# PFES-007 — Artifact Lifecycle

Artifacts are classified as irreplaceable, canonical large, expensive
reproducible, cheap reproducible, or quarantine. Every accepted artifact has a
stable Artifact ID, one or more hash-identified representations, and explicit
provenance.

Delete only after:

1. provenance and relationships are cataloged;
2. replacement or regeneration is verified;
3. no unique engineering knowledge is lost;
4. the retention decision is recorded;
5. required independent copies exist.

Identical bytes do not erase provenance distinctions. Same-disk copies are not
backups. During the interim single-disk server phase, source originals for
irreplaceable and canonical material must remain outside the server.
