{"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__systems_cybernetics","archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"systems_cybernetics","title":"Lifecycle Gating for Stale Regime-Specific Control Memory","opportunity_summary":"Test whether explicit active, archived, and reversible-quarantine states for regime-specific models, control laws, thresholds, and causal maps reduce stale artifact selection while preserving auditability, rollback, and recovery when an old regime recurs.","adopter_authorizer":"The accountable control-system owner is the adopter and decision authority, with independent safety approval required before retiring safety-relevant artifacts.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"If stale callable artifacts cause the proposed mistuning, oscillation, delayed correction, or unsafe transitions, preventing their selection could materially improve stability and safety; the occurrence and magnitude of those harms remain unmeasured."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"Operators, maintainers, and assurance teams have plausible interests in stable and auditable control, but the sealed packet provides no evidence of incident frequency, expressed demand, budget, or adoption urgency."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":4,"rationale":"Relative to latest-certified-only control, the proposal adds regime-mismatch detection, dependency and exception gates, reversible quarantine, and tested restoration, plausibly reducing stale eligibility without discarding useful rare-regime memory."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The combined lifecycle-gating and recoverability design is coherent and testable, but prior art is explicitly unsearched, so distinctiveness from existing model, configuration, supervisory-control, and assurance governance is unverified."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"Versioned registries, lifecycle metadata, shadow classification, replay, quarantine, and restoration testing are technically bounded operations, although integration quality and semantic restorability are system-specific uncertainties."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The accountable owner and independent safety approver are explicitly identified, and the first step avoids live-control changes; broader retirement decisions may still encounter certification, incident-hold, or destruction-policy constraints."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The packet supplies observable indicators, separate problem and intervention falsifiers, a nearest-rival comparison, a 30-day read-only shadow test, halt conditions, and rollback from an untouched snapshot."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"Reversible quarantine, retained audit history, restoration tests, exception gates, and prohibitions on hard deletion or live actuator changes provide substantial safeguards against false staleness classification."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A registry-centered lifecycle method could transfer across artifacts and subsystems, but dependency mapping, regime semantics, certification requirements, and restoration validation may require significant tailoring for each control environment."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Conduct the proposed 30-day read-only registry inventory and historical replay on one noncritical subsystem, including artifact classification, nearest-rival comparison, restoration sampling, safety review, and analysis.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["A usable registry snapshot and historical replay data already exist.","No live eligibility, gains, actuators, or control outputs are changed.","The subsystem can be studied by a small control, data, and assurance team without new specialized hardware."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Design and integrate lifecycle metadata, mismatch scoring, dependency and exception gates, quarantine workflows, audit logging, restoration tests, operator interfaces, and assurance documentation for an initial production subsystem.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The existing controller exposes version and selection interfaces.","Deployment remains limited to one organization and a bounded set of artifacts.","Independent safety and compliance review is required but full recertification of the entire plant is not."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"1M_TO_5M","scope":"Launch governed lifecycle gating across multiple production subsystems, including migration of historical artifacts, validation, operator training, incident procedures, certification work, monitoring, and staged rollback capability.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Several heterogeneous control subsystems are included.","Safety-relevant artifacts require formal approval and regression testing.","Existing registries and replay infrastructure can be extended rather than replaced wholesale."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Maintain lifecycle classifications, dependency records, exception reviews, replay suites, archive restorability, audit evidence, monitoring, software, and periodic safety reassessment.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The system continues to generate new regime-specific artifacts.","Human review remains necessary for exceptions and safety-relevant retirement.","Recurring cost excludes major controller replacement or plant-wide redesign."]}},"research_burden":"MODERATE","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"The packet identifies observable counts, ages, conflicts, and regime-assumption mismatches among callable artifacts, plus a registry-audit falsifier that could determine whether the proposed problem exists in a target system."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The accountable control-system owner is named as decision authority, with independent safety approval for retirement of safety-relevant artifacts."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that lifecycle gating will reduce stale selections relative to latest-certified-only control while tested restoration preserves rare-regime recovery; the shadow replay can test both parts."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A 30-day read-only inventory and replay on one noncritical subsystem is bounded, excludes changes to live outputs, includes a comparator, and has explicit failure and rollback conditions."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The first step is read-only, hard deletion and live control changes are excluded, safety authority is named, the original registry remains untouched, and explicit halt conditions cover hidden active artifacts, failed restoration, and rejection of valid rare-regime models."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"Implementation can be scoped into shadow evidence, one-subsystem integration, multi-subsystem launch, and recurring governance, with broad resource-equivalent bands; system-specific integration and certification needs keep confidence low."}},"blocking_evidence":["Whether superseded artifacts are actually callable or consulted in candidate systems and create material conflicts, burden, or incidents.","Whether lifecycle gating reduces stale selections or instability proxies relative to latest-certified-only control in historical replay.","Whether quarantine and archive restoration preserve semantically valid rare-regime recovery rather than only technical file recovery.","Whether mismatch scores, dependencies, and exceptions can be classified reliably enough to avoid suppressing necessary model variety.","Whether safety, certification, incident-hold, and mandatory-destruction rules permit the proposed lifecycle states.","Whether the combined design is incrementally distinct from existing control-model and configuration-governance practices; prior art is unsearched and unverified."],"next_evidence_step":"Run the authorized 30-day read-only shadow inventory and historical replay on one noncritical subsystem, comparing lifecycle gating with latest-certified-only control on stale-selection rate, instability proxies, and valid rare-regime recovery; falsify advancement if gating produces no reduction in stale selections or instability proxies, or materially worsens recovery of valid rare-regime behavior.","research_questions":["How often are superseded artifacts callable, operator-visible, selected, or implicated in conflicting guidance?","Which observable regime, dependency, validation, and assumption signals reliably distinguish stale artifacts from reusable rare-regime memory?","Does lifecycle gating outperform latest-certified-only control on stale selection without increasing rare-regime recovery failures?","Can archived artifacts be restored with their dependencies, assumptions, semantics, and assurance context intact?","What thresholds and exception processes prevent lifecycle status from becoming a bureaucratic proxy for validity?","Which safety, certification, retention, incident-hold, and mandatory-destruction requirements constrain quarantine or retirement?","What integration and recurring governance resources are required for each target control environment?","What existing model-management, supervisory-control, assurance, or configuration-governance precedents overlap with the combined design?"],"recommendation":"PARTNERED_RESEARCH","uncertainty_constraints":["Problem prevalence, stakeholder demand, realized impact, and market size are unsupported by the sealed packet.","All claimed operational benefits remain hypotheses pending the bounded comparison.","Cost bands are low-confidence resource equivalents because system scale, data quality, integration architecture, and certification burden are unspecified.","Old control memory may regain value abruptly, so artifact age alone cannot establish staleness.","The replay may not represent rare or future regimes, limiting generalization to live operations.","Prior art and world novelty have not been externally assessed."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"Prior art is unsearched and unverified. The sealed materials support evaluation of internal coherence, testability, and safety bounds only; they do not establish novelty, prevalence, market position, or superiority over existing control-model governance practices."}