Death by a Thousand Edits
The reports use “death by a thousand edits” to name a gradual erosion pattern. One change looks harmless. Another looks like optimization. A third removes an edge case. Over time, safety constraints become weaker even though no single change looks like the decisive cause.
Where edits accumulate
Edits can accumulate in prompt policy, adapter stacks, evaluator prompts, router thresholds, memory consolidation rules, tool permissions, dependency versions, or organizational runbooks. Each edit may have a legitimate local justification.
Why lineage alone is not enough
Lineage records that a change happened. It does not prove that reviewers understood the behavioral consequence of the change. Behavioral inheritance requires re-evaluation against the current composition, not just ancestry reconstruction.
Control pattern
Use cumulative-change budgets. After a defined number of minor changes, force a full ecological re-certification. Track not only changes to artifacts, but changes to thresholds, hidden tests, approval norms, and rollback assumptions.