Computational Work Conservation

This technical note establishes the principle of Computational Work Conservation — the proposition that completed computational work persists only through the artifacts produced by that work. When systems lose artifacts, they must redo the same computations. Modern infrastructure frequently discards intermediate results and temporary outputs, treating recomputation as inevitable rather than recognizing it as a direct consequence of lost artifacts. The note proposes that preserving artifact graphs — structures that map the relationships between computational outputs — allows systems to accumulate work over time. This contrasts with current practice in which distributed systems repeatedly recreate similar computations independently, destroying the value of prior effort. The implications extend particularly to agent ecosystems, where multiple autonomous systems can reuse artifacts from prior computation rather than duplicating effort. This framework enables a new computing paradigm — Cumulative Computing — in which systems build upon previously completed work through systematic artifact preservation rather than starting from scratch. This is Technical Note 07 of the Agent Artifact Availability (AAA) Framework series.