> Kind of like the "zygote" forking model (early in the main process lifetime, a zygote process gets forked off, and when the main process wants another worker it asks the zygote to fork one off) except that the "zygote" is more like an induced pluripotent stem cell, having been reverted from an adult state.

interestingly enough, i thought of the same concept, except i did not get to implement that (for a few reasons). is "zygote" a term you made up or is it an established pattern?