Clause 7 is where periods become specifications. It separates standard from regular periods, says how to identify the standard period for a cluster, and covers the special situations that bend the rule: changed records, delayed deletion, suspension and backups. The most valuable output of clause 7 is a period specification that two people can apply the same way. That requires four fields on every row: the period, the event that starts it, the event that stops it, and the evidence that the clock was read correctly. A period without a start event is a wish. A period without a stop event cannot handle a contract that is renewed or a case that reopens. The distinction between standard and regular periods is what keeps the schedule small. A standard period is a policy choice, applied to several clusters. The regular period is the operational limit for one cluster, and it can be longer because the deletion itself takes time. The special situations are where audits find the real failures. A record that was modified after creation may need a fresh period, and the register must say so. A record moved to another cluster for a legitimate purpose must show the move and the new rule. A legal hold must be recorded with an end date and a reviewer, or it becomes a permanent exemption. A backup copy must have a documented treatment, because the live record's deletion does not remove it. None of these is exotic. They are the normal life of a record, and the clause exists because a simple timer cannot describe them.
The graph holds this control, the 0 it maps to, and the evidence behind each claim, over MCP and REST.