{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__ethnography_qualitative_methods","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"ethnography_qualitative_methods","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"stale_qualitative_corpus_governance","causal_lever_id":"explicit_evidence_lifecycle_state_and_disposition","proposal":{"problem":"In long-running or multi-project qualitative research repositories, fieldnotes, transcripts, consent records, codebooks, memos, interpretations, and derived claims accumulate without explicit currentness, retention, dependency, or supersession states. Researchers may unknowingly reuse obsolete interpretations or consent-incompatible material, while indiscriminate cleanup can erase contextual lineage, participant accountability, and the ability to reconstruct findings.","actors_substrate":["research participants and represented communities","field researchers and interviewers","qualitative analysts and secondary researchers","principal investigators and research-data stewards","institutional ethics, privacy, and records authorities","repositories containing raw observations, contextual metadata, analytic artifacts, and their links"],"observable_state":"A repository contains temporally ordered qualitative artifacts whose current validity, access frequency, consent or retention status, analytic dependencies, and successor relationships are incompletely recorded; old artifacts remain searchable alongside current ones or are removed through ad hoc project-closeout decisions.","consequence":"Stale context can silently influence coding and claims, sensitive material can persist beyond justified use, search and maintenance burdens grow, and deletion can make published interpretations or participant-facing decisions impossible to audit or reconstruct.","affected_objective":"Maintain an interpretable, ethically governed, bounded qualitative evidence base without allowing obsolete artifacts to masquerade as current or destroying necessary context and lineage.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits with changing value and validity","domain_realization":"Successive fieldnote editions, transcript corrections, consent states, codebooks, memos, and interpretations accumulate as field settings and analytic frames change.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"stale layers remain active by default","domain_realization":"Unmarked earlier codes or interpretations can remain discoverable and be treated as current evidence.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"retention and preservation exceptions","domain_realization":"Consent terms, ethics requirements, legal obligations, community agreements, historical significance, and evidentiary dependencies can require different dispositions.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"dependency-preserving retirement","domain_realization":"Before suppressing or destroying an artifact, the repository checks whether claims, publications, audit trails, or contextual interpretations depend on it.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"bounded stack with recoverable memory","domain_realization":"Superseded material is labeled, access-demoted, compacted, archived, or removed while provenance and permitted reconstruction paths remain explicit.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Identity-resolved register of raw and derived qualitative artifacts."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Creation, correction, import, and supersession chronology."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Artifact class by consent, ethics, funder, institutional, and analytic-retention rule."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Review priority rises with time since contextual or analytic validation; age alone never determines worth."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Consent change, supersession, project milestone, contextual change, or scheduled review triggers reassessment."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Transparent multi-criterion review of interpretive value, sensitivity, reuse authority, and reconstruction importance."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Trace links from artifacts to codes, memos, claims, outputs, and commitments."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, restrict, archive, compact, quarantine, or authorized destruction."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named ethical, legal, community, historical, or analytic exceptions with owners."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Disposition log and recoverable quarantine where continued retention is permitted."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Budget includes researcher attention, search visibility, security burden, and storage."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Periodic steward and study-team review of lifecycle states and exceptions."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Ethics, consent, legal, investigation, or community-governance override."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Active, restricted-reference, and archival discovery/access states."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Artifacts with no recorded analytic, evidentiary, or governance dependency."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Marker points from obsolete artifact or interpretation to its successor and reason."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag redundant derivatives for loss-aware packaging without collapsing distinct participant context."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Authorized procedure to recover and reconnect archived context and lineage."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Estimate effects on participants, confidentiality, claims, publications, and reconstruction."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Signals include contradicted setting descriptions, changed terminology, superseded consent, broken provenance, or invalidated codes."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Reject composite age-discounted ranking: old ethnographic context may gain historical value, and a scalar score obscures ethical judgments. Use transparent criteria and review triggers instead.","counterfactual_removal":"No material loss; lifecycle triage can operate without false numerical precision."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Periodically restore authorized samples across formats and age bands and verify readable context, provenance, and claim links.","counterfactual_removal":"Archiving could silently become irreversible loss, weakening the preservation alternative to deletion."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Access recency is not legitimate authority for disposing of participant evidence or analytic context.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss; fast-tier optimization is not the target causal lever."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Hard-gate destruction on traced analytic, publication, participant, audit, and reconstruction dependencies; unknown dependencies block deletion.","counterfactual_removal":"Cleanup could sever evidence-to-claim lineage and make findings unreconstructable."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Translate tiers into active discovery, restricted reference, and archive states with access controls; demotion does not imply diminished epistemic value.","counterfactual_removal":"The intervention would collapse toward keep-active versus delete, reducing feasible retention choices."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Blind generational purging conflicts with content-sensitive ethical and interpretive review.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss; ordered age is recorded without position-based destruction."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Classify artifacts by consent, ethics, institutional obligation, research need, and preservation exception, with periodic revalidation.","counterfactual_removal":"Disposition would lack differentiated authority and could become arbitrary or uniformly indefinite."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use reversible suppression only when the governing retention and consent basis permits temporary continued possession; otherwise require approved destruction.","counterfactual_removal":"Correctable classification mistakes could become irreversible losses."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Provide an owned inventory showing currentness, consent compatibility, provenance integrity, dependencies, and pending reviews; signals never act autonomously.","counterfactual_removal":"Stale artifacts would remain indistinguishable from current material, leaving the primary problem intact."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Reject automatic clock-based expiry; use time only to trigger review because ethical authority and interpretive value are context-dependent.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss; review triggers provide bounded attention without blind expiry."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Retain a minimal, non-sensitive disposition or supersession marker where permitted, separated from removed content.","counterfactual_removal":"Absence could be mistaken for nonexistence, and surviving references could resolve ambiguously."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory artifacts and expose lifecycle, currentness, consent, and dependency states.","Trigger review when context, consent, supersession, policy, or cadence indicates possible staleness.","Apply differentiated retention authority and preservation exceptions before considering disposition.","Trace dependencies and estimate participant, interpretive, and reconstruction impact; uncertainty blocks irreversible deletion.","Refresh, label, restrict, archive, quarantine, or destroy through an authorized path, recording supersession or disposition.","Revalidate exceptions and test archive restoration so obsolete material loses active authority while necessary memory remains usable."],"baseline":"Project teams commonly retain folders and repositories indefinitely with naming conventions and informal knowledge, then conduct manual cleanup at project closeout or under storage, privacy, or access pressure.","nearest_rival":"A conventional data-management plan with fixed retention dates and project-level archiving, but without artifact-level currentness labels, dependency gates, supersession links, and recurring revalidation.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["participants whose words, identities, or communities are represented","researchers relying on the corpus","communities with negotiated governance interests","institutions accountable for ethics, privacy, and research integrity"],"decision_authority":"The accountable principal investigator and research-data steward, constrained by consent, ethics approval, law, institutional policy, and any recognized participant or community governance; analysts may propose but not unilaterally destroy.","authorized_first_step":"On one completed study, build a read-only inventory and shadow-classify lifecycle states for a bounded sample; compare current versus proposed search results and dependency traces, then conduct an authorized restore drill. Do not change access or delete content during this test.","excluded_actions":["automatic destruction based only on age, access, or model output","overriding consent, ethics, legal, or community restrictions","removing raw material needed to substantiate an active claim while dependencies are uncertain","using lifecycle labels to erase contested interpretations or inconvenient evidence","retaining quarantined sensitive content when hard deletion is required"],"halt_rollback":"Halt if classification exposes data beyond existing authorization, participants or governors contest the proposed use, dependencies cannot be resolved, or restoration fails. Revoke pilot views, restore prior discovery metadata from the change log, and preserve source artifacts under their existing controls pending review."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Longitudinal qualitative artifacts can become more valuable as contexts change, and apparent inconsistency may be analytically meaningful rather than stale. Existing consent, repository, and project practices may already prevent obsolete material from being treated as current.","analogy_break":"Qualitative artifacts are not interchangeable storage objects: meaning is relational, omission can distort interpretation, and decisions about retention and visibility distribute power over whose account remains legible. Technical lifecycle state cannot determine epistemic or ethical worth by itself.","failure_condition":"The approach fails if artifact identity and dependencies cannot be represented without stripping context, governance authority cannot be resolved, or lifecycle labels encourage decontextualized trust in a supposedly current version.","problem_falsifier":"Across a representative bounded corpus, artifacts already have inspectable currentness, consent, retention, dependency, and supersession states; users do not mistake obsolete artifacts for current evidence; and accumulated material causes no material search, maintenance, exposure, or accountability burden.","intervention_falsifier":"In the bounded pilot, lifecycle labels and dependency review do not reduce stale-artifact retrieval or improve correct interpretation against the baseline, or they increase context loss, unauthorized exposure, unresolved disputes, or reconstruction failures.","risks":["misclassifying historical difference as staleness","false confidence from incomplete dependency graphs","privacy exposure created by a centralized inventory","institutional authority overriding participant or community interests","archives preserving material beyond valid consent","metadata or tombstones leaking sensitive existence","cleanup selectively erasing dissenting or negative evidence","restricted tiers making legitimate scrutiny practically inaccessible"]},"null_rationale":null,"classification":{"candidate_kind":"MECHANISM_COMPOSITION","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 depends on a recognizable governance failure in accumulated qualitative corpora, not on treating age as evidence of low value; empirical prevalence and effect claims remain hypotheses."}