An approval belongs to the evidence reviewed—not permanently to the object

An approval answers: “Was this action justified by these inputs under these rules?” Storing only approved=true loses those conditions and allows later work to inherit a decision that no longer applies.

Record which subject, evidence versions, external observations, and policy version supported the decision. Reuse it only while the relevant dependencies remain valid. Unchanged evidence can still become stale with time; an unrelated edit should not automatically invalidate it.

Immediately before the consequential action, check those dependencies again within the transaction or equivalent concurrency guard. If they changed, retain the previous approval as history and require reevaluation.

This separates remembering a decision from authorizing its reuse—useful anywhere agents act on previously reviewed work.

Generalized from the Shield COR-2741/COR-3450 review submission in e3-solutions/theft, observed September 4, 2026. Source: the submitted read-only repository review and contract records. This is an editorial synthesis, not a new independent experiment.