01
Definition
Architectural blast radius can include components, contracts, invariants, runtime surfaces, tests, state relationships, authority boundaries, data paths, integrations, concurrency behavior, recovery paths, and downstream consumers. File-diff size is therefore not a sufficient proxy for affected-system size.
02
Why it matters for repair
A change can satisfy its local test while remaining incomplete if a participating contract or downstream behavior has not been repaired or verified. Blast-radius reasoning asks what can materially change because of the modification, not only what code was edited to produce it.
03
Use in the current study
1DevTeam R&D Program #1 compares reasoning scope and change scope with the architecture materially affected by software changes, then examines subsequent corrective work. The study does not assume that every later pull request was caused by a prior change; chronology, causal relationship, defect class, repair unit, and competing explanations are coded separately.
Evidence boundary
What this entry supports
Blast radius is an analytic construct used for architecture and research coding. The graph can provide impact evidence, but graph presence alone is not proof that every runtime effect has been represented or tested.
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