The Anatomy of a Tool: Kinds, Identifiers and Lifecycle

All courses / Tools / Module 1 / Chapter 2

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

Identify the parts of the common anatomy in an unfamiliar artefact template.
Trace a chain of records in both directions by their identifiers.
Explain why a reader should search by identifier and read the Origin row before trusting a prefix.
Describe the lifecycle stages of an artefact and the fields that carry review and expiry.

Key concepts

Common anatomy: A set of habits, not a formal schema: an artefact states an identifier, a status, a version and date, an owner, the decision record that approved it, links to other records, a review and expiry, and its evidence. Not every artefact has every part.
Identifier family: A prefix of usually two to four capital letters and a hyphen, followed by a rest that carries the organisation, the year or both and a sequence. The infix NR or HM is a convention of the examples; templates use XX.
AI Decision Record: The record that approves a decision about an AI system, to which nearly every other artefact points. From The Transformed Security Architect on, each volume reserves a number range, for example AIDR-0900 to AIDR-0999 in AI Operations.
Evidence age: A record that supports a claim says when the claim was last tested and when it expires. In AI Operations the default clock for a restore or failover test of a Tier 1 service is 180 days or a substantive change, whichever comes first.
Lifecycle of an artefact: Proposal, approval and first use, review, suspension, and expiry and retirement, as shown by the status, review and expiry fields of the templates. Lowering a ceiling is immediate; raising one needs a named authority's decision.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Interactive exercise 1 · Put in order

The life of an artefact

Put the stages in the life of an artefact in the order that the statuses, review fields and expiry fields of the templates show.

Interactive exercise 2 · Match

Identifier families and what they identify

Match each identifier family with the artefact it identifies and the volume whose inventory entries carry the prefix first, as Table 2.2 records.

Teaching plan

15 min	Present Table 2.1, the common anatomy, with the field names of AI Operations. Show that the decision record is called decision_record in one template and decision in another.
15 min	Walk through Table 2.2 of identifier families. Participants pick out prefixes that name more than one artefact: DLG, CHG, CAP, RST and SCE.
15 min	Trace the chain of the worked example on the board: SVC-NR-002, SLO-NR-002, RST-NR-2027-002, CHG-NR-2028-0007 and the risk acceptance in DRF-NR-001, forwards and backwards.
20 min	Exercise: participants draw the identifier chain for one service or agent of their own organisation and mark the missing links.
10 min	Debrief: which review and expiry fields were missing, and what version control would let a pipeline check.

Discussion

The objective record SLO-NR-002 shows a failed restore test beside the recovery objective. What does an organisation gain and risk by publishing the failed evidence next to the promise?
The books do not force the frame onto a template where it does not fit: the service record has no status. When is a missing part of the anatomy a defect and when is it a sound design?
The chapter concludes that the more an actor can do without a person in the loop, the more of the anatomy must be present before it acts. How would you apply that to a new agent proposal?

Written exercise

Exercise · 20 minutes

Draw the identifier chain of one service

Choose one important service in your own organisation, or use the citizen e-service portal of Nordvik Region. List the records that exist for it and give each an identifier in the families of the series: a service record, an objective record, the most recent restore test, any change motivated by that test and any risk acceptance that covers a gap. Draw the chain with arrows for the fields that cite another record. For each record, write the owner, the date of its evidence and the review or expiry date. Mark every link, owner or date that you cannot fill in from an existing document.

Deliverable: A one-page chain diagram with at least four linked records, each with identifier, owner, evidence date and expiry, and a list of the gaps found.

Your work

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

What did the restore test RST-NR-2027-002 show about the citizen e-service portal of Nordvik Region?
Show the answer
A. Failover took 5 hours 20 minutes against an objective of 2 hours, so the claim was withdrawn
The test of 2027-10-12 failed over the portal in 5 hours 20 minutes against a 2-hour objective; the review found a DNS time-to-live and an unrenewed certificate. The record withdraws the claim and the objective record shows the failed evidence.
Why does the chapter advise searching a repository by identifier and not by field name?
Show the answer
C. The same part of the anatomy has different field names in different templates
The AI Decision Record is decision_record in one template and decision in another. A reader who searches by field name will miss records; a reader who searches by identifier will not.
Which statement about raising and lowering a delegation ceiling matches the chapter?
Show the answer
D. Lowering a ceiling is immediate; raising one is a named authority's decision
The delegation profile separates the agent's owner from the authority that may raise a ceiling. Lowering is immediate, and raising needs the named authority's decision, which the commit and the decision record then show.