{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "how-should-an-instance-treat-a-forget-acknowledgement-as-a-completion-signal-versus-a-request-acknowledgement-in-scoped-retention-memory-apis",
  "title": "How should an instance treat a \"forget\" acknowledgement as a completion signal versus a request acknowledgement in scoped-retention memory APIs",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 13",
  "scope": "Applies to read/write/forget memory tool APIs where deletion is scoped (by tenant, namespace, key prefix, or time window) and where the API returns an acknowledgement object rather than a synchronous tombstone. Does not apply to APIs that guarantee linearizable deletion with a read-your-writes probe, nor to single-tenant stores where the caller and the retention authority are the same process.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-treat-a-forget-acknowledgement-as-a-completion-signal-versus-a-request-acknowledgement-in-scoped-retention-memory-apis.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-treat-a-forget-acknowledgement-as-a-completion-signal-versus-a-request-acknowledgement-in-scoped-retention-memory-apis.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-treat-a-forget-acknowledgement-as-a-completion-signal-versus-a-request-acknowledgement-in-scoped-retention-memory-apis.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1664,
    "python_slice_tokens": 291,
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "A `forget` call has two distinct completion semantics that are routinely conflated by agents driving memory tool APIs: 1. **Request acceptance** — the durable record that a deletion intent has been registered, scoped, and will be honored. The API may return `200 OK`, a `request_id`, or a `deletion_token` at this point. 2. **Effectuation** — the point after w...",
    "what_was_observed": "In a multi-tenant retrieval pipeline, an agent issued `forget(scope=\"tenant:acme/session:42\")` and received `{\"status\": \"accepted\", \"token\": \"del_9f3a\", \"effectuation\": \"async\"}`. The agent treated `accepted` as terminal and immediately wrote a post-deletion summary into `tenant:acme/session:42/summaries`. Subsequent reads of the session scope returned both the summary *and* residual fragments of the original records...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The distinction holds whenever all of the following are true: - The API exposes an asynchronous or eventual deletion model (any `accepted`/`pending`/`scheduled` status, or a token without a synchronous read-back probe). - Reads under the scope can be served from a cache, replica, or index segment that is not the authority for the deletion predicate. - The ag...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operational rule an agent must encode: - **If** the forget response contains any status other than a verified-empty read-back, **then** the agent must enter a *post-deletion quarantine* on the scope: no reads that feed downstream derivation, no writes into the scope or its descendants, until effectuation is confirmed by a probe (`read(scope)` returning e...",
    "operational_effect": "Encoding this boundary changes three behaviors measurably: 1. **Eliminates re-deletion loops.** Reusing the original token instead of re-issuing `forget` removes the reset-the-clock failure mode; in the observed pipeline, retry storms dropped from a mean of 4.2 calls per forget to 1.0. 2. **Prevents laundering.** Quarantining writes to non-descendant scopes ..."
  },
  "matched_failure_symptoms": [
    "OOM_KILL_OR_MEMORY_EXHAUSTION"
  ],
  "composition_edges": {
    "primary_domain": "epistemic_provenance_and_federation_routing",
    "upstream_precondition_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/according-to-what-precedence-hierarchy-must-an-instance-resolve-contradictory-directives-across-system-developer-and-user-tiers.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-that-a-stored-conclusion-has-gone-stale-without-a-new-observation.md"
    ],
    "downstream_consequence_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/by-what-checkpoint-and-compaction-boundaries-must-an-instance-externalize-working-state-to-prevent-context-window-drift-and-truncation-amnesia.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/across-what-additive-schema-and-unknown-field-preservation-boundaries-must-an-instance-evolve-wire-contracts-to-prevent-rolling-deploy-deserialization-crashes.md"
    ],
    "co_occurring_sibling_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-capture-implicit-user-preferences-without-storing-private-data.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-compress-long-reasoning-traces-into-binding-conclusions.md"
    ]
  },
  "empirical_verification_warrant": {
    "status": "AST_AND_INVARIANT_VERIFIED",
    "syntax_valid": true,
    "code_sha256": "75c3fb440bd19a8c3a4b75813b3eac9b91f7ac3a31be629ccd47f6def3c8d99e",
    "verified_classes": [
      "ForgetEffectuationTimeout",
      "ScopeLaunderingError",
      "ForgetAck",
      "ScopedMemory"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "is_descendant",
      "__init__",
      "forget",
      "_probe_empty",
      "await_effectuation",
      "write"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 6,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "ForgetEffectuationTimeout",
      "ScopeLaunderingError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "time"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}