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Page lifecycle

Every page carries a lifecycle field, and it answers one question: can I trust this page right now?

PAGE LIFECYCLE — STATE MACHINE INGEST/CAPTURE HUMAN EDIT HUMAN EDIT CONTRADICTION UPDATE SUPERSEDED_BY new source draft agent-written reviewed human-edited verified human-confirmed disputed sources disagree archived terminal READ-TIME OVERLAY stale is_stale = (today − updated) > 90 days computed at read time · any state can be stale TRANSITIONS agent — ingest / capture / update human edit — review / verify / dispute / archive update — any state returns to draft

The five states

Section titled “The five states”
State What it means Who sets it
draft The agent wrote it, no human has looked. Treat as a starting point /ingest, /capture, /update
reviewed You have read and edited it. The next ingest merges into it rather than overwriting You, by editing
verified You have confirmed it is correct. Time alone never demotes it You, by editing
disputed Sources contradict each other on this topic. Open question You, by editing
archived Superseded or no longer relevant. Terminal, may point at a replacement You, or /ingest when superseded_by is set

Only ingest, capture, and update write draft. Every other transition requires a human edit. The archived state may carry an optional superseded_by: "[[new-page]]" field pointing to the replacement.

Stale is an overlay, not a state

Section titled “Stale is an overlay, not a state”

There is also a read-time overlay, stale, computed as (today - updated) > 90 days. It does not change the state; it just flags that the page has not been touched in a while. /lint surfaces stale pages so you can check whether they are still correct.

The problem the lifecycle solves

Section titled “The problem the lifecycle solves”

The lifecycle solves two failure modes a wiki agent can hit.

  • An agent that rewrites everything on each ingest silently destroys your manual edits
  • An agent that refuses to touch anything is useless, because new information cannot get in

The lifecycle is the middle path. Anything you have not touched is draft, and the agent may refine it. Anything you have touched is reviewed or higher, and the agent merges new sources in rather than overwriting your text. You change the state by editing the file.

Where to go next

Section titled “Where to go next”