{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__literature_literary_theory","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"literature_literary_theory","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"stale_annotation_accretion_in_living_critical_editions","causal_lever_id":"editorial_lifecycle_states_for_interpretive_layers","proposal":{"problem":"Living digital critical editions accumulate successive annotations, glosses, theoretical interpretations, bibliographic links, and editorial claims. Superseded or contextually stale layers can remain as visible and authoritative as current scholarship, while wholesale cleanup can erase reception history, citation anchors, and evidence needed to reconstruct editorial decisions.","actors_substrate":["editorial boards and edition maintainers","literary scholars and annotators","readers, students, and downstream citers","versioned annotations, glosses, links, and critical-apparatus records"],"observable_state":"An edition contains temporally deposited interpretive layers with inconsistent dates, validation status, supersession links, visibility, and preservation rules; users encounter obsolete claims or broken references without reliable cues distinguishing current guidance from historical interpretation.","consequence":"Search and interpretation are burdened by stale material, superseded claims can be cited as current, maintenance is deferred because deletion dependencies are unclear, and improvised removal can destroy scholarly provenance.","affected_objective":"Keep a living critical edition current and intelligible while preserving reconstructable reception and editorial history.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits with changing active usefulness","domain_realization":"Successive editorial notes, glosses, bibliographic references, and interpretations accumulate as scholarship and editions change.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"stale layers masquerade as current","domain_realization":"Undated or unlabeled superseded annotations retain equal interface prominence and apparent editorial authority.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"removal threatens reconstruction and auditability","domain_realization":"Deleting cited notes or prior readings can break citations and obscure how an edition's interpretation evolved.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"explicit lifecycle governance","domain_realization":"Each annotation receives a state such as active, review-due, superseded, historical, quarantined, or withdrawn, with recorded transitions.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"bounded active stack with preserved memory","domain_realization":"Only validated layers remain prominent; historically valuable or referenced layers remain recoverable with provenance.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Stable IDs and an inventory for every annotation and revision."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Creation, revision, and validation dates plus edition sequence."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Rules by layer class for active display, historical preservation, and withdrawal."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Age raises review priority but never establishes interpretive invalidity."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Elapsed review date, broken source, superseding edition, or contradicted factual premise triggers review."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Transparent indicators for citation use, provenance, historical value, staleness evidence, and reader-confusion risk."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Check citations, cross-references, variants, and editorial-history dependencies before withdrawal."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Refresh, supersede, demote to historical view, archive, or exceptionally delete."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named exceptions for reception history, unique scholarship, teaching use, or evidentiary value."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Logged withdrawal with a reversible quarantine period."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Budgets for editorial attention, interface prominence, indexing, and archival storage."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Periodic editorial review of flagged and excepted layers."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Rights, research-integrity, dispute, or institutional-record holds override disposal."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Current, historical-on-request, and preservation-only visibility tiers."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Identify notes lacking live citations, references, or reconstruction roles."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Visible link from an old interpretation to its successor and reason for change."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag repetitive revision chains for a synopsis while retaining originals."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Restore archived notes with identifiers, links, and provenance intact."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Estimate broken citations, lost historical evidence, and affected readers before withdrawal."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag broken references, obsolete factual premises, and notes superseded by later editorial findings."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Reject a single decayed score because old criticism may gain historical value; use inspectable indicators instead.","counterfactual_removal":"No causal loss; review remains multi-criteria."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Sample archived annotations and verify identifiers, text, provenance, and links restore correctly.","counterfactual_removal":"Archival recoverability would be asserted but untested."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Access recency cannot decide scholarly authority or preservation.","counterfactual_removal":"No change."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Trace citations, cross-references, and reconstruction paths before irreversible removal.","counterfactual_removal":"Cleanup could silently break citations and editorial history."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Translate tiers into current display, historical access, and preservation-only archive.","counterfactual_removal":"Lifecycle states could remain, but active interfaces would stay cluttered."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Blind generational purging ignores content and reception value.","counterfactual_removal":"No change."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Use class-based review and disposition rules with named scholarly and rights exceptions.","counterfactual_removal":"Layers revert to active-by-default accumulation and ad hoc cleanup."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Hide withdrawn layers temporarily while preserving an authorized restoration path.","counterfactual_removal":"Editorial mistakes become immediately irreversible."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Inventory layers and surface evidence of obsolete context without automatically judging interpretations false.","counterfactual_removal":"Editors lack a tractable review queue and stale layers remain invisible."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Fixed expiry is unsuitable for criticism; dates may trigger review, not self-executing deletion.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss because review triggers supply the safe function."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Preserve the removed layer's identity, reason, date, and successor for surviving citations.","counterfactual_removal":"Absence becomes ambiguous and citations can resolve as if the layer never existed."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory and date deposited interpretive layers.","Detect stale context and trigger class-specific editorial review.","Check scholarly value, exceptions, holds, citations, and reconstruction dependencies.","Refresh, supersede, demote, archive, or quarantine the layer while retaining a marker.","Reduce stale material's active authority while preserving recoverable editorial history.","Revalidate exceptions and test restoration on a schedule."],"baseline":"Editors leave most annotations active indefinitely and correct conspicuous problems individually when readers or maintainers notice them.","nearest_rival":"Improve metadata, search ranking, and dated-version display while retaining every layer as equally active content.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["annotators and cited scholars","readers and students","downstream citers","rights holders and institutional archives"],"decision_authority":"The edition's accountable editorial board, with archive or rights review for irreversible or contested disposition.","authorized_first_step":"On one bounded annotation set from a single work, inventory at most 200 layers, label proposed lifecycle states, and compare stale-item discovery and reader interpretation against the current interface; permit only reversible visibility demotion during the pilot.","excluded_actions":["automatic deletion based only on age, access, or score","silent rewriting of historical annotations","removal of cited, disputed, rights-held, or dependency-uncertain layers","claiming an interpretation is invalid solely because it is old"],"halt_rollback":"Halt if citations break, provenance cannot be reconstructed, readers more often confuse historical and current claims, or any affected editor identifies unrecorded loss; restore all demoted layers from quarantine and retain the audit log."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Older annotations may constitute valuable reception history, and readers may already distinguish dated commentary adequately; observed difficulty could arise from poor metadata or interface ranking rather than unmanaged lifecycle accumulation.","analogy_break":"Interpretive scholarship does not decay monotonically like cached data: an old reading can regain relevance, disagreement is not staleness, and no objective clock determines when criticism expires.","failure_condition":"The proposal fails if lifecycle labels merely encode current editorial preference, suppress legitimate minority readings, or create more review burden than the stale-layer problem imposes.","problem_falsifier":"In the sampled edition, stale or superseded layers are rare, reliably recognized by users, and do not measurably impair retrieval, citation, interpretation, or maintenance.","intervention_falsifier":"Compared with the baseline interface, lifecycle treatment does not improve correct identification of current versus historical claims, or it increases broken-reference, provenance-loss, or reader-confusion rates.","risks":["Canonization of current editorial judgments through visibility control.","False staleness flags for deliberately historical or contested interpretations.","Loss of citation continuity or scholarly credit.","Rights or privacy obligations may conflict with rollback retention.","Maintenance effort may shift from annotation to bureaucracy."]},"null_rationale":null,"classification":{"candidate_kind":"MECHANISM_ADAPTATION","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. The candidate treats annotations and editorial interpretations as deposited layers while explicitly rejecting chronological decay as a proxy for literary value."}