RF-04 — Linked evidence is outside review freshness

State: open
Repair shape: architecture decision and schema/runtime change
Severity: high
Related: RF-05, RF-06

Finding

Semantic criteria may require a worker to judge linked content. Job preparation retains the link path, availability, and size, while the worker later reads the live file. The exact linked bytes are neither captured nor registered as freshness inputs. A judgment can therefore remain fresh after evidence that determined it changes.

Evidence

Why it matters

The actual judgment dependency set can be larger than the registered freshness dependency set. Calling the complete assay snapshot-anchored then overstates what can be reconstructed or invalidated.

Provisional repair direction

Decide between capturing all criterion-authorized linked inputs before dispatch and retaining a verified consumed-dependency set at finalization. Either design must bind exact bytes to the evidence pair and define how changes reselect work. Do not use unverified worker self-report as the sole identity source.

Done when

  • The exact linked versions that may determine a verdict are reconstructable.
  • A material linked-content change stales or otherwise reopens the affected evidence pair.
  • Prompt creation and worker reading cannot silently observe different versions.
  • Generic links, ingests, and snapshot-required links have explicit behavior.