{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__behavioral_economics","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"behavioral_economics","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"obsolete_choice_architecture_accretion","causal_lever_id":"review_triggered_choice_architecture_retirement","proposal":{"problem":"Organizations repeatedly add defaults, prompts, disclosures, incentives, and other behavioral interventions to the same services, but rarely inventory or retire them. Interventions can remain active after their evidence, objective, population, or operating context changes, producing conflicting cues, cognitive burden, reduced autonomy, inequitable effects, and maintenance cost. HYPOTHESIS: unmanaged persistence materially worsens user welfare or decision quality in some high-change services.","actors_substrate":["people exposed to accumulated choice architecture","behavioral-design and product teams","service operators and policy owners","legal, compliance, accessibility, and ethics reviewers","researchers evaluating intervention effects"],"observable_state":"A service contains multiple temporally deposited behavioral interventions whose owner, deployment date, evidence status, dependencies, successor, and review date are incomplete; interventions flagged as stale remain user-visible or behaviorally active.","consequence":"Obsolete or conflicting interventions continue steering behavior, while teams avoid removal because downstream effects, obligations, and reconstruction requirements are unclear.","affected_objective":"Improve informed choice, user welfare, autonomy, equity, and service performance while reducing maintenance and interpretive burden.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits","domain_realization":"Successive defaults, prompts, disclosures, incentive rules, and interface nudges added to a service.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"changed active usefulness or validity","domain_realization":"An intervention's evidence, target behavior, population, or surrounding choice context can change while deployment persists.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"stale layers mistaken for current truth","domain_realization":"Continued visibility and execution can make a legacy intervention appear currently endorsed and evidence-based.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"retention and dependency exceptions","domain_realization":"Legal duties, accessibility needs, active experiments, contractual rules, and linked workflows can bar immediate retirement.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"bounded stack with recoverable history","domain_realization":"Only reviewed interventions remain active; retired specifications, evidence, decisions, and configurations remain reconstructable.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Registry assigning a stable identity to every deployed behavioral intervention."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Deployment, revision, and last-review dates for each intervention."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Intervention class and risk level mapped to review and retention rules."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Evidence/context confidence declines or triggers review as unvalidated time and contextual change accumulate."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Predefined sunset or mandatory-review date."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Separate estimates of current benefit, autonomy risk, equity risk, exposure, and removal cost."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Check linked workflows, regulations, experiments, metrics, and reproducibility needs before retirement."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, deactivate, archive, consolidate, or delete an intervention."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named, dated exceptions retaining an intervention beyond ordinary review."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Logged deactivation followed by a time-boxed restoration period."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Maintenance and user-attention budgets plus active, dormant, and archived registry tiers."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Periodic owner review using current evidence and context."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Legal, accessibility, research-integrity, or contractual override blocking retirement."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Active, restricted/dormant, and archived intervention states."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Detection of interventions with no accountable owner, current objective, or verified dependent."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Marker linking a retired intervention to its replacement or stating no successor."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag overlapping prompts or disclosures for consolidation."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Procedure to restore archived configuration and supporting rationale."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Estimate affected users, behavioral change, equity effects, and rollback difficulty."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Signals population, evidence, objective, regulation, or interface drift since validation."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Reject a single age-discounted score because age is a weak proxy and aggregation could conceal autonomy or equity vetoes; retain disaggregated review criteria.","counterfactual_removal":"Removal avoids false precision without breaking lifecycle review."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"TEST_DESIGN","adaptation_or_rejection":"Sample archived intervention configurations and verify that specification, rationale, and dependencies can be reconstructed.","counterfactual_removal":"Retirement remains possible, but claims of recoverability would be untested."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"User-facing interventions cannot safely be evicted solely because a capacity-limited fast tier fills.","counterfactual_removal":"No effect on the proposed causal chain."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Block irreversible removal until live workflows, obligations, experiments, and reconstruction paths are checked.","counterfactual_removal":"Retirement could silently break services, compliance, or evaluation, making deletion unacceptable."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Translate storage tiers into active, dormant, and archived governance states.","counterfactual_removal":"Binary keep/delete decisions would increase resistance and restoration cost."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Generational, content-blind rotation is inappropriate for heterogeneous interventions with differing risks and obligations.","counterfactual_removal":"No effect on viability."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Assign intervention classes mandatory review intervals, disposition rules, and named overrides.","counterfactual_removal":"Legacy interventions would again remain active by default."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Deactivate from user exposure while preserving configuration for a risk-sized rollback window.","counterfactual_removal":"The first test would expose users and operations to avoidable irreversible errors."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use an owned registry to surface interventions contradicted by current evidence or context.","counterfactual_removal":"The organization could not reliably identify the active legacy interventions needing review."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Stamp new interventions with mandatory-review expiry; expiry pauses or escalates rather than automatically destroying them.","counterfactual_removal":"Inattention would remain the default source of indefinite activation."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Leave a registry marker recording retirement, rationale, and successor.","counterfactual_removal":"Auditors and maintainers could confuse retirement with nonexistence or revive obsolete configurations."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory deployed behavioral interventions and assign owners, dates, objectives, and evidence status.","Detect contextual staleness and fire class-specific mandatory-review triggers.","Apply exceptions, legal overrides, impact estimates, and dependency checks.","Refresh, consolidate, or reversibly deactivate interventions that lack current justification.","HYPOTHESIS: reducing obsolete and conflicting choice architecture lowers cognitive burden and unwanted steering while preserving service continuity.","Revalidate outcomes and restore any intervention whose removal causes specified harm."],"baseline":"Status quo: teams add or revise behavioral interventions through ordinary product and policy work; retirement occurs ad hoc after complaints, redesigns, or owner initiative.","nearest_rival":"A one-time behavioral or UX audit that identifies ineffective interventions but installs no persistent registry, expiry trigger, exception process, or rollback pathway.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["service users, including vulnerable and accessibility-dependent groups","frontline staff and service operators","intervention owners and evaluators","people represented in behavioral data"],"decision_authority":"The accountable service owner may authorize reversible deactivation only after behavioral, operational, legal, accessibility, and ethics review appropriate to risk; irreversible deletion requires records authority.","authorized_first_step":"Run an 8-week pilot on one bounded service journey: inventory interventions, select at most three low-risk stale candidates, randomize or stagger reversible deactivation where ethical, and measure comprehension, completion, choices, complaints, subgroup effects, and operational incidents.","excluded_actions":["automatic hard deletion based only on age or score","removal of legally required, accessibility-critical, safety-critical, or actively studied interventions","unreviewed changes to high-stakes financial, health, employment, or eligibility choices","treating reduced uptake as proof of improved welfare"],"halt_rollback":"Immediately restore the prior configuration and halt further retirements if safety or compliance incidents occur, any prespecified vulnerable subgroup materially worsens, complaints exceed the pilot threshold, or essential service completion deteriorates beyond its bound."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"A complete registry and exposure audit could show that legacy interventions are already routinely reviewed, remain effective across current populations, do not conflict, and impose negligible burden; observed problems may instead arise from the underlying service complexity.","analogy_break":"Behavioral interventions are not passive records: they can alter habits, expectations, institutional routines, and welfare after removal, so archiving the artifact cannot fully restore the prior behavioral state.","failure_condition":"The approach fails if interventions cannot be separately identified or deactivated, owners cannot observe exposure and outcomes, or dependencies and subgroup harms cannot be assessed within a reversible boundary.","problem_falsifier":"In the pilot service, a comprehensive audit finds no persistent unowned or context-invalid intervention, no conflicting accumulated cues, and no association between intervention age/staleness and user or maintenance harm.","intervention_falsifier":"Relative to baseline or staggered controls, lifecycle review and reversible retirement do not reduce stale exposure, comprehension errors, complaints, or maintenance burden, or they worsen welfare, equity, completion, compliance, or safety beyond prespecified bounds.","risks":["Expiry may remove a still-beneficial intervention whose effect is difficult to measure.","Officials may use lifecycle language to erase evidence of manipulation or failed policy.","Composite staleness judgments may encode institutional bias.","Archiving may preserve sensitive behavioral data longer than justified.","Frequent changes may destabilize user expectations or contaminate evaluation.","Apparent performance gains may reflect reduced participation rather than improved welfare."]},"null_rationale":null,"classification":{"candidate_kind":"DOMAIN_TRANSFER","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","evidence_maturity":"HYPOTHESIS"},"revision_change_log":{"revision_kind":"ORIGINAL","prior_problem_id":null,"prior_causal_lever_id":null,"problem_changed":false,"causal_lever_changed":false,"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"repairs_addressed":[]},"confidence":0.84,"generator_notes":"Closed-book structural transfer. The candidate treats deployed choice-architecture interventions as sequential, behaviorally active deposits and preserves differentiated review, archival, exception, dependency, and reversible-retirement relations; empirical benefit remains untested."}