiting its arrival, and reserves that seat in the next round, as entering the same results once each does in any order. Only an exit relayed past a BYE stands pending (COMPASS 32/31 20551581 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: aDissolvedConvergenceKeepsItsLoserLinkAward).
The seat left opposite a BYE goes on. A BYE advances the drawPosition opposite it when it lands, occupied or not, and two BYEs meeting send one BYE on. When one of the two is withdrawn, the empty seat now opposite the BYE that stays goes on into the next matchUp, where it has room, as it would have had that BYE landed alone; a position that entered the round from an earlier one is a reservation, and is not moved (COMPASS 32/30 20694910 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: theSeatLeftOppositeAByeGoesOn).
A reason is attributed by where it came from, not by what it says. sideStatusCodes holds the scoring policy's reason per side ({ 2: 'DM' }), split from the positional matchUpStatusCodes a client submits. A propagation or convergence write stores the array deriveStatusCodes builds from provenance, where a side that exited with no recorded reason shows the bare outcome code (['DEF'], ['WO']), or re-stores the matchUp's own array, which may be such a display. Either array is display only and is not split: the write keeps the reasons the matchUp already holds and the source's own side-keyed reason, on the side it arrived at. The source's positional array is read for display only, never as a reason. Before this, a double default reached in one entry order stored { 1: 'DEF', 2: 'DEF' } and in the other stored nothing. A client's array is split as before, and no code is reserved by value (FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION 32: aDerivedOutcomeCodeIsNeverASideReason).
What forward play sends on from a result is sent on from a re-derived one. A removal re-derives the matchUp it vacates (a cleared BYE or double exit puts it back to the exit it held) and used to stop there. It is now asked of the settled draw (settleForwardConsequences), and answered by the forward primitive: a decided matchUp's winner goes on into its next matchUp; its losing participant is directed over its loser link, the exit carried on as a direction carries it; and a pending exit holding one lone empty seat makes its reservation. An empty seat goes on, or is reserved, only for an exit that came straight down its origin's link, never one relayed past a BYE, and only from the round it entered the structure in, since an award to an empty seat advances nobody. A FIRST_MATCHUP link is asked only of a loser it feeds (COMPASS 32 20503744, OLYMPIC 32/29 9100068: aDissolvedConvergenceAdvancesTheReDerivedAward, aWithdrawnByeSendsTheReDerivedLoserOn).
A cleared seat's loser link is served from the matchUp as it re-derived. The removal took back whatever the matchUp had sent over a loser link into another structure, before asking what the re-derived matchUp sends. A re-derived exit whose loser is nobody keeps the BYE at its loser seat, a loser already standing where the link leads stays there, and a BYE another live double exit still claims stays as well (COMPASS 32/30 20694910 and 20485116: aClearedSeatKeepsTheByeItsReDerivedExitHolds, aClearedSeatKeepsTheLoserItsReDerivedResultDirected; COMPASS 16, built by hand: aClearedSeatKeepsTheByeALiveDoubleExitClaims).
A BYE origin goes when its feeder stops delivering. A BYE matchUp delivers once both its seats are filled, a BYE in one and a participant in the other, and only then is the { BYE, BYE } origin it gives the side it feeds true. When that participant leaves again (a result clearing whose loser had been sent there), their position stays advanced past the BYE, so no release reaches the matchUp holding the origin; the origin goes with the delivery, and the draw is the one in which the participant never arrived (FIRST_ROUND_LOSER_CONSOLATION 16/14 21029590: aByeOriginGoesWhenItsFeederSeatEmpties; 9 census rows on three draw types).
A carry past a BYE the forward settle puts back is carried again. A direction the forward settle makes can re-form a double exit whose loser seat takes its BYE again, in front of a carrier whose carry past it a removal had taken back. The carry past a late BYE is asked again once the forward settle has written, so the carrier's exit stands in the matchUp beyond as forward play writes it (COMPASS 32/32 21097909: aCarryPastAByeTheSettleReplacesIsCarriedAgain).
A carrier arriving at the seat an exit awaits converges with it (A1 wave 3). A single exit awarded to a seat nobody has reached is waiting for whoever arrives there. When the arrival is a participant carrying their own walkover or default past a BYE, two exits meet, and the matchUp is the double exit their convergence makes, as it is when the carrier's exit was recorded first and the other arrived after. The convergence then produces onward and serves its loser link as any convergence does: what the single exit had sent on is withdrawn, and the first carrier, sent over the loser link as that exit's loser, comes back, since a double exit has no loser. Before this the carrier took the award and won on the exit they had brought, and which of the two draws a schedule reached depended on its order (COMPASS 32/27 21028022, 25 census rows: aCarrierArrivingAtTheSeatAnExitAwaitsConverges; COMPASS 16/16 20672521: aByeRecordsNoArrivalByResult; DOUBLE_ELIMINATION 8/5 20722665, where re-entering a double default now returns the draw the same results reach entered once: aDeciderHoldsNobodyUntilItsFinalIsDecided).
A carrier sent into a BYE matchUp records its carry there (A1 wave 3). A carrier a late BYE sends on, into a matchUp a BYE already holds, writes their exit beside that BYE, as the carry rule above states for every matchUp a carry passes. Before this the second BYE matchUp recorded nothing, so when its BYE went, the exit coming back stood alone and awarded the carrier a match they had walked over (COMPASS 32/27 21137946, 8 census rows: aCarrierPassingIntoAByeMatchUpRecordsItsCarry).
A seat a BYE carried into a round goes on past the next BYE (A1 wave 3). The settle pass that sends on the seat left opposite a BYE (above) treats a position that entered the round from an earlier one as a reservation, and does not move it. A position a BYE carried in, empty opposite that BYE in the earlier round, is not a reservation: the BYE there advanced it, and the BYE here advances it again, as forward play does in every order (MODIFIED_FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 32/27 21029862, FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP_TO_SF 32 21072304, 4 census rows: aSeatAByeCarriedInGoesOnPastTheNextBye).
A passer comes back when the holder's BYE goes, even beside a held seat (A1 wave 3). A carrier who passed a BYE that a BYE holder had left in the next round goes back with that BYE when the holder's exit is sent on, and the exit meets their carry there. The matchUp they had decided onward keeps its award where the seat opposite is held: its occupant may have gone on, and the convergence's produced exit awards them the same seat. Before this the carrier stayed onward, beside the produced exit, and the matchUp read as an undecided walkover holding two participants (FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP_TO_SF 16/14 21089693, CURTIS_CONSOLATION 16 21143807, MODIFIED_FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 16 21046667 under allowChangePropagation: aPasserComesBackWhenTheHoldersByeGoes).
An award taken back takes back the BYE it sent over its loser link (A1 wave 4). A produced exit awarded to the participant who arrives opposite it has nobody for a loser, so its loser seat gets a BYE, which the award claims. When that participant leaves again, over either link, the award goes and the exit stands pending; a pending exit sends nothing over its loser link, so the BYE goes with the award, as it does when a double exit is unwound. Before this the loser seat stayed a BYE that no rebuild of the standing results places (COMPASS 32/27 21081040 and 16/14 21086952 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false, 7 census rows: anUndoneAwardTakesBackItsLoserSeatBye).
A BYE matchUp's loser seat keeps its BYE (A1 wave 4). A BYE matchUp's loser is a BYE, so the ordinary BYE cascade gives its loser seat a BYE that no double exit claims. A double exit's cascade that reaches a BYE standing unclaimed in the loser seat of a matchUp that holds a BYE records no claim on it, since the BYE predates the cascade; and unwinding a double exit keeps a loser-seat BYE while the matchUp feeding it still holds a BYE. Before this a double exit cleared beside a BYE matchUp took that BYE's loser seat with it (COMPASS 16/15 21036395 and 32/27 21060039, 5 census rows: aByeMatchUpsLoserSeatKeepsItsBye). An unclaimed BYE fed by a matchUp with no BYE is still claimed: FIRST_MATCH_LOSER's BYE for a loser who has already won a match stands for a reason a later result can take away, and the exit that makes the loser nobody is then the BYE's only lasting reason. Skipping that claim let the unwind of one exit clear the seat while another exit still owed it its BYE, and the consolation stalled (FIRST_MATCH_LOSER_CONSOLATION 8/8 9000230, all three arms: aFirstMatchLoserByeIsClaimedByTheExitThatOwesIt).
A carrier a BYE displaces leaves no carry in any round (A1 wave 4). A carrier's carry is written in the seat they land in and in each matchUp a BYE sends them into. When a propagated BYE takes their seat, the carry is withdrawn from every matchUp their position reached, not only the furthest. Before this a BYE-vs-BYE matchUp could keep an entry naming a feeder that had become a BYE, in some entry orders and not others (COMPASS 32/31 21079296, 6 census rows: aDisplacedCarrierLeavesNoCarryInAnyRound).
An exit carried past a BYE converges with a pending exit beyond it (A1 wave 4). When a convergence's produced exit is carried past a BYE into a matchUp that nobody has reached and that already holds a pending exit on its other side, the two exits meet there and the matchUp converges, as it does when the pending exit is the one to arrive second. Before this a convergence re-formed by a clear left that matchUp a single WALKOVER (COMPASS 32/29 21129718, 2 census rows: aCarryPastAByeMeetsAPendingExit).
A dissolved convergence keeps the BYE its single exit sends, and only the claims a single exit makes (A1 wave 4). Unwinding a double exit that had converged with an awarded single exit re-derives the matchUp to that exit, which has nobody for a loser and sends its loser seat a BYE, as forward play does (COMPASS 32/27 21034527: aDissolvedConvergenceSendsItsSingleExitsBye). A single exit records no claim on a BYE that others already claim, because forward play claims only a seat it fills. So when a convergence dissolves to a single exit, its claim on a BYE that others still claim is withdrawn, and the BYE stays theirs (COMPASS 32/31 21055187 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: aDissolvedConvergenceLeavesASharedByeClaim).
A carry past a convergence's BYE is written on the first entry (A1 wave 5). A convergence the settle produces serves its loser link, and the BYE it places there can stand in front of a carrier. That carry is written in the same call, not when the same outcome is entered a second time. Before this the matchUp beyond the BYE stayed TO_BE_PLAYED under the carrier until a second, identical entry wrote it (COMPASS 32, 6 census rows, e.g. 32/27 21138626: aCarryPastAConvergencesByeIsCarriedOnTheFirstEntry).
A carrier who went on only as a carrier is released with the carry (A1 wave 5). When the exit that sent a carrier over its loser link converges, the carrier no longer lost anything and leaves the loser seat. If they had gone on from that seat past a BYE, or out of a matchUp only exits decided, into matchUps where nothing was played and only carried exits decided anything, the release takes the whole carry back and the seat is served as a double exit's loser seat. Before this the release refused the position as active, because an award made by the opponent's carried exit had reached it, and the director's call was refused ERR_ACTIVE_DRAW_POSITION after the draw had moved (COMPASS 32/27 21155795 and 32/30 21063079, 4 census rows: aCarrierPastAByeIsReleasedWhenItsExitConverges). A carrier who went on by a played result is cleared, and refused, as before.
A BYE origin goes with the carry a BYE displaces (A1 wave 5). When a propagated BYE takes a carrier's seat, the carry is withdrawn from every matchUp the seat reached, and a BYE origin written opposite that carry goes with it, as it does when a double exit is unwound. Before this the origin stood opposite no exit (COMPASS 32/30 21063079: aByeOriginGoesWithTheCarryItStoodOpposite).
A carry entry is written in each matchUp it is carried into past a BYE, in any round and in either entry order. A participant carrying their own walkover or default into a seat beside a BYE goes through it, and the BYE matchUp records their carry beside the BYE, whether the carrier was seated first and the BYE arrived after them or the BYE stood there first. Before this the BYE-first order recorded the carry only in a structure's last round, so the same results entered in the two orders left two draws (COMPASS 32, census A1: Southwest|1|2 and Southeast|1|1). Withdrawing the copy instead, once the carry is recorded where the carrier landed, was measured and rejected: a pull-back reads the BYE matchUp's copy to find the carry it takes home. Such a copy is not a held exit once its carrier's seat has gone to a BYE because a correction made the carrier's origin a double exit; only that double exit's produced exit is sent on from there (COMPASS 32/27 20521366: theWholeDrawIsTheSameInEveryOrder). Pinned by aCarryPastAnEarlierRoundByeIsRecordedInEitherOrder.

Rules settled by census Phase B (2026-10-20)

A seat fed by a BYE matchUp keeps its BYE when its last claim goes. A BYE matchUp's loser is a BYE, so the seat it feeds across a link holds a BYE for that reason. Such a seat's BYE can also carry a double exit's claim, placed before the feeder became a BYE matchUp. When that double exit dissolved and its claim was withdrawn, the BYE was cleared with it, though the feeder still held its BYE. Withdrawing a claim now keeps the BYE while the seat's feeder holds one, as unwinding a double exit already did (COMPASS 32/32 30007402 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: aSeatFedByAByeMatchUpKeepsItsByeWhenItsLastClaimGoes).
A relabel reaches the carry on a BYE-held matchUp. An exit re-entered as the other exit, the winner unchanged (WALKOVER and DEFAULTED, either way), relabels its loser's carry. A carry can stop on a matchUp that reads BYE because a double exit elsewhere claimed its other seat, and the relabel, which looks for the loser's standing matchUp and passes over a BYE, left that entry's label as it was. When the claim later went and the BYE with it, the matchUp was decided by the old label. The relabel now rewrites the label on every BYE-held matchUp where the loser's carry is recorded, and only the label: the BYE is never re-derived, and the entry's BYE claims stay (CURTIS_CONSOLATION 8/6 30009232 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: aRelabelReachesTheCarryOnAByeHeldMatchUp).
A single carried exit follows its feeder’s current side on an unscored, undecided matchUp. Where advanced drawPosition numbering interleaves, rule 3 can assign a feeder a different side after positions arrive or leave. At the end of a call, a lone carried provenance entry is re-keyed to its source feeder’s current side when the target has exactly two winner feeders in the same structure. This preserves the source and exit status; it does not move a position or change an outcome. Targets with a winning side, any played score, or a concluded status are excluded; single walkover/default statuses without a winner remain eligible because they can describe an exit pending on an empty seat. Census policy-off 30030527 (MODIFIED_FEED_IN_CHAMPIONSHIP 32/32) pins both entry orders, the shrunk and full histories, and the result-dependent boundaries in aCarriedExitFollowsItsFeederSide. This accommodates unstable side keys without changing draw-position rule 3; Mentat P59 remains open.
A convergence a call dissolved is owed its BYE back. Under doubleExitPropagateBye: false, a single exit that becomes a double exit gives up the BYE its loser seat held on its account, and its loser seat takes the produced exit instead. When a later call re-derives it to an awarded single exit, it again has nobody to lose, so the seat is owed that BYE. Two dissolving paths already gave it back (a re-derived convergence, and an unwound double exit); a convergence dissolved because an exit was withdrawn from it did not, and the seat stood empty, its matchUp decided for an empty side. The BYE is now owed once the call has settled, for every matchUp that was a double exit before the call and is an awarded single exit after it; a convergence that dissolves and converges again within one call is owed nothing (COMPASS 32/30 30004303 under doubleExitPropagateBye: false: aConvergenceACallDissolvedIsOwedItsByeBack).
Resolved (Mentat P58, 2026-10-22): a BYE matchUp's loser-seat BYE no longer depends on a claim. That BYE can have two reasons, the matchUp feeding the seat is a BYE matchUp and a double exit whose produced exit it relays makes its loser nobody, and the retired byeClaims ledger kept or omitted the double exit's claim by which came first (CA ruling (b), 2026-10-20, left such claims out of the census round trip). Whether the BYE stands is now read from the draw (see "Why a loser seat's BYE is read from the draw"), the claims are gone, and the round trip compares the seat whole: census Phase B 30004303's schedule and probes replay clean (aByeFedLoserSeatRoundTripsWhole).

Nothing to do is success, not failure

Several situations look like a failure to place a participant but are simply an absence of one. The clearest is a pending propagated exit whose losing side is an empty feed slot: there is no loser to direct into the consolation yet, and one will be directed when the slot fills. These return success.

Statuses that do not propagate

RETIRED is an exit for the purpose of activity checks. Whether it is carried into a consolation structure is decided by policy, not by the engine — see propagateRetirementAsExit below.

This paragraph previously stated flatly that a retirement is never carried onward. That was never what the code did, and it is not a question the engine should answer: a retirement is a completed match with a score and a winner, and whether the retiring player is then treated as unable to continue differs by governing body and by event.

`propagateRetirementAsExit`

A scoring-policy setting, effective only when propagateExitStatus is also on.

value	effect on the retiring player's consolation matchUp
`true`	a `WALKOVER` to the opponent — the retiree is treated as unable to continue
`false` (default)	left `TO_BE_PLAYED` — the retiree is an ordinary loser who may still play

Placement is identical either way: the retiring player is directed to the linked structure in both cases, as any other loser is. Only what happens to them on arrival differs.

This does change behaviour for a caller passing propagateExitStatus: true under the default policy: a retirement used to carry onward there. That is the point — it is the one place the engine was answering a rules question on a federation's behalf. POLICY_SCORING_USTA sets it true explicitly, so its observable behaviour is unchanged. A provider with propagateExitStatus off — the factory default — is unaffected either way.

It resolves the way propagateExitStatus does, since 7.5.0: policy ?? param ?? false. A policy that sets it, true or false, wins over the call; the call decides only where the policy is silent; absent both it is false. A tournament director under a policy that ends a retiree's participation cannot keep that participant in the draw by passing false on the call.

The single gate is validExitToPropagate in directLoser.ts. progressExitStatus also names RETIRED, but it runs after the decision to propagate has been taken, so it can only choose the label the exit carries — it cannot suppress one.

BYE is not an exit. It is an absence of an opponent, and it propagates by advancing the participant who has no one to play.

Exit Profiles — the path a participant took between structures
Finishing Positions — how positions are derived across linked structures
Draw Links — how losers reach a target structure
Exit-propagation harness — how these guarantees are tested

Overview​

The pending propagated exit​

propagateExitStatus​

BYE provenance: byeFromPropagation​

Exit provenance: sideExitProvenance​

Why not matchUpStatusCodes​

Why this one carries a matchUpId when byeFromPropagation refuses to​

Why a loser seat's BYE is read from the draw​

Guarantees​

Re-applying the same double exit does nothing​

A rejected mutation does not alter the draw​

Which double exit a convergence becomes does not depend on entry order​

What a double exit produces downstream keeps its flavour​

A correction lands where the direct entry lands​

A team dual's double exit is unwound by its lines, or protected from them​

An exit never discards a placement, and says when it kept one​

A produced exit awards no empty seat, on any path​

A pending exit's reservation goes with it​

An exit that meets a BYE leaves a BYE behind​

Two held exits meet past their own BYEs​

A held exit goes on to a seat awaiting its arrival​

A carry past a BYE a holder takes back comes back with it​

A carried exit is corrected at its origin​

A relabel out of a convergence, and back into one​

A recorded result downstream fixes the kind of a correction​

An exit arriving at a seat already decided for it is carried past​

Two carried exits converge over what they carried​

A withdrawn exit releases the seat it won​

A loser who is nobody holds no seat​

A clear takes back only the side it cleared​

The decider holds the final's finalists​

A carry comes home with its carrier​

An arrival carrying an exit converges with a pending exit​

Either origin of a converged double exit clears to the kept origin's draw​

Rules settled by the census in S6 (2026-10-15)​

Rules settled by the census in S7 (2026-10-15)​

Rules settled by the census in S8 (2026-10-16)​

Rules settled by the census in A1 (2026-10-17)​

Rules settled by census Phase B (2026-10-20)​

Nothing to do is success, not failure​

Statuses that do not propagate​

propagateRetirementAsExit​

Related​