{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp05_complete_proposal_portfolio20_20260803","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__physics","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_id":"physics_accelerator_interlock_override_lifecycle","proposal_index":4,"version":0,"title":"Expiring Safety-Override Layers for Accelerator Operating Modes","problem":"During accelerator commissioning, maintenance, and experimental-mode development, authorized teams may add temporary interlock masks, alarm suppressions, threshold deviations, or conditional bypasses over the baseline machine-protection configuration. These sequential rule layers can remain active after their owner, hardware context, test, or approved operating interval has changed. A stale override can therefore continue modifying beam-permission logic without a current justification. Deleting old overrides indiscriminately is also unsafe: a commissioned operating mode may still depend on one, and incident reconstruction may require the exact protection stack that was active at the time.","actors":["accelerator operations coordinator","machine-protection system owner","controls engineer","beam physicist responsible for an operating mode","equipment subsystem owner","radiation-safety representative","incident-review lead","configuration custodian"],"observable_state":"For every override, operators can inspect its identity, affected baseline rule, functional category, creator, accountable owner, justification, creation time, approved machine mode, hardware configuration, commissioning test, start and expiry conditions, current activation state, dependent mode recipes, linked work authorization, review date, successor, preservation holds, and archived audit state. The failure state is an override that remains active without a current owner or matching context, lacks a bounded expiry, conflicts with another layer, or cannot be removed because its operational and investigative dependencies are unknown.","consequence":"A context-stale override can leave the executed protection logic different from the reviewed baseline when equipment or beam conditions change. Conversely, uncoordinated removal can prevent a validated mode from starting, induce unnecessary protective stops, or obscure why an earlier operation was permitted. Destroying the historical rule stack can also impair incident reconstruction and accountability.","affected_objective":"Keep executed accelerator protection logic aligned with the currently authorized machine state while bounding temporary override accumulation and preserving sufficient configuration history for commissioned-mode recovery and incident reconstruction.","intervention":"Place temporary machine-protection overrides under a fail-safe lease lifecycle. At authorization, give each override a durable identity, narrowly scoped machine context, accountable owner, review boundary, and expiration action. The lease expires at a safe operational boundary, such as before the next mode authorization, rather than changing protection logic unexpectedly during an active run. Expiration removes the override from permission eligibility and requires explicit renewal; it does not erase its record. A read-only lifecycle monitor compares active layers with current hardware, mode recipes, owners, and authorization state. Before an override is purged from recoverable history, a dependency gate traces commissioned modes, control recipes, open maintenance work, investigations, and mandated records. Disabled overrides enter a recoverable quarantine, archived protection stacks are periodically replayed in an isolated logic emulator, and tombstones retain the removed override's scope, history, rationale, and successor.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Sequential deposits remain active after their usefulness or validity changes","domain_realization":"Temporary masks, suppressions, and threshold exceptions are deposited over baseline protection logic during successive commissioning and maintenance episodes, but can persist after their approved context ends."},{"archetype_element":"Layer inventory and identity map","domain_realization":"Each override is resolved to the baseline rule it modifies, its owner, authorization, machine context, active mode recipes, and audit history."},{"archetype_element":"Deposition order and age index","domain_realization":"Creation order, activation intervals, time since validation, last authorized use, and configuration generation identify how the executed rule stack accumulated."},{"archetype_element":"Decay and expiration rule","domain_realization":"An override's operational standing decays when its review date, owner authorization, hardware match, or approved mode ends; its lease then expires at a defined safe boundary."},{"archetype_element":"Expired does not mean destroyed","domain_realization":"An expired override loses permission authority but remains available for dependency review, controlled reinstatement, configuration comparison, or incident reconstruction."},{"archetype_element":"Dependency and reconstruction check","domain_realization":"Historical removal is blocked while a commissioned mode, control recipe, open work authorization, safety review, or incident record depends on the override."},{"archetype_element":"Preservation exception register","domain_realization":"Named overrides can be held for an active investigation, scheduled commissioning sequence, regulatory record, or disputed configuration reconstruction, with an owner and revalidation date."},{"archetype_element":"Reversible cleanup pathway","domain_realization":"An override first transitions to disabled quarantine, where it is excluded from live permission resolution but remains recoverable under authorized change control."},{"archetype_element":"Deletion marker and supersession lineage","domain_realization":"A tombstone records that an override existed, when and why it lost authority, which baseline or successor replaced it, and where retained evidence resides."},{"archetype_element":"Review cadence and restore validation","domain_realization":"Recurring lease review bounds active exceptions, while isolated replay tests check that archived rule stacks can still reconstruct historical protection decisions."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"time_to_live_ttl_policy","role":"Stamps each temporary override with a bounded authorization lease when it is created. Expiry blocks the override from the next applicable mode authorization unless an authorized owner renews it after review.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the precommitted lease, continued activation becomes the default and temporary exceptions can persist solely because no one initiates removal."},{"mechanism_slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","role":"Provides a read-only inventory and flags active overrides whose owner, hardware context, mode, authorization, validation, or successor relationship no longer agrees with current state.","counterfactual_removal":"Without context-aware detection, an override can look administratively present but give operators no consolidated evidence that its original justification has become stale."},{"mechanism_slug":"age_weighted_value_score","role":"Ranks overrides for human review using age, inactivity, context mismatch, ownership status, operational dependency, investigative value, and restoration difficulty. Safety relevance and live dependencies act as vetoes; the score cannot modify logic.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a ranking input, review must proceed ad hoc or by age alone, which can focus attention on harmless recent layers while missing older unowned exceptions."},{"mechanism_slug":"retention_schedule","role":"Defines ordinary lease lengths, minimum historical retention, review cadence, disposition paths, and preservation exceptions for classes such as commissioning masks, maintenance suppressions, diagnostic-only alarms, and emergency authorizations.","counterfactual_removal":"Without class-specific rules, unlike overrides receive arbitrary lifetimes, while temporary investigative or operational holds can silently become permanent."},{"mechanism_slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","role":"Blocks purging an override record until inbound references from commissioned modes, recipes, work authorizations, investigations, and required audit records have been resolved.","counterfactual_removal":"Without this gate, cleanup could erase a rule still required to reproduce an approved mode or explain a historical protection decision."},{"mechanism_slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","role":"Separates loss of live authority from destruction by placing disabled overrides in controlled quarantine for a risk-sized interval with an explicit reinstatement path.","counterfactual_removal":"Without quarantine, an erroneous dependency verdict or expiry decision would force either immediate irreversible loss or indefinite active retention."},{"mechanism_slug":"archive_restore_test","role":"Restores sampled historical protection stacks into an isolated emulator and verifies that their rules, ordering, referenced baseline, and decision outputs can be reconstructed without connection to live equipment.","counterfactual_removal":"Without replay of the actual archived stack, retained files and audit metadata cannot establish that a past protection decision remains reconstructable."},{"mechanism_slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","role":"Leaves a durable marker after an override is purged, recording its former scope, activation interval, disposition, retained evidence, and successor resolution.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a marker, a missing override is ambiguous between intentional retirement, failed deployment, corruption, or an incomplete historical export."}],"causal_chain":["Authorized commissioning and maintenance activities add temporary rule layers over baseline machine-protection logic.","As hardware, beam modes, owners, and work authorizations change, some layers lose their original context while remaining technically active.","The inventory compares each active layer with its authorization and current machine context, exposing stale or conflicting exceptions.","A bounded lease makes continued permission opt-in and routes expired overrides to review at a safe operational boundary.","Human review, class rules, and dependency tracing distinguish overrides that require renewal, historical preservation, controlled retirement, or investigation holds.","Retired overrides lose live authority before entering recoverable quarantine, preventing stale execution while retaining rollback.","After the quarantine window, cleared histories may be compacted or purged while tombstones preserve identity and successor resolution.","Isolated restore tests verify that archived stacks can reconstruct past protection decisions.","Recurring expiry and exception revalidation keep the executable override stack bounded without erasing required operational or investigative memory."],"baseline":"The baseline uses change tickets, control-system configuration files, shift logs, and periodic expert review. Temporary exceptions may be removed manually after commissioning or persist in mode-specific configurations, while historical snapshots are retained separately. Activation authority, expiry, operational dependency, investigative retention, and reconstructability are not represented as one lifecycle.","nearest_rivals":["Manual periodic override review: permits expert judgment but depends on complete inventories and recurring attention, and it does not make continued authority expire by default.","A fixed hard timeout for every override: bounds persistence but can invalidate an approved multi-stage commissioning sequence or change behavior at an unsafe operational moment.","Immutable protection-configuration snapshots: preserve historical states but do not identify which individual override remains authorized or prevent an old snapshot from being reused in a changed context.","Ordinary configuration diff and approval workflows: reveal changes at deployment but do not govern how temporary rule layers age, acquire dependencies, enter quarantine, or leave active authority.","Rebuilding each mode from the current baseline: removes historical exception accumulation but can discard validated mode-specific behavior and weaken incident reconstruction.","Failing all mode authorization whenever any exception exists: provides a conservative gate but does not distinguish reviewed temporary overrides from stale ones or manage historical retention."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The proposal's specific claim is that a temporary safety override should be governed as a time-bounded authority layer rather than merely as a configuration value. Its permission authority expires at a safe operational boundary, while dependency-aware quarantine, historical replay, and tombstones preserve legitimate recovery and accountability needs separately from live execution.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The machine-protection system owner and operations coordinator jointly authorize activation or renewal; the affected equipment owner confirms context; radiation-safety review participates where required by existing facility rules; the configuration custodian manages archival state. No score, dashboard, or expiry job may independently enable an override. Irreversible historical disposal requires a cleared dependency verdict and the approvals required by the facility's existing records policy.","authorized_first_step":"Construct a read-only shadow inventory from one retired subsystem or offline test stand and replay its historical baseline and override stacks in an isolated emulator. Simulate lease expirations and safe-boundary outcomes without connecting to live controls, modifying configuration repositories, or changing any operating authorization.","excluded_actions":["creating, activating, renewing, or testing an override on live equipment","changing protection logic automatically when a lease expires during active operation","treating the review score as authorization to disable or purge a rule","revealing or exporting sensitive override details beyond authorized facility personnel","deleting configuration history with an unresolved mode, work-order, investigation, or records dependency","assuming that an unowned override is safe to remove","using emulator results as production authorization without the existing protection review process"],"halt_rollback":"Halt if the shadow inventory cannot reproduce the known executed stack, an archived baseline is missing, a simulated expiration would alter logic during an active-state boundary, or the dependency check misses a known mode or investigation. Leave all live and source configurations unchanged, discard only ordinary isolated emulator outputs, and mark all generated lifecycle states non-authoritative."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"The control architecture already makes every temporary override nonpersistent, binds it cryptographically or procedurally to one approved machine state, requires explicit authorization before every use, preserves complete immutable execution histories, and leaves no accumulated active or unidentified exception stack. In that condition, the proposed lifecycle would duplicate existing controls.","problem_falsifier":"The problem is falsified in the pilot scope if every override already has a current owner, bounded context, enforced expiration, complete dependency record, and reconstructable history; no exception survives a state transition without reauthorization; and no cleanup or retention decision remains unresolved.","intervention_falsifier":"The intervention is falsified if shadow leases fail to identify known stale or context-mismatched overrides, incorrectly expire authorized mode dependencies, cannot reproduce historical rule ordering, or provide no actionable distinction beyond existing change control. Failure of sampled archived stacks to replay also falsifies the claimed reconstruction safeguard until corrected.","risks":["Incorrect context metadata could expire a justified override or leave a stale one eligible.","Changing rule authority at the wrong operational boundary could cause an unnecessary stop or an unsafe transition.","A numerical review score may conceal uncertainty or be mistaken for a safety judgment.","Dependencies embedded in operator practice, external procedures, or undocumented mode sequences may be missed.","A recoverable quarantine copy remains sensitive configuration material requiring access control.","Archived rule syntax or emulator behavior may drift from the historical execution environment.","Repeated preservation holds can recreate indefinite accumulation in the archive.","Tombstones can reveal sensitive operational history or themselves become an unmanaged layer stack."]},"next_evidence_step":"Using a retired subsystem or offline test stand, reconcile a bounded set of historical overrides against baselines, mode recipes, change authorizations, owners, and known investigations. Have one protection team assign shadow lifecycle states and dependencies, while an independent controls-and-operations panel adjudicates the same cases without seeing the review score. Seed the emulator with documented examples of expired ownership, hardware-context change, overlapping exceptions, and valid long-running commissioning dependencies. Compare false expirations, missed stale layers, unresolved references, and historical replay failures against manual review and fixed-timeout baselines. Make no live configuration or authority changes.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Proposal 1 governs shot-deposited physical debris films on optical shields and routes contaminated hardware through measurement, replacement, cleaning, quarantine, or specimen preservation. This proposal governs executable safety-rule exceptions; no physical deposit, optical-transfer measurement, cartridge handling, or cleaning is involved. Proposal 2 governs Markov-chain field configurations whose statistical sample membership and storage value diverge. This proposal does not select simulation samples or manage restart data; it bounds temporary behavioral permissions in accelerator protection logic. Proposal 3 governs scientific calibration payloads used to correct detector data, separating default resolver validity from historical retention. This proposal governs live machine-permission exceptions and therefore expires authority at safe operational boundaries under protection ownership, with the causal path running from accumulated overrides to altered protection behavior rather than from stale calibration to reconstructed-quantity inconsistency. It is independently adoptable by an accelerator controls and machine-protection program without adopting any optical-shield, simulation-configuration, or detector-calibration lifecycle.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Created one complete proposal at index 4.","Addressed a materially different problem from proposals 1, 2, and 3.","Specified a distinct intervention, causal path, authority structure, safeguards, rivals, falsifiers, and bounded evidence step.","Explicitly explained diversity from every earlier sealed proposal."],"conceptual_changes":["Initial formulation; no parent version.","Instantiated accumulated layers as temporary accelerator machine-protection overrides.","Separated live permission authority from historical retention and incident-reconstruction value."],"operational_changes":["Initial formulation; no parent version.","Defined fail-safe leases, safe-boundary expiry, context monitoring, dependency-gated quarantine, isolated historical replay, and tombstones.","Restricted initial evidence to a retired subsystem or offline test stand with no live control connection."],"evidence_changes":["Initial formulation; no parent version.","Specified independent adjudication and seeded historical replay against manual-review and fixed-timeout baselines."],"claim_changes":["Initial formulation; no parent version.","Limited the contrastive claim to lifecycle governance of temporary behavioral authority with separately preserved history.","Made no claim of novelty, prevalence, demand, or effect size."]}}