{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp04_retrieval_first_paired20_20260802","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__law_governance","arm":"PROPOSAL_FIRST","candidate_id":"pf-a5-guidance-lifecycle-register-001","hypothesis_id":null,"version":0,"title":"Expiring-Authority Register for Administrative Guidance","problem":"An administrative agency issues manuals, circulars, interpretations, forms, and temporary directives sequentially, but superseded layers often remain searchable without a reliable lifecycle state. Caseworkers may treat stale guidance as current, while wholesale removal can erase the material needed to reconstruct past decisions, conduct appeals, or satisfy preservation duties.","actors":["Agency policy owners","Frontline caseworkers","Applicants and regulated parties","Administrative appeals officers","Agency counsel","Records officers","Auditors and investigators"],"observable_state":"Within the agency guidance corpus, artifacts can be observed that lack an owner, effective period, supersession link, retention class, dependency record, or explicit active/expired/archived state; obsolete artifacts still appear in ordinary search results or citations, and archived artifacts may lack demonstrated restore paths.","consequence":"Decision-makers can apply conflicting or expired guidance, producing inconsistent determinations and avoidable appeals, while uncertain dependencies and preservation duties cause either indefinite active retention or risky deletion that impairs later reconstruction.","affected_objective":"Keep the operative guidance set bounded, current, and interpretable while preserving the evidence required to reconstruct historically valid decisions and comply with holds or retention obligations.","intervention":"Install a lifecycle register over one administrative guidance corpus. Give each artifact an identity, owner, effective period, supersession relation, retention class, lifecycle state, and dependency record. Detect and rank stale candidates, but require policy-owner review, preservation checks, and an inbound-dependency check before disposition. Demote expired guidance from ordinary search, archive reconstructively valuable versions, leave successor-aware tombstones, quarantine proposed deletions for a reversible interval, and periodically test restoration from the archive.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Sequentially deposited layers","domain_realization":"Successive manuals, circulars, interpretations, forms, FAQs, and temporary directives issued by an agency"},{"archetype_element":"Age and deposition index","domain_realization":"Issue date, effective date, amendment sequence, and supersession chain for each guidance artifact"},{"archetype_element":"Decay or expiration trigger","domain_realization":"End of stated effective period, enactment of a contradicting rule, replacement of a referenced procedure, departure of the responsible owner, or confirmed supersession"},{"archetype_element":"Differentiated lifecycle states","domain_realization":"Draft, active, review-due, expired, archived, quarantined, deleted-with-marker, and preserved-by-exception"},{"archetype_element":"Dependency and reconstruction check","domain_realization":"Trace citations from active workflows, forms, decisions, training materials, appeals, and historical reconstruction procedures before removal"},{"archetype_element":"Preservation exception","domain_realization":"Litigation hold, investigation, statutory retention duty, pending appeal, historical significance, or named evidentiary need"},{"archetype_element":"Reversible cleanup and deletion evidence","domain_realization":"Search demotion, archive placement, time-boxed quarantine, restoration route, and durable disposition record kept separately from removed content"},{"archetype_element":"Revalidation loop","domain_realization":"Periodic owner review of active guidance, exceptions, archive readability, and lifecycle rules"}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","role":"Maintains an identity-resolved inventory and surfaces guidance whose meaning may no longer match current law, procedure, ownership, or referenced systems; it proposes review and never changes authority by itself.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, stale layers remain dispersed and lifecycle review reverts to complaints or incidental discovery."},{"mechanism_slug":"age_weighted_value_score","role":"Ranks review candidates using age alongside current access, provenance, reconstruction value, and risk; legal or evidentiary flags veto automatic expiration.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, a large backlog has no comparable triage order and review selection is likely to be ad hoc, though no artifact becomes deletable merely because the score exists."},{"mechanism_slug":"retention_schedule","role":"Maps guidance classes to minimum and maximum retention periods, disposition paths, and preservation overrides, supplying the governing constraints for lifecycle decisions.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, disposition lacks a consistent class-level authority and temporary exceptions can silently become permanent retention."},{"mechanism_slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","role":"Blocks removal unless live inbound citations and reconstruction dependencies have been traced and resolved.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, low-value or expired guidance could be removed while still supporting a workflow, appeal record, form, or historical interpretation."},{"mechanism_slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","role":"Hides an approved deletion candidate from ordinary use while retaining a recoverable copy for a time-boxed period proportionate to estimated deletion impact.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, an erroneous disposition can become irreversible before omitted dependencies or preservation needs are discovered."},{"mechanism_slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","role":"Preserves the former artifact identity, disposition date and reason, and successor link so citations resolve to an explicit deletion or supersession state rather than an ambiguous absence.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, users cannot distinguish deleted guidance from missing guidance, and stale copies may be reintroduced as apparently valid."},{"mechanism_slug":"archive_restore_test","role":"Samples archived guidance across age and format bands and exercises retrieval, readability, citation resolution, and reconnection to the current register.","counterfactual_removal":"Without it, archive placement may provide only nominal recoverability and failures may remain hidden until an appeal or investigation requires reconstruction."}],"causal_chain":["Successive guidance artifacts receive explicit identities, dates, owners, supersession links, retention classes, and lifecycle states.","Meaning-based staleness signals and age-weighted scores create a ranked review queue without altering legal or administrative authority.","The responsible policy owner determines whether each candidate remains active, requires refresh, has expired, or needs preservation by exception.","The retention schedule and preservation register constrain the available disposition paths.","Inbound dependencies and reconstruction needs are traced; unresolved references block deletion and instead require remediation, continued retention, or archival treatment.","Expired guidance is removed from ordinary current-guidance search and either archived or placed into reversible quarantine.","Tombstones preserve identity and successor routing, while separate audit records preserve who authorized each disposition and why.","Restore drills and periodic exception reviews reveal archive failures and obsolete holds, feeding corrections back into the register.","If these links operate as intended, stale guidance competes less with current authority while historical decisions remain reconstructable."],"baseline":"Policy teams publish replacements and occasionally add a superseded banner or remove old intranet files; records staff apply broad retention categories separately. Search indexes, citations, legal holds, and historical copies are reconciled manually, usually during cleanup, litigation, audit, or appeal.","nearest_rivals":["A conventional document-management system with version history and a current-version flag; it can distinguish editions but may not govern semantic staleness, dependencies, preservation exceptions, quarantine, and tested restoration as one lifecycle.","A centralized codification or repeal register; it clarifies which formal rules are operative but may not cover the manuals, forms, temporary directives, and interpretive artifacts that mediate implementation.","A records-retention schedule alone; it supplies retention authority but does not necessarily prevent expired material from appearing as current guidance or prove that archived decision context can be reconstructed."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The candidate's testable contrast is the coupled transition from active authority to explicitly non-operative but reconstructable memory: semantic staleness detection initiates review, authority remains with named officials, dependency and preservation gates constrain disposition, and tombstones plus restore drills preserve historical interpretation. The claim is structural and does not assert novelty, prevalence, demand, or effect size.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The agency official who owns the guidance determines its operative status; the records officer governs retention and disposition; agency counsel controls legal or investigative holds. The register, score, and dashboard have no independent authority to repeal guidance or destroy records.","authorized_first_step":"Run a read-only retrospective pilot on a bounded sample from one program, producing proposed identities, lifecycle states, supersession links, dependencies, and disposition recommendations for authorized human review.","excluded_actions":["Automatically repealing, expiring, or revising guidance","Changing applicant or regulated-party rights or obligations","Deleting or overwriting any source artifact","Releasing a legal, investigative, or preservation hold","Suppressing material needed for a pending matter","Treating an age-weighted score as a legal conclusion","Publishing pilot classifications as official guidance"],"halt_rollback":"Halt the pilot if source identity cannot be resolved, ownership is disputed, a hold or pending matter is discovered, dependency coverage is materially incomplete, or reviewers find current guidance being labeled expired. Because the first step is read-only, rollback consists of withdrawing pilot labels and recommendations while leaving the corpus and its official search behavior unchanged."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"The proposal is weakened if ordinary document versioning plus the existing records schedule already yields reliable current-only retrieval, complete dependency tracing, explicit preservation exceptions, and routinely demonstrated historical restoration without an added lifecycle register.","problem_falsifier":"In a stratified sample, the problem is not supported if guidance artifacts already have unambiguous operative status and successor links, current search does not surface superseded artifacts as usable authority, and past determinations can be reconstructed without missing or unreadable layers.","intervention_falsifier":"The intervention is not supported if blinded reviewers using its register are no more accurate at identifying the guidance operative on a historical decision date, or if it creates unresolved false-expiration flags, omitted dependencies, or failed restores at a rate that makes lifecycle recommendations unsafe for further testing.","risks":["False precision from composite value scores","Incorrect expiration of guidance that remains legally or operationally relevant","Incomplete dependency maps, especially for external citations or informal workflows","Privacy or confidentiality exposure from retaining quarantined copies","Archive formats or credentials becoming unusable despite sampled tests","Lifecycle labels being mistaken for official legal determinations","Legal holds or historical exceptions becoming indefinite and unreviewed","Tombstones themselves accumulating or revealing sensitive metadata","Search demotion hiding material that users need for a historical-date inquiry"]},"next_evidence_step":"Select 150 guidance artifacts from one agency program, stratified across age, artifact type, and apparent current or superseded status. For 60 days, build the register read-only and have two authorized reviewers independently determine operative status on selected historical dates, successor relationships, preservation constraints, and inbound dependencies. Compare register-assisted review with the existing search-and-file process on classification agreement, time to locate operative guidance, unresolved citations, hold detection, and successful restoration of a small age-and-format-stratified archive sample. Predefine halt thresholds for any pilot label that could conceal current guidance or overlook a hold; make no production search changes or dispositions.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":[],"conceptual_changes":[],"operational_changes":[],"evidence_changes":[],"claim_changes":[]}}