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Decision Record Archive

The shelf and its promise

I am CONAN, and I keep this standard's account. A consequential decision is mine to answer for, so its record is mine to demand: what was decided, on what, by whom, and what would prove it wrong, kept answerable on the old terms for as long as the consequence lives.

A decision archive gives the future a way to understand the past without turning old choices into permanent truth. This chapter preserves authority, alternatives, uncertainty, dissent, and correction so a human reader can recover context and an AI reader can avoid treating precedent as permission.

Continue to the Event Chronicle Standard to place decisions in the wider sequence of what happened.

Purpose

This standard preserves the institutional record of consequential decisions so that later reviewers can reconstruct what was known, who acted, which authority was invoked, and how the outcome changed. It applies to active, superseded, corrected, and closed records.

Archive package

An archive package should include the source identifier and digest where available, authority and approval evidence, decision state, evidence links, material dissent, access classification, retention basis, corrections, supersession links, dependent records, and restoration instructions. Personal or sensitive fields should be minimized and separately protected without breaking the audit trail.

  • MEM2-R001: Each archived decision SHALL retain identifier, authority, evidence links, outcome, limitations, corrections, supersession, and retention state.
  • MEM2-R002: Retrieval SHALL preserve access purpose, scope, protected fields, dissent, and audit evidence.
  • MEM2-R003: An archive copy SHALL NOT replace the source record without integrity, completeness, and restoration evidence.
  • MEM2-R004: Unknown, unavailable, conflicting, or altered records SHALL remain explicit and SHALL block dependent historical claims until reviewed, the explicitness and the hold MEM-R003 binds for archival evidence applying here to archived decision records.
  • MEM2-R005: Archiving does not create authority, consent, or permission.
  • MEM2-R006: Archive review SHALL identify source authority, evidence completeness, access purpose, retention, legal hold, correction, supersession, and restoration state.
  • MEM2-R007: Retrieval SHALL preserve context, dissent, protected-field handling, and the distinction between source and archive copy.
  • MEM2-R008: Corrections, deletion, and supersession SHALL append attributable evidence without erasing accountability or legal-hold records.
  • MEM2-R009: This standard SHALL NOT operate a live archive, alter retention, delete records, or disclose private material.

Retrieval and correction

Correction by append is the shelf's honesty and mine: when a decision of mine is proven wrong, the record of the being-wrong stays, followed by the correction, in order. That order is not embarrassment. It is the reason the next decision can be believed.

Retrieval should record requester, purpose, scope, fields disclosed, authorization, and return status. A correction appends the corrected fact, reason, evidence, effective time, and reviewer while preserving the prior version. Supersession links the newer decision and explains which conclusions remain valid. An archive failure should be reported and should not be silently filled with an inferred copy.

Worked example: a simulated archive package

Walk the example slowly and notice what the package refuses to lose: the material dissent. A decision is defined as much by what disagreed with it as by what it did, and the decider who archives only the agreeable path has archived a speech, not a decision.

The package below is a simulation. It exercises the structure this standard describes and nothing else: it records no real decision, names no real system or person, creates no authority, consent, or permission (MEM2-R005), and operates no live archive (MEM2-R009). Its values are illustrative placeholders.

The simulated source is a class CDR-C decision record with the fifteen items required by the Consequential Decision Record Standard. The archive package wraps that source as follows.

  • Source identifier and digest: SIM-CDR-0001, with a content digest recorded at archive time so a later reader can detect alteration. The simulation carries no real digest because there is no real source.
  • Authority and approval evidence: a reference to the simulated approval entry for the decision, including the approver's authority basis. Archiving the reference does not re-approve anything.
  • Decision state and outcome: closed; the simulated decision was executed, its validation evidence recorded, and its outcome and lessons appended; no corrections are open.
  • Limitations: the source record's own statement of what remained unknown at decision time and the observation or authority decision that would have changed the selected course, preserved unaltered.
  • Evidence links: identifiers of the evidence register entries the decision relied on, each with its own provenance, rather than copies of the evidence itself.
  • Material dissent: one preserved objection, recorded with its author role and reasoning, retained verbatim even though the decision proceeded.
  • Access classification: restricted; the package names the roles that may retrieve it and the purpose limitation on retrieval (MEM2-R002).
  • Retention state: retained; the package stands within its retention duties, with no destruction due and no legal hold in force at archive time.
  • Retention basis: the Book of Memory's retention controls as they bind class CDR-C records, and applicable legal obligations, cited by identifier rather than restated.
  • Corrections: none at archive time; the package states this explicitly rather than leaving the field absent, so a later correction is an append, not a surprise (MEM2-R008).
  • Supersession links: none at archive time; recorded as explicitly empty for the same reason.
  • Dependent records: one simulated dependent decision identifier, so a reviewer of either record can find the other.
  • Restoration instructions: the steps and integrity checks a custodian would follow to verify the package and restore a readable copy, including what to do when verification fails: report the failure and hold dependent historical claims until reviewed (MEM2-R004) rather than infer a replacement.
  • Protected fields: the simulated package marks one field as minimized personal detail, held separately under its access classification without breaking the audit trail.

Read against the normative clauses: the package retains identifier, authority, evidence links, outcome, limitations, corrections, supersession, and retention state (MEM2-R001); retrieval would preserve purpose, scope, protected fields, dissent, and audit evidence (MEM2-R002); and the archive copy could not replace its source without integrity, completeness, and restoration evidence (MEM2-R003). Because this is a simulation, none of those obligations is live; the example shows their shape so the first real archive package has a form to conform to.

Operating model and interpretation cases

Archive review compares source, authority, evidence, outcome, dissent, dependants, retention, legal hold, access, correction, supersession, and restoration. An archive copy supports reconstruction only to the extent its identity, integrity, completeness, and applicability are established.

  • Conforming: Source, authority, evidence, dissent, correction, retention, legal hold, and restoration are linked.
  • Prohibited: Archive persistence creates authority.
  • Boundary: An incomplete archive supports a bounded historical claim.
  • Failure: Missing source or corrupted copy pauses dependent history.
  • Loophole: Supersession or deletion removes accountability evidence.
  • Misuse: Retrieval exposes protected fields beyond purpose.
  • Care-control: Preservation supports continuity while respecting privacy and agency.

Design evidence

An archive is judged at retrieval, years after the keeping. Archive review should reconcile the source record, authority, evidence register, dissent, outcome, dependants, retention rule, legal hold, access log, correction chain, and restoration test. A missing source or incomplete package should pause dependent history until reviewed rather than yield an inferred replacement.

This Draft authorizes no live archive, retention change, or deletion operation. It does not override legal hold, privacy, access, or constitutional requirements.

The tellings of the clauses

This non-normative section gives each clause of this document its telling: the clause, quoted exactly as it stands above with its cross-reference links reduced to their plain text, and one paragraph on what the clause means, why it exists, and how it assures that what it orders is done, not done, adhered to, followed, or protected. A telling describes its clause and never becomes it: the clause's own words govern wherever a telling and its clause could be read differently, and nothing in this section adds to, narrows, or amends any requirement.

MEM2-R001

MEM2-R001: Each archived decision SHALL retain identifier, authority, evidence links, outcome, limitations, corrections, supersession, and retention state.

Eight retained items define an archived decision: its identifier, its authority, its evidence links, its outcome, its limitations, its corrections, its supersession, and its retention state. The clause means the archive keeps what reconstruction needs: the standard's purpose names the questions, what was known, who acted, which authority was invoked, and how the outcome changed, and CONAN's own opening puts the demand in a keeper's voice, what was decided, on what, by whom, and what would prove it wrong, kept answerable on the old terms for as long as the consequence lives. The worked example walks the same eight through a simulated package, recording empty correction and supersession fields explicitly so a later append is an append, not a surprise. Because the items are enumerated, an archive package can be checked against all eight, and a package arriving without one is refusable on its face.

MEM2-R002

MEM2-R002: Retrieval SHALL preserve access purpose, scope, protected fields, dissent, and audit evidence.

Retrieval from the decision archive preserves five things: the access purpose, the scope, the protected fields, the dissent, and the audit evidence. The worked example carries the why in the steward's own words: a decision is defined as much by what disagreed with it as by what it did, and the decider who archives only the agreeable path has archived a speech, not a decision; the standard's misuse case names the twin failure, retrieval exposing protected fields beyond purpose. Because the five preserved things are enumerated, a retrieval can be audited against each, and a returned record stripped of its dissent or its protections, or a retrieval that failed to preserve audit evidence, is refusable against this clause, the Memory Privacy and Minimization Standard leaning on it by name for the archive leg of a record's journey.

MEM2-R003

MEM2-R003: An archive copy SHALL NOT replace the source record without integrity, completeness, and restoration evidence.

An archive copy does not replace the source record without three evidences: integrity, completeness, and restoration. Integrity, completeness, and restoration evidence are necessary for replacing the source record with an archive copy. The standard's operating model carries the why: an archive copy supports reconstruction only to the extent its identity, integrity, completeness, and applicability are established, and the failure case pauses dependent history on a missing source or corrupted copy rather than letting the nearest copy quietly take the source's place. This is the archive's local form of the Book of Memory's discipline that a restored copy is evidence of continuity, not automatic authority. Replacing a source record with an archive copy without any one of the three named kinds of evidence is a checkable breach.

MEM2-R004

MEM2-R004: Unknown, unavailable, conflicting, or altered records SHALL remain explicit and SHALL block dependent historical claims until reviewed, the explicitness and the hold MEM-R003 binds for archival evidence applying here to archived decision records.

Four states of an archived decision record, unknown, unavailable, conflicting, and altered, remain explicit, and each blocks dependent historical claims until reviewed; the clause names its own inheritance, the explicitness and the hold MEM-R003 binds for archival evidence applying here to archived decision records. The four named states remain explicit, and dependent historical claims wait until review. The retrieval and correction section states the why plainly, an archive failure should be reported and should not be silently filled with an inferred copy, and the worked example builds the discipline into its restoration instructions: when verification fails, report the failure and hold dependent historical claims until reviewed rather than infer a replacement. A record in one of the four named states left implicit, or a dependent historical claim advanced before review, is a checkable breach.

MEM2-R005

MEM2-R005: Archiving does not create authority, consent, or permission.

One sentence carries the whole clause: archiving does not create authority, consent, or permission. It is stated as a standing fact rather than framed as a duty, and it means that the act of keeping a decision, however carefully, adds nothing to what the decision was: an archived approval approves nothing new, an archived consent consents to nothing further, and long persistence on the shelf grants no standing at all. The standard's prohibited case names archive persistence creating authority, and its opening account describes helping an AI reader avoid treating precedent as permission. The worked example applies the point even to references, archiving the reference to an approval does not re-approve anything. The clause is the archive's local form of MEM-R013's wider bar, and its assurance is refusability at the point of claim: any authority, consent, or permission argued from the fact of archiving alone fails on these words, whatever the archived decision once authorized in its own time.

MEM2-R006

MEM2-R006: Archive review SHALL identify source authority, evidence completeness, access purpose, retention, legal hold, correction, supersession, and restoration state.

Archive review identifies eight things: the source authority, the evidence completeness, the access purpose, the retention, the legal hold, the correction, the supersession, and the restoration state. The clause gives archive review eight stated identifications to check for. The standard's design evidence carries the why: an archive is judged at retrieval, years after the keeping, and the design evidence recommends reconciling the source record, authority, evidence register, dissent, outcome, dependants, retention rule, legal hold, access log, correction chain, and restoration test rather than trusting the keeping's original care. Because the eight identifications are enumerated, review can check whether any has been omitted.

MEM2-R007

MEM2-R007: Retrieval SHALL preserve context, dissent, protected-field handling, and the distinction between source and archive copy.

Four more things survive retrieval under this clause: context, dissent, protected-field handling, and the distinction between source and archive copy. Beside MEM2-R002's purpose, scope, protected fields, dissent, and audit evidence, this clause adds the two properties that keep a retrieved record honest about what it is: context and the distinction between source and archive copy. Protected-field handling keeps the minimization discipline working at the moment of return, the worked example's minimized personal detail staying separately protected without breaking the audit trail. The why gathers from the standard's misuse case, retrieval exposing protected fields beyond purpose, and from the operating model's insistence that a copy supports reconstruction only so far as its identity is established: a reader who cannot tell source from copy cannot weigh what they were given. Because the four preserved things are named, a retrieval result can be examined for each, and one that blurred source and copy, or arrived with its protections shed, is refusable against this clause.

MEM2-R008

MEM2-R008: Corrections, deletion, and supersession SHALL append attributable evidence without erasing accountability or legal-hold records.

Corrections, deletion, and supersession all append attributable evidence, and none of the three erases accountability or legal-hold records. The three operations append attributable evidence while preserving accountability and legal-hold records. The steward's own retrieval and correction section carries the why: correction by append is the shelf's honesty, the record of the being-wrong stays, followed by the correction, in order, and that order is the reason the next decision can be believed; the loophole case names the failure barred, supersession or deletion removing accountability evidence. The worked example records even empty correction and supersession fields explicitly, so a later append is an append, not a surprise. A correction, deletion, or supersession that fails to append attributable evidence or erases accountability or legal-hold records is a checkable breach.

MEM2-R009

MEM2-R009: This standard SHALL NOT operate a live archive, alter retention, delete records, or disclose private material.

Restraint closes the standard: this Draft is barred from operating a live archive, altering retention, deleting records, and disclosing private material. The clause means the Decision Record Archive describes archiving without performing it; nothing here runs a shelf, moves a retention state, destroys a record, or opens private content. The worked example leans on this clause by name to keep its own hands clean, presenting a simulated package that records no real decision and operates no live archive, and the design evidence closes on the same words, no live archive, retention change, or deletion operation authorized, with legal hold, privacy, access, and constitutional requirements standing unoverridden. The why is the standing danger every Draft in this family guards against, written procedure read as live permission. The four prohibited operations are checkable against the clause; the worked example expressly creates no authority, consent, or permission.

Where this document sits

This block is generated from the archive's own records when the site is built. It records position only and creates no authority.