Artifact Lifecycle Protocol

Status: Canonical
Version: 1.0.0

Purpose

This protocol defines lifecycle state independently from confidence, completion, and publication tier.

Research artifacts

Research artifacts use:

draft -> review -> accepted -> superseded | withdrawn

• draft and review content may be edited.
• accepted content is immutable. A substantive correction creates a superseding artifact; a metadata-only correction requires an amendment.
• superseded and withdrawn artifacts remain discoverable.
• A superseding relationship must be reciprocal.

Existing REP records using canonical are treated as accepted for compatibility. deprecated maps to superseded. archived is a storage state, not permission to remove a canonical record.

Missions

Missions use:

proposed -> approved -> active -> blocked | completed | cancelled -> archived

A completed mission references its outputs and records verification. A blocked mission names the blocker and executable next step. Reopening a completed or cancelled mission requires a new mission or an explicit Decision Record.

Theories

Theories use:

candidate -> supported -> established -> challenged -> superseded | rejected

Theory status describes maturity. Confidence describes evidential strength; neither implies the other.

Enforcement boundary

ros validate checks allowed states and relationship integrity. Accepted content mutation requires a comparison baseline, which the initial validator does not yet implement; until then, review is procedural and this limitation must remain visible in the migration report and REP.