Did 402index's health labels change in September 2026?
The short answer
Yes, sharply, and with no note saying why. Early in September a large block of endpoints moved between the directory's two failing labels within days while its total barely moved, and neither its health document nor its own daily series records what changed.
As published in the issue
402index's labels moved by tens of thousands in two days. Its health document, which we capture daily, read
degraded43,554 anddown17,051 on 7 September, anddegraded13,070 anddown54,741 on 9 September, while its total grew 0.8% (105,267 to 106,115). Its own daily series shows the same break (degraded_endpoints39,295 → 13,619 → 13,048 on 7, 8 and 9 September). Neither the document nor the series carries a note saying what changed.
The sentence above is quoted from a published issue and is not re-written here. Its date, its population and the record behind it are below.
Why it matters
A label that moves by a large block overnight, with no version or change date, cannot be told apart from a change in the endpoints themselves. An agent routing on it inherits that ambiguity.
What we measured
The directory's own health document, captured daily, and its own published daily series, read across September. The figures are the directory's, in its own field names, with the dates they were read.
What the evidence shows
- Sealed days behind the archive figures
- 27
- Observations in that window
- 315,315
- Issue
- Machine Commerce Reality Index: #002 — September 2026
- Published
2026-09-04 · 2026-09-05 · 2026-09-06 · 2026-09-07 · 2026-09-08 · 2026-09-09 · 2026-09-10 · 2026-09-11 · 2026-09-12 · 2026-09-13 · 2026-09-14 · 2026-09-15 · 2026-09-16 · 2026-09-17 · 2026-09-18 · 2026-09-19 · 2026-09-20 · 2026-09-21 · 2026-09-22 · 2026-09-23 · 2026-09-24 · 2026-09-25 · 2026-09-26 · 2026-09-27 · 2026-09-28 · 2026-09-29 · 2026-09-30
27 of the 27 sealed days behind these figures are on the head table at /chain (9 re-derived from an off-vendor replica and 18 anchored from the archive as stored). Each day's manifest is served at /chain/<date>.
What this does not say
- An old label is not necessarily a wrong one. Provider labels and counters above are theirs; comparisons against our dated readings are ours.
Method and reproduction
The runs behind the figures, the record each one produced, and the terms this question uses.
What ran, when, and the record it produced.
| What ran | When | Record |
|---|---|---|
| The one reader over our sealed captures of the providers' own published documents, day by day across September: each provider's own published counts, when they moved, and the days our capture is absent. | 67fbc9628ec74d4ee1b73dd32fd7aa2da1f6bcf1f2a159143c9c6db5aec788a7 | |
| The extraction over those saved bodies: every third-party figure the issue prints, with the verbatim excerpt it was read from, refusing a body that no longer hashes to the read. | 934ee4eaf54201929db1a252ee3d8b29654bb2bc7cb703b606e31f929037055a |
The terms
The terms this question uses are defined in the glossary.
Corrections and disputes
This answer names a party we measure. The route to dispute a reading is on the corrections page.
Corrections to this issue are on the corrections register, and this answer reads from the record rather than from a copy.