How a review artifact moves through controlled states.
Visibility does not confer standing. Reviewability does not confer acceptance. This page explains the states a Genesis review artifact can be in, and what each one does and does not mean.
- Artifact ID
siw/lifecycle.html- Version
- Build 16 Shadow — M2B
- Date
- 2026-09-22
- Status
- BUILD 16 — SHADOW DEVELOPMENT CANDIDATE
- Provenance / source
- This repository, branch
build16/shadow-foundation-001. - Standing
- NOT ESTABLISHED
- Acceptance state
- NOT ESTABLISHED
- Supersedes / superseded by
- NOT ESTABLISHED
- Scope
- Explains review-artifact lifecycle vocabulary already used elsewhere on this site. Asserts no Canon or SIW governance state of its own.
- Claim ceiling / limitation
- Explanatory only. Reading or reaching this page creates no standing, admission, or authority for anything it describes.
This header is a worked example of the reusable provenance/standing pattern (<dl class="provenance-header">, assets/css/lifecycle.css) any future governed review packet or walkthrough page can copy directly. No other walkthrough/planning-packet surface currently exists in this repository to apply it to (see the M2B completion report).
Visibility does not confer standing.
An artifact being shown, reachable, or open for inspection says nothing on its own about whether it has been accepted, admitted, or given any authority. Presence and acceptance are always separate questions, answered separately.
What that badge does and does not mean.
Every Build 15 page carries a Public Review Candidate badge. It means exactly this: the artifact is open for technical review under the existing Genesis review process, and nothing more. It specifically does not mean:
- production release;
- accepted Canon;
- authoritative implementation;
- validated deployment;
- an endorsed claim;
- permission to reproduce;
- permission to derive;
- current standing.
Reused, not restated differently: “Independent review can identify weaknesses, supply evidence, challenge assumptions, and motivate tests. It does not by itself create Canon standing, SIW lifecycle standing, implementation acceptance, authority to bind, or deployment authority.” — Specification Status, independent review reconciliation. This page's own Standing and Acceptance state fields above are marked NOT ESTABLISHED for exactly this reason.
Allowed conceptual transitions.
Explanatory only — this diagram documents distinctions already present in Genesis/SIW records; it does not encode or change any governance logic.
This is one conceptual family, not one universal linear lifecycle every artifact must pass through — matching the standing rule already stated on Specification Status: “acceptance, authority, current standing, binding, consequence and model output remain separate” rather than one collapsed progression.
What each one means, and where it already comes from.
Available for inspection; not accepted merely because it exists.
The state every Public Review Candidate page is in by default, and the intake state for a Governance proposal before any decision.
Source: the site-wide Public Review Candidate badge; Book Two's candidate structural outline.
Reviewed or examined; inspection itself does not confer acceptance.
The same distinction INSPECT SIW's own name and every claim card on this Shadow already assert.
Source: R2's own INSPECTED → ACCEPTED MergeProposal transition — FIP-C-003, Claims / Non-Claims Register.
Explicitly admitted or ratified under the applicable authority/process.
Reached only through a real decision, never by default or by passage of time.
Source: the FIP-001 ACCEPTED status-chip vocabulary; Governance's ADMIT decision outcome referenced in FIP-C-007A.
Reviewed and expressly not accepted.
A refusal leaves the record unchanged — nothing is admitted, and nothing is silently retried as if accepted.
Source: FIP-C-007A — “A refusal leaves the store unchanged and asserts no admitted standing.”
Retained for evaluation or continued development without final acceptance.
Kept visible as real, honest status — not offered as if it were finished material.
Source: the M1D CONDITIONAL claims class; Book Two's outline, which “explicitly states it does not establish final numbering, titles, or admission.”
Replaced by a later artifact while preserved for lineage/history.
The earlier artifact is not deleted or hidden — its lineage stays inspectable.
Source: FIP-C-019 — “Supersession is forward temporal lineage.”
No longer active for current use, while remaining inspectable where appropriate.
Distinct from Rejected: a retired artifact was not refused, it simply is not the current path.
Source: the 3D Navigator's own historical/preserved framing — “already correctly disclosed on-page as historical/preserved rather than integrated.”
This page explains implementation-status vocabulary (Specified / Implemented / Tested / Partial / Experimental / Planned / Open Specification) belongs to a separate axis — whether a feature is built — not the artifact-acceptance lifecycle above. See Specification Status for that axis; this page does not duplicate it.
Where this connects.
INSPECT SIW applies these same distinctions to individual claims, evidence, and limitations. The Orientation Primer introduces the six broader distinctions (attribution, possession, access, inspection, simulation, capability) this lifecycle model is one instance of. The Attribution ≠ Authority demonstration walks through the first of those six with a worked example.