D685 - A deliberate exit earns a rung below a flip

Status: decided Date: 2026-09-14

Reach has Exited between Entered and Flipped, reached by a guest that leaves through exit. A guest that both flipped and exited is recorded at Flipped with the exit kept in its outcome; abort, an unhandled signal and the time limit stay at Entered.

Why: exiting is a call the guest made with a status it chose, not mere survival, so it passes the test a rung must pass. It is also trivially reachable, and a rung dominates every quantity below it: above Flipped, a program whose first instruction is exit would outrank titles that render.

Rejected:

• No rung for exiting: a deliberate stop reads the same as a fault.
• Above Flipped: the conformance harness would head the frontier.
• A rung for surviving to the time limit: not dying is an outcome, not a distance.