State drift

State drift occurs when two components synchronize state via deltas and the observer's state diverges from the producer's due to lost messages or failures. The core problem is that without a self-correction mechanism, a single lost delta can permanently corrupt state. The recommended solution is to treat delta updates opportunistically while periodically performing full state reconciliation — similar to how Git uses Merkle trees, rsync compares directory listings, or video codecs use keyframes. Strong delivery guarantees (e.g., Kafka's durable commit log) are a complementary strategy. Webhooks are criticized for lacking redelivery guarantees, requiring inbound HTTP servers, and making debugging difficult, though a durable queue proxy service is proposed as a mitigation.