You have constructed a hypothetical case where the answer would likely depend on facts and circumstances beyond what's written. That such cases can exist doesn

You have constructed a hypothetical case where the answer would likely depend on facts and circumstances beyond what's written. That such cases can exist doesn't mean it's not clear-cut here. In the vast majority of cases, two engineers will agree on the question "is this data persisted or ephemeral" and the fact that the line is blurry doesn't mean we can't know when it's been crossed.