 Self-starting finite-state machine

A hardware finite-state machine whose implemented transitions eventually leave every unused state encoding and enter the intended valid state set. If recovery must hold for arbitrary inputs, it is not enough that some input sequence can escape: there must be no indefinitely surviving unused-state path under any input sequence. Since the unused-state graph is finite, absence of a directed cycle among unused states gives a uniform finite recovery bound. A reset or initialization rule may still be required to give the valid state its intended meaning.