{"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__mathematics","archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"mathematics","title":"Lifecycle-gated retirement of superseded formal-library artifacts","opportunity_summary":"A read-only inventory and lifecycle classification could help formal-library maintainers distinguish active, superseded, archived, and preservation-frozen artifacts, then gate any later retirement on dependency and reconstruction checks. The proposal is coherent and testable, but the sealed packet provides no evidence that superseded active artifacts are prevalent or materially harmful.","adopter_authorizer":"Designated formal-library maintainers, with artifact owners and cited-release custodians reviewing contested or irreversible state changes.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"Avoiding obsolete-interface selection, proof-search noise, broken dependencies, and irreproducible cited results could matter substantially, but the packet contains no observation of prevalence, frequency, or realized burden in formal libraries."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"Maintainers, proof developers, reviewers, and reproducibility users are identifiable beneficiaries, but no actor demand, reported pain, adoption request, or willingness to maintain lifecycle metadata is supplied."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Relative to the specified deprecation-only rival, the proposal adds explicit archival states, dependency and reconstruction gates, successor markers, quarantine, and rollback. These are concrete incremental mechanisms, although their operational advantage remains untested."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The integrated lifecycle-and-preservation framing is plausibly differentiable from informal deprecation, but prior art is unsearched and the packet explicitly allows that mature libraries may already use namespaces, versioning, and comparable controls."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A read-only inventory and shadow classifier appear implementable on a bounded namespace, while reliable artifact identity, implicit or dynamic dependency resolution, citation tracing, and archive reconstruction could be difficult."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate assigns decisions to designated maintainers, adds review for contested cases, excludes automatic deletion, and provides halt and rollback rules. Feasibility still depends on library-specific governance and custodian availability."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The proposal supplies observable states, a bounded shadow test, a deprecation-only comparator, and explicit problem and intervention falsifiers. Representative sampling, labeled ground truth, and thresholds remain to be designed."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"Dependency gates, preservation freezes, quarantine, reconstruction checks, successor markers, and restoration directly reduce the risk of breaking proofs or losing reproducibility. Their reliability has not yet been demonstrated."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"Lifecycle metadata and automated checks could extend across a corpus, but heterogeneous artifacts, unresolved dependencies, recurring exception review, and archive-tool compatibility may create increasing maintenance burden."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Read-only inventory and shadow lifecycle classification for one namespace over one release cycle, including maintainer adjudication and comparison with deprecation-only review.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["Existing repository metadata and dependency information are accessible without new licensing.","The namespace is bounded enough for limited manual ground-truth review.","No production resolution state or artifact content is changed.","The band includes protocol design, analysis, maintainer coordination, and reporting."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Prototype lifecycle schema, identity resolution, dependency and citation checks, successor markers, quarantine workflow, audit logging, and integration for a limited portion of one formal library.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Existing proof and repository tooling exposes usable integration points.","Archive storage infrastructure already exists or requires only modest extension.","Deployment remains reversible and excludes hard deletion.","Security, governance, testing, documentation, and maintainer labor are included."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Corpus-wide launch within one substantial formal library, including metadata migration, dependency validation, reconstruction testing, governance procedures, user communication, exception review, and production monitoring.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The library is large enough to require staged migration and substantial review.","Hidden dependencies and preservation obligations require human adjudication.","No cross-institutional standardization or rebuilding of the proof platform is included.","The band includes engineering, evaluation, compliance-like governance work, and partner coordination."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Ongoing lifecycle review, exception handling, archive and reconstruction revalidation, tooling maintenance, metadata quality control, and monitoring for dependency misses within one library.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Checks are substantially automated after launch but retain human review for contested cases.","Repository and archive interfaces do not require major annual replacement.","The number of preservation exceptions remains manageable.","The band includes maintainer, infrastructure, software, and periodic evaluation resources."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The problem and its observable state are clearly specified, but the packet supplies no representative observation that superseded active artifacts or their stated consequences occur materially."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"Designated library maintainers are named as decision authorities, with artifact owners and cited-release custodians assigned review roles for contested or irreversible cases."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The lifecycle approach can be compared with deprecation-only review on stale-active classification and dependency detection, and it fails if it offers no accuracy advantage or misses a known live dependent."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate authorizes a read-only shadow classification of one namespace for one release cycle with no retirement, providing a bounded and reversible evaluation setting."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The authorized first step changes no artifacts; maintainers retain authority, automatic deletion is excluded, and dependency misses, preservation disputes, or excessive classification error trigger a halt."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate defines separable shadow-test, limited integration, launch, and recurring-maintenance scopes that support broad conditional resource bands, although library size and tooling quality keep confidence limited."}},"blocking_evidence":["A representative audit showing whether superseded-but-active artifacts are sufficiently prevalent to warrant intervention.","Measured evidence of search ambiguity, wrong-version use, maintenance burden, unsafe-cleanup uncertainty, or reproducibility risk attributable to those artifacts.","Shadow-test performance against deprecation-only review, including adjudicated false-current and false-stale rates.","Evidence that dependency checks identify every known live dependent in the bounded test and can handle relevant implicit or dynamic dependencies.","Demonstration that archived or quarantined artifacts and cited snapshots can be reconstructed with the available tooling.","Prior-art evidence establishing whether comparable lifecycle, archival, and dependency-gated retirement mechanisms already exist."],"next_evidence_step":"Preselect one namespace and one release cycle, preregister classification and dependency-miss thresholds, then run a read-only identity inventory and shadow lifecycle classification. Compare it with deprecation-only maintainer review using adjudicated stale-active labels, documented consequence cases, and a set of known live dependents. Stop further development if the audit finds negligible stale-active burden, the lifecycle method does not improve classification, or either method's proposed dependency gate misses any known live dependent.","research_questions":["How many identity-resolved artifacts in a representative namespace are simultaneously active and genuinely superseded?","What measurable search, import, maintenance, or reproducibility consequences arise from those artifacts?","Does lifecycle classification outperform deprecation-only review without creating unacceptable false-stale or false-current labels?","Can dependency, citation, and reconstruction checks reliably identify all obligations that should block retirement?","How much continuing maintainer effort is required to adjudicate exceptions and keep lifecycle metadata current?","Do existing formal-library tools or governance practices already provide materially equivalent functionality?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["Problem prevalence and effect size are unmeasured.","Stakeholder demand and willingness to maintain lifecycle metadata are unobserved.","Prior art and world distinctiveness are unsearched.","Artifact identity and dependency completeness may vary substantially by library.","Archive reconstruction reliability and long-term tooling compatibility are unknown.","All cost bands are conditional resource estimates rather than observed prices or quotes."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"No prior-art search or external comparison was performed. The assessment cannot claim novelty, prevalence, market size, realized impact, or absence of equivalent namespace, versioning, deprecation, archival, dependency, or reproducibility controls."}