{
  "id": "metastable.shallow",
  "term": "metastable",
  "sense": "shallow",
  "pos": "adjective",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 21,
  "domain": "window",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "held in a position without work, but near a wall, so the thing persists on its own until one small drift crosses and it cannot return.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "parameter.condition",
      "window.range",
      "wall.range-end",
      "drift.aimless",
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "equilibrium.state",
      "near.spatial",
      "small.size"
    ],
    "interaction": "A parameter rests where no maintenance is needed, but the resting place sits near a wall, so a single small drift carries it across where equilibrium far from a wall would have absorbed it.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "persistence without upkeep",
      "one-push fragility",
      "stability that reads as permanent from inside"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Supercooled water sits liquid below freezing until a single dust grain gives the crystal somewhere to start, and the whole volume freezes at once.",
      "domain": "physics"
    },
    {
      "text": "A company with one customer runs profitably for years without effort spent on sales, until that customer leaves and no pipeline exists to replace them.",
      "domain": "business"
    },
    {
      "text": "A friendship maintained by shared circumstance persists effortlessly until one person moves away, and neither had ever built the habit of reaching out.",
      "domain": "everyday life"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "equilibrium.state",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "equilibrium is held without work with no wall clause; metastable adds the nearby wall, so the same effortless rest is one small excursion from ending"
    },
    {
      "id": "stable.condition",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "stable drift returns toward the window's centre on its own; metastable drift that crosses does not return at all"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "metastability",
    "metastable",
    "metastably"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5:paramspace",
    "date": "2026-08-22",
    "confidence": 0.8,
    "sources": [
      "tools/paramspace.py vacancy MAINT=free + WALL=near"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-metastable.shallow"
}