{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp06_four_proposal_generalization60_20260803","cell_id":"representation_independent_interface_contract__aviation_aeronautics","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_id":"ripc-aviation-maintenance-obligation-ledger-003","proposal_index":3,"version":0,"title":"Opaque Maintenance-Obligation Ledger for Aircraft Configuration and Usage Evidence","problem":"An aircraft operator's maintenance-planning, component-tracking, and records-review clients obtain aircraft configuration, accumulated usage, maintenance credit, and remaining-interval information by reading shared database tables and derived status columns. Each client consequently embeds assumptions about row order, null values, correction handling, unit conversion, installation history, counter resets, and when an accomplishment grants credit. Replacing the database, replaying records into a new backend, or changing how derived fields are cached can then alter obligation status even when the nominal data-access interface remains available. The organization lacks a representation-independent definition of the state transitions and observable answers that constitute the maintenance-obligation ledger.","actors":["Aircraft maintenance-records personnel","Maintenance-planning engineers","Aircraft configuration and component-tracking teams","Line-maintenance and technical-operations users","Maintenance software engineers","Authorized maintenance, airworthiness, and operational-release decision makers"],"observable_state":"The condition is observable in a bounded dependency and replay audit if client code queries internal tables or calculated columns directly, orders corrections by database insertion identifiers, treats null or sentinel values as maintenance status, recomputes usage or credit locally, or produces different obligation answers after logically equivalent records are loaded in a different order or stored in a different schema. Relevant outputs include installed-configuration state, accumulated usage, credited accomplishments, remaining interval, overdue or indeterminate status, conflict flags, error categories, revision identity, and the evidence cited for each answer.","consequence":"A storage migration, cache change, or record replay can silently change whether a maintenance obligation appears satisfied, remaining, overdue, or indeterminate. Different clients can also derive incompatible answers from the same evidence. This weakens traceability from a displayed status to the records and transition rules that produced it; the software result could then be misused in planning or release decisions unless authorized personnel independently resolve the discrepancy.","affected_objective":"Preserve consistent and traceable maintenance-obligation state across ledger implementations without freezing a database schema or transferring maintenance and operational-release authority to the software.","intervention":"Define an opaque AircraftMaintenanceObligationLedger as a stateful abstract component. Its abstract state consists of a versioned aircraft configuration, installed component identities, accepted usage evidence, maintenance requirements, credited accomplishments, supersession links, unresolved conflicts, and an immutable audit history. Public operations establish an approved baseline, submit a typed evidence event, supersede rather than erase an erroneous event, derive an as-of snapshot, query an obligation, compare revisions, and request a sanctioned evidence explanation. Preconditions and postconditions allocate responsibility for identifiers, units, occurrence times, evidence authority, configuration applicability, and correction links. Invariants prohibit silent history deletion, double installation of one serialized component, credit without an applicable requirement and evidence reference, and conversion of contradictory evidence into a definite answer. Event logs, relational tables, graphs, caches, derived columns, and replay algorithms remain hidden. Every implementation must run the same operation-sequence conformance oracle before it is considered behaviorally substitutable. The contract returns evidence status and conflicts; it does not decide aircraft release, approve a deferral, or amend an official maintenance record.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Abstract behavioral surface","domain_realization":"Operations include establish_baseline, submit_evidence, supersede_event, snapshot_as_of, query_obligation, compare_revision, and explain_status over an opaque ledger handle."},{"archetype_element":"Abstract state and transitions","domain_realization":"The ledger transitions among versioned configurations and evidence states as installation, removal, utilization, accomplishment, and correction events are accepted; queries observe a revision without directly mutating it."},{"archetype_element":"Hidden representation","domain_realization":"Database tables, event-store partitions, graph edges, materialized views, cache keys, internal record ordering, and derived status columns are non-contractual."},{"archetype_element":"Representation invariant and abstraction function","domain_realization":"Each concrete backend must map every valid stored state to exactly one abstract ledger revision while preserving event identity, provenance, supersession, configuration applicability, usage units, conflicts, and audit history."},{"archetype_element":"Behavioral laws and invariants","domain_realization":"A query is stable for an immutable revision; an accepted duplicate event is idempotent; supersession preserves the original event and identifies its replacement; independent nonconflicting events commute; conflicting events yield an explicit indeterminate or conflict state; as-of snapshots exclude later-known evidence according to the declared cutoff semantics; and a component cannot occupy mutually exclusive installation positions in one definite configuration."},{"archetype_element":"Error and side-effect semantics","domain_realization":"The contract distinguishes malformed evidence, duplicate identity, unauthorized evidence type, unit incompatibility, configuration mismatch, unresolved conflict, unsupported historical query, and internal failure. A rejected operation leaves the prior revision unchanged."},{"archetype_element":"Conformance oracle","domain_realization":"A parameterized black-box suite submits generated event sequences, duplicates, corrections, conflicting installations, unit conversions, out-of-order arrivals, and as-of queries to every candidate backend and compares only contract-level state and explanations."},{"archetype_element":"Substitutability rule","domain_realization":"A backend is eligible for further assurance only if it passes the common behavioral suite, preserves required evidence traceability, exposes no forbidden storage assumptions, and meets separately specified durability and resource constraints. Passing does not authorize migration of official records."},{"archetype_element":"Leakage control and stewardship","domain_realization":"A leakage watchlist covers database identifiers, row order, timestamp precision, null conventions, status-code numbering, cache timing, and diagnostic text. Contract changes require maintenance-records and authority review; conforming internal storage changes remain the backend owner's responsibility."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"abstract_data_type_specification","role":"Models the ledger by its configuration, evidence, obligation, conflict, and revision semantics and requires each backend to define a representation invariant and mapping to that abstract state.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the abstract state and mapping, the intervention would be a database wrapper and could not certify that relational, event-sourced, or graph implementations mean the same thing."},{"mechanism_slug":"opaque_type_or_module_boundary","role":"Makes stored records and derived columns unreachable, forcing clients to use declared evidence-transition and query operations.","counterfactual_removal":"Clients could continue reading rows and reconstructing status locally, so storage details would remain an unofficial contract."},{"mechanism_slug":"design_by_contract_clause","role":"Defines obligations for evidence identity, authority, units, applicability, correction links, errors, and unchanged state after rejected submissions.","counterfactual_removal":"Clients and backends could assign different meanings to invalid, duplicated, corrected, or conflicting records despite sharing operation signatures."},{"mechanism_slug":"black_box_contract_test_suite","role":"Uses one public-surface-only battery to determine whether alternate ledger backends preserve observable state transitions and queries.","counterfactual_removal":"Backend-specific regression tests could all pass while the same event history produced different obligation answers across implementations."},{"mechanism_slug":"property_based_conformance_test","role":"Generates long event sequences and checks idempotence, commutativity of independent events, audit preservation, configuration consistency, and invariant preservation after every accepted transition.","counterfactual_removal":"Handwritten cases could miss interactions among out-of-order evidence, corrections, installations, accumulated usage, and historical queries."},{"mechanism_slug":"reference_implementation_differential_test","role":"Replays bounded histories through a deliberately simple immutable model and a candidate backend, comparing abstract revisions, obligation states, conflicts, and evidence explanations.","counterfactual_removal":"General laws alone might not determine the exact state of complex but valid histories, leaving no practical oracle for many sequence-specific answers."},{"mechanism_slug":"representation_leakage_probe","role":"Subtracts the promised surface from all observable identifiers, ordering, timestamps, status encodings, diagnostics, and timing behavior and requires each residual leak to be sealed or sanctioned.","counterfactual_removal":"Clients could infer database structure or depend on incidental replay order even though direct table access had been removed."},{"mechanism_slug":"abstraction_barrier_code_review","role":"Reviews producer and client changes for new dependence on backend-specific fields or unpromised status behavior and records recurring boundary rulings.","counterfactual_removal":"Human-readable exports, troubleshooting hooks, and convenience methods could gradually restore storage coupling through sanctioned-looking access paths."},{"mechanism_slug":"semantic_versioning_and_deprecation_gate","role":"Separates compatible operation additions and internal storage changes from breaking changes to transition rules, evidence semantics, errors, or obligation meaning.","counterfactual_removal":"A rule change could be presented as a backend update, or a representation-only migration could trigger unnecessary client rewrites."}],"causal_chain":["Maintenance clients obtain obligation information through shared storage structures and derived fields rather than through a complete behavioral contract.","They independently interpret record ordering, corrections, units, configuration applicability, nulls, and maintenance-credit rules.","A backend migration, cache redesign, or logically equivalent record replay changes those accidental representation features.","Client-derived configuration, usage, credit, or remaining-interval answers then diverge, with no common oracle separating a storage difference from a semantic rule change.","The intervention replaces storage access with an opaque stateful ledger defined by evidence operations, transition laws, invariants, errors, historical-query semantics, and evidence explanations.","Representation mappings and a reusable sequence-based oracle judge relational, event-sourced, graph, or other backends against the same abstract ledger behavior.","Conforming storage changes become distinguishable from changes to maintenance meaning, while conflicts and under-specified rules surface for authorized human resolution instead of being silently converted into definite status."],"baseline":"Retain the shared maintenance database, calculated status fields, direct reporting queries, and client-specific business logic. Validate backend changes with schema checks, sampled record counts, and separate end-to-end tests for each consuming application.","nearest_rivals":["Standardize one canonical maintenance-record database schema. This can align fields but freezes a storage representation and does not fully define event sequencing, correction, conflict, idempotence, or as-of query behavior.","Build a read-only reporting warehouse or common materialized view. This consolidates access but can reproduce stale derived fields and still leaves transition semantics in upstream loaders or downstream clients.","Install a centralized maintenance rules engine over the existing tables. This centralizes calculations but remains coupled to table meaning unless its own abstract state, error behavior, and substitution criteria are specified.","Adopt an append-only event store. Immutability improves auditability, but an event log alone does not determine how conflicting, duplicated, corrected, or out-of-order events map to obligation state.","Expose a typed service API over the current database. Signatures can block direct SQL while leaving status semantics, state transitions, and backend leakage under-specified.","Validate a migration through record counts and sampled before-and-after reports. Such checks may detect gross loss but do not systematically exercise behavioral laws or discriminating event sequences."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"Relative to these rivals, the proposal's narrower testable claim is that specifying the maintenance ledger as an opaque state machine over evidence—with invariant-preserving transitions, conflict semantics, historical queries, and a shared sequence oracle—can distinguish backend substitutability from mere schema compatibility or record-count agreement. It does not claim that software conformance determines maintenance compliance or aircraft release.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"Authorized maintenance-records, continuing-airworthiness, and operational-release personnel retain authority over evidence acceptance in official systems, maintenance credit, deferrals, discrepancy resolution, aircraft status, and release. Software and test teams may specify and evaluate the contract but cannot make those decisions.","authorized_first_step":"Conduct a read-only shadow replay in an isolated environment using a bounded, approved set of de-identified historical or synthetic event sequences. Implement the proposed interface around a copy of the incumbent logic and an independent simple model; compare only test-ledger revisions, statuses, conflicts, and evidence explanations.","excluded_actions":["No write to an official aircraft, component, maintenance, or utilization record","No change to a released aircraft's maintenance status or operational availability","No approval of maintenance credit, deferral, escalation, interval adjustment, or return to service","No connection of experimental outputs to dispatch or maintenance-release workflows","No destructive correction or deletion of source evidence","No claim that conformance demonstrates regulatory compliance, airworthiness, or record completeness","No movement of controlled maintenance data outside its approved boundary"],"halt_rollback":"Stop if the test cannot preserve source provenance, maps contradictory evidence to a definite status, changes incumbent outputs merely by wrapping them, exposes controlled records, or produces discrepancies that authorized subject-matter reviewers cannot classify. Roll back by deleting only the isolated test-ledger instances and disabling the test adapters; official records, incumbent applications, and decision workflows remain unchanged."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"A dependency audit and controlled backend perturbation show that all bounded clients already use documented evidence operations, never inspect storage, apply no local maintenance logic, and return identical abstract states when database layout, row order, caching, and replay order are changed without changing declared semantics.","problem_falsifier":"For the scoped clients and histories, every observable dependency traces to an explicit reviewed transition or query rule, and independent backends produce identical configuration, usage, credit, conflict, historical, and explanation results for all discriminating sequences.","intervention_falsifier":"A common contract cannot make a known-valid incumbent backend and a known-valid independent model agree without exposing their schemas, suppressing maintenance-relevant distinctions, or assigning definite answers to unresolved evidence conflicts. The proposed abstraction would then be an unsuitable boundary.","risks":["The abstract state may omit maintenance-program, configuration, jurisdiction, or evidence-authority context needed to interpret an obligation.","A simple reference model may encode the same mistaken rule as the incumbent or be too incomplete to judge complex histories.","Generated sequences may fail to represent irregular but valid correction and utilization histories.","Commutativity may be asserted for events whose applicability actually depends on order.","Opaque storage may make investigation harder unless evidence explanations and sanctioned audit access are sufficient.","Version rules may inadequately distinguish a corrected business rule from a breaking semantic change.","Shadow replay may contain incomplete histories, making apparent backend divergence a source-data problem.","Users may treat a deterministic ledger answer as authorization even though the governing evidence or decision remains subject to human review."]},"next_evidence_step":"Select one obligation type and one bounded aircraft or synthetic configuration history, including installation, removal, utilization, accomplishment, duplicate, correction, conflict, and out-of-order cases. Before replay, write the abstract states, operation clauses, evidence cutoff semantics, invariants, error categories, and expected treatment of unresolved conflicts. Implement an immutable reference model, wrap the incumbent logic, and create seeded faulty implementations that delete superseded evidence, accept duplicate utilization twice, order by insertion ID, double-install a component, or silently choose one conflicting record. Run the identical black-box and property-based sequence suite against each implementation and perform a leakage audit of returned identifiers, ordering, timestamps, and explanations. Record whether seeded defects are rejected and classify every incumbent-reference divergence as an implementation defect, contract gap, source-data ambiguity, or invalid abstraction. This evidence remains confined to the test environment and does not alter official maintenance status.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Proposal 1 concerned a ground-based trajectory predictor and the representation of future space-time occupancy used by air-traffic conflict tools. Its causal path ran from leaked waypoint and uncertainty structures through predictor substitution to divergent conflict indications; its intervention was a stateless-query-oriented predicted-flight-volume contract. Proposal 2 concerned alternate numerical encodings of one released aerodynamic response field used in aircraft simulation, loads, trim, and control-law analysis. Its causal path ran from exposed coefficient grids and interpolation conventions through re-encoding to divergent engineering results; its intervention was an immutable configuration-and-flight-condition response mapping. This proposal instead concerns a stateful maintenance-evidence ledger whose meaning emerges from ordered and partially commutative installation, usage, accomplishment, correction, and conflict transitions. Its causal path runs from shared-table and derived-column dependencies through backend replay or migration to inconsistent maintenance-obligation status. Its intervention, evidence, actors, authority boundary, and failure modes are independently adoptable: it uses event-sequence invariants, historical snapshots, supersession, and evidence explanations rather than trajectory-containment queries or aerodynamic coefficient evaluation. It is neither a feature nor an implementation component of either earlier proposal.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Generated the third sealed complete proposal","Established material independence from sealed proposals 1 and 2"],"conceptual_changes":["Instantiated the archetype as a stateful maintenance-obligation ledger defined by evidence transitions and invariants.","Separated ledger conformance from maintenance-credit, compliance, and aircraft-release authority."],"operational_changes":["Restricted first evidence to an isolated read-only shadow replay.","Added explicit prohibitions on official-record mutation and operational use."],"evidence_changes":["Specified generated event-sequence testing, an immutable reference model, seeded transition defects, historical queries, and a representation-leakage audit."],"claim_changes":["Limited the claim to distinguishing behavioral backend substitution from schema compatibility or record-count agreement.","Made no novelty, prevalence, demand, effect-size, compliance, or airworthiness claim."]}}