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• Skips historical data that existed before the consumer started (like latest)
• Captures all data produced after the consumer started (unlike latest)
• Handles partition expansion gracefully (starts from earliest available when timestamp predates partition creation)
• Minimizes data loss during log truncation by starting from available data Handles log truncation gracefully (after segments are deleted, the consumer can still consume any remaining data whose timestamps fall at or after the startup time, rather than skipping to the end of the partition)

Public Interfaces

We propose updating the auto.offset.reset configuration to support a new value: by_start_time. This option automatically resets offsets based on the consumer’s startup timestamp.

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