{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__engineering_design","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"engineering_design","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"superseded_design_record_authority_confusion","causal_lever_id":"explicit_design_record_lifecycle_state_gating","proposal":{"problem":"Engineering repositories accumulate drawings, specifications, analyses, models, and change packages whose validity has ended but whose status and visibility do not reliably distinguish current authority from obsolete history. Engineers may therefore use superseded design inputs, while indiscriminate cleanup can destroy certification evidence, dependency lineage, or the ability to reconstruct prior configurations.","actors_substrate":["design engineers and reviewers","configuration-management and records teams","manufacturing, maintenance, and supplier users","safety, quality, certification, and legal authorities","versioned engineering records and their dependency graph"],"observable_state":"Multiple generations of engineering artifacts remain searchable or usable without consistently inspectable lifecycle state, supersession links, retention basis, dependency status, or tested recoverability; stale artifacts appear alongside released records and the repository grows without accountable disposition.","consequence":"A superseded artifact can be mistaken for an authorized design input, causing rework or configuration error; alternatively, uncertain dependencies and obligations cause perpetual retention, or deletion removes evidence needed for investigation, certification, maintenance, or reconstruction.","affected_objective":"Keep engineering decisions tied to the valid configuration while bounding repository cost and preserving required traceability and recoverability.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits with changing usefulness and validity","domain_realization":"Successive revisions, calculations, simulations, drawings, and change packages accumulate after release or supersession.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"stale layers remain active or discoverable","domain_realization":"Obsolete design artifacts remain visible without a reliable non-authoritative state and may be reused as current inputs.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"removal can break reconstruction, audit, or lineage","domain_realization":"Prior design baselines may support certification evidence, incident analysis, maintenance, and configuration reconstruction.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"exceptions constrain ordinary expiration","domain_realization":"Safety, contractual, certification, litigation, and historical-baseline needs can require named retention holds.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"lifecycle governance bounds the stack","domain_realization":"Explicit active, superseded, archived, quarantined, and destroyed states govern visibility, authority, storage, and disposition.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Identity-resolved register of every controlled engineering artifact and revision."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Creation, release, supersession, and last-validation timestamps."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Artifact-class matrix of minimum, maximum, and disposition rules."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Age raises review priority but never alone revokes authority or compels destruction."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Supersession, project closure, review-date lapse, or obligation expiry triggers review."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Triage score combines reuse, evidence value, staleness risk, and reconstruction cost."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Gate checks references, configured baselines, evidence chains, and reproducibility needs."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, supersede, archive, compact, quarantine, or destroy."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named holds with owner, justification, scope, and review date."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Audited soft deletion precedes irreversible destruction."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Availability and cost budgets define active and archival tiers."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Periodic review of stale candidates, holds, rules, and restore performance."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Authorized certification, investigation, contractual, or legal hold blocks disposal."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Released, reference-accessible, archive, and deep-archive access tiers."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Detect artifacts with no live configuration, workflow, evidence, or reconstruction dependency."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Durable non-authoritative marker links an obsolete revision to its successor."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag eligible record bundles for lossless packaging or deduplication."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Documented retrieval, format reading, integrity validation, and dependency reconnection."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Estimate affected configurations, users, evidence chains, and recovery difficulty."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag contradictions with released baselines, broken references, overdue validation, or absent ownership."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use only to rank reviews; authority, dependencies, and holds remain vetoes.","counterfactual_removal":"Review ordering becomes less scalable, but lifecycle gating remains viable."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Exercise representative archived design packages end to end across formats and ages.","counterfactual_removal":"Archival could silently become irreversible loss, invalidating deletion safety."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Recency-based instantaneous eviction optimizes latency, not design authority or evidence retention.","counterfactual_removal":"No material change; storage tier transitions remain policy-governed."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Trace live configuration, workflow, supplier, evidence, and reconstruction dependencies before deletion.","counterfactual_removal":"Cleanup could break active designs or traceability, hard-gating viability."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Demote non-current records while preserving identity, integrity, and controlled retrieval.","counterfactual_removal":"Authority control could work, but affordable long retention would weaken."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Generational position is too content-blind for heterogeneous engineering evidence.","counterfactual_removal":"No change; design records are not a homogeneous rolling log."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Map engineering-record classes to obligations, dispositions, exceptions, and holds.","counterfactual_removal":"Disposition would lack consistent authority and defensible exception handling."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Hide records from ordinary use while retaining audited restoration for an impact-sized period.","counterfactual_removal":"Mistaken cleanup becomes immediately irreversible."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Inventory records and surface likely non-current artifacts without autonomously changing status.","counterfactual_removal":"Stale-authority exposure remains largely invisible and unmanaged."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"TTL triggers revalidation or archival eligibility, never automatic destruction of controlled records.","counterfactual_removal":"More manual review is required, but the core control persists."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Preserve identity, deletion reason, date, and successor resolution after removal.","counterfactual_removal":"Absence becomes ambiguous and stale replicas or references can misresolve."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory and identity resolution expose accumulated revisions and their current states.","Staleness and supersession signals identify artifacts that may falsely retain authority.","Retention rules, holds, and dependency checks separate required history from safe disposition candidates.","State gating removes superseded artifacts from normal design selection before physical deletion.","Tiering or compaction preserves low-access evidence; quarantine, tombstones, and tested restore paths limit cleanup harm.","Periodic revalidation keeps holds, classifications, and recovery claims from silently decaying."],"baseline":"Repositories retain most revisions indefinitely; users rely on filenames, folders, dates, or local knowledge to infer which artifact governs, and cleanup occurs through occasional manual projects.","nearest_rival":"Strengthen configuration release and access controls so only the current baseline is usable, while retaining every historical artifact indefinitely; this reduces misuse but does not bound retention or validate recoverability.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["engineers and reviewers using controlled artifacts","manufacturing, maintenance, and suppliers","record subjects and owners","quality, safety, certification, legal, and investigation functions"],"decision_authority":"The designated engineering configuration-control board owns lifecycle-state changes; records, safety, certification, privacy, and legal authorities hold vetoes within their mandates.","authorized_first_step":"Run a read-only 8-week pilot on one closed project and one artifact class: inventory records, infer stale candidates, compare them with the released baseline, trace dependencies, and simulate dispositions. No authoritative status or bytes change without board approval.","excluded_actions":["automatic hard deletion","using age or score as sole authority","overriding a hold","removing the sole reconstruction or certification copy","hiding lifecycle state from affected users"],"halt_rollback":"Halt if the pilot misclassifies any sampled currently authoritative record, cannot enumerate a material dependency class, or cannot restore a sampled archive within agreed fidelity. Revoke proposed transitions and retain all originals; any later soft-delete pilot restores quarantined records on discrepancy."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"If repository permissions already expose only the released baseline, all superseded artifacts have reliable successor links, retention is bounded, dependencies are complete, and sampled archives restore successfully, the diagnosed lifecycle gap is absent.","analogy_break":"Engineering revisions are not uniformly decaying deposits: an old artifact can remain the governing definition for a long-lived configuration, so age cannot stand in for validity or value.","failure_condition":"Lifecycle labels exist but search, downstream tools, exports, or supplier copies ignore them, leaving obsolete artifacts operationally authoritative.","problem_falsifier":"Across a representative project sample, no superseded artifact appears in ordinary design retrieval or downstream use, lifecycle states and obligations are complete, and accumulation stays within budget without ad hoc cleanup.","intervention_falsifier":"In the bounded pilot, lifecycle gating does not materially reduce retrieval or selection of known superseded artifacts versus the baseline, or dependency/restore failures exceed the predeclared tolerance.","risks":["False stale classification could suppress a valid design input.","Incomplete dependency discovery could break a configuration or evidence chain.","Composite scores may create false precision and encode governance bias.","Archival latency or format drift could make retained evidence unusable.","Quarantine may conflict with mandatory destruction or privacy deadlines.","Persistent tombstones may themselves accumulate or disclose sensitive metadata."]},"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":0.87,"generator_notes":"Closed-book structural inference from the supplied packet; empirical prevalence, effect size, thresholds, and dependency completeness remain unverified."}