{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__sociology_anthropology","trajectory_id":"R","attempt_index":0,"archetype_slug":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management","domain_slug":"sociology_anthropology","decision":"CANDIDATE","problem_id":"institutional_rule_sedimentation","causal_lever_id":"lifecycle_governance_for_sedimented_rules","proposal":{"problem":"Organizations accumulate policies, precedents, forms, and exceptions whose original contexts have ended but whose unmarked continued authority creates contradictory decisions, search burden, and unequal treatment. Uncontrolled removal, however, can erase accountability, relied-upon rights, and institutional memory.","actors_substrate":["members and service recipients subject to rules","frontline staff interpreting rules","policy owners and governing body","records and legal officers","successive policies, precedents, forms, exceptions, and their archive"],"observable_state":"A rule register shows multiple active items covering the same conduct, obsolete contextual assumptions, unresolved references, unknown owners, and exceptions with no review date; staff continue citing these items in current decisions.","consequence":"Sedimented rules produce inconsistent enforcement and preserve past power arrangements, while improvised cleanup risks eliminating evidence or protections on which affected groups rely.","affected_objective":"Maintain intelligible, consistent, accountable institutional governance without erasing legitimate reliance, contestation, or historical evidence.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"sequential deposits","domain_realization":"Successive administrations add policies, precedents, forms, and exceptions without retiring predecessors.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"stale layers mistaken for current truth","domain_realization":"Unmarked superseded rules remain discoverable and are treated as binding.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"retention and dependency constraints","domain_realization":"Some old rules remain necessary for appeals, rights claims, audits, or interpretation of earlier decisions.","claim_kind":"INFERENCE"},{"archetype_element":"managed expiration","domain_realization":"Rules receive explicit active, review, superseded, archived, held, or withdrawn states.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"},{"archetype_element":"bounded stack with reconstructable history","domain_realization":"Current guidance is separated from a recoverable record of prior institutional authority.","claim_kind":"HYPOTHESIS"}],"component_map":[{"component":"layer_inventory_and_identity_map","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Canonical register of rules, versions, aliases, owners, and scopes."},{"component":"deposition_order_and_age_index","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Enactment, amendment, and supersession chronology."},{"component":"retention_policy_matrix","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Rule-class matrix for active review, archival, and evidentiary retention."},{"component":"decay_function_or_aging_rule","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Age raises review priority but never alone cancels authority."},{"component":"expiration_trigger_definition","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Review date, contextual change, owner loss, or successor enactment triggers reassessment."},{"component":"layer_value_and_risk_score","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Transparent rubric for current use, reliance, rights, conflict, and evidentiary value."},{"component":"dependency_and_reconstruction_check","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Check citations, workflows, appeals, and historical reconstruction before withdrawal."},{"component":"pruning_or_archival_pathway","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Refresh, consolidate, supersede, archive, quarantine, or withdraw."},{"component":"preservation_exception_register","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Named historical, rights-protecting, evidentiary, and contested-item exceptions."},{"component":"deletion_audit_and_rollback_window","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Logged withdrawal followed by a reversible quarantine period."},{"component":"resource_budget_and_storage_tier","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Attention and access budget separates current guidance from archival material."},{"component":"review_cadence_and_revalidation_loop","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Periodic owner and affected-party review of rules and exceptions."},{"component":"legal_hold_or_compliance_override","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Litigation, investigation, statutory, or records hold blocks destruction."},{"component":"hot_warm_cold_access_state","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Current, reference-only, restricted archive, and deep archive states."},{"component":"orphan_layer_detection","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Identify rules with no owner, live citation, workflow, or reliance claim."},{"component":"supersession_marker","status":"direct","domain_realization":"Visible withdrawn or superseded marker pointing to the successor."},{"component":"layer_compaction_candidate_flag","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag overlapping rules for consolidation without erasing versions."},{"component":"rehydration_or_restore_procedure","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Procedure to retrieve archived text, metadata, citations, and decision context."},{"component":"deletion_impact_estimate","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Estimate affected decisions, groups, reliance interests, and reconstruction loss."},{"component":"stale_context_detector","status":"adapted","domain_realization":"Flag references to abolished roles, changed laws, defunct practices, or contradicted rules."}],"mechanism_dispositions":[{"slug":"age_weighted_value_score","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Age may prioritize review, but a composite score would falsely quantify legitimacy and can bury minority reliance interests.","counterfactual_removal":"No material loss; the transparent multi-criterion review remains."},{"slug":"archive_restore_test","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"TEST_DESIGN","adaptation_or_rejection":"Sample archived rules and prove that text, context, and citations can be reconstructed.","counterfactual_removal":"Archival recoverability would remain assumed rather than demonstrated."},{"slug":"cache_eviction_rule","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Recent use is not a legitimate basis for demoting binding or rights-protecting rules under instantaneous capacity pressure.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss; governance does not require cache-like eviction."},{"slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Withdrawal is blocked while live procedures, appeals, citations, or reliance claims depend on the rule.","counterfactual_removal":"Cleanup could break rights, decisions, and historical reconstruction."},{"slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","disposition":"selected_supporting","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Separate authoritative current guidance from reference and archival tiers while preserving identity.","counterfactual_removal":"Superseded rules would continue competing with current rules for visibility."},{"slug":"log_rotation_and_cleanup_job","disposition":"incompatible","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Generational position cannot determine the fate of heterogeneous institutional rules.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss; content- and obligation-sensitive disposition remains."},{"slug":"retention_schedule","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"CORE_CAUSAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Governed rule classes receive review and retention periods plus named preservation and legal overrides.","counterfactual_removal":"Items would again remain active or be removed through ad hoc discretion."},{"slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Withdraw from current use first, preserve recoverably, then destroy only after review.","counterfactual_removal":"Mistaken withdrawal could become immediately irreversible."},{"slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"OPERATIONAL","adaptation_or_rejection":"An owned register surfaces contextual staleness and conflicting authority without acting automatically.","counterfactual_removal":"The sedimented stack and its stale authority would remain difficult to identify."},{"slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","disposition":"considered_rejected","contribution_type":"NONE","adaptation_or_rejection":"Fixed self-executing expiry is too blind for rules carrying authority, rights, or contested reliance; use review triggers instead.","counterfactual_removal":"No loss; expiry remains deliberative and exception-aware."},{"slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","disposition":"selected_load_bearing","contribution_type":"SAFETY_GUARDRAIL","adaptation_or_rejection":"Keep a durable marker stating withdrawal date, reason, authority, and successor.","counterfactual_removal":"Absence would become ambiguous and obsolete copies could regain apparent authority."}],"causal_chain":["Inventory and date the rule stack.","Detect contextual staleness, conflicts, and missing ownership.","Apply class-based retention rules and open affected-party review.","Block withdrawal where dependencies, holds, reliance, or historical value remain.","Label and tier superseded material away from current guidance.","Quarantine withdrawals, preserve tombstones, and verify archival restoration.","Reduced false authority and clearer current guidance improve consistency while retaining accountability."],"baseline":"Occasional complaint-driven cleanup by policy owners; most old rules stay active because status, dependencies, and removal authority are unclear.","nearest_rival":"A one-time legal or editorial consolidation that rewrites the current manual but lacks continuing review, dependency gates, reversible withdrawal, and reconstructable archives.","authority_safety":{"affected_parties":["people governed by the rules","frontline interpreters","groups relying on exceptions or protections","policy and records staff","future investigators and historians"],"decision_authority":"The institution's duly constituted governing or policy body approves state changes; records and legal officers control holds, while affected parties receive notice and a contest channel.","authorized_first_step":"Run a 90-day pilot in one consenting organizational unit on 30 overlapping rules: inventory and label only, convene affected-party review, simulate tiering, and restore a sample archive; permit reversible status changes but no destruction.","excluded_actions":["automatic expiry based only on age or use","irreversible destruction during the pilot","removal of held, contested, or dependency-uncertain material","retroactive invalidation of prior rights or decisions","concealing superseded rules from authorized audit"],"halt_rollback":"Halt if a status change disrupts a live service, appeal, protection, or reconstructability, or if affected parties cannot contest it; restore the prior visible state from quarantine and review the dependency map."}},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"Apparent contradictions may represent deliberate pluralism or protections for different constituencies; labeling them stale could centralize authority and erase legitimate local interpretation.","analogy_break":"Institutional rules are socially interpreted claims backed by contested authority, not inert files; use and age do not determine legitimacy, and archival demotion can itself change power.","failure_condition":"The approach fails if rule identity, ownership, dependencies, or legitimate disposition authority cannot be established without suppressing contested claims.","problem_falsifier":"Audit of the pilot unit finds few overlapping or context-stale rules, and observed inconsistency is explained mainly by discretion, resource scarcity, or unequal enforcement rather than accumulated rule layers.","intervention_falsifier":"The diagnosed sedimentation is real, but after the pilot the lifecycle treatment does not reduce obsolete-rule citation or decision inconsistency, or it increases unresolved reliance harms relative to baseline.","risks":["Central actors may label inconvenient protections obsolete.","Archival tiers may become practically inaccessible despite formal preservation.","Composite classifications may disguise political judgments as administration.","Sensitive historical records may be overexposed or retained too long.","Added review work may create another unmaintained governance layer."]},"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 inference from the supplied packet; empirical prevalence and effects are unverified."}