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Term -- Polecats
Term -- Polecats

Polecats: Gas Town is a work-swarming engine. Polecats are ephemeral per-Rig workers that spin up on demand. Polecats work, often in swarms, to produce Merge Request - MRs, then hand them off to the Merge Queue - MQ. After the merge they are fully decommissioned, though their names are recycled
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code merge request and code merge queue

Backlinks

Annotated version of 'Welcome to Gas Town'

Gas Town’s propulsion (GUPP) is effective, but still a bit flaky right now, and sometimes you will need to go hustle the Term -- Polecatss to get their MR submitted, and then hustle the Refinery to deal with them. The Witness patrol helps smooth this out so it’s almost perfect for most runs.
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Pushing along the worker agents and the specialized agent -- code merge

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⤢
^ Term -- Polecats

Worker Rig-level Worker

Polecats: Gas Town is a work-swarming engine. Polecats are ephemeral per-Rig workers that spin up on demand. Polecats work, often in swarms, to produce Merge Request - MRs, then hand them off to the Merge Queue - MQ. After the merge they are fully decommissioned, though their names are recycled
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code merge request and code merge queue

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Glossary

Term Description Kind

Term -- Polecats Ephemeral per-rig workers that swarm to produce merge requests role

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Polecat type

^ Term -- Polecats type

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Roles

Role Description

Term -- Polecats Ephemeral per-rig workers that swarm to produce merge requests

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Term -- The Witness

The Witness: Once you spin up enough Term -- Polecats, you realize you need an agent just to watch over them and help them get un-stuck. Gas Town's propulsion (GUPP) is effective, but still a bit flaky right now, and sometimes you will need to go hustle the polecats to get their MRs submitted, and then hustle the Refinery to deal with them. The Witness Patrol helps smooth this out so it's almost perfect for most runs.

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spaced repetition prompts - blog section 12 - Patrols

Who does The Witness check in on? ? The Term -- Polecats and Refinerys — but it also peeks in on The Deacon.

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spaced repetition prompts - blog section 14 - Convoys

What happens to a Term -- Polecats when its Molecule enters a Gate state? ? The Term -- Polecats disappears. When the Gate bead triggers, Gas Town wakes up a new Term -- Polecats to continue the work.

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Can multiple Swarms work on the same Convoy? ? Yes — whoever manages the Convoy (e.g. Witness) keeps recycling Term -- Polecats and pushing them on issues until it finishes.

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spaced repetition prompts - blog section 16 - Planning in Gas Town

What distinguishes shiny and chrome Term -- Polecats workflows from regular ones? ? They add extra code review and testing steps, which makes them take longer to complete.

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spaced repetition prompts - blog section 17 - Comparison to Kubernetes

In Kubernetes, pods are anonymous cattle. What plays the "cattle" role in Gas Town? ? Sessions. Term -- Polecats are credited workers with persistent identities — it's their sessions that are disposable.

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spaced repetition prompts - blog section 4 - Gas Town 101

What are the two types of coding workers in Gas Town? ? Term -- Polecats (ephemeral) and The Crew (long-lived).

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Which roles are per-rig? ? Witness, Term -- Polecats, Refinery, and Crew.

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What do Term -- Polecats produce? ? Merge Requests (MRs).

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How do Term -- Polecats lifecycles differ from The Crew lifecycles? ? Term -- Polecats are ephemeral and decommissioned after their MR merges. Crew members are long-lived with persistent identities.

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What happens to Term -- Polecats after their MR is merged? ? They are fully decommissioned, though their names are recycled.

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What about a Term -- Polecats remains, even after they are decommissioned? ? Their name remains, and is recycled

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Who do Witnesses watch over? ? The Term -- Polecats.

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Why do you need a Witness? ? When enough Term -- Polecats are swarming, some get stuck and need to be hustled along.

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Why is merging hard when Term -- Polecats swarm? ? The baseline changes so much that late mergers face an unrecognizable new head and may need to completely reimplement.

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How do The Crew differ from Term -- Polecats in terms of management? ? Crew work directly for the Overseer, not managed by The Witness. Term -- Polecats are managed by the Witness.

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Term -- PolecatsTerm -- Polecats

Term -- Polecats
Term -- Polecats