{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__human_computer_interaction","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"human_computer_interaction","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"persistent_notification_staleness_and_overload","causal_lever_id":"explicit_notification_lifecycle_and_authority_state","proposal":{"problem":"Persistent notification centers and collaborative-work inboxes accumulate old alerts, requests, and status cards after their relevance or underlying state has changed. Because these deposits remain visibly actionable by default, users must repeatedly interpret obsolete items and may act on stale prompts; indiscriminate clearing can erase accountability, unresolved dependencies, or needed history.","actors_substrate":["notification recipients","people or services generating notifications","workspace administrators and records stewards","persistent notification cards, alerts, requests, and activity records","notification center, search index, archive, and linked source objects"],"observable_state":"The interface contains growing cohorts of old notifications lacking explicit current, stale, superseded, archived, or expired states; obsolete cards remain searchable or actionable, ownership is unclear, and users defer cleanup because deletion consequences are unknown.","consequence":"Current work competes with obsolete prompts for attention, stale actions can be taken, search and triage become harder, and cleanup alternates between indefinite retention and unsafe bulk deletion.","affected_objective":"Accurate, low-effort prioritization of current work while preserving necessary history, accountability, accessibility, and recovery.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits","domain_realization":"Notifications and activity cards are deposited into a persistent user-facing inbox over time.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"changed active usefulness or validity","domain_realization":"A notification can become irrelevant, fulfilled, contradicted, or superseded when its linked task or system state changes.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"stale layers masquerade as current","domain_realization":"An old card that retains ordinary action styling can still communicate present authority.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"retention and dependency tension","domain_realization":"Removing a card may eliminate an audit cue, explanation, link, or evidence needed by another participant.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"differentiated disposition","domain_realization":"Cards may be refreshed, marked superseded, hidden from the active view, archived, compacted, or deleted.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"bounded searchable stack","domain_realization":"The active notification surface is kept small while archived history remains deliberately reachable.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Identity-resolved registry of notification cards and their source events."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Creation time and ordered notification history."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Rules by alert class, sensitivity, source, and audit need."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Class-specific decline in presumed action relevance, never sole evidence for deletion."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Elapsed TTL, source resolution, supersession, or owner-confirmed completion triggers review or demotion."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Inspectable signals for current relevance, harm from stale action, sensitivity, and reconstruction value."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Check live links, workflows, audit needs, and successor context before destruction."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, active-view removal, archive, compact summary, or deletion paths."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Named exceptions for disputes, investigations, accessibility needs, or historical value."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Logged soft deletion with a recoverable grace period."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Budgets for active-screen attention and indexed versus archival storage."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Periodic review of rules, exceptions, classifier errors, and restore success."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Hold blocks destruction without requiring continued active display."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Active inbox, searchable history, and deep archive."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Detect notifications with no live source, successor, dependent workflow, or required record role."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Visible marker links an obsolete card to the current card or source state."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag repetitive event runs for a reversible grouped summary."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Restore archived cards with their source links and state labels."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Estimate affected participants, workflows, evidence, and recovery difficulty."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Detect mismatch between card claims or actions and current source state."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Rejected as a composite decision score: age and guessed weights could create false precision for heterogeneous human-facing alerts. Its underlying signals remain inspectable separately.","counterfactual_removal":"No material change; the intervention uses class rules, source-state mismatch, and human review rather than a single ranking number."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Sample archived notifications across classes and ages; verify readable content, source linkage, permissions, and restoration latency.","counterfactual_removal":"Archiving could silently become irreversible, weakening the preservation claim but not stale-state detection."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Attention relevance is not adequately represented by access recency, and arrival under a fixed cache ceiling should not choose which human-facing record disappears.","counterfactual_removal":"No change; capacity-pressure eviction is outside the proposed causal chain."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Before permanent deletion, trace source links, dependent workflows, participants, holds, and reconstruction roles; uncertainty blocks destruction.","counterfactual_removal":"Permanent cleanup could break workflows or erase required context, hard-gating safe viability."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Move expired cards from active view to searchable history and then archive; compact repetitive runs while retaining provenance.","counterfactual_removal":"Active-view demotion remains possible, but affordable long-term retention and differentiated access weaken."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Blind generational rotation is unsuitable because critical unresolved alerts and routine events can share the same age.","counterfactual_removal":"No change; disposition is state- and class-sensitive rather than sequence-only."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Assign notification classes minimum and maximum retention, disposition, exception, and hold rules while separating retention from active visibility.","counterfactual_removal":"Automated destruction would lack consistent authority and protected exceptions."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Hide first, record who/why, retain recoverably for an impact-scaled window, then destroy only after gates pass.","counterfactual_removal":"A classification or bulk-action error could become immediately irreversible, making the bounded pilot unsafe."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Provide an owned inventory of cards and source-state mismatch flags, with reasons and confidence, without autonomously acting.","counterfactual_removal":"The system loses its evidence for distinguishing obsolete prompts from merely old but valid ones."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"At creation, assign class-specific review or active-visibility TTLs; expiry demotes or requests refresh rather than automatically destroying.","counterfactual_removal":"Most cards remain active by default, so accumulation and stale authority continue unless manually cleared."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Leave a time-bounded marker identifying deletion or supersession and the successor destination for surviving links.","counterfactual_removal":"Stale replicas, ambiguous missing results, and dangling links become more likely, though active-view cleanup still occurs."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory notifications and link each card to its source state and owner.","Detect source-state mismatch and apply class-specific active-visibility expiry triggers.","Replace ordinary action styling with explicit stale, superseded, archived, or review states.","Route cards through refresh, grouping, archive, exception, or soft-delete paths.","Gate permanent deletion on holds, dependencies, impact, and quarantine expiry; retain decision evidence.","Users encounter fewer apparently current obsolete prompts while recoverable history remains deliberately reachable."],"baseline":"Notifications remain in a chronological read/unread list until users individually dismiss them or use bulk clear; age rarely changes their apparent authority, and deletion consequences are opaque.","nearest_rival":"Add filters, search, grouping, and a manual archive button without source-state detection, lifecycle triggers, dependency gates, or governed expiry.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["notification recipients","authors and assignees represented by notifications","people relying on shared activity history","records, privacy, security, and accessibility stakeholders"],"decision_authority":"Individual users control active-view organization; the workspace product owner and records/privacy authorities approve class rules and permanent deletion; designated legal or safety authorities control holds.","authorized_first_step":"Run a four-week, one-team shadow pilot: classify and label copied notification metadata, then expose prototype stale/superseded labels and reversible archive suggestions to consenting users; measure decisions without permanent deletion.","excluded_actions":["permanent deletion during the pilot","suppression of emergency, security, health, or other safety-critical alerts","override of legal holds or minimum retention","automatic dismissal based only on age or access","removal of another person's required record without authorized review"],"halt_rollback":"Stop automation if any protected alert is hidden, a source-state label is materially wrong, required history cannot be restored, or affected users cannot understand the state cues; disable rules and restore quarantined cards and prior presentation."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"If old cards are already reliably non-actionable, rarely revisited, and do not measurably impair task finding or cause mistaken actions, the visible accumulation may be benign history rather than an HCI problem.","analogy_break":"Unlike storage layers, a notification's value is socially distributed and context-dependent: apparent inactivity can coexist with unresolved responsibility, and hiding it changes what people perceive as owed or urgent.","failure_condition":"The lifecycle labels add more interpretive work than they remove, source systems cannot reliably expose current state, or archival delays make legitimate history unusable.","problem_falsifier":"In representative task sessions, accumulated old notifications do not increase time or errors in identifying current work, and users correctly distinguish obsolete from current items without lifecycle cues.","intervention_falsifier":"Compared with the ordinary baseline, the bounded prototype does not reduce stale-card selections or current-task identification time, or it increases missed valid alerts, restoration failures, or state-label misunderstandings beyond predeclared tolerances.","risks":["Incorrect staleness inference hides valid obligations.","Lifecycle labels create false confidence that source state is current.","Retention can expose sensitive history longer than users expect.","Deletion or compaction can erase socially important context.","Tiering can impair accessibility or timely retrieval.","Metrics may reward a visually empty inbox while unresolved work persists."]},"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":0.82,"generator_notes":"Closed-book structural inference from the supplied packet. The candidate treats persistent human-facing notifications as temporal deposits; empirical prevalence and effect sizes remain untested."}