(ticket requested here http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/browse_thread/thread/119311e89fa46806/4903ce25ff6deaa6#4903ce25ff6deaa6)

The general idea is to declare invariants inside a transaction and, when at commit time an invariant doesn't hold anymore, the transaction retries.
So it can both act as a kind of soft ensure or to specify actions that "partially commute".
Thus it would enable coarser refs.

See the attached file for quick prototype.

User code would looks like:

(invariant (@world :key))
(commute world update-in [:key] val-transform-fn)

This means the commute will occur only if (@world :key) returns the same value in-transaction and at commit point.