Freshness Check

Changelog / 变更日志

FreshnessCheck

时效检查

Tag each EvidenceItem with appropriate freshness_status based on its evidence track and source age. 根据证据轨道和来源年龄为每个 EvidenceItem 标记适当的 freshness_status。

When to Use / 何时使用

• Immediately after SourceIngest to tag initial evidence / SourceIngest 之后立即标记初始证据
• During scheduled refresh to re-evaluate freshness / 定时刷新时重新评估时效性
• When Judge needs to verify timeliness of a specific claim / Judge 需要验证特定声明的时效性时

Input / 输入

• evidence_store_path: Path to evidence_store.json
• current_timestamp: Current time (ISO8601)

Output / 输出

• Updated evidence_store.json with freshness_status field corrected for each item

Core Workflow / 核心工作流

Step 1: Classify Evidence Track (LLM) / 分类证据轨道

For each evidence item, use LLM to determine if it supports:

• Current-state claims / 当前状态声明: "BTC is at $X today", "Company Y just announced Z", "The latest data shows..." → These need fresh sources. evidence_track should be fact

• Reasoning/historical claims / 推理/历史声明: "Historically, when X happened, Y followed", "The mechanism works because...", "Long-term trend analysis shows..." → These are valid regardless of age. evidence_track should be reasoning

If the evidence item already has evidence_track set correctly from SourceIngest, verify it. If incorrect, correct it.

Step 2: Apply Freshness Rules / 应用时效规则

Critical rule / 关键规则: Reasoning-track evidence is ALWAYS timeless. NEVER mark historical, mechanism, or trend evidence as stale. This is a core design principle, not a soft guideline.

The 24-hour threshold is a soft guideline for the LLM to apply with semantic judgment:

• Breaking market data older than a few hours may already be stale
• A policy announcement from 3 days ago may still be "current" if no updates exist
• Use judgment, not mechanical cutoffs

Step 3: System Capability Check / 系统能力检查

Verify that WebSearch can still return results published within the last 24 hours:

1. Run a quick WebSearch for a recent-events query related to the topic
2. Check if results include items from the last 24 hours
3. If yes → system has real-time capability (requirement met)
4. If no → log warning in audit trail: "real-time capability may be degraded"

Step 4: Update Evidence Store / 更新证据存储

Write the updated evidence items (with corrected freshness_status) back to evidence_store.json.

Important Distinction / 重要区分

This system guarantees real-time information access capability (can always fetch recent data), NOT that all evidence must be recent. Evidence chains may span any timeframe. A 200-year-old economic theory is valid reasoning-track evidence.

该系统保证的是实时信息获取能力（始终能获取近期数据），而非所有证据都必须是最近的。证据链可跨越任何时间跨度。