Change Principles

A Lab change is safe only when it preserves the distinction between advice, approved intent, operational readiness, execution handoff, observation, interpretation, and evidence promotion. These states may be related, but none proves the next.

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> Advisory
    Advisory --> Executable: approval and assay contract
    Executable --> Ready: capacity, controls, materials
    Ready --> HandedOff: operator and artifact contract
    HandedOff --> Observed: normalized result record
    Observed --> Triaged: failure and censoring interpretation
    Triaged --> Promoted: evidence review
    Promoted --> [*]

Classify The Change

Changed surface	Questions that must be answered	Required evidence
assay or protocol design	Did controls, replicates, acceptance, or sample meaning change?	design fixtures and scientific review
advisory-to-executable transition	What new approval makes work actionable?	transition tests and refusal cases
readiness	Are capacity, inventory, staffing, dependencies, and controls current?	dated readiness snapshot
queue or schedule	Did burden, priority, fairness, or prerequisite ordering change?	deterministic queue examples and rationale
handoff	Can an operator reconstruct intent, inputs, protocol, owner, and expected outputs?	serialization and round-trip evidence
observation	Are units, detection limits, censoring, failure class, and provenance preserved?	normalized outcome fixtures
promotion	Why may an observation become Knowledge evidence?	separate promotion decision and lineage
learning feedback	Which observed outcome may influence a later policy or plan?	eligibility, provenance, and adaptation audit

Invariants

• Advisory records remain non-executable until an explicit transition succeeds.
• Readiness expires when its operational snapshot is no longer current.
• Missing prerequisites and controls block affected work.
• Technical failure, biological failure, and censored measurement remain distinguishable.
• Promotion is a separate review; successful execution is insufficient.
• Every transition retains the actor, prior state, rationale, and source artifacts required to reconstruct it.
• Storage or serialization changes do not silently alter lifecycle meaning.

Cross-Package Changes

Change Foundation when shared identifiers or provenance primitives move; Core when scientific result meaning moves; Knowledge when evidence custody moves; and Intelligence when recommendation policy moves. Lab owns the downstream feasibility, handoff, observation, and outcome consequence—not those upstream authorities.

A change spanning several lifecycle states should be split by semantic owner unless atomicity is required to preserve one public transition contract.