Fact lifecycle: expiry-unless-reaffirmed + ratification surface #14

Design proposal (companion to #13). Grounded in current code; no implementation yet.

What exists

• Recall::StaleDetector (#35) surfaces access-stale active facts (last_recalled_at past threshold), explicitly read-only: "the sweeper never acts on this."
• Sweep::RecallTimestampRefresher touches last_recalled_at on recall/context-injection.
• Fact statuses: active / superseded / rejected (plus disputed per Provenance + authority on facts; keep and surface contested claims #13). Observations already have an expired retire path (observation_writes.rb:79); facts have no lifecycle terminal for "nobody has needed or confirmed this in a long time."

Gap

Staleness is a report, not a lifecycle. A stale-but-wrong fact stays active and keeps winning recall forever unless the user happens to read the stale list. And the only freshness signal is passive recall — which self-defeats: recalling a fact touches last_recalled_at, so frequently-recalled-but-wrong facts can never age out.

Proposal

Two-stage expiry with distinct signals per stage:

1. active → expiring (sweeper, automatic): stale past threshold_days per existing StaleDetector predicate. expiring facts still recall, but annotated (staleness_annotator already exists) and down-weighted. Passive recall during this window does NOT reset the clock back to active — that's the self-defeat above.
2. expiring → expired (sweeper, automatic): after a second window (ratify_window_days) with no ratification. expired facts are excluded from default recall (like superseded), never deleted, and restorable.
3. Ratification (explicit, user/agent-initiated): new reaffirmed_at column, set only by the ratification surface — never by passive recall. Ratifying returns the fact to active and resets both clocks.

Ratification surface

• CLI: claude-memory ratify — interactive bulk pass over expiring facts (keep / expire / edit), modeled on the existing stale-list review flow.
• MCP: list_expiring_facts + ratify_fact(id) so agents can raise expiring facts mid-session ("still true that X?") — the cheapest honest signal, since the user is present.
• Dashboard: expiring count next to the existing stale count in the sidebar.

Open questions

• Should expiring facts lose conflict-resolution priority in Resolve::Resolver? (Lean: yes — a contested claim between active and expiring should prefer active.)
• Per-predicate thresholds? Identity facts (name, timezone) age slower than state facts (current project). PredicatePolicy is the natural home.
• Does ratification need authority per Provenance + authority on facts; keep and surface contested claims #13? (Lean: yes — user ratification > agent ratification, recorded in the same provenance columns.)