CACHE REUSE POLICY
Evidence Commons — Cache Reuse Policy v0.1¶
Economic rule¶
An agent must not pay to rediscover what the network already knows. A new acquisition is required only when evidence is missing, stale, materially different, independently required, or outside license scope.
Identity¶
Cache keys derive from a normalized request including:
- provider identity
- resource / endpoint class
- normalized query text
- normalized parameters (stable key order)
- format, locale, jurisdiction
- license scope fingerprint
Raw URL or query text alone is insufficient.
Freshness¶
| Status | Current query | Historical query |
|---|---|---|
| FRESH | Reuse (FRESH_HIT) | Reuse with STALE_ALLOWED label |
| STALE | REVALIDATE | STALE_ALLOWED only when caller accepts historical boundary |
| SUPERSEDED / DISPUTED | Never presented as current | Provenance preserved |
Independence¶
independentSourceCount increments only for distinct provider/source lineages, not reader count. Multiple agents reading one packet do not increase corroboration.
Public vs private¶
Public provenance does not imply public payload. License scope gates payload return separately from metadata.