[newnewpdro]

I only skimmed the article, but the description of outputs and their asynchronous lifecycle making things complicated just made me think of what's become known as the ECS pattern in game development.

Your outputs sound just like entities in a game. They come and go as they please, and you often have multiple references to them from myriad places since entities may interact with many parts of the game.

I suspect if you investigated the established techniques for implementing ECS-style games in rust, you might find some simpler and established solutions for your troubles.