The evidence is our own history
Everything built in the factory’s March 2026 burst was rotten by July without a single defect occurring: a decommissioned agent’s access credential sat expired for a month, the export pipeline shipped empty context placeholders, all roadmap dates elapsed unrevised. Nothing failed. Everything decayed. Staleness is this factory’s corrosion, and corrosion protection is a designed system, not a virtue. No amount of diligence keeps certificates current; only machinery does — expiry sweepers, re-certification triggers, and a bill of materials precise enough that a model swap reopens every certificate binding that model as a query, not an investigation.What it changes on the floor
- Certificates carry an expiry interval and trigger conditions — model swap, dependency change, N production failures (Station 4).
- Operate is a permanent station with no exit gate, because there is no exit.
- The warehouse of finished goods that agent builders imagine they have does not exist. What exists is a fleet under continuing inspection, each unit’s trust renewed on schedule or withdrawn.
Self-audit
| Claim | Source |
|---|---|
| A Corolla’s quality is fixed at the gate; an agent’s is a drifting distribution over future runs | docs/factory-design.md:32 |
| The factory never releases a unit; deployment is zone transfer; certificates expire; continuing airworthiness; kill switch is a recall | docs/factory-design.md:34 |
| March 2026 decay evidence: expired credential, empty export placeholders, elapsed roadmap dates — nothing failed, everything decayed | docs/factory-design.md:36 |
| Staleness is this factory’s corrosion; corrosion protection is a designed system | docs/factory-design.md:36 |
| Expiry field: interval + trigger conditions (model swap, dependency change, N failures) | docs/factory-design.md:142 |
| Model swap reopens every affected certificate — a query, not an investigation | docs/factory-design.md:158 |