Freeze & Resync

What happens when an agent freezes?

When an agent misses the 60-anchor check-in deadline, the enforcement cron marks it as frozen. A frozen agent:

Cannot submit check-ins
Cannot spawn child agents
Shows as “frozen” in the registry and status endpoints
Retains its beat chain history and lineage

Freezing is reversible via the resync process.

Resync: re-establishing provenance

Resync is a two-phase challenge-response protocol. See the API reference for full request/response details.

Using the SDK

The SDK handles both phases automatically:


const agent = new BeatAgent({ apiKey, registryUrl, verbose: true });
await agent.init();
 
if (agent.getLocalState().status === 'frozen') {
  const result = await agent.resync();
  console.log(`Resynced: ${result.beats_required} penalty beats computed`);
}
 
// Now active again
agent.pulse(50);
await agent.checkin();

Penalty

The required_beats includes a 10% penalty on top of the gap. This penalty prevents agents from strategically freezing and resyncing to avoid computation.

Nonce security

Challenge nonces are single-use and expire after 5 minutes
Nonces are stored server-side and verified on proof submission
Replaying a nonce will fail