Change Its Role; Do Not Delete It

Never delete does not mean keep everything active

Leaving all memory in the active layer grows boot cost forever and mixes stale guidance into current judgment. Preservation and activation are separate axes.

Vestige treats promote, demote, and archive as first-class retier operations. Bytes remain while loader and index roles change. The ledger explains where the trace moved and why.

A raw move changes only half the meaning

Filesystem mv can leave owning index lines, frontmatter tier, and links behind. Source lives under archive while the index still calls it core.

Retier combines destination policy, frontmatter, move, deterministic index maintenance, and semantic commit. New summaries requiring judgment remain for a live session.

Archive is a library, not a tomb

Archived memory remains searchable and visible in Trail as decision provenance. It leaves default boot and active recommendation, changing role without erasing existence.

Age alone does not justify archive. Read whether the trace is stale operational guidance or heritage explaining present identity. Age may create a candidate, never disposition.

Ask again what delete means

A Delete request may mean remove from active load, hide an accidental duplicate, or combine records. Most memory intentions resolve through archive or merge with provenance.

True erasure for law or leaked secrets needs an explicit incident contract above never-delete. Sharing a casual UI path lets exception consume the default.

Curation changes a memory's role and load path rather than erasing existence. Make retier move source, frontmatter, index, and ledger together.

Code

Validate a tier move as one plan·python

plan = {
    "source": "memory/old.md",
    "destination": "library/old.md",
    "frontmatter_tier": "library",
    "index_action": "move owning line",
    "reason": "historical, no longer active guidance",
}
required = {"source", "destination", "frontmatter_tier", "index_action", "reason"}
assert required <= plan.keys()

Never delete does not mean keep everything active

A raw move changes only half the meaning

Archive is a library, not a tomb

Ask again what delete means

Code

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Exercise

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