Corrections: supersede

Since 0.4.0.

The memory palace treats correction as a first-class structural operation, not a ranking fight. Before 0.4, a wrong high-importance memory outranked every lower-tier correction forever — wake-up orders lexicographically (importance DESC, created_at DESC), so recency never closed an importance gap, and corrections only worked when a human re-saved them at matching importance to win the recency tiebreak. The 2026-09-22 research dive called this “a ritual, not a mechanism.” Supersede is the mechanism.

The link

Saving a memory that declares supersedes: <target_id>:

• writes the inverse link (superseded_by, superseded_at_unix) onto the target as part of the save — serialized and failure-compensated (see below);
• excludes the target from wake-up, search, and browse — regardless of either row’s importance, tier, or age;
• keeps the target recallable by id, with its links intact — superseded rows are visible fossils, not deletions.

POST /memories
{
  "id": "mem_correction",
  "content": "The wire shape was fixed in commit abc123 — earlier notes were wrong.",
  "supersedes": "mem_wrong_note",
  "evidence": "Observed",
  "citations": [{ "kind": "Commit", "locator": "abc123" }],
  ...full Memory fields...
}

Semantics

• Chains, not re-targeting: a memory that is already superseded cannot be superseded again — supersede the successor. A ← B ← C is a valid chain; A ← B then A ← C is rejected (409).
• Self-supersede is rejected (409); a target absent from the namespace is 404.
• Namespace-scoped: the link resolution never crosses walls.
• Concurrency-safe (the precise guarantee): a supersede save is insert → conditional claim → compensate, serialized per process — not a single transaction. The claim on the target is one conditional atomic update (UPDATE … WHERE superseded_by = NONE), so concurrent successors of one target yield exactly one winner; a claim that fails (absent, claimed, or self target) compensates by deleting the just-inserted successor, leaving the pre-attempt graph. Mutually referencing saves see the serial outcome — both rejected and compensated away — instead of forming a correction cycle. The correction graph is acyclic by construction under single-process operation; cross-process serialization is federation’s problem.

Where exclusion applies

Corrections and evidence grades

A correction that merely asserts a different claim is an interpretation. A correction that cites what it observed ("Observed" + citations — see provenance) carries the evidence axis with it. The two mechanisms compose: the supersede link decides what is visible; the evidence grade declares how the replacement knows.

Doctrine is versioned, not superseded

The doctrine tier (Git-reviewed, ingested from corpus) corrects itself through versioning and rollback, not supersede links — its rows carry stable revision identities instead. The two correction systems are tier-appropriate: agent memory displaces; doctrine re-versions.