{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"computability_boundary_mapping__library_information_science","archetype_slug":"computability_boundary_mapping","domain_slug":"library_information_science","title":"Governed computability boundaries for digital-preservation fidelity claims","opportunity_summary":"Formalize the limits of exact preservation-fidelity validation, construct validators for enforceable restricted classes, and route cases outside proven guarantees to labeled unknown, bounded-analysis, or curator-review paths. The proposal could reduce false certainty, but the existence and frequency of the targeted unrestricted demand are unverified.","adopter_authorizer":"Repository preservation governance, acting with collection stewards and independent technical reviewers; the validator team is not authorized to define significant properties unilaterally.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"If a repository is funding impossible universal automation or issuing unsupported Boolean fidelity claims, bounded guarantees and explicit unknown states could materially improve auditability and prevent hidden preservation loss. Impact is capped because the prevalence of those claims is unsupported."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"The candidate identifies curators, governance, depositors, and users who could benefit, but supplies no evidence that repositories actually seek the unrestricted validator or prioritize this issue over ordinary requirements, standards, and workflow problems."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Unlike checksums, format validation, samples, or a stronger finite test suite, the proposal separates proven restricted guarantees from unresolved cases and prevents passing tests from supporting an unrestricted claim. Whether this improves operational outcomes enough to justify added review remains untested."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The combination of checked boundary arguments, enforceable fragment membership, versioned guarantees, and governed fallback routing is coherent and potentially differentiating. Prior art is explicitly unsearched, so distinctiveness cannot be affirmed."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A bounded formalization, attempted reduction, restricted validator, and routing prototype are feasible study outputs. Faithful formalization of behavioral fidelity, proof obligations, enforceable fragment membership, and integration across heterogeneous executable objects remain substantial uncertainties."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate assigns decisions to preservation governance with collection stewards and independent technical review, specifies that the validator team cannot redefine significance, and includes halt and rollback rules. No actual repository commitment or available reviewer capacity is established."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":3,"rationale":"The candidate provides separate problem and intervention falsifiers, a non-production study design, comparisons to current practice, and explicit proof obligations. It has no empirical problem validation, checked formal result, prototype result, or operational evaluation."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"Retaining originals, prohibiting automatic production migration, distinguishing unknown from failure, withdrawing pilot labels, and reverting to existing review provide a strong safety net against overclaiming. Formal omissions, label laundering, false alarms, and unsupported escalation capacity remain risks."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The guarantee-labeling and routing framework could be reused across repositories and object classes, but each fidelity predicate, computational model, fragment definition, and significant-property policy may require collection-specific formal and curator work."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"A bounded non-production audit of repository requirements, validator outputs, and governance language to determine whether unrestricted exact Boolean fidelity claims occur, including curator and preservation-engineer review and a documented baseline comparison.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["One cooperative repository provides access to a limited sample of policies and outputs.","The audit uses existing staff and records without production-system changes.","No sensitive collection-scale data extraction or formal proof development is included."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"The authorized synthetic-and-duplicated-object study: formalize one behavioral fidelity predicate, attempt one checked reduction, implement one restricted-class validator, and measure fragment coverage, unknown rates, and routing behavior under independent review.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The study covers one predicate and a small, prespecified object corpus.","Existing emulation, testing, and proof-checking tools can be reused.","Original holdings are excluded and no production integration is attempted.","Formal-methods expertise and curator semantic review are available."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Production-ready integration at one repository, including guarantee metadata, enforceable class checks, unknown-state routing, curator workflow, audit logging, security and compliance review, training, independent validation, and staged evaluation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The repository already has migration, emulation, and preservation-management infrastructure.","Launch is limited to selected object classes rather than all holdings.","No replacement of core repository or emulator platforms is required.","Reviewer and escalation capacity must be funded."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Ongoing curator escalation, guarantee and predicate versioning, regression evaluation, independent audits, maintenance of fragment recognizers and validators, training, and governance reporting for a bounded deployment.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Coverage remains limited to selected classes and transformations.","Unknown-case volume is manageable within a small specialist allocation.","Major platform migrations or collection-wide reclassification are excluded."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The problem and consequence are clearly specified, but the sealed candidate explicitly treats repository prevalence as a hypothesis and provides no evidence that unrestricted exact terminating claims occur in practice."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"Repository preservation governance is identified as the authorizer, with collection stewards and independent technical review assigned substantive roles and the validator team explicitly denied unilateral semantic authority."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that checked restricted guarantees plus labeled routing will reduce false certainty relative to finite semantic-difference testing; reduction validity, fragment coverage, unknown rates, and comparative claim accuracy are testable."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A non-production study on synthetic and duplicated objects is authorized, with one predicate, one attempted reduction, one fragment validator, measured routing outcomes, explicit halt conditions, and no changes to originals."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate preserves originals, excludes production automation and unsupported guarantees, assigns semantic authority to governance and stewards, and requires halting when predicate, reduction, abstraction, or object-safety obligations fail."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The study activities are bounded, but repository scale, technical architecture, object diversity, proof expertise, compliance needs, integration effort, and curator escalation volume are unspecified, making deployment and recurring ranges assumption-dependent."}},"blocking_evidence":["Whether any target repository actually requests or asserts an exact, always-terminating, unrestricted Boolean fidelity decision rather than bounded checks or acknowledged expert judgment.","A curator-approved formal fidelity predicate that preserves the socially and operationally significant meaning of at least one executable or interactive object class.","Independent checking of the proposed impossibility reduction, including totality, computability, and answer-preservation obligations.","A constructive restricted validator with enforceable fragment membership and evidence that its abstraction is sound for the stated guarantee.","Comparative evidence that labeled routing reduces false certainty relative to the existing workflow without creating unmanageable false alarms or curator workload.","Prior-art research establishing whether equivalent formal-boundary and guarantee-routing practices already exist."],"next_evidence_step":"Conduct a four-to-six-week, non-production audit of a prespecified sample of repository requirements, policies, and validator outputs. Compare the frequency of unqualified universal Boolean fidelity claims with explicitly format-bounded, test-bounded, or expert-judgment decisions. Stop or deprioritize the proposal if no unrestricted claim or decision demand is found; only then proceed to the authorized synthetic-object formal study.","research_questions":["Do repository policies, procurements, interfaces, or audit reports actually demand or imply universal exact terminating fidelity decisions?","Can one operationally important behavioral fidelity predicate be formalized without omitting properties that curators and represented communities consider significant?","Does a checked reduction establish a genuine boundary for the faithfully formalized unrestricted class?","Which useful object and transformation classes admit constructive total validators with mechanically enforceable membership?","Compared with current tests and curator judgment, does guarantee-labeled routing reduce unsupported preserved/not-preserved conclusions?","What unknown rate, false-alarm rate, and escalation workload can repository governance sustain?","What prior systems, standards, or formal-methods approaches already provide equivalent boundary analysis or labeled guarantees?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["Closed-book assessment with no external validation of problem prevalence, stakeholder demand, prior art, market size, realized impact, or exact cost.","The candidate establishes neither undecidability nor a constructive restricted validator; both remain prospective proof and implementation obligations.","Cultural significance and future user value may not admit faithful reduction to program-semantic predicates.","Costs depend heavily on repository architecture, collection heterogeneity, access constraints, formal-methods staffing, and curator workload.","The generic adopter role is identifiable, but no specific repository commitment, budget authority, or reviewer capacity is evidenced.","Operational value depends on routing reducing false certainty rather than merely shifting unresolved cases and accountability to under-resourced experts."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"No external search or prior-art assessment was performed. The candidate labels prior art as unsearched and makes no novelty claim; distinctiveness, prevalence, comparable implementations, and realized outcomes remain unmeasured."}