Why old context cannot answer “now”

A previous screenshot can be relevant, precise, and completely wrong for the question being asked.

The build may have finished. The modal may have closed. The value may have changed one minute after the stored capture. History is valuable because it records another moment, not because it quietly becomes the present.

Fresh and historical are different evidence classes

Noru keeps the distinction in the tool contract. A live-observation request creates a fresh capture. History listing and capture retrieval read what is already stored; they do not trigger the screen.

That separation prevents a subtle failure mode: asking what is on screen now, failing to observe it, and returning an older image because it looks close enough. If the live request cannot complete because the app is unavailable, paused, unauthorized, or unacknowledged, the honest result is a failure to observe now.

Identity makes the difference inspectable

Every capture has its own identity and time. The text layer, image rendering, source, and dimensions belong to that same observation. Historical results retain those facts so an agent can say which moment supports a conclusion.

Without capture identity, “I saw it” can collapse several observations into one vague memory. With identity, the agent can distinguish the current frame from a useful prior frame and fetch either one deliberately.

History must point backward

When Noru searches local history for related context, candidates are constrained to observations that precede the fresh query capture. Evidence from an equal or later timestamp is not prior context, even if its words happen to match better.

That rule sounds obvious until a ranking system encounters an appealing future record. Relevance cannot repair a broken timeline. Temporal truth comes before similarity.

Before and after require two observations

A previous capture can establish “before.” It cannot establish that an action worked. Verification requires another observation after the action and an explicit comparison between the two. The agent may infer a change from that pair; Noru should not collapse the pair into an unsupported success claim.

The Noru decision

Fresh evidence answers the present. Historical evidence explains continuity, recurrence, and change. Noru can make both available without allowing one to impersonate the other.

Old context may be exactly what the agent needs to understand “before.” It is never a stored substitute for “now.”