Superseding a memory
Superseding replaces the claim that governs behaviour while leaving the earlier one readable as history. Only the current version reaches a reply or a call; the previous one is there so a message sent under the old truth can still be explained. Use it when something was true and stopped being true — not when the wording was simply wrong.
Why the old statement is kept at all#
Every outbound thing Connect does is explainable after the fact: the audit trail records what was decided, by what, under which rule, and what happened. That guarantee has a weak point — a rule that can be silently rewritten. If the memory a reply was written against can be edited into something else, the trail says a decision was made under a rule that, as far as anyone can now see, never existed.
Superseding closes that gap for the one case where it matters: a claim that was correct and has changed. A quotation sent in March under March's delivery times is defensible in June because March's statement is still legible beside June's.
What a reader sees#
- The current claim, which is what governs the next reply and the next call.
- The earlier claim, marked as no longer current and clearly not the one in force.
- The tier, unchanged — superseding replaces a statement, it does not move it to another scope.
- The tags, which carry forward unless you change them. A superseded row that carried a block still carries a block through its replacement.
A superseded statement is history, not context. It does not compete with the current one when a reply is assembled, and it does not consume any of the character budget on a live call — which is exactly why keeping it is affordable. Somewhere between a hundred and a thousand superseded lines costs a live call nothing, whereas a hundred *current* ones would not fit at all.
The test for which action to take#
Ask whether anyone might ever need to know what this row said before.
Result If nobody could — a typo, a misheard word, a line that was mistaken from the day it was written — edit it and move on. History for its own sake makes a tier unreadable.
Ask whether a message has already gone out under the old claim.
Result If one has, supersede. The gap between what was sent and what the record says is the thing you are protecting against.
Ask whether the change is likely to reverse.
Result Seasonal facts, temporary constraints and pilot arrangements reverse. Superseding leaves the previous wording there to restore, rather than making somebody reconstruct it from memory.
A rule of thumb that holds up: correcting a mistake is an edit, recording a change is a supersede. The word to test is whether the sentence "that used to be true" makes sense. If it does, the old version is worth keeping.
What superseding does not do#
- It does not notify anyone
- Nothing is queued for approval and nothing appears in Needs You. Superseding is a record-keeping action, not a decision waiting on a person.
- It does not change a message already sent
- That message left through the send boundary with provider acknowledgement. Nothing about a later memory change touches it.
- It does not re-open a conversation
- The thread, the call and the timeline are unchanged. Only what the next piece of work reads has moved.
- It does not lift a block
- Tags carry through. Removing a
block:<channel>tag is a separate, deliberate act.
Questions#
Can I go back to a superseded version?
The earlier wording is readable, so restoring it is a matter of making it the current claim again — write it back as the version in force. That is the practical reason to supersede rather than edit for anything seasonal: you are not relying on somebody remembering the old sentence correctly.
Does a superseded memory still cost anything on a phone call?
No. Only the current claim is rendered into the brief, and the brief is what the character budgets apply to — 700 characters for memory, 600 for the contact block. History is free at the point of use, which is what makes keeping it reasonable.
Should every correction be a supersede, to be safe?
No, and doing so makes the tier worse. A row with nine superseded typos above it is harder to read and no more accountable. Keep history for changes in the world and use a plain edit for changes in the wording.