Welford cold-start needs a health check endpoint

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User's exact phrasing: "the Welford integration has been flaky on cold starts, might need to add a health check endpoint"

When a backend integration is flaky on cold start, the typical end-user experience is: "the app isn't working." A health check endpoint converts that opaque failure into a known state — the app can show a "warming up" message, retry intelligently, or just refuse to start a session until the data layer is ready. It also unblocks upstream orchestrators (Supabase, k8s) from sending traffic until Welford is actually warmed up.

Surfaced during a working session on Hydrolyze — Swim Analysis Platform. User was mid-thought on the Stripe monetization decision when a separate technical observation landed about Welford's cold-start behavior.

Proposed. Not yet committed to a sprint or implementation timeline. Logged on the Hydrolyze — Swim Analysis Platform Decisions list as 2026-06-14.

How it's structured

  1. Context Surfaced during a working session on Hydrolyze — Swim Analysis Platform. User was mid-thought on the Stripe monetization decision when a separate techni…
  2. The insight When a backend integration is flaky on cold start, the typical end-user experience is: "the app isn't working." A health check endpoint…
  3. The insight The smallest observable change converts a flaky system into a deterministic one from the user's perspective. That's the move.
  4. Status Proposed. Not yet committed to a sprint or implementation timeline. Logged on the Hydrolyze — Swim Analysis Platform Decisions list as 2026-06-14.

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