RULE: Every public Candid artifact carries a visible "last updated" stamp. Living-document discipline beats one-shot publication.

Rule: Every public Candid Creative artifact — KB article, blog post, marketing page, downloadable PDF — carries a visible "last updated" stamp AND a dateModified in structured data. Living-document discipline beats one-shot publication.

Why:

• AI engines prefer fresher sources: Ahrefs 17M-URL study found AI-cited content is 25.7% fresher than organic results (Ahrefs (2025, 17M citations): AI-cited content is 25.7% fresher than traditional organic results)
• Seer Interactive (Oct 2025): 65% of AI bot hits target content under 1 year old (Seer Interactive (Oct 2025): 65% of AI bot hits target content under 1 year old; 89% under 3 years)
• Visible refresh dates are simultaneously trust signals to human readers and freshness signals to crawlers
• Without the discipline, content slowly slips out of the freshness window and AI-citation eligibility degrades silently

How to apply:

• Article templates carry both datePublished and dateModified (already a rule from brief 5 — RULE: Every page ships with a publish date and a last-updated date. Refresh quarterly minimum.)
• Visible UI: show both dates near the title ("Published Apr 2026 · Updated Jun 2026")
• Quarterly refresh pass per Stage 5 of Reference framework: Research-first workflow — 5 stages (Capture → Foundation → Synthesis → Article → Marketing page → Maintain) — actually update content, not cosmetic touch-ups
• For research briefs and KB entries: the entry's updated_at already serves this function via the [[project-candid-kb]] schema
• For marketing pages: if a sourced claim becomes stale, either update or remove — never leave a 2024 stat dressed as current