Three minutes at the reactor before coffee
The usual check: a look, a sniff, a couple of numbers in the log. Today they will turn out to matter.
A look and a sniff
Lid open: the smell is neutral, there is more condensation on the walls than usual. The worms are slightly lower than yesterday.
A reading in the log
Core temperature 26.8 °C, moisture 82%. Two numbers and a note about the condensation, that’s all.
Vermix connects the dots
The reading fits into a trend: moisture has been rising for three days and the core is warm. On its own, each sign is not yet a crisis.
For now it’s just a morning. In four and a half hours these numbers will add up to a signal.
VermiGuard: self-heating risk
Not “something’s wrong”, but a breakdown: what happened, why the system decided so, what to do and what comes next.
The signal came more than a day before the point of no return
Without the log this day would have looked ordinary: the smell and the worms leaving would have shown up two days later, when recovery takes weeks, not minutes.
Twelve minutes of hands-on work
Vermix did nothing by itself: it explained what to do and why. A person does the hands-on work.
13:02 · Loosen the top layer
With a fork, a hand’s depth down: get oxygen back into the core and release the heat. Seven minutes of work.
13:09 · Feeding on pause
A note in the log: the next feeding is pushed back 24 hours, so the heat source is gone.
18:30 · Follow-up reading
ΔT 3.1 °C, below the 5 °C threshold. The moisture trend has turned around. Protocol closed.
Feed depletion
A shortage of available organic matter slows processing down. The population stays alive but stops growing and starts using up its own reserves.
Why it worked
The protocol is built not on general advice but on the ΔT and trends of this particular reactor.
How conclusions are builtThe record went into the reactor passport
The day took fifteen minutes. The episode stays in the reactor log along with the readings and actions.
What Vermix saw
A trio of signs: the moisture trend, a warm core, a recent feeding. On its own, each is not yet a crisis.
What the person did
Loosened the layer and pushed feeding back. Fifteen minutes instead of a lost population.
Three minutes is usually enough, but the day that counts is when it isn’t
Start with one reactor: the first 14 days are free, with no card and no sensors.