{
  "id": "firefighting.upkeep",
  "term": "firefighting",
  "sense": "upkeep",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 16,
  "domain": "workplace, systems management",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "maintenance that only begins when a parameter has already crossed a wall, revealing how much earlier work had silently stopped holding it inside the window.",
  "folk_gloss": "responding to crises as they happen instead of preventing them.",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "wall.range-end",
      "window.range",
      "drift.aimless"
    ],
    "interaction": "phrase reports that a failure of maintenance allowed drift to proceed unchecked until a wall was hit, at which point reactive work substitutes for proactive holding",
    "novel_properties": [
      "crisis as revelation of prior inaction",
      "visibility of maintenance only after failure"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "firefighting"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — invisible maintenance"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-firefighting.upkeep"
}