Maintenance

AMES files and declarations should remain synchronized with the pages they represent.

When a canonical page changes in a way that affects its content, structure, permissions, title, dates, zones, or essential media, the corresponding AMES signals and translation file should be updated as part of the same publishing workflow.

Publishers should periodically confirm that:

• page-level AMES tags remain present and accurate;
• /.well-known/ames-ai.txt remains publicly available and continues to state the publisher’s current site-level policy;
• each published .ax.md file resolves at its declared URL;
• manifest values still match the canonical page;
• declared zones and media references still correspond to the translated body;
• permissions remain consistent across the HTML source and manifest; and
• translation files continue to preserve structural parity with the current page.

Where files are generated automatically, validation should occur during the build or deployment process. A syntactically valid YAML document is not necessarily a valid AMES document.

If a translation cannot be kept current, it should be withdrawn rather than left materially stale. Withdrawing a translation includes removing the rel="alternate" link from the source page’s head. The page-level AMES policy may remain in place without a translation file.

Publishers should also review their implementation when adopting a new AMES version. Existing files should continue to identify the version under which they were produced until they are intentionally migrated and validated against the newer specification.