Bug: the previous order checked the "nothing changed → return None" rule
first, so the spec's "corpus unchanged 3+ days → Late REM (shake things
loose)" branch could never fire. Stasis was permanent — quiet would just
keep returning None forever as long as no new chunks or journals appeared,
regardless of how stale the corpus got.
Fix: check staleness first. Quiet remains the default within the 1-2-day
window the spec implicitly grants for the dreamer to "go quiet rather than
manufacturing novelty." At day 3+, Late REM fires automatically — the
spec's mechanism for breaking out of the silence when the corpus isn't
delivering new material.
Observed symptom that triggered this: dreamer fired 2026-05-21 08:00 and
2026-05-22 08:00, both went quiet. Real cause was no new content (which
is correct quiet behavior for days 1-2), but the bug would have made it
stay quiet indefinitely had we not fixed it before day 3.
aaron
3ec9a48151