How do you let a frozen enterprise move without destroying the reference?
Day-0 must remain stable.
Simulation must be allowed to change the company.
Those requirements conflict unless Metrolane separates the two estates.
Keep a master copy and a working copy
Conceptually:
derive / reset
The simulator works on runtime.
The reference remains untouched.
Think of a flight simulator.
You may have a saved training scenario:
Every training run can start from that known scenario.
The session changes.
The saved reference does not.
RESET
A RESET run means:
- runtime estate
- ↓ reset
- ↓ reseed from Day-0
- ↓ begin simulation
Use it for: development, verification, scenario testing, replay, repeatable experiments.
CONTINUE
A CONTINUE run means:
- keep current runtime state
- ↓ move forward
That supports a synthetic enterprise that accumulates history across runs.
RESET is not rewind-in-place
The important idea is not:
It is:
so that the starting estate is known again.
The reference side
The current Day-0 Explorer shows the frozen reference estate.
For example:
are inspectable Day-0 records/states.
The Guide then explains the runtime copy conceptually.
There is no need to fabricate a runtime Explorer page before the runtime product exists.
Runtime isolation
The runtime must never accidentally point at the Day-0 reference database for mutation.
That is one of the most important safety boundaries in the simulator architecture.
Conceptually:
Not merely:
Why this matters for replay
Suppose you run the same plan twice.
If the second run starts from a different enterprise state, different results do not necessarily mean replay is broken.
So deterministic verification needs:
Reference identity vs run identity
Later runtime architecture distinguishes:
- Reference estate identity
- Which Day-0/reference did we start from?
- Run identity
- Which execution attempt is this?
- Plan identity
- Which intended sequence of business actions is being executed?
A replay can use a new run identity while executing the same recorded plan from the same reference baseline.
Chapter takeaway
- Day-0 is the immutable reference.
- Runtime is the mutable working enterprise.
- RESET restores a known Day-0-derived starting point.
- CONTINUE keeps the current evolving runtime.
- This separation protects reproducibility and makes replay meaningful.