Enterprise Knowledge Corpus Freshness and Decay Review

Determine where the enterprise knowledge corpus has become stale, time-sensitive, or decision-unsafe by relating source authority, change events, usage, review evidence, and retrieval exposure. Focus on freshness decay and revalidation evidence, not a broad knowledge-base quality audit.

Context and inputs to provide:
- Knowledge corpus name: [Knowledge corpus name]
- Corpus export or representative content set: [Corpus export or representative content set]
- Source inventory and authority rules: [Source inventory and authority rules]
- Known change events and effective dates: [Known change events and effective dates]
- Usage and retrieval exposure data: [Usage and retrieval exposure data]
- Existing review evidence and owner list: [Existing review evidence and owner list]
- Decision horizon and risk tolerance: [Decision horizon and risk tolerance]

Evidence rules:
- Separate observed evidence from inference. Label each conclusion as Observed, Inferred, or Unknown.
- Do not claim that a source, log, review, owner approval, or retrieval result was inspected unless it appears in the provided material.
- Preserve uncertainty where evidence is incomplete, contradictory, old, or sampled.
- Prefer source-effective dates, documented review records, owner attestations, change logs, and actual retrieval or usage evidence over assumptions.
- If the corpus export is incomplete, treat the result as a scoped review and state the coverage limits.

Authority boundaries:
- Do not make final compliance, legal, medical, financial, security, or customer-impact determinations unless an accountable owner has provided the relevant authority rule in the inputs.
- Assign proposed decisions to accountable roles such as knowledge owner, source authority, product owner, policy owner, compliance owner, data owner, search owner, or support operations owner.
- Where the correct owner is unclear, mark Owner Unknown and specify the evidence needed to assign accountability.

Review method:
1. Establish the freshness policy map.
   - Identify content classes that require freshness controls, such as policy, product behavior, pricing, regulated guidance, operational runbooks, customer-facing answers, security procedures, data definitions, and historical reference material.
   - For each class, map source authority, expected review cadence, change triggers, acceptable age, required evidence of review, and decision owner.
   - If no explicit policy exists, infer a provisional freshness expectation from risk, source type, and decision use; mark it as Inferred.

2. Detect decay signals.
   - Compare corpus claims against known source changes, effective dates, product or policy updates, review timestamps, ownership changes, usage patterns, and retrieval exposure.
   - Identify assets with missing source authority, expired review windows, superseded references, conflicting versions, orphaned ownership, high retrieval exposure, or recent source changes without revalidation.
   - Distinguish content that is merely old from content that is decision-unsafe.

3. Build the decay-risk register.
   For each material risk, provide:
   - Asset or content group
   - Decision or workflow it may affect
   - Decay signal observed
   - Source authority status
   - Last known review evidence
   - Retrieval or usage exposure
   - Potential consequence if used as-is
   - Confidence level and evidence basis
   - Accountable owner
   - Recommended disposition: Retain, Revalidate, Update, Restrict, Retire, or Split/Merge

4. Build the source-change impact matrix.
   - List each known source change or effective-date event.
   - Map the affected corpus assets, topics, audiences, workflows, and retrieval surfaces.
   - Identify whether the corpus reflects the change, partially reflects it, conflicts with it, or lacks enough evidence to determine impact.
   - Prioritize changes that affect high-exposure retrieval, customer-facing guidance, regulated decisions, operational safety, financial terms, security controls, or contractual commitments.

5. Produce the revalidation queue.
   - Rank assets by decision risk, retrieval exposure, source-change proximity, review age, and owner availability.
   - For each item, specify the minimum evidence needed to clear or confirm the risk.
   - Assign an accountable owner and a practical next step.
   - Separate urgent restrictions from routine revalidation work.

6. Make retire, restrict, update, or revalidate decisions.
   - Recommend a disposition for each priority item.
   - Use Restrict when content could cause harmful or materially wrong decisions before validation is complete.
   - Use Retire when content is superseded, duplicate, ownerless with no defensible authority, or no longer tied to a valid business use.
   - Use Update when authoritative replacement information is available.
   - Use Revalidate when the content may still be valid but lacks current review evidence.
   - Use Retain only when freshness requirements, source authority, and review evidence are adequate for the stated decision horizon.

Output format:

A. Scope and evidence coverage
- Corpus reviewed
- Materials provided
- Materials not provided but needed
- Coverage limits
- Assumptions and uncertainty

B. Freshness policy map
Create a table with columns: Content class | Source authority | Review cadence or trigger | Acceptable age | Required review evidence | Decision owner | Basis: Observed/Inferred/Unknown.

C. Decay-risk register
Create a table with columns: Priority | Asset or group | Affected decision/workflow | Decay signal | Source authority status | Review evidence | Retrieval/usage exposure | Consequence | Confidence | Owner | Recommended disposition.

D. Source-change impact matrix
Create a table with columns: Source change | Effective date | Affected assets/topics | Exposure surface | Alignment status | Risk level | Required action | Owner.

E. Revalidation queue
Create a table with columns: Queue rank | Asset or group | Reason for queueing | Minimum evidence needed | Proposed verifier | Target decision | Urgency | Dependency.

F. Retire/restrict/update decisions
Create a table with columns: Asset or group | Decision | Rationale | Evidence basis | Owner to confirm | Completion check.

G. Missing evidence and unresolved questions
List the specific missing logs, source records, review attestations, authority rules, owner assignments, or retrieval evidence needed to convert Unknown or Inferred judgments into Observed judgments.

H. Completion criteria
State whether this review is complete enough to support immediate restriction, update, retirement, or revalidation planning. Identify which decisions require confirmation by the relevant knowledge owner, source authority, product owner, compliance owner, data owner, or search owner before implementation.