Research maintenance and documentation drift control

Edition: 2026.09.09 · Status: researched guidance and proposed operating procedure
Applies to: Ongoing stewardship of this library
Evidence: S01, S02, S04, S05, S47 in the source register.
Boundary: Official facts are attributed below. Acceptance gates, priorities and workflows are agency recommendations, not secret ranking factors or performance guarantees.

Use a source ledger rather than a refresh slogan

Each maintained rule needs an owner, current source, observed date, affected modules and a next-review condition. A document is not current merely because its title includes the year. Preserve the difference between publication date, source update date, retrieval date and the effective date of a product change.

This release encountered a concrete example: older Google AI documentation described overall reporting, while a later announcement and help page document a dedicated report. Keep a conflict record so the next editor does not accidentally restore the older interpretation. [S03–S05 in the source register]

Proposed review cadence

Review engine bot controls, eligibility changes and critical policies before each relevant deployment and on a recurring team-owned schedule. Review framework-specific examples when the installed major version changes. Review business facts when their source changes. These are recommended operating practices; no background monitoring service has been scheduled by this package.

Use the official changelog as a trigger, not a substitute for reading the affected page. A documentation clarification may not mean a new ranking factor or a newly launched feature. Record the event type explicitly. [S01]

Change workflow

Open a change record with the source, exact changed claim, affected modules, urgency and test impact. Update the canonical owner first, then dependent tiers, templates, sales wording and acceptance tests. Keep a concise before/after explanation and the original evidence location.

For protocol and software changes, distinguish stable, older supported and draft versions. A draft security page can inform a threat review, but should not silently redefine a pinned production implementation. The MCP module intentionally records version boundaries. [S47]

Automated checks

Run the supplied library auditor for local file links, JSON syntax, metadata references and preserved-original hashes. These checks do not confirm that an external page is still live or that its content supports a claim. External link checking and semantic source review are separate activities.

Maintain a queue for unverified historical claims. A regex match is a lead for review, not a confirmed defect. Close a claim only after a reviewer records a disposition: verified, narrowed, superseded, removed or still unresolved.

Acceptance

Every release should carry a manifest, migration map, source register, coverage matrix and test report. Mark retained legacy documents honestly instead of assigning a current research stamp to untouched prose. Preserve rollback copies and make the authoritative entry point obvious to both humans and AI assistants.

The objective is controlled, traceable improvement, not endless document growth. Add a new module only when it owns a distinct decision, implementation contract or evidence workflow.