{"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retirement of superseded formal-library artifacts","opportunity_summary":"Apply explicit current, superseded, archived, and preserved lifecycle states to formal-library artifacts, with retirement gated by dependency, citation, and reconstruction checks. The proposal could reduce ambiguous imports and proof-search noise while preserving reproducibility, but the sealed packet provides no evidence that superseded-active artifacts or their consequences are prevalent enough to justify implementation.","adopter_authorizer":"Designated formal-library maintainers would adopt and approve lifecycle state changes; artifact owners and cited-release custodians would review contested or irreversible cases.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"If the stated stale-active artifacts are materially present, reducing wrong-version selection, maintenance burden, proof-search noise, and unsafe cleanup would directly support corpus clarity, dependency integrity, and reproducibility. The magnitude remains conditional because prevalence and effect size are unobserved."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"The proposal names maintainers, authors, reviewers, downstream developers, and reproducibility users, but the packet contains no observed complaints, requests, adoption commitments, or measured burden from those stakeholders."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Relative to the stated deprecation-only rival, explicit lifecycle states, dependency and reconstruction gates, quarantine, successor markers, and archive revalidation provide a coherent safety and eventual-retirement mechanism rather than warnings alone. Whether this improves outcomes in practice is untested."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The combination of lifecycle classification, preservation roles, dependency-gated reversible retirement, and reconstruction checks is specific and testable, but prior art is unsearched and mature libraries may already provide materially similar controls through namespaces, releases, versioning, or deprecation practices."},"technical_implementability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A read-only inventory and shadow classifier appear feasible in a bounded namespace, but reliable identity resolution, dependency discovery, citation tracking, and archive reconstruction may be difficult, especially where dependencies are dynamic or tooling changes over time."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate assigns decisions to designated maintainers and review of contested cases to artifact owners and release custodians. Adoption remains somewhat constrained by coordination across downstream users and preservation obligations."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The packet defines a bounded, read-only namespace test, a deprecation-only comparison, explicit problem and intervention falsifiers, and halt thresholds. Preregistered metrics and a representative namespace still need to be selected."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"Dependency and reconstruction gates, quarantine, successor markers, preservation freezes, explicit exclusions of automatic deletion, and rollback procedures offer substantial protection compared with informal cleanup. Hidden dependencies and unrestorable archives remain material risks."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"Lifecycle metadata and automated dependency checks could extend across namespaces and releases, but exception review, citation obligations, archive revalidation, and toolchain heterogeneity may create continuing manual overhead."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Conduct a read-only inventory and shadow lifecycle classification for one namespace over one release cycle; compare classifications with maintainer judgments and a deprecation-only review, test against known dependencies, and measure search or import ambiguity without changing active resolution.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The namespace and relevant metadata are accessible without major licensing or compliance expense.","Existing tooling can expose artifact identities and at least static dependency information.","A small number of maintainers can provide blinded or independently recorded judgments.","No production retirement or archive migration is included."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Build or integrate identity resolution, lifecycle metadata, dependency and citation checks, maintainer review workflows, quarantine handling, successor markers, audit logs, and reconstruction validation for an initial library deployment.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The library has machine-readable source, release, and dependency metadata.","Deployment extends existing repository and proof-tooling infrastructure rather than replacing it.","The scope is one established formal library, not a cross-ecosystem standard.","Compliance needs are primarily governance, access control, provenance, and reproducibility review."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Roll out lifecycle governance across a substantial formal library, backfill artifact states, validate preserved releases, train maintainers, resolve disputed classifications, and monitor an initial set of reversible demotions or quarantines.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["A significant historical corpus requires backfill and exception review.","Launch includes partner coordination with downstream users and cited-release custodians.","Hard deletion remains excluded during launch.","Costs vary strongly with corpus size, metadata quality, proof-tool heterogeneity, and hidden dependencies."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Maintain lifecycle metadata and automation, review new supersession candidates and exceptions, revalidate archives and reconstruction paths, monitor false classifications, support rollback, and update integrations as proof tooling evolves.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Most routine checks can be automated after startup.","Maintainers retain final authority for disputed or preservation-sensitive cases.","Archive storage is modest relative to labor and validation costs.","The library has a moderate release cadence and does not require continuous cross-library dependency reconciliation."]}},"research_burden":"MODERATE","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The candidate clearly describes ambiguous active status, proof-search noise, unsafe cleanup, and reproducibility risk, but supplies no audit, user observation, or measured consequence showing that these occur materially in a representative formal library."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"Designated library maintainers are explicitly assigned approval authority, with artifact owners and cited-release custodians reviewing contested or irreversible cases."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that lifecycle classification plus dependency and reconstruction gates can identify and safely demote stale-active artifacts more effectively than deprecation-only review; classification accuracy and missed known dependencies provide direct tests."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A read-only shadow classification of one namespace for one release cycle is explicitly authorized, entails no retirement, and can be compared with maintainer judgments and deprecation-only review under preregistered falsification thresholds."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The first step is read-only, designated maintainers hold authority, automatic deletion and unresolved-dependency retirement are excluded, and the packet specifies halt and rollback conditions."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The intervention components and bounded pilot scope are identifiable, but corpus size, metadata quality, dependency observability, archive condition, tool integration effort, and reviewer workload are unknown, making even broad deployment ranges assumption-sensitive."}},"blocking_evidence":["A representative audit establishing whether superseded artifacts materially remain in active resolution and whether they cause wrong-version use, search or import ambiguity, maintenance burden, or retirement uncertainty.","Evidence that identity resolution and dependency checks capture known live dependents with no misses in the bounded test.","Comparison showing lifecycle classification identifies stale-active artifacts more accurately or usefully than deprecation-only review.","Evidence that preserved releases and cited results can be reconstructed after reversible demotion or quarantine.","Measurement of maintainer review burden, disputed classifications, exception growth, and metadata upkeep relative to the demonstrated problem.","Prior-art research establishing whether existing formal-library versioning, namespace, archive, and deprecation systems already implement the claimed combination."] ,"next_evidence_step":"Preregister and run a read-only shadow study on one purposively selected namespace for one release cycle: inventory identity-resolved artifacts, have maintainers independently label current, superseded, archived, or preserved status, compare the proposed gated method with deprecation-only review on stale-active precision and recall, and test both against a seeded or previously known set of live dependencies. Stop if either method finds negligible stale-active artifacts or consequences, or if the proposed dependency checks miss any known live dependent; execute no state change or retirement.","research_questions":["How many artifacts in a representative namespace are superseded yet still searchable or importable through active resolution?","Do such artifacts produce measurable wrong-version selection, proof-search noise, import ambiguity, maintenance effort, or uncertainty about safe cleanup?","Can artifact identities, successors, and static or dynamic dependencies be resolved with sufficient completeness for retirement decisions?","Does lifecycle-gated review outperform deprecation-only review on accurate and useful stale-active classification?","Which citation, release, or reproducibility obligations require permanent preservation or active availability rather than archival availability?","Can archived artifacts and historical releases be reconstructed across proof-assistant and toolchain changes?","What maintainer labor, dispute rate, exception growth, and recurring metadata burden does the lifecycle system create?","Do existing library mechanisms already provide materially equivalent lifecycle, dependency-gating, and reconstruction protections?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["The packet contains no empirical observation of problem prevalence or consequence magnitude.","Stakeholder demand and willingness to adopt are unmeasured.","Prior art and current library practices are unsearched and unverified.","Technical feasibility depends on unknown identity, dependency, citation, and reconstruction metadata quality.","Cost bands are resource-equivalent planning ranges based on assumed library scale, not observed implementation data.","The analogy concerns artifact currency and interface status, not decay of mathematical truth.","Scalability is constrained by unknown exception volume, cross-library dependencies, and archive-toolchain durability."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"Prior art was not searched and remains unverified under this closed-book assessment. No claim is made about novelty, prevalence, market size, existing equivalent systems, or realized impact; distinctiveness is only a proposal-level plausibility judgment against the sealed deprecation-only rival."}