{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__innovation_entrepreneurship","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"innovation_entrepreneurship","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"obsolete_venture_evidence_remains_decision_active","causal_lever_id":"lifecycle_state_gated_evidence_visibility","proposal":{"problem":"Venture teams accumulate experiment reports, assumption versions, market analyses, pitch claims, and pivot decisions. Superseded artifacts often remain discoverable without a clear lifecycle state and can be mistaken for current evidence, while indiscriminate cleanup can erase learning, provenance, or defensible decision history.","actors_substrate":["venture founders and product teams","innovation portfolio managers","experiment repositories, wikis, shared drives, and decision logs","legal, compliance, and records stewards","investors, partners, and later team members relying on venture evidence"],"observable_state":"Multiple dated artifacts address the same assumption or decision, but current, superseded, archived, held, and deletion-pending states are not consistently visible; owners cannot readily establish which artifacts remain authoritative or safely removable.","consequence":"Stale claims may influence roadmap, investment, or go-to-market decisions; search and review burdens grow; cleanup is deferred or destroys evidence needed to reconstruct why a venture changed direction.","affected_objective":"Maintain decision-relevant organizational learning with bounded search and stewardship cost while preserving required provenance, accountability, and recoverability.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits","domain_realization":"Successive experiments, hypothesis revisions, market studies, pitch materials, and pivot records deposited during venture development.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"stale layers remain active by default","domain_realization":"Superseded venture evidence remains searchable and insufficiently distinguished from current evidence.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"retention and dependency tension","domain_realization":"Old artifacts can mislead current decisions, yet may support later learning, dispute resolution, investor reporting, or reconstruction of a pivot.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"managed disposition paths","domain_realization":"Artifacts are refreshed, marked superseded, compacted, archived, quarantined, preserved by exception, or deleted according to class and dependency.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"bounded interpretable stack","domain_realization":"Current evidence is prominent while historical evidence remains explicitly recoverable and provenance-linked.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Registry of venture artifacts keyed to experiment, assumption, decision, owner, and version lineage."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Creation, validation, supersession, and last-access timestamps."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Rules by artifact class, sensitivity, evidentiary need, and venture stage."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Age raises review priority but does not independently determine deletion."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Triggers include hypothesis supersession, venture closure, owner departure, review deadline, or policy maximum."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Transparent factors for reuse value, provenance, sensitivity, reconstruction cost, and misleadingness; no single automatic score."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Check citations, decision links, investor obligations, active experiments, and lineage before removal."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, supersede, summarize, archive, quarantine, or destroy."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named holds for disputes, intellectual-property evidence, landmark learning, or continuing dependencies."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Recorded rationale and reversible quarantine before destruction."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Budgets for active-review attention and fast repository access, with cheaper archive tiers."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Stage-gate and periodic owner review of states, exceptions, and rules."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Legal, contractual, privacy, tax, or investigation holds override routine disposition."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Current workspace, searchable archive, and restricted deep archive."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Identify artifacts with no live citations, owner, obligation, or reconstruction role."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Visible marker linking an obsolete claim or artifact to its successor."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag related experiment bundles for a provenance-linked learning summary."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Documented restoration of archived evidence and its links."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Estimate affected decisions, users, obligations, and reconstruction loss."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag contradictions with the current hypothesis set, product state, market definition, or ownership."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Rejected as a governing composite because venture evidence can regain relevance and subjective weights create false precision; retain transparent factors for review.","counterfactual_removal":"No material change: class rules, staleness signals, dependencies, and human review still govern disposition."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Periodically restore samples across artifact classes and ages, verifying readability, provenance links, and access authorization.","counterfactual_removal":"Archival would remain possible, but recoverability could silently fail, hard-gating claims that history is preserved."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Access recency under fast-tier pressure is not a defensible rule for removing venture evidence.","counterfactual_removal":"No change to the causal chain."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Trace live citations, decision lineage, obligations, and active experiment links before irreversible removal.","counterfactual_removal":"Deletion could break reconstruction or remove evidence still supporting active decisions."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Move inactive but retained artifacts from active workspaces to searchable or restricted archives; compact only with provenance links.","counterfactual_removal":"Authority labeling could still reduce misleadingness, but active repositories and stewardship costs would remain less bounded."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Generational position is too content-blind for heterogeneous venture evidence.","counterfactual_removal":"No change to the causal chain."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Define artifact-class retention ranges, disposition options, preservation exceptions, and legal overrides.","counterfactual_removal":"Lifecycle decisions revert to inconsistent owner judgment and exceptions become implicit."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Hide deletion candidates from ordinary use while preserving audited restoration for an impact-sized grace period.","counterfactual_removal":"The first cleanup error becomes irreversible, materially constraining safe testing and adoption."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Expose inventory, ownership, lifecycle state, contradictions, broken links, and review priority without taking automatic action.","counterfactual_removal":"Stale evidence remains difficult to identify, so the intervention loses its principal decision-quality lever."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Rejected for historical and decision evidence because a blind creation-time clock can expire still-relevant material; scheduled review triggers supply expiration without automatic destruction.","counterfactual_removal":"No material change because expiration eligibility is provided by the retention matrix and review cadence."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Leave a durable identity-level marker stating deleted or superseded status, rationale, date, and successor where applicable.","counterfactual_removal":"Absence becomes ambiguous and stale copies or citations may revive or misrepresent removed claims."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory and identity resolution reveal accumulated venture-evidence layers.","Staleness signals and lifecycle labels separate current evidence from superseded or review-due material.","Retention rules, holds, dependency checks, and impact estimates constrain allowable dispositions.","Supersession markers immediately prevent obsolete artifacts from masquerading as current authority.","Archival, compaction, or reversible quarantine reduces active clutter while preserving provenance and recovery.","Audited review and restore tests correct classification errors and revalidate exceptions.","HYPOTHESIS: Lower stale-evidence visibility and search burden improve the traceability and consistency of venture decisions."],"baseline":"Teams ordinarily keep experiments and decision artifacts in shared tools, depend on filenames, folders, recent memory, or owners to interpret authority, and conduct ad hoc cleanup when clutter becomes painful.","nearest_rival":"A periodic owner-led knowledge-base cleanup that archives visibly old material but lacks class-based retention, dependency gates, tombstones, quarantine, and tested restoration.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["artifact authors and subjects","current product and venture teams","investors and partners relying on prior claims","legal, privacy, compliance, and records functions","future teams reconstructing venture decisions"],"decision_authority":"The venture or product lead may label and archive ordinary artifacts; irreversible destruction requires the designated records owner, with legal or privacy approval where applicable. Artifact owners and cited decision owners can contest classification.","authorized_first_step":"Run a six-week, read-only-first pilot on at most 100 closed experiments from one product squad: inventory them, assign provisional lifecycle states, add supersession markers, and simulate disposition. Only owner-approved low-impact items may enter a 30-day recoverable quarantine; compare retrieval time and incorrect-current selections with an untreated artifact set.","excluded_actions":["automatic hard deletion","changing the historical content or stated outcome of an experiment","disposing of customer data, financial records, contracts, intellectual-property evidence, disputed material, or held records","using access frequency alone as evidence of low value","applying pilot rules outside the selected squad"],"halt_rollback":"Halt if any proposed action conflicts with a hold, loses a live dependency, denies an authorized retrieval, or causes users to select archived material as current more often. Restore quarantined items, remove provisional labels if necessary, preserve the audit log, and review the rule that failed."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"The dominant causes of inconsistent venture decisions may be incentives, turnover, weak experiment design, or deliberate narrative selection rather than stale artifacts; repository lifecycle state would then address an epiphenomenon.","analogy_break":"Venture evidence is interpretive and context-dependent, not a passive storage object: an old rejected hypothesis can become relevant after a market change, and consequential dependencies may be tacit, political, or external to any traceable graph.","failure_condition":"The approach fails if teams do not consult the repository, lifecycle labels are contested or unmaintained, dependencies cannot be observed, or archive friction causes parallel shadow copies.","problem_falsifier":"Across the bounded corpus, reviewers can already identify authoritative evidence reliably; obsolete artifacts are rare, clearly marked, and do not affect retrieval, interpretation, roadmap, or funding decisions.","intervention_falsifier":"Relative to the untreated set, the pilot does not reduce time to locate authoritative evidence or incorrect-current selections, or it increases missing-dependency incidents, contested classifications, or failed retrievals beyond the predeclared tolerance.","risks":["Lifecycle labels may confer unjustified authority on weak but current evidence.","Cleanup can sanitize failure history or enable selective storytelling.","Sensitive material may persist during quarantine or archive contrary to deletion duties.","Owners may preserve their own artifacts through permanent exceptions.","Staleness detection may encode one contested view of the market or strategy.","Archive tiers and summaries may hide nuance needed for later reinterpretation."]},"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":0.82,"generator_notes":"Closed-book structural transfer. Empirical effectiveness and prevalence claims remain hypotheses; prior art was not searched."}