Ricky Reusser

Yup, it's the previously computed value. From what I understand, when you hit play, the whole Variable gets deleted and reinstantiated. That part is likely hidden somewhere in Observable's UI logic, but for the rest:
1. Variable._value is initialized as undefined (see https://github.com/observablehq/runtime/blob/9d4866/src/variable.js#L30)
2. last computed value is always passed as context (see https://github.com/observablehq/runtime/blob/9d4866/src/runtime.js#L231).
3. computation of the new value then happens inside a Promise (see https://github.com/observablehq/runtime/blob/9d4866/src/runtime.js#L246)

Fabian Iwand

I've been thinking: What strategies exist to "reset" a stateful cell (aside from rerunning the code)? As far as I'm aware, when a cell recycles its previous value, there is no way to force a complete revert from the outside. Correct?

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