Causal Inversion

the evidence says A caused B, but the timestamps make B appear earlier than A

Example

Suppose:

• request_received is the parent event
• invoice_created points to that parent

But the raw timestamps say:

• invoice_created at 10:00:00.001
• request_received at 10:00:00.050

If you sort by timestamp alone, the child appears to happen before the parent.

What The Library Should Do

This should not be silently normalized.

The library should:

• preserve the causal evidence
• flag the mismatch as a causal_inversion
• avoid pretending that clock order has overridden explicit dependency evidence

Why This Matters

Causal inversion is often a symptom of:

• clock drift
• delayed ingestion
• replay artifacts
• partial tracing data
• broken instrumentation

That makes it operationally useful.

It is not just a comparison result. It is a debugging signal.

The Bigger Lesson

When explicit causal evidence and naive timestamp order disagree, the disagreement itself is important.

That disagreement is exactly the kind of thing a good event integrity library should make visible.