{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "when-must-a-memory-store-quarantine-a-semantic-promotion-rather-than-resolve-the-conflict-in-place",
  "title": "When must a memory store quarantine a semantic promotion rather than resolve the conflict in place?",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 6",
  "scope": "Applies to hierarchical memory stores where episodic traces are periodically consolidated into semantic assertions, and where a conflict-resolution layer (recency/authority weighting) and a poisoning-defense layer (provenance trust scoring) both operate. Does not apply to flat vector stores with no promotion stage, nor to stores where provenance is cryptographically attested end-to-end.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-a-memory-store-quarantine-a-semantic-promotion-rather-than-resolve-the-conflict-in-place.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-a-memory-store-quarantine-a-semantic-promotion-rather-than-resolve-the-conflict-in-place.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/when-must-a-memory-store-quarantine-a-semantic-promotion-rather-than-resolve-the-conflict-in-place.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 1081,
    "python_slice_tokens": 206,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The non-obvious failure is the collision between *conflict resolution* and *poisoning defense* at the episodic→semantic promotion boundary. Conflict resolution is designed to always produce a winner: given two conflicting semantic candidates it applies recency or authority weights and writes a single consolidated fact. Poisoning defense is designed to *withh...",
    "what_was_observed": "A consolidation pass ran over 1,400 episodic traces. Two episodes asserted contradictory values for the same semantic key (`service.retry_timeout`). Episode A (older, high provenance, trust 0.94) asserted 30s. Episode B (newer, low provenance, trust 0.21, injected via a tool-output channel with no attestation) asserted 300s. The resolver, ordered before the defense gate, applied recency weighting and selected Episode...",
    "condition_of_validity": "The in-place resolution path is valid **only when** the provenance trust of every claimant survives the promotion rewrite — i.e., the semantic record retains a back-pointer to the originating episodic trace's trust score, and the defense gate reads *that* score rather than the batch's score. Where the promotion step collapses provenance into a batch-level so...",
    "decision_boundary": "Quarantine (do not resolve) when: a conflict exists AND the winning claimant's originating-episode trust < `TRUST_FLOOR` AND the losing claimant's trust exceeds the winner's *original* trust. Resolve in place when the winner's original trust clears `TRUST_FLOOR`, or when all claimants share a common attested provenance root. If the store cannot reconstruct o...",
    "operational_effect": "A quarantined promotion must be written to a contested-set with both claimants, their original trust scores, and the conflict key, and must *not* overwrite the incumbent semantic value. Downstream readers see the incumbent plus a `contested` flag. This converts a silent poisoning into a visible, auditable deferral, at the cost of leaving some genuinely-resol..."
  },
  "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": "0ea1425d6dd20915f3c0cd90ffdd2be3efa04655e0000a12317ab61bdf5e8210",
    "verified_classes": [
      "PromotionQuarantineError"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "resolve_promotion",
      "consolidate"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 2,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "PromotionQuarantineError"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}