About this reference

About

What this site is §

This site is the permanent reference for Silent Expiry: the canonical definition, the test that follows from it, worked examples, the lineage of the idea, and the record of how the definition has changed. It exists so that anyone who uses the term — in a procedure, an audit report, a paper, a standard — can point at one stable text and mean the same thing.

It is not a product page and it does not sell anything. There is no account, no form, no newsletter, no tracking. Every page is a static document that can be saved, printed and cited.

How the definition is maintained §

The canonical definition is revised the way an engineering specification is revised: by numbered revision, dated, with a change note. Each revision is preceded by adversarial review — the text is attacked in writing, and every finding is dispositioned before anything is changed. Superseded revisions are retained. The policy is stated in full on the Revision history page.

Downstream texts — articles, posts, training material, the forthcoming Field Manual — conform to the canonical definition or revise it first. Where they disagree, the definition prevails.

Authorship §

The canonical definition and the texts on this site are written by Dan Bleigh, author of record, who first demonstrated the concept at length in The Norwood Files (2026). The definition’s lineage — the works it descends from — is credited in Section 2 and listed in full under References.

How to cite §

Plain. Silent Expiry — Canonical Definition, Rev3, silent-expiry.pages.dev, 2026.

With section. Silent Expiry — Canonical Definition, Rev3, Section 1, silent-expiry.pages.dev, 2026.

BibTeX.

@misc{silentexpiry2026,
  title        = {Silent Expiry --- The Canonical Definition},
  author       = {Bleigh, Dan},
  year         = {2026},
  note         = {Rev3, issued 5 September 2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://silent-expiry.pages.dev/definition/}}
}

Always cite the revision number. Superseded revisions remain citable; the Revision history records what changed between them.

Stable anchors §

Every section of the canonical definition, and every paragraph a reader is likely to cite, has an anchor that will not change between revisions. Link to /definition/#anchor. The principal anchors:

Anchors on the Canonical Definition page
Anchor	Points to
`#short-form`	The canonical short-form definition
`#conditions`	The three conditions (`#condition-1`, `#condition-2`, `#condition-3`)
`#structural-condition`	Why the state persists — the structural condition
`#graded`	Expiry is graded, not binary; materiality
`#protection`	“Protection” means the control’s own
`#why-a-new-term`	Section 2, with `#vs-root-cause`, `#vs-audit`, `#vs-iso-9001`, `#vs-risk-management`, `#vs-fmea`, `#vs-model-risk-management`
`#lineage`	Lineage and contribution; `#positioning` for the claim as stated
`#what-expires`	Section 3.1 — the premise and its five properties (`#property-1` … `#property-5`)
`#why-the-premise-gets-lost`	Section 3.2 — the severance
`#exclusions`	Section 4, with `#not-poor-execution`, `#not-negligence`, `#not-technical-failure`, `#not-obsolescence`, `#not-root-cause`, `#not-drift`, `#latent-conditions`
`#symptoms`	Section 5; `#competing-explanations` for the five-explanations test
`#audits`	Section 6; `#effectiveness-audit`, `#third-axis`, `#blind-spot`
`#examples`	Section 7, with `#example-manufacturing` … `#example-government`
`#three-questions`	Date, Witness, Counterfactual (Section 9); `#boundaries` for what bounds the work

Other pages: /examples/#manufacturing … /examples/#government; /references/#ref-leveson-2015 and the like; /revision-history/#rev2; /premise-test/01/ for the first article of the series.

Corrections and questions §

Corrections and counter-examples are the mechanism by which this definition has been revised: each revision was preceded by written attacks on the text and a line-by-line disposition, recorded in the Revision history. A counter-example that breaks the three-condition test is the most useful thing a reader can produce. No contact route or e-mail address is published in this version of the site.

What is planned §

A public archive of superseded revisions at stable URLs.
The Field Manual: the instrument for managing Silent Expiry — the premise register and its operating discipline — with its forms and templates published here.
A reader-facing edition of the review record.
Verified editions and page references for every entry in References.