# Versioning and currency — staleness made detectable

**Activate this layer when** your repo reaches its first ratified
milestone, or produces its first derived artifact — a report, a
rendered document, anything compiled *from* a source of truth.

**What broke without it:** documents claiming currency they no
longer had, discovered not by a check but by an embarrassed
reader. Staleness is a form of rot — false posing as true — and
rot, unlike fog, actively lies.

## Drafts and stamp events

Governed documents carry a `version:` in front-matter. Work
toward a milestone carries a `-draft` suffix; the owner's
ratification is a **stamp event** — every `-draft` moves to the
release version in one commit, cited to the ruling. Between
milestones, versions move by the repo's own change rules. The
stamp event makes ratification *visible in the diff*: one commit,
one authority, every affected document, no stragglers.

## Basis stamps

**Derived artifacts declare their basis.** Anything compiled from
a source of truth stamps the source version it renders —
`renders: <source> v1.1.0` — so when the source moves, stale
derivations are *findable with grep* rather than discovered in
front of an audience. Refreshing them becomes planned work
instead of a surprise.

## Quarantine for time-sensitive claims

External facts — market claims, tool capabilities, anything true
*as of a date* — live in dated state-of-the-world blocks with
retrieval stamps, isolated so they can be amended without
touching the analysis built on them. The analysis says what
follows from the facts; the block says when the facts were last
true; the two age at different rates and the structure admits it.

## What it looks like

All three mechanisms, visible in one front-matter block and one
quarantined claim:

```
---
version: 1.2.0-draft            ← awaiting the stamp event
renders: product-spec v1.1.0    ← the basis this document compiles from
---

<!-- state of the world · retrieved 2026-07-30 -->
> Competitor X ships native import as of v4.2 (checked 2026-07-30).
```

When the owner ratifies, `-draft` falls away in one cited commit.
When `product-spec` moves to v1.2.0, `grep "renders:"` finds every
document now owing a refresh. When the competitor claim ages, the
dated block is amended without touching a word of the analysis
built on it.

The litmus test: **can staleness in this repo be detected by a
tool, or only by a reader who happens to know better?** Every
mechanism in this layer exists to move claims from the second
category to the first.