Stop compensation retries when a replacement has already shipped

Project context

A fictional equipment retailer lets customers choose a refund or replacement after inspection. Its payment and stock providers can time out after accepting an operation, so retrying the whole return is unsafe. Create a local TypeScript application, PostgreSQL state/outbox tables, and synthetic provider doubles with controllable outcomes; no starter code or fixtures are supplied. Use invented orders and integer minor-unit amounts only, with no real payments or external provider calls.

Setup prerequisites

• SQL transactions
• Idempotent commands
• Async failure handling
• State modeling

Preceding work

Complete these dependencies, or supply their agreed outputs before taking this ticket.

• PRECOVER-101 · Reject return decisions that skip inspection or reverse a completed refund
• PRECOVER-102 · Bind a repeated refund request to its original merchant and intent
• PRECOVER-103 · Commit approved return work and its dispatch record together
• PRECOVER-104 · Persist replacement progress across stock reservation and shipment creation
• PRECOVER-105 · Open the refund circuit without declaring timed-out refunds failed
• PRECOVER-106 · Keep stalled stock calls from consuming every refund execution slot

Acceptance criteria

• Revalidate confirmed external progress and the workflow revision before each compensation step; a stale plan cannot execute against newer shipment state.
• Represent irreversible shipment completion and conflicting provider facts explicitly, moving unresolved cases to needs-review with a bounded reason trail.
• An authorized resolution records its cited synthetic provider references and chosen next action without deleting earlier uncertainty or issuing an unapproved second benefit.

Implementation constraints

• Compensation must follow the declared return policy and current confirmed facts; never model an external shipment as a reversible local transaction.

Verification to include

• Queue compensation, then reveal a confirmed shipment before its next step; assert the stale compensation is stopped and no refund is issued.
• Race two resolution attempts and return contradictory provider status responses; verify one revision wins and unresolved contradictions remain visible.

Deliverables

• Compensation guards, conflict-resolution contract, and late-confirmation race cases

Rollout and recovery

Enable automatic compensation only for confirmed reversible states; keep conflict resolution explicit and retain a pause control for all pending compensation.

Value of the work

For the engineer: Practice durable workflow state, ambiguous provider outcomes, compensation, concurrency isolation, and recovery that survives process restarts.

For the team: Inspect whether a proposed workflow preserves refund and inventory invariants, contains provider failures, and gives operators a bounded recovery path.

Evidence boundaries

Outcome Evidence: Tests, patches, and runbooks are requested deliverables. They become Outcome Evidence only through a qualified Mission and immutable Evidence IDs.

Ownership Evidence: Independent adaptation must be observed under a declared verification policy and cite immutable Evidence IDs. Completing a planning ticket establishes no Ownership Evidence.