Evidence Hygiene

Tier: 0 · Normative weight: implements TM-EVD-008 Requires: nothing

Problem it removes

Evidence capture defaults to “keep everything”: raw logs, full model output, whole databases, screenshots with secrets in frame. The record becomes unreviewable, retention boundaries are violated by accident, and the one command that would reproduce the result is buried in noise.

Mechanism

Two written lists, kept where evidence is captured — the declared retention boundary TM-EVD-008 requires. Curate: the commands run, digests, timings, and metadata needed to reproduce or verify the result. Never add: credentials, customer data, raw logs or traces, model prompts and output, databases, weights, binaries, copies of runtime checkouts — plus whatever the repository’s own privacy, legal, and ownership boundaries forbid. A recovery-safe reference or curated observation is often more truthful than an uncontrolled duplicate; the record states what it proves and what deliberately remains outside the system.

Cost

Authoring: minutes — the lists are short. Per change: a moment of judgment at each capture, which is judgment the capture needed anyway. Per session: none.

Do not adopt when

Never skip the exclusion list in a repository that captures evidence at all. The pattern only lacks a subject where no evidence is recorded.

Evidence

Assessed in inference-ops and cloud-ops, where the lists live in the scoped guidance of the directories that capture evidence.

Template

None — adopted by convention, as a section of the front door or the evidence directory’s scoped guidance.

Related patterns

Evidence Packet gives curated evidence a durable identity. Untrusted Intake governs what arrives before curation.