{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp09_archetype_breadth150_20260804","cell_id":"backcasting_pathway_design__computer_science","arm":"BREADTH_PROBE_ONE_SHOT","candidate_id":"backcasting_pathway_design__computer_science__P1","proposal_index":1,"version":0,"title":"Clean-Room Replay Backcast for Reproducible Compute Jobs","problem":"A shared scientific-computing platform cannot reliably replay a completed job after its original execution environment has changed. Job records may identify source code while omitting mutable dependency versions, input snapshots, environment variables, random seeds, external-service responses, or execution images. Teams add provenance fields incrementally, but because planning begins with existing telemetry and ownership boundaries, it does not reveal the full set or ordering of conditions required for independent replay.","actors":["Platform product owner responsible for job-submission and provenance services","Site-reliability engineers operating execution infrastructure","Runtime and dependency-registry maintainers","Research software teams submitting jobs","Data stewards governing sensitive input retention","Security and privacy reviewers","Independent reproducibility tester"],"observable_state":"For a bounded sample of completed jobs, an authorized tester given only the retained job record cannot reconstruct a clean execution package or obtain matching declared output hashes without contacting the original operator, recovering mutable resources, or guessing missing configuration. Failure reasons can be classified by absent, mutable, inaccessible, or nondeterministic prerequisites.","consequence":"The platform cannot distinguish a reproducible computation from one whose result depends on unrecorded execution state, impairing result validation, incident reconstruction, and defensible retirement of old runtimes or registries.","affected_objective":"Authorized, policy-compliant replay of selected completed jobs from retained provenance after the original host and mutable dependencies are unavailable.","intervention":"Define a chosen future state in which an authorized independent tester can take a retained job record, resolve a policy-approved immutable execution package in a clean sandbox, run it without assistance from the original operator, and verify declared output hashes or documented tolerance rules. In a Reverse Milestone Planning Workshop, reason backward from that test: immediately beforehand, all replay inputs must be resolvable and authorized; before that, each input must have an immutable identifier and retention rule; before that, submission and runtime boundaries must capture the identifiers before mutable state disappears; before that, supported workflow classes and nondeterminism rules must be explicit. Place these conditions on a Dependency Mapping Board, distinguish verified dependencies from assumptions, and translate only the nearest conditions into a Present Commitment Register for a reversible shadow-capture pilot.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Desired Future State","domain_realization":"An authorized tester independently replays a selected completed job in a clean sandbox using only retained records and verifies its declared outputs."},{"archetype_element":"Future Success Criteria","domain_realization":"The replay package resolves without operator assistance; code, dependencies, inputs, configuration, and execution image have immutable identifiers; access remains policy-compliant; outputs satisfy stated hash or tolerance checks; unsupported nondeterminism is explicitly reported rather than concealed."},{"archetype_element":"Baseline Current State","domain_realization":"Job records contain incomplete provenance and refer to mutable or inaccessible resources, so clean-room replay attempts stop at identifiable missing conditions."},{"archetype_element":"Prerequisite Condition","domain_realization":"Every replay-relevant dependency is captured at the boundary where it can still be identified, retained under an applicable policy, and resolvable by the tester's bounded authority."},{"archetype_element":"Reverse Milestone","domain_realization":"Condition-rich milestones run backward from successful sandbox verification to resolvable immutable packages, governed retention, capture coverage, and an agreed definition of supported workflow classes."},{"archetype_element":"Dependency Map","domain_realization":"A graph links replay verification to package resolution, retention authorization, immutable naming, capture points, registry capabilities, data access, and nondeterminism handling, exposing blockers and ordering constraints."},{"archetype_element":"Feasibility Constraint","domain_realization":"The pathway may not retain secrets or restricted datasets without authorization, promise bitwise equality for workflows governed by tolerance rules, or assume indefinite storage."},{"archetype_element":"Pathway Assumption","domain_realization":"For the selected workflow class, enough execution state can be identified and retained lawfully to support the specified replay test."},{"archetype_element":"Present Commitment","domain_realization":"Instrument one consenting workflow class in shadow mode, attempt clean-room replay on a bounded historical sample, classify missing prerequisites, and assign owners only to the nearest validated capture and policy gaps."},{"archetype_element":"Monitoring Trigger","domain_realization":"Revise the pathway or endpoint when a required state cannot be captured, retention is disallowed, sandbox replay changes the computation, or tolerance criteria cannot be specified."},{"archetype_element":"Pathway Owner","domain_realization":"The platform product owner maintains the dependency map and commitment register, while data, security, and runtime owners retain approval over their respective conditions."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"reverse_milestone_planning_workshop","role":"Derives each prior enabling condition from the clean-room replay endpoint and rejects milestones that merely name implementation activities.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the workshop's reverse questions, the work can collapse into a forward telemetry backlog shaped by fields already easy to collect."},{"mechanism_slug":"dependency_mapping_board","role":"Makes technical, retention, authorization, and ownership dependencies visible and marks each link as verified, contested, or untested.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the board, teams can implement local capture features while missing a blocking upstream condition such as immutable input naming or lawful retention."},{"mechanism_slug":"present_commitment_register","role":"Connects the nearest validated prerequisites to named owners, bounded resources, review dates, and stop conditions for the pilot.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the register, the backcast can expose prerequisites without changing any present action or accountability."},{"mechanism_slug":"pathway_assumption_review","role":"Re-tests whether capture completeness, storage limits, access controls, and determinism assumptions still support the endpoint.","counterfactual_removal":"Without periodic review, infeasible assumptions may remain embedded in a confident-looking roadmap or silently erode the endpoint."}],"causal_chain":["Independent clean-room replay is specified as an observable endpoint with security, retention, and output-verification constraints.","Reasoning backward identifies the conditions that must exist immediately before replay, including resolvable immutable artifacts and authorized inputs.","Repeated backward reasoning exposes earlier conditions: identifiers and retention rules must exist before resources mutate, and capture must occur at submission or execution boundaries.","The dependency map reveals which technical, governance, and ownership conditions precede others and which links remain assumptions.","The nearest unresolved prerequisites become reversible shadow-capture and sandbox-replay commitments with owners and stop conditions.","Pilot evidence tests dependency links before any platform-wide mandate.","Assumption reviews determine whether to retain the endpoint, revise the pathway, narrow the supported workflow class, or halt."],"baseline":"Continue adding provenance fields through ordinary forward backlog planning, driven by known incidents and currently available telemetry. Replay is attempted after implementation, so omitted prerequisites may be discovered only after the mutable state they concern has disappeared.","nearest_rivals":["A forward provenance backlog that adds known metadata fields without deriving completeness from an independent replay endpoint","Post-hoc containerization of jobs, which may preserve binaries while leaving inputs, external responses, authorization, and retention unresolved","A conventional migration roadmap organized by component or quarter rather than by enabling conditions required for replay","A checklist declaring required metadata without mapping when each item must be captured, retained, and made resolvable"],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The candidate is specifically a backcast because present capture work is derived from the conditions of an independently testable clean-room replay future, recursively through prerequisite and ordering links. Its contrast with the nearest rivals is this future-to-present dependency derivation, not the use of a roadmap, container, checklist, or deadline.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The platform product owner may authorize a bounded, non-blocking pilot on consenting workflows and sandbox infrastructure; data stewards, security reviewers, runtime owners, and submitting teams retain authority over data retention, access, runtime changes, and workflow participation.","authorized_first_step":"Conduct a tabletop reverse-milestone session using one synthetic job and one consenting low-sensitivity workflow, then run shadow provenance capture and an isolated replay attempt without changing production scheduling or declared results.","excluded_actions":["Blocking or rejecting production jobs","Mandating platform-wide instrumentation or workflow migration","Copying secrets, restricted inputs, or external-service payloads without explicit authorization","Changing scientific outputs, source code, dependency versions, or retention policies","Treating sandbox access as authorization to access the corresponding production data","Claiming successful replay beyond the workflow classes and conditions actually tested"],"halt_rollback":"Stop capture and replay if unauthorized data appears, sandbox isolation fails, workload behavior changes, or a participating owner withdraws. Disable the pilot-only capture hook, quarantine its records for review, and delete them only under the applicable data owner's approved disposition process; production execution remains unchanged."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"A representative authorized sample already replays successfully from retained records after original hosts and mutable registries are unavailable, with no operator assistance and no systematic missing-condition failures; this would undercut the claimed pathway gap.","problem_falsifier":"Replay failures in the bounded sample are not caused by absent, mutable, inaccessible, or unrecorded execution prerequisites but solely by defects already reproducible from complete retained packages.","intervention_falsifier":"Reverse-derived dependency maps do not identify any necessary capture, retention, authorization, or ordering condition beyond those produced by the existing forward backlog, or the resulting present commitments do not improve prerequisite coverage in subsequent blinded replay attempts.","risks":["The chosen endpoint may be infeasible for workflows that depend on unrecordable external state.","A narrow pilot may yield a dependency map that does not transfer to other languages or workload classes.","Provenance capture may expose secrets or increase retention of sensitive data.","Bitwise output equality may be mistaken for the appropriate criterion when a documented numerical tolerance is required.","Storage and registry dependencies may be understated, producing an infeasible pathway.","Endpoint erosion may relabel partial reconstruction as independent replay without an explicit decision.","The dependency map may create false confidence if contested links are displayed as established facts.","Additional instrumentation may alter timing-sensitive or nondeterministic workloads."]},"next_evidence_step":"Within a two-week bounded pilot, select one synthetic job and up to five consenting low-sensitivity completed jobs from one workflow class. First derive the prerequisite graph without inspecting their replay outcomes; then have an independent tester attempt sandbox reconstruction using only retained records. Record each stopping point, whether the predicted prerequisite existed, its authorization status, and whether its dependency link was necessary. End with a single assumption review; do not deploy platform-wide controls from this pilot.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Not assessed against other proposals because runtime isolation forbids inspecting them; this one-shot candidate is independently grounded in the reproducible-computation problem and the supplied backcasting structure.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":[],"conceptual_changes":["Initial one-shot formulation of clean-room job replay as a desired future requiring reverse-derived provenance, retention, authorization, and capture prerequisites."],"operational_changes":["Initial bounded shadow-capture and sandbox-replay pilot with named authority limits, stop conditions, and rollback."],"evidence_changes":["No prior-art or external evidence consulted; falsifiable observations are defined for a future bounded test."],"claim_changes":["Initial contrastive claim limited to future-to-present dependency derivation; no novelty, prevalence, demand, or effect-size claim is made."]}}