{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__engineering_design","archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"engineering_design","title":"Lifecycle-state gating for superseded engineering records","opportunity_summary":"Evaluate whether explicit lifecycle-state gating can keep superseded engineering artifacts out of ordinary design selection while preserving required history, dependencies, holds, and recoverability. The candidate supplies a safe, testable mechanism, but problem prevalence, effect size, distinctiveness, dependency completeness, and enterprise-scale feasibility remain unverified.","adopter_authorizer":"The designated engineering configuration-control board would authorize lifecycle-state changes, subject to scoped vetoes from records, safety, certification, privacy, and legal authorities.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"If superseded artifacts retain apparent authority, the stated consequences include configuration error, rework, loss of certification evidence, and failed reconstruction. These are consequential outcomes, although their frequency and aggregate magnitude are unsupported."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":3,"rationale":"The proposal identifies affected engineers, downstream users, configuration-management teams, and oversight authorities, but supplies no evidence of expressed demand, budget ownership, adoption requests, or dissatisfaction with current controls."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Compared with retaining all history behind stronger release controls, the proposal additionally tests bounded disposition, recoverability, dependency preservation, and removal of obsolete records from ordinary selection before deletion. The size of the resulting improvement is unmeasured."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The combination of lifecycle gating, dependency-aware disposition, quarantine, tombstones, and tested restoration is differentiated from the stated baseline and nearest rival, but prior art is explicitly unsearched and world novelty is unmeasured."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A read-only inventory and simulated-gating pilot is technically bounded, but reliable identity resolution, dependency enumeration, downstream enforcement, archive restoration, format preservation, and supplier-copy handling could make full implementation difficult."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate names a configuration-control board as decision owner and assigns scoped vetoes to relevant authorities. Feasibility is reduced by the number of required functions and the possibility of conflicting retention, destruction, privacy, and certification obligations."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate provides an eight-week read-only pilot, explicit baseline comparison, problem and intervention falsifiers, excluded actions, and halt conditions. Readiness is limited by absent sampling rules, thresholds, repository data, and validated dependency coverage."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"State gating before deletion, holds, dependency checks, quarantine, retained originals, tombstones, restore testing, and rollback protect against suppression or destruction of valid evidence. Their effectiveness remains untested, and tombstones or archives can create their own risks."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The lifecycle model could apply across projects and artifact classes, but the candidate only bounds a pilot to one closed project and one class. Heterogeneous tools, exports, supplier copies, obligations, and dependency graphs make broader scaling uncertain."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Conduct the specified read-only eight-week pilot on one closed project and one artifact class, including inventory, identity resolution, stale-candidate inference, baseline comparison, dependency tracing, simulated dispositions, restore sampling, governance review, and evaluation.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["Existing repository access and a usable released baseline are available.","No production status, permissions, or stored bytes are changed.","A small cross-functional engineering, records, and evaluation team can participate.","The selected artifact class does not require major custom extraction tooling."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Prepare a limited controlled deployment for one repository or engineering program, including lifecycle-state definitions, search gating, retention and hold mappings, dependency checks, quarantine and restore procedures, auditability, training, and approval workflows.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The repository exposes suitable metadata and integration interfaces.","Deployment initially covers a limited number of artifact classes and downstream tools.","Existing configuration-control and records functions can absorb part of the governance work.","No large-scale legacy-format conversion is required."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"1M_TO_5M","scope":"Launch across multiple engineering repositories, artifact classes, and downstream workflows, including integrations, legacy-data remediation, supplier or export controls where feasible, compliance validation, migration, training, and independent evaluation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Launch spans a substantial engineering organization but not an entire highly fragmented global ecosystem.","Dependency discovery and identity resolution require significant engineering and manual review.","Safety, certification, records, privacy, and legal reviews are included.","Existing repository platforms can be extended rather than replaced wholesale."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Operate lifecycle governance, exception and hold review, dependency monitoring, periodic revalidation, archive and restore testing, audit support, user training, tooling maintenance, and outcome measurement.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Repository scale and disposition volume are moderate.","Periodic human review remains necessary.","Archive storage is tiered and does not require extensive bespoke preservation infrastructure.","Major platform replacement and extraordinary litigation or certification activity are excluded."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"0_TO_3_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate specifies an observable authority-confusion problem, affected users, causal pathway, consequences, and a representative-sample problem falsifier. Its prevalence is not established, but the problem is recognizable and empirically testable."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The designated engineering configuration-control board is explicitly assigned lifecycle-state authority, with records, safety, certification, privacy, and legal functions holding scoped vetoes."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate claims that lifecycle gating will reduce ordinary retrieval or selection of known superseded artifacts relative to current repository behavior, while adding bounded retention and tested recovery beyond the nearest rival."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A read-only eight-week pilot on one closed project and one artifact class is specified, with baseline comparison, simulated dispositions, halt conditions, and no authoritative or byte-level changes."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The first step preserves all originals, excludes hard deletion and hold overrides, identifies the decision authority and veto holders, and halts on authoritative-record misclassification, material dependency gaps, or restore failure."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The pilot scope is bounded, but the sealed candidate provides no repository scale, integration inventory, data quality, staffing, compliance workload, or deployment breadth from which implementation and recurring resource requirements could be validated."}},"blocking_evidence":["Representative evidence that superseded artifacts appear in ordinary retrieval or downstream use despite current controls.","Measured comparison of simulated lifecycle gating with the current baseline for retrieval or selection of known superseded artifacts.","Evidence that material dependency classes, successor links, lifecycle states, holds, and retention obligations can be enumerated with acceptable error.","Successful restoration of sampled archives at predeclared fidelity and usability thresholds.","Evidence that search, downstream tools, exports, and relevant supplier workflows will honor lifecycle state rather than bypass it.","Adopter inquiry confirming that the configuration-control board and veto authorities view the gap as material and would sponsor a controlled next phase.","Prior-art research establishing whether the proposed bundle offers a meaningful distinction from existing engineering configuration and records-management approaches."],"next_evidence_step":"Pre-register and run the authorized read-only eight-week pilot on one closed project and one artifact class. Compare current ordinary retrieval and selection of known superseded artifacts with simulated lifecycle-state gating, while tracing dependencies and testing sampled archive restoration. Treat absence of baseline exposure, no material reduction versus baseline, any sampled authoritative-record misclassification, an unenumerated material dependency class, or restore failure beyond a predeclared tolerance as a falsifier or halt condition; retain all originals.","research_questions":["How often do superseded artifacts appear in ordinary retrieval, selection, exports, or downstream use under existing controls?","Does simulated lifecycle gating materially reduce that exposure relative to the current baseline without suppressing authoritative records?","Which dependency classes, successor relationships, retention duties, holds, and long-lived configurations cannot be reliably inferred from current metadata?","What restoration fidelity, latency, and format-usability thresholds are required by engineering, certification, maintenance, and investigation users?","Which tools and external copies would bypass lifecycle labels or continue to confer operational authority on obsolete artifacts?","Would the configuration-control board and scoped veto authorities sponsor deployment if the pilot meets its thresholds?","What relevant prior art exists, and what incremental claim remains after comparison with it?","What repository scale, integration effort, manual-review burden, and recurring governance load determine viable cost and rollout scope?"],"recommendation":"PRIOR_ART_RESEARCH","uncertainty_constraints":["Closed-book assessment; no external evidence was consulted.","Problem prevalence, stakeholder demand, effect size, market size, and realized impact are unsupported.","Prior art and world novelty are explicitly unmeasured.","Cost bands are resource-equivalent planning ranges, not validated estimates.","Repository scale, metadata quality, dependency completeness, integration count, and compliance burden are unspecified.","The proposed scoring thresholds, sampling design, acceptable error rates, and restore tolerances are not defined.","Scalability beyond one closed project and one artifact class is untested."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"The sealed packet classifies prior art as UNSEARCHED and the candidate as a HYPOTHESIS. This assessment can evaluate internal differentiation from the stated baseline and nearest rival only; it cannot establish novelty, prevalence, competitive position, or whether equivalent lifecycle-gating and records-disposition methods already exist."}