artifact-analysis
Type: kb/types/tag-readme.md · Status: current
The vocabulary for analyzing retained artifacts: where behavior-shaping state persists, how it is encoded, where it came from, and with what force it acts. The four-field scheme (storage substrate, representational form, lineage, behavioral authority) classifies any retained artifact without collapsing into storage-based taxonomy. A child of learning-theory; the agent-memory-systems reviews apply this vocabulary to external systems.
The scheme
- axes of artifact analysis — the four-field analysis: storage substrate, representational form, lineage, and behavioral authority over the operative part or consumption path
- the four-field record exposes an efficiency, security, and sovereignty agenda — what the classification is for: the downstream questions the fields make answerable
- memory design adds operational axes to artifact analysis — extends the scheme with write/read-side operational axes for memory-system design
Definitions
- retained artifact — retained state a later agentic loop consumes in a behavior-shaping way; the boundary is behavioral consequence, not storage label
- operative part — the behavior-affecting content, structure, parameterization, or mechanism within a retained artifact
- storage substrate — where retained state persists; storage is one field, not the taxonomy
- representational form — how an operative part is encoded and consumed; form determines the default review method
- lineage — source dependencies and derivation status needed to invalidate, regenerate, retire, or review retained behavior
- behavioral authority — who consumes an artifact, through which channel, with what force
- knowledge artifact — retained artifact consumed as evidence, reference, context, explanation, or advice
- system-definition artifact — retained artifact consumed with instruction, enforcement, routing, validation, configuration, evaluation, or learning force
Applications
- system-definition artifacts are crystallized reasoning under context pressure — why system-definition artifacts exist at all: reasoning crystallized so it need not be redone in-context
- orchestration strategies and run state have opposite persistence — a persistence asymmetry the fields predict: strategies accumulate, run state is disposable
- ephemeral computation prevents accumulation — discarding generated artifacts trades accumulation for simplicity; the inverse of codification
- ephemerality is safe where embedded operational knowledge has low reach — the boundary rule: discard is safe below the reach threshold, accumulation mandatory above it
- RLM, Tendril, and llm-do place symbolic work at different persistence points — three systems located by where their symbolic artifacts persist
Other tagged notes
- Design proposals differ from claims in kind, not confidence - A hypothesis is a claim at reduced commitment; a design proposal is not truth-apt at all — free parameters make it evaluable by usefulness, not truth. A proposal with substantive requirements can re-enter a claims register as an existential claim with the construction as witness