@gapMindful, this is a very cool way of doing it. This looks a lot like the way the blinks download algorithm works. Made me think hard a few times!
You inspired me to have a crack at this interesting problem. I wanted to see if it was possible to do a full tree search that was robust to loops and spontaneous topology changes without needing to use serial numbers (and thus avoiding memory limitations and needing datagrams).
Check out what I came up with…
…and LMK if I missed anything. And thanks again for all the thoughtful work in this area!