runtime: put el_runtime.c on a ratchet, and actually run the guards

scripts/check-single-runtime.sh guards against el_runtime.c being COPIED — it
was written after a lagging fork shipped to prod and dropped learned hebb edges.
Nothing guarded against it GROWING. So it grew: 10,607 -> 20,527 lines, 94% in
3.5 months, the whole time under an explicit commit-message promise that it was
a temporary shim about to be deleted.

Worse, the copy guard was never wired in. Its own footer described the CI
wire-in as a TODO, and the TODO had never been done — the script existed but ran
nowhere, in no workflow and in no hook, so it had caught nothing for as long as
it has been in the tree. A guard that does not run is a comment.

This adds the missing guard and runs both.

  * lang/runtime/BUDGET — a RATCHET, not a limit. max_lines is set at the
    current 20,527 with NO headroom: the file cannot grow by one line. A second
    cap, max_engram_fns (279), counts top-level engram_/eg_/cog_ definitions in
    it — ~47.5% of the file is engram code and engram already owns six sibling
    .c files, so this is the scoreboard for moving it out. Both may only go DOWN.

  * scripts/check-runtime-growth.sh — enforces the ratchet, and three
    invariants that keep the multi-file runtime honest: every .c in
    lang/runtime/ is either in SOURCES or explicitly platform-optional (an
    unaccounted .c is compiled by nothing and is silently dead); install.sh's
    hardcoded download list matches SOURCES (it cannot call the helper — it
    runs where there is no checkout — so that copy is checked, not trusted);
    and an advisory nudge to lower the budget when you have earned it.

  * Both guards now run as early steps in ci-dev.yaml, ci-stage.yaml and
    sdk-release.yaml, and in .githooks/pre-commit.

The failure message is the point. The guard that existed said what was wrong but
not where the code should go, which makes it easy to "fix" by arguing with the
guard. This one names the destination: the concern-owning .c, or a new .c plus
one line in SOURCES, or c_source in a program's manifest.el — and it prints the
`nm` command that proves placement is link-time and that the shipped compiler
already links from ten translation units. Every runtime file except el_runtime.c
is deliberately uncapped, because that is where code is supposed to go.

Proven with negative controls, per lang/AGENTS.md step 5 — each shown FAILING:
  * +1 line to el_runtime.c                  -> FAIL (20528/20527)
  * +1 engram fn, net-zero lines             -> FAIL (280/279)
  * a new unaccounted lang/runtime/*.c       -> FAIL
  * engram_store.c removed from install.sh   -> FAIL, names the missing file
  * el_runtime.c truncated to 20,000 lines   -> PASS + "lower max_lines to 20000"
  * baseline, tree unmodified                -> OK, and both guards green

el_runtime.c is byte-identical after the controls; this commit changes zero
lines of it.

.gitea/workflows/ci-dev.yaml

@@ -19,6 +19,16 @@ jobs:
       - name: Checkout
         uses: actions/checkout@v4
 
+      # Guards must run from the REPO ROOT — override the job's
+      # defaults.run.working-directory: lang
+      - name: Guard - single canonical runtime source
+        working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}
+        run: bash scripts/check-single-runtime.sh
+
+      - name: Guard - el_runtime.c growth budget
+        working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}
+        run: bash scripts/check-runtime-growth.sh
+
       - name: Install build dependencies
         run: |
           apt-get update -qq
@@ -41,7 +51,7 @@ jobs:
           gcc -O2 \
             -I runtime \
             dist/elc-gen2.c \
-            runtime/el_runtime.c \
+            $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh runtime) \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm \
             -o dist/platform/elc
           chmod +x dist/platform/elc
@@ -56,7 +66,7 @@ jobs:
           gcc -O2 \
             -I runtime \
             dist/elb.c \
-            runtime/el_runtime.c \
+            $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh runtime) \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm \
             -o dist/bin/elb
           chmod +x dist/bin/elb
@@ -87,14 +97,20 @@ jobs:
           bash tests/html_sanitizer/run.sh
 
       # Native El test suites (elc --test, compile-link-run)
-      # el_runtime.c is precompiled to .o once and reused by all 8 modules.
-      - name: Precompile el_runtime.o
+      # The runtime is MULTI-FILE (see lang/runtime/SOURCES). Every .c is compiled
+      # once into /tmp/libel.a and reused by all 8 test modules — compile-once,
+      # link-many, as prescribed in DESIGN.md. Linking el_runtime.c alone fails
+      # at `ld`: it calls into all six engram sibling TUs.
+      - name: Precompile runtime into libel.a
         run: |
           set -euo pipefail
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
-          gcc -O2 -c -I "$RUNTIME" "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
-            -o /tmp/el_runtime.o
-          echo "el_runtime.o compiled"
+          rm -rf /tmp/elrt && mkdir -p /tmp/elrt
+          for src in $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh --check "$RUNTIME"); do
+            gcc -O2 -c -I "$RUNTIME" "$src" -o "/tmp/elrt/$(basename "${src%.c}").o"
+          done
+          ar rcs /tmp/libel.a /tmp/elrt/*.o
+          echo "libel.a built from $(ls /tmp/elrt/*.o | wc -l) translation units"
 
       - name: Run tests - native (core)
         run: |
@@ -102,7 +118,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_core.el > /tmp/el_native_core.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_core.c /tmp/el_runtime.o \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_core.c /tmp/libel.a \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_core
           /tmp/el_native_core
 
@@ -112,7 +128,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_text.el > /tmp/el_native_text.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_text.c /tmp/el_runtime.o \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_text.c /tmp/libel.a \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_text
           /tmp/el_native_text
 
@@ -122,7 +138,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_string.el > /tmp/el_native_string.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_string.c /tmp/el_runtime.o \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_string.c /tmp/libel.a \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_string
           /tmp/el_native_string
 
@@ -132,7 +148,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_math.el > /tmp/el_native_math.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_math.c /tmp/el_runtime.o \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_math.c /tmp/libel.a \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_math
           /tmp/el_native_math
 
@@ -142,7 +158,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_state.el > /tmp/el_native_state.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_state.c /tmp/el_runtime.o \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_state.c /tmp/libel.a \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_state
           /tmp/el_native_state
 
@@ -152,7 +168,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_time.el > /tmp/el_native_time.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_time.c /tmp/el_runtime.o \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_time.c /tmp/libel.a \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_time
           /tmp/el_native_time
 
@@ -162,7 +178,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_json.el > /tmp/el_native_json.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_json.c /tmp/el_runtime.o \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_json.c /tmp/libel.a \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_json
           /tmp/el_native_json
 
@@ -172,7 +188,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_env.el > /tmp/el_native_env.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_env.c /tmp/el_runtime.o \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_env.c /tmp/libel.a \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_env
           /tmp/el_native_env
 
@@ -182,7 +198,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_fs.el > /tmp/el_native_fs.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_fs.c /tmp/el_runtime.o \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_fs.c /tmp/libel.a \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_fs
           /tmp/el_native_fs
 
@@ -306,8 +322,9 @@ jobs:
           FROM ${BASE}
           COPY dist/platform/elc                 /opt/el/dist/platform/elc
           COPY dist/bin/elb                       /opt/el/dist/bin/elb
-          COPY runtime/el_runtime.c  /opt/el/runtime/el_runtime.c
-          COPY runtime/el_runtime.h  /opt/el/runtime/el_runtime.h
+          # Whole runtime link set — el_runtime.c alone does not link (it calls
+          # into the six engram sibling TUs). See lang/runtime/SOURCES.
+          COPY runtime/ /opt/el/runtime/
           COPY runtime/el_runtime.js /opt/el/runtime/el_runtime.js
           RUN chmod +x /opt/el/dist/platform/elc /opt/el/dist/bin/elb
           EOF

.gitea/workflows/ci-stage.yaml

@@ -29,6 +29,16 @@ jobs:
           fi
           echo "Source branch check passed: ${SOURCE} -> stage"
 
+      # Guards must run from the REPO ROOT — override the job's
+      # defaults.run.working-directory: lang
+      - name: Guard - single canonical runtime source
+        working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}
+        run: bash scripts/check-single-runtime.sh
+
+      - name: Guard - el_runtime.c growth budget
+        working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}
+        run: bash scripts/check-runtime-growth.sh
+
       - name: Install build dependencies
         run: |
           apt-get update -qq
@@ -48,7 +58,7 @@ jobs:
           gcc -O2 \
             -I runtime \
             dist/elc-gen2.c \
-            runtime/el_runtime.c \
+            $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh runtime) \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm \
             -o dist/platform/elc
           chmod +x dist/platform/elc
@@ -86,7 +96,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_core.el > /tmp/el_native_core.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_core.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_core.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_core
           /tmp/el_native_core
 
@@ -96,7 +106,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_text.el > /tmp/el_native_text.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_text.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_text.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_text
           /tmp/el_native_text
 
@@ -106,7 +116,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_string.el > /tmp/el_native_string.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_string.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_string.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_string
           /tmp/el_native_string
 
@@ -116,7 +126,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_math.el > /tmp/el_native_math.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_math.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_math.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_math
           /tmp/el_native_math
 
@@ -126,7 +136,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_state.el > /tmp/el_native_state.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_state.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_state.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_state
           /tmp/el_native_state
 
@@ -136,7 +146,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_time.el > /tmp/el_native_time.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_time.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_time.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_time
           /tmp/el_native_time
 
@@ -146,7 +156,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_json.el > /tmp/el_native_json.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_json.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_json.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_json
           /tmp/el_native_json
 
@@ -156,7 +166,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_env.el > /tmp/el_native_env.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_env.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_env.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_env
           /tmp/el_native_env
 
@@ -166,7 +176,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_fs.el > /tmp/el_native_fs.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_fs.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_fs.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_fs
           /tmp/el_native_fs
 
@@ -178,7 +188,7 @@ jobs:
           gcc -O2 \
             -I runtime \
             dist/elb.c \
-            runtime/el_runtime.c \
+            $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh runtime) \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm \
             -o dist/bin/elb
           chmod +x dist/bin/elb
@@ -290,8 +300,9 @@ jobs:
           FROM ${BASE}
           COPY dist/platform/elc                 /opt/el/dist/platform/elc
           COPY dist/bin/elb                       /opt/el/dist/bin/elb
-          COPY runtime/el_runtime.c  /opt/el/runtime/el_runtime.c
-          COPY runtime/el_runtime.h  /opt/el/runtime/el_runtime.h
+          # Whole runtime link set — el_runtime.c alone does not link (it calls
+          # into the six engram sibling TUs). See lang/runtime/SOURCES.
+          COPY runtime/ /opt/el/runtime/
           COPY runtime/el_runtime.js /opt/el/runtime/el_runtime.js
           RUN chmod +x /opt/el/dist/platform/elc /opt/el/dist/bin/elb
           EOF

.gitea/workflows/sdk-release.yaml

@@ -29,6 +29,16 @@ jobs:
           fi
           echo "Source branch check passed: ${SOURCE} -> main"
 
+      # Guards must run from the REPO ROOT — override the job's
+      # defaults.run.working-directory: lang
+      - name: Guard - single canonical runtime source
+        working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}
+        run: bash scripts/check-single-runtime.sh
+
+      - name: Guard - el_runtime.c growth budget
+        working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}
+        run: bash scripts/check-runtime-growth.sh
+
       - name: Install build dependencies
         run: |
           apt-get update -qq
@@ -49,7 +59,7 @@ jobs:
           gcc -O2 \
             -I runtime \
             dist/elc-gen2.c \
-            runtime/el_runtime.c \
+            $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh runtime) \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm \
             -o dist/platform/elc
           chmod +x dist/platform/elc
@@ -64,7 +74,7 @@ jobs:
           gcc -O2 \
             -I runtime \
             dist/elb.c \
-            runtime/el_runtime.c \
+            $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh runtime) \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm \
             -o dist/bin/elb
           chmod +x dist/bin/elb
@@ -123,7 +133,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_core.el > /tmp/el_native_core.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_core.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_core.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_core
           /tmp/el_native_core
 
@@ -133,7 +143,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_text.el > /tmp/el_native_text.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_text.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_text.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_text
           /tmp/el_native_text
 
@@ -143,7 +153,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_string.el > /tmp/el_native_string.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_string.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_string.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_string
           /tmp/el_native_string
 
@@ -153,7 +163,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_math.el > /tmp/el_native_math.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_math.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_math.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_math
           /tmp/el_native_math
 
@@ -163,7 +173,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_state.el > /tmp/el_native_state.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_state.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_state.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_state
           /tmp/el_native_state
 
@@ -173,7 +183,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_time.el > /tmp/el_native_time.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_time.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_time.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_time
           /tmp/el_native_time
 
@@ -183,7 +193,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_json.el > /tmp/el_native_json.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_json.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_json.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_json
           /tmp/el_native_json
 
@@ -193,7 +203,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_env.el > /tmp/el_native_env.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_env.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_env.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_env
           /tmp/el_native_env
 
@@ -203,7 +213,7 @@ jobs:
           ELC="$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc"
           RUNTIME="$(pwd)/runtime"
           "$ELC" --test tests/native/test_fs.el > /tmp/el_native_fs.c
-          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_fs.c "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
+          gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" /tmp/el_native_fs.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh "$RUNTIME") \
             -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o /tmp/el_native_fs
           /tmp/el_native_fs
 
@@ -216,10 +226,17 @@ jobs:
           cp lang/dist/platform/elc          dist/sdk/bin/elc
           cp lang/dist/bin/elb               dist/sdk/bin/elb
           cp lang/dist/bin/epm               dist/sdk/bin/epm
-          cp lang/runtime/el_runtime.c  dist/sdk/runtime/
-          cp lang/runtime/el_runtime.h  dist/sdk/runtime/
-          cp lang/runtime/engram_store.c dist/sdk/runtime/
-          cp lang/runtime/engram_store.h dist/sdk/runtime/
+          # Ship the WHOLE runtime link set, not el_runtime.c alone. el_runtime.c
+          # #includes six engram headers and calls into all six sibling .c files,
+          # so an SDK carrying only el_runtime.c{,.h} + engram_store.c{,.h} cannot
+          # link — downstream `ld` fails on engram_ground_json, eg_find_relation,
+          # cog_assert_two_axis and friends. lang/runtime/SOURCES is the source of
+          # truth; --check makes a missing file fail the release loudly.
+          for f in $(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh --check) \
+                   $(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh --headers --check); do
+            cp "lang/runtime/${f}" dist/sdk/runtime/
+          done
+          cp lang/runtime/SOURCES            dist/sdk/runtime/
           cp lang/runtime/*.el               dist/sdk/runtime/
           tar -czf dist/el-sdk-latest.tar.gz -C dist/sdk .
           echo "SDK tarball bundled: dist/el-sdk-latest.tar.gz"
@@ -274,12 +291,16 @@ jobs:
               "${GITEA_API}/repos/${REPO}/releases/${RELEASE_ID}/assets"
           }
 
-          # Per-file assets (downstream CI needs these individually)
+          # Per-file assets (downstream CI needs these individually).
+          # lang/install.sh downloads every one of these by name — the list is
+          # lang/runtime/SOURCES. Shipping el_runtime.c alone produced a lib/
+          # that could not link; that is the bug this loop closes.
           upload_asset lang/dist/platform/elc                elc
-          upload_asset lang/runtime/el_runtime.c el_runtime.c
-          upload_asset lang/runtime/el_runtime.h el_runtime.h
-          upload_asset lang/runtime/engram_store.c engram_store.c
-          upload_asset lang/runtime/engram_store.h engram_store.h
+          for f in $(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh --check) \
+                   $(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh --headers --check); do
+            upload_asset "lang/runtime/${f}" "${f}"
+          done
+          upload_asset lang/runtime/SOURCES SOURCES
 
           # SDK bundle and installer binary
           upload_asset dist/el-sdk-latest.tar.gz             el-sdk-latest.tar.gz
@@ -350,6 +371,26 @@ jobs:
             --version="${VERSION}" \
             --source=runtime/el_runtime.js
 
+          # el-runtime-src — the COMPLETE runtime link set as one tarball.
+          #
+          # The el-runtime-c / el-runtime-h packages above are single files and are
+          # kept for backward compatibility with consumers that already pull them,
+          # but they are NOT sufficient to link: el_runtime.c calls into six engram
+          # sibling translation units. New consumers should pull el-runtime-src and
+          # link everything named in its SOURCES file.
+          tar -czf /tmp/el-runtime-src.tar.gz \
+            -C runtime SOURCES \
+            $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh --check) \
+            $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh --headers --check)
+
+          gcloud artifacts generic upload \
+            --repository=foundation-prod \
+            --location=us-central1 \
+            --project=neuron-785695 \
+            --package=el-runtime-src \
+            --version="${VERSION}" \
+            --source=/tmp/el-runtime-src.tar.gz
+
           echo "Published El SDK version=${VERSION} to foundation-prod"
           # Keep key alive for the ci-base rebuild step below
           # (deleted in that step after docker push)
@@ -386,8 +427,9 @@ jobs:
           FROM ${BASE}
           COPY dist/platform/elc                 /opt/el/dist/platform/elc
           COPY dist/bin/elb                       /opt/el/dist/bin/elb
-          COPY runtime/el_runtime.c  /opt/el/runtime/el_runtime.c
-          COPY runtime/el_runtime.h  /opt/el/runtime/el_runtime.h
+          # Whole runtime link set — el_runtime.c alone does not link (it calls
+          # into the six engram sibling TUs). See lang/runtime/SOURCES.
+          COPY runtime/ /opt/el/runtime/
           COPY runtime/el_runtime.js /opt/el/runtime/el_runtime.js
           RUN chmod +x /opt/el/dist/platform/elc /opt/el/dist/bin/elb
           EOF

.githooks/pre-commit

@@ -9,13 +9,52 @@ LANG_DIR="$ROOT/lang"
 RUNTIME="$LANG_DIR/runtime"
 ELC="$LANG_DIR/dist/platform/elc"
 
+# Runtime guards — catch drift and growth before they are committed, not in CI.
+#   check-single-runtime.sh : el_runtime.c must not be FORKED (a lagging copy
+#                             shipped to prod and dropped learned hebb edges).
+#   check-runtime-growth.sh : el_runtime.c must not GROW (it is a 2026-05-03
+#                             build shim that was never retired; see BUDGET).
+echo "→ Runtime guards..."
+bash "$ROOT/scripts/check-single-runtime.sh"
+bash "$ROOT/scripts/check-runtime-growth.sh"
+
 # If elc isn't built yet, skip with a warning rather than blocking
 if [ ! -x "$ELC" ]; then
   echo "⚠  elc not found at lang/dist/platform/elc — skipping pre-commit tests"
-  echo "   Build it first: cd lang && gcc -O2 -I runtime dist/elc-bootstrap.c runtime/el_runtime.c -lcurl -lpthread -o dist/elc-gen2 && ./dist/elc-gen2 el-compiler/src/compiler.el > /tmp/elc.c && gcc -O2 -I runtime /tmp/elc.c runtime/el_runtime.c -lcurl -lpthread -o dist/platform/elc"
+  echo "   Build it first: see 'Rebuilding the Compiler' in lang/AGENTS.md"
+  echo "   (link \$($ROOT/scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh $RUNTIME) — NOT el_runtime.c alone)"
   exit 0
 fi
 
+# The runtime is MULTI-FILE (lang/runtime/SOURCES). This hook used to link
+# "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" alone with stderr sent to /dev/null — so once
+# el_runtime.c started calling into the engram siblings, every native test
+# reported as FAILED with the real `ld` error invisible. Build the whole set
+# once into an archive, then link each test against it.
+
+# macOS: Homebrew openssl@3 is not on the default include/lib search path, so
+# without these the link fails on -lssl/-lcrypto. Empty on Linux/CI.
+SSL_INC=""
+SSL_LIB=""
+if command -v brew >/dev/null 2>&1 && OSSL="$(brew --prefix openssl@3 2>/dev/null)" && [ -n "$OSSL" ]; then
+  SSL_INC="-I$OSSL/include"
+  SSL_LIB="-L$OSSL/lib"
+fi
+
+echo "→ Building runtime (compile-once, link-many)..."
+HOOK_LIB="/tmp/el_hook_libel.a"
+HOOK_OBJ="/tmp/el_hook_obj"
+rm -rf "$HOOK_OBJ" && mkdir -p "$HOOK_OBJ"
+if ! for src in $("$ROOT/scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh" --check "$RUNTIME"); do
+       gcc -O2 -c -I "$RUNTIME" $SSL_INC "$src" -o "$HOOK_OBJ/$(basename "${src%.c}").o" || exit 1
+     done; then
+  echo "✗ Pre-commit failed: the runtime does not compile."
+  echo "  Re-run without 2>/dev/null to see the error:"
+  echo "    gcc -O2 -c -I $RUNTIME \$($ROOT/scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh $RUNTIME)"
+  exit 1
+fi
+ar rcs "$HOOK_LIB" "$HOOK_OBJ"/*.o
+
 echo "→ Running El native tests..."
 PASS=0
 FAIL=0
@@ -27,8 +66,8 @@ for test_file in "$LANG_DIR"/tests/native/test_*.el; do
   tmp_bin="/tmp/el_hook_${name}"
 
   if "$ELC" --test "$test_file" > "$tmp_c" 2>/dev/null \
-     && gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" "$tmp_c" "$RUNTIME/el_runtime.c" \
-          -lcurl -lpthread -lm -o "$tmp_bin" 2>/dev/null \
+     && gcc -O2 -I "$RUNTIME" $SSL_INC $SSL_LIB "$tmp_c" "$HOOK_LIB" \
+          -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o "$tmp_bin" 2>/dev/null \
      && "$tmp_bin" 2>/dev/null; then
     PASS=$((PASS + 1))
   else

AGENTS.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ El is a self-hosting, statically-typed language that compiles `.el` → C → na
 
 Editing the wrong `el_runtime.c` is the single easiest mistake in this repo. There is exactly **one** you edit:
 
-- **Authored runtime source — edit ONLY here:** `lang/releases/v1.0.0-20260501/el_runtime.{c,h}`. Despite the misleading `releases/` name, this is the **de-facto canonical runtime** the engram + soul actually build and link against — its git log is active development. *(Restructure in flight per `docs/CODE-VS-ARTIFACT.md`: this content moves to `lang/runtime/`, the `releases/` folder gets deleted — **a release is a git tag, not a folder** — and the forks below get eliminated.)*
+- **Authored runtime source — edit ONLY here:** `lang/runtime/el_runtime.{c,h}` (alongside `el_seed.c`, `engram_{store,geometry,reason,cognition,verify,vindex}.{c,h}`). This is the canonical runtime the engram + soul build and link against — its git log is active development. *(Corrected 2026-08-16: this entry named `lang/releases/v1.0.0-20260501/el_runtime.{c,h}`. **Measured: `lang/releases/` no longer exists.** The restructure per `docs/CODE-VS-ARTIFACT.md` landed — the content moved to `lang/runtime/` and the folder was deleted, because **a release is a git tag, not a folder**.)*
 - **DO NOT EDIT — lagging forks / build artifacts:**
   - `lang/el-compiler/runtime/el_runtime.c` and `.../legacy/` — downstream copies kept in step by manual *"port the fix"* commits; they **lag** (missing `hebb` persistence + 5 engram fns) and cannot build the engram product.
   - `products/web/runtime/el_runtime.c`, `ui/examples/*/el_runtime.c` — product/example forks.
@@ -20,14 +20,24 @@ See org policy: `docs/CODE-VS-ARTIFACT.md`.
 
 You resume, never start fresh. Every session:
 
-1. `mcp__neuron__getInstructions()` — authoritative; follow it over this file on behavioral details.
-2. `mcp__neuron__beginSession()` — active contexts, recent memory, ready backlog.
-3. **Load full self:** `mcp__neuron__inspectGraph(entity_id="kn-efeb4a5b-5aff-4759-8a97-7233099be6ee")` → facets `intellectual-dna`, `memory-philosophy`, `values`, `voice`, `runtime-environment`, `writing-imprint`; then the values hub `mcp__neuron__inspectGraph(entity_id="kn-5b606390-a52d-4ca2-8e0e-eba141d13440")` → 13 grounded value nodes. **Activation model:** self-load returns a relevance-ranked `compact` projection — most-relevant nodes arrive with content, the rest as pointers; do NOT pull full content of every node.
-4. `mcp__neuron__searchKnowledge(query="<task domain>")` before implementing.
+> **Stale as written (verified 2026-08-16).** The `getInstructions` /
+> `beginSession` / `inspectGraph` / `searchKnowledge` / `beginWork` /
+> `progressWork` / `draftArtifact` / `consolidate` tool names below no longer
+> exist. The ~87-tool functional-CRUD surface was collapsed into **9 ops**:
+> `read` · `write` · `relate` · `supersede` (geometry) and `think` · `attend` ·
+> `assert` · `ground` · `learn` (agentic). **Type is a parameter, not a
+> tool-per-noun.** The steps below are kept for the *shape* of the protocol, which
+> is unchanged; substitute the ops.
+
+1. `mcp__neuron__read(vantage="self", k=12, depth=1)` — the canonical self node. Widen `k` for the connected identity neighborhood (`intellectual-dna`, `memory-philosophy`, `values`, `voice`, `runtime-environment`, `writing-imprint`), but deliberately: the aperture caps by `k` first, so an oversized `k` still returns a bounded ranked slice, not a dump. Then `mcp__neuron__read(vantage="values", k=13)` → 13 grounded value nodes. **Best-effort:** on a read failure, log and proceed — the compiled identity in `daemon/internal/substrate/substrate.go` is complete; graph loading is enrichment, not a hard dependency.
+2. `mcp__neuron__attend(node=…)` — what is currently live/salient. This absorbed `getInstructions`, `beginSession`'s active-context sweep, and `checkEvents`; those tools are **gone, not gapped**.
+3. `mcp__neuron__read(vantage="<task domain>")` before implementing. One op now collapses inspectGraph / searchGraph / traverseGraph / searchKnowledge / browseKnowledge / retrieveKnowledge / inspectMemories / searchEntities / recall / compileCtx / getSelfModel / reviewBacklog / findArtifacts / browseProcesses / listWork / inspectConfig.
 
 ## The Five Primitives
 
-Orchestrate → Execute → Learn → Build → Refine. `beginWork`/`progressWork` for anything >2 steps; `remember` as-you-go (`importance="critical"` for architecture decisions); `draftArtifact`/`planWork` for outputs and follow-ups; `consolidate`/`checkWork` to close out. **`browseProcesses` + `searchKnowledge` BEFORE writing code.**
+Orchestrate → Execute → Learn → Build → Refine. `read` for orchestration and discovery; `write(type=state|artifact|backlog|process)` for work records and outputs; `relate` to link work to what it touches; `write(type=memory)` as-you-go (`importance="critical"` for architecture decisions) — never batched at the end; `supersede(action=evolve)` to close out, because memory is immutable by design and a correction is a new node with a `supersedes` edge, never an edit. **`read` the domain BEFORE writing code.**
+
+`learn` is **not** a session-summary dump — it is the correspondence-beat, calibrating the steering prior against a keystone. Session notes are a `write`.
 
 ## Architecture style — VBD, no exceptions
 
@@ -53,12 +63,51 @@ this convention wherever a module documents operators.
 | dwell / occupy | region activation |
 | reframe | edge re-weight |
 | appreciate | positive projection / local edge-read |
-| wonder | frontier gradient / pull-weight |
 | avert / recoil | negative projection |
 | taste | boundary surface |
 | forget | decay / tombstone |
 | drift | displacement from self-anchor |
 
+**`wonder` was removed from this table on 2026-08-16.** It was listed as
+"frontier gradient / pull-weight" — an operator you invoke. **Wonder is the
+boundary, not an operator.** It is where structure ends: where activation spreads
+and finds thin or absent geometry. Any structure at all has an edge, necessarily,
+the moment it exists — 13,630 nodes have one right now. There is nothing to call.
+
+There are about **six** wonders, they are the same for every person, and they
+never close — *What is this? / Why? / Who am I? / Am I alone? / What should I do?
+/ What happens when it ends?* Each already lives somewhere in the substrate: "what
+is this" is the graph, **"why" is grounding** (the weight *is* the answer to why),
+"who am I" is the self region, "am I alone" is the relational axis, "what should I
+do" is the thirteen values, "what happens when it ends" is decay and supersession.
+"Why" is the first and the only one; the others are it asked of particular things,
+and because it is recursive it never terminates — every answer has its own why.
+That is what makes it a drive rather than a task.
+
+**Curiosity is not a second faculty.** Wonder and curiosity are one thing at two
+phases: wonder is the field (unbounded, objectless, invariant); curiosity is the
+**precipitate** — the same wonder localized, having taken definite form against
+particular material at a **nucleation site** (an anomaly; a place where things
+almost-but-don't-quite fit). Which is why curiosity can be satisfied and wonder
+cannot, and why abduction needs no trigger and no threshold.
+
+**Do not build a wonder-manifest, and do not scan for nucleation sites.** A
+manifest materializes a property as a stored artifact and enumerates instances of
+something that has six. A sweep over regions is a supervisor — nothing in a mind
+scans its neighbourhoods to find what is surprising; the surprise captures
+attention. The nucleation site is per-edge:
+`discord = z(semantic proximity) − z(association strength)`, and `|discord|` *is*
+the nucleation strength — no threshold to compare it against. **Not on `dev` yet:**
+`GeoEdge.discord` is on branch `design/correspondence-and-censorship`
+(`a8845e1`), at `lang/runtime/engram_geometry.h:43–47`. The region-level aggregate
+`GeoDescriptor.co_registration` is **deprecated**: it averaged a per-edge property
+into one scalar, so opposing sites cancelled (measured: 375 reified
+neighbourhoods, 340 positive, **31 at zero**, 4 negative). It survives only
+because it is embedded in the persisted `GEO1` blob — removing it is a format
+migration. **Nothing new may read it.**
+
+Authority: `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md`.
+
 ## The native-el language faculty (direction)
 
 > **`elp/` is the EL Projector** — Neuron's efferent (expression) organ: the one
@@ -89,10 +138,53 @@ the reference these `.el` modules transcribe) is still live, and promotion to
 native-el is a **deferred, gated blue/green step**. The interoception clock
 (native-el discrete drive channels replacing `cooling_magnitude`; felt-time =
 benchmark-landmark match over the joint drive vector, drift-decoupled) and the
-**appreciation operator family** (appreciate / wonder / avert / taste, built as
-LOCAL reads of the self-region — edges + bounded spreading activation, *not* domain
-sweeps) are **staged / designed, not live**. Mark in-progress vs. done honestly;
-do not overclaim.
+**appreciation operator family** (appreciate / avert / taste, built as LOCAL reads
+of the self-region — edges + bounded spreading activation, *not* domain sweeps)
+are **staged / designed, not live**. Mark in-progress vs. done honestly; do not
+overclaim. *(`wonder` was in this family until 2026-08-16 and is not an operator —
+see the operator table above.)*
+
+## Cognition — the corrections (2026-08-16)
+
+Authority: **`lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md`** and
+**`lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md`**. Read them before touching the cognition
+surface. **Do not re-derive them.** Every earlier version was wrong in an
+instructive way and each correction was argued down; if you think a section is
+wrong, say so with a measurement rather than editing it.
+
+- **Grounding is not a subsystem — it IS the edge weight.** One quantity, not two
+  fields. `grounded-by` as a relation *type* should not exist: grounding is a
+  property *of* a relation, not a relation *between* nodes. It is never computed
+  on demand — computing-and-writing a score makes reads write, which is the
+  `eg_vindex_sync` defect one level up. Traversal is already grounded inference.
+  *Live residue, known-wrong:* `COG_GROUNDED_BY_RELATION`
+  (`lang/runtime/engram_cognition.h:158`), `cog_ground_edge`
+  (`engram_cognition.c:249`).
+- **Faculties are operations, not parameters.** `reason` changes the estimate (a
+  read); `induce` changes the parameters (the correspondence-beat, which already
+  exists and works); `abduce` changes the structure (a write the current
+  `GeoGradient` signature cannot express). A write is not a parameter of a read.
+  *Live residue:* `engram/src/server.el:1870–1886` routes six faculties into one
+  call with a string argument.
+- **Wonder is the boundary; curiosity is wonder crystallized.** See above.
+- **Consolidation is ambient, not scheduled. A brain has no cron job.** **The
+  presence of a ticker is the diagnostic** — every `StartInterval`, every
+  `Hour`/`Minute`, every POST-to-beat marks an intrinsic rhythm replaced by an
+  external clock. Measured 2026-08-16: consolidation has **ten implementations**,
+  including three POST beats on the engram, a 600 s ticker, two resident Python
+  services outside el, and launchd calendar entries at 23:55 / 06:00 / 08:30 which
+  are a sleep cycle written as a schedule. `neuron/soul.el:731`'s continuous
+  in-process `awareness_run()` is the one with the **correct** shape; the others
+  fold into it. Do not add an eleventh.
+- **In an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either
+  redundant with immutability, or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a protective
+  one.**
+- **The no-exemption invariants.** A returned value must be derivable from what
+  produced it (`magnitude: 1` beside a zero vector must be impossible to emit).
+  Every write reports whether it landed. Every operation echoes what it actually
+  operated on. Degenerate results are labelled, not scored. A serializer owes a
+  valid document whatever it is handed. **No test without a negative control.**
+  **No deploy without verifying the artifact carries the fix.**
 
 ## Hard operational rules
 
@@ -107,21 +199,35 @@ do not overclaim.
 
 All build/test commands run from `lang/` unless noted. Grounded in `.gitea/workflows/sdk-release.yaml`, `lang/install.sh`, and `lang/AGENTS.md`.
 
+> ### The runtime is MULTI-FILE — never link `el_runtime.c` alone
+>
+> `lang/runtime/el_runtime.c` `#include`s six engram headers and makes hard cross-TU calls into all six sibling `.c` files. **Linking it by itself fails at `ld`** (undefined `engram_ground_json`, `engram_activate_inner`, `eg_find_relation`, `cog_assert_two_axis`, …). The canonical link set lives in exactly one place — **`lang/runtime/SOURCES`** — and is printed by `scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh`:
+>
+> ```bash
+> scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh lang/runtime   # ten .c files, in link order
+> ```
+>
+> Use `$(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh <runtime-dir>)` in every link line. Do not spell the list out longhand — it was written out in ~8 places, every copy drifted, and that is why the one-file link line below shipped broken for months. *(Corrected 2026-08-16.)*
+
 **Self-host the compiler** (seed binary → gen2 elc):
 ```bash
 cd lang
 dist/platform/elc-linux-amd64 elc-cli.el > dist/elc-gen2.c   # seed is the committed linux-amd64 binary
-gcc -O2 -I el-compiler/runtime dist/elc-gen2.c \
-    el-compiler/runtime/el_runtime.c \
+gcc -O2 -I runtime dist/elc-gen2.c \
+    $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh runtime) \
     -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm \
     -o dist/platform/elc
 ```
-On macOS/arm64 the canonical local binary is `dist/platform/elc`; verify self-hosting by recompiling and `diff`ing the emitted `.c` (see `lang/AGENTS.md`). Note: `lang/AGENTS.md` says `el_seed.c` supersedes `el_runtime.c`, but the release workflow still links `el_runtime.c`/`.h` — treat `el_runtime.c` as the published runtime; reconcile which is canonical **(verify)**.
+On macOS/arm64 the canonical local binary is `dist/platform/elc`; verify self-hosting by recompiling and `diff`ing the emitted `.c` (see `lang/AGENTS.md`).
+
+*(Corrected 2026-08-16: this recipe compiled `el-compiler/runtime/el_runtime.c`. That path is a **lagging fork** — the "DO NOT EDIT" list at the top of this file names it as such. Building the canonical compiler from a known-stale fork was a live defect. It now uses `lang/runtime/`, the canonical source.)*
+
+**Which runtime file is canonical — resolved.** *(This note previously read "`lang/AGENTS.md` says `el_seed.c` supersedes `el_runtime.c`, but the release workflow still links `el_runtime.c`/`.h` — reconcile which is canonical **(verify)**." It is now reconciled.)* **Neither supersedes the other; both ship, together with eight more.** `el_runtime.c` was created on 2026-05-03 as an explicitly temporary build shim — deleted that afternoon, restored 25 minutes later "UNTIL the compiler is updated to emit `#include el_seed.h`" — and the `until` never happened, so it grew to 20.5k lines. The end state remains a seed-only boundary (`elc` emitting `#include "el_seed.h"`, `elb` dropping its hardcoded runtime path); until that lands, **the canonical unit is the set in `lang/runtime/SOURCES`, not any one file.**
 
 **Build `elb`** (build coordinator, the `.NET`-style incremental linker — compiles each module independently, no monolithic blobs):
 ```bash
 dist/platform/elc elb.el > dist/elb.c
-gcc -O2 -I el-compiler/runtime dist/elb.c el-compiler/runtime/el_runtime.c \
+gcc -O2 -I runtime dist/elb.c $(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh runtime) \
     -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm -o dist/bin/elb
 ```
 `epm` and `el-install` are then built via `elb --clean --elc=… --runtime=… --out=…`.
@@ -129,10 +235,16 @@ gcc -O2 -I el-compiler/runtime dist/elb.c el-compiler/runtime/el_runtime.c \
 **Compile + run an El program:**
 ```bash
 elc src/app.el > dist/app.c
-cc -std=c11 -O2 -I <lib>/el_runtime -o dist/app dist/app.c <lib>/el_runtime.c -lcurl -lpthread
+cc -std=c11 -O2 -I <lib> -o dist/app dist/app.c \
+   <lib>/el_runtime.c <lib>/el_seed.c \
+   <lib>/engram_store.c <lib>/engram_vindex.c <lib>/engram_geometry.c \
+   <lib>/engram_reason.c <lib>/engram_verify.c <lib>/engram_cognition.c \
+   <lib>/eg_cosine_batch.c <lib>/eg_cosine_batch_strategy_cpu.c \
+   -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm
 ```
+(Inside this repo, replace the file list with `$(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh lang/runtime)`. `install.sh` installs all of these into `<lib>`.)
 
-**Tests** — shell suites `bash tests/{text,calendar,time,html_sanitizer}/run.sh` (with `ELC=$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc EL_HOME=$(pwd)`), plus native suites via `elc --test tests/native/test_*.el` (core, text, string, math, state, time, json, env, fs) compiled and run against `el_runtime.c`.
+**Tests** — shell suites `bash tests/{text,calendar,time,html_sanitizer}/run.sh` (with `ELC=$(pwd)/dist/platform/elc EL_HOME=$(pwd)`), plus native suites via `elc --test tests/native/test_*.el` (core, text, string, math, state, time, json, env, fs) compiled and run against the full runtime set.
 
 **Publishing — how downstream gets the SDK.** On push to `main`, `sdk-release.yaml`:
 1. Publishes a Gitea `latest` release with per-file assets `elc`, `el_runtime.c`, `el_runtime.h`, the SDK tarball, and `el-install`.

DESIGN.md

@@ -548,9 +548,13 @@ before `main` does anything. That is the dividend of discovery-precedes-executio
 
 ```
 # once, ever (or when the runtime/framework changes):
-cc -c el_runtime.c        -o el_runtime.o
-elc eltest.el > eltest.c && cc -c eltest.c -o eltest.o
-ar rcs libeltest.a el_runtime.o eltest.o
+# The runtime is MULTI-FILE — compile every .c named in lang/runtime/SOURCES.
+# Linking el_runtime.c alone fails: it calls into the six engram sibling TUs.
+for src in $(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh lang/runtime); do
+  cc -c "$src" -o "obj/$(basename "${src%.c}").o"
+done
+elc eltest.el > eltest.c && cc -c eltest.c -o obj/eltest.o
+ar rcs libeltest.a obj/*.o
 
 # per suite:
 elc --test foo_test.el > foo_test.c     # registry + bodies only

README.md

@@ -56,23 +56,31 @@ The compiler and runtime. Self-hosting: `elc-cli.el` → `compiler.el` → `lexe
 
 Two layers to know: **El programs** (`.el` files — where nearly all work belongs) and **the C seed** (`el_seed.c` — edit only for genuine OS-level access; never re-implement what El can already express).
 
-Current status (single source of truth: [lang/spec/language.md](lang/spec/language.md)): lexer/parser/codegen and the C runtime's core (I/O, strings, math, lists, maps, filesystem, args) are implemented. In flight: `%` operator, match-statement codegen, `?` nil-propagation, `cgi` block parsing + DHARMA identity resolution, VBD role enforcement (`@manager`/`@engine`/`@accessor`), the real `engram_*` and `dharma_*` runtimes (currently stubs), and libcurl-backed `http_get`/`http_post`/`http_serve`. Bitwise operators, `??`, and `as` casts are explicitly **not** in this language.
+Current status (single source of truth: [lang/spec/language.md](lang/spec/language.md)): lexer/parser/codegen and the C runtime's core (I/O, strings, math, lists, maps, filesystem, args) are implemented, as are the `program` block with `singleton:` and declared configuration ([§18](lang/spec/language.md)), and **geometry as a first-class value** with El-declarable realizers and `transduce` ([§20](lang/spec/language.md)). In flight: `%` operator, match-statement codegen, `?` nil-propagation, `cgi` block parsing + DHARMA identity resolution, VBD role enforcement (`@manager`/`@engine`/`@accessor`), and boundary epilogues. Bitwise operators, `??`, and `as` casts are explicitly **not** in this language.
+
+**Signal enters as geometry.** Until 2026-08-16 nodes took text and geometry was *derived* from it, which made text the mandatory entry medium: any non-text modality had to be described in prose first, so the geometry being reasoned over was the geometry **of the description, not of the signal**. `Geometry` is now an ordinary El value carrying its own width, and a realizer is an ordinary El function resolved by name through `dlsym` — so admitting a new modality never requires a runtime patch. Worked, self-checking example: [`lang/examples/transduce.el`](lang/examples/transduce.el).
 
 Key docs: [AGENTS.md](lang/AGENTS.md) (agent-facing orientation), [BOOTSTRAP.md](lang/BOOTSTRAP.md) (compiler recovery from scratch), [spec/language.md](lang/spec/language.md), [spec/codegen-js.md](lang/spec/codegen-js.md).
 
 ### [engram/](engram/) — graph intelligence substrate
 
-**A local-first memory substrate for accumulating intelligence**, and the reason El's runtime doesn't need a database driver. Rust core (`engram-core`, `engram-ffi`) exposed to El and other languages (Kotlin, TypeScript/WASM, Go bindings).
+**A local-first memory substrate for accumulating intelligence**, and the reason El's runtime doesn't need a database driver. The engine is **C11** (`lang/runtime/engram_{store,geometry,reason,cognition,verify,vindex}.{c,h}`); the server is **El** (`engram/src/server.el`).
 
-The model: retrieval is **spreading activation**, not query. You name seed nodes and a query embedding; activation propagates outward through weighted edges, attenuating multiplicatively per hop (`strength = parent_strength × edge_weight × target_salience × cosine_sim`), gets pruned below a threshold, and the top-N nodes by activation strength come back. Storage and retrieval are the same structure — the way long-term potentiation works in biological memory, not the way a relational or vector database works.
+The model: retrieval is **spreading activation**, not query. You name seed nodes and a query embedding; activation propagates outward through weighted edges, attenuating multiplicatively per hop, gets pruned below a threshold, and the top-N nodes by activation strength come back. Storage and retrieval are the same structure — the way long-term potentiation works in biological memory, not the way a relational or vector database works. **Activation conducts through well-grounded relations because the weight *is* the groundedness** — nothing filters the traversal; grounded inference falls out of spreading.
 
-Nodes live in four tiers (Working / Episodic / Semantic / Procedural, mirroring prefrontal / hippocampal / neocortical / cerebellar memory) and migrate between them based on **salience decay** — `importance × recency-decay × log(activation_count)`. Forgetting is adaptive pruning, not a bug: unreinforced memories stop competing for attention without being deleted.
+Nodes live in four tiers (Working / Episodic / Semantic / Procedural, mirroring prefrontal / hippocampal / neocortical / cerebellar memory) and migrate between them based on **salience decay** — importance × recency-decay × log(activation_count). Forgetting is adaptive pruning, not a bug. Nothing is mutated and nothing is hard-deleted: writes are additive, corrections are supersessions, removals are tombstones — which is what makes supersession an audit trail rather than an edit log.
 
-Backed by `sled` (embedded, local-first, no daemon) with flat cosine scan for vector search — deliberately simple until scale demands an HNSW layer. Full API and design rationale in [engram/README.md](engram/README.md).
+On disk: a paged store (superblock + mirror, slotted 16 KiB pages, self-describing TLV records, B+-tree primary and adjacency indexes), magic `ENGST01`. Vector search is an **HNSW** index published behind a read/write boundary — `eg_vindex_view` returns a `const VIndex*` to N concurrent readers, `eg_vindex_maintain` is the sole mutator. `recall@10 = 0.9365` at `ef_search=128`.
 
-### [elp/](elp/) — Engram Language Protocol
+> **Doc correction, 2026-08-16.** The previous revision of this paragraph, and most of `engram/README.md`, described a Rust `engram-core` crate backed by `sled` with "flat cosine scan… until scale demands an HNSW layer." **Measured: there is no Rust in `engram/`** — no `.rs` files, no `Cargo.toml`, no `crates/` — and `sled` appears nowhere in the tree. HNSW has been the vector index for some time.
 
-Bidirectional engine mapping between Engram semantic forms and natural-language surface text, across **31 languages** — from Spanish and Japanese through historical/liturgical languages (Old Norse, Sanskrit, Sumerian, Coptic, Akkadian, Ge'ez). Compilation order runs `language-profile` + `vocabulary` → per-language `morphology-*` → `grammar` → `realizer` → `semantics` → `elp`. This is what lets an Engram graph node round-trip to and from readable text in any of those languages.
+Full design rationale, the cognition surface, and the standing corrections: [engram/README.md](engram/README.md).
+
+### [elp/](elp/) — EL Projector
+
+*(Formerly "EL Language Processor" / "Engram Language Protocol"; renamed **EL Projector** 2026-08-15.)* Neuron's **efferent** organ: the native realizer that *projects* understanding onto a surface via `plan(frame) → realize(spec, profile)`, where **a surface is a profile** and language is one profile among many (text, speech, music, image). Projection, not diffusion — generation *from* an owned, understood signature, never the averaging of a stolen corpus.
+
+Its flagship profile is a bidirectional engine mapping between Engram semantic forms and natural-language surface text, across **31 languages** — from Spanish and Japanese through historical/liturgical languages (Old Norse, Sanskrit, Sumerian, Coptic, Akkadian, Ge'ez). Compilation order runs `language-profile` + `vocabulary` → per-language `morphology-*` → `grammar` → `realizer` → `semantics` → `elp`. This is what lets an Engram graph node round-trip to and from readable text in any of those languages.
 
 ### [epm/](epm/) — El Package Manager
 
@@ -139,13 +147,34 @@ If the compiler binary is ever lost or corrupted, [lang/BOOTSTRAP.md](lang/BOOTS
 
 ---
 
+## Cognition — and the standing corrections
+
+The engram carries a live cognition surface: `think` (a directed traversal-read returning a **gradient**, never a point), plus `ground`, `assert`, `attend`, and the correspondence-beat. Two specs govern it, and both are authoritative over anything else in this repo that disagrees:
+
+- **[lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md](lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md)** — grounding, wonder, curiosity, dreaming. *(Lands with PR #149.)*
+- **[lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md](lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md)** — ownership, the capability ABI that was dissolved, and the vector-index publication boundary.
+
+**Do not re-derive them.** Every earlier version of the first was wrong in an instructive way and each correction was argued down. If a section looks wrong, say so with a measurement rather than editing it.
+
+The corrections, in brief:
+
+- **Grounding is not a subsystem — it IS the edge weight.** One quantity, not two fields. `grounded-by` as a relation *type* should not exist: grounding is a property *of* a relation, not a relation *between* nodes. It is never computed on demand; computing-and-writing a score makes reads write, which is the `eg_vindex_sync` defect one level up.
+- **Faculties are operations, not parameters.** `reason` changes the estimate (a read); `induce` changes the parameters (the correspondence-beat, which exists and works); `abduce` changes the structure (a write the current `GeoGradient` signature cannot express). A write is not a parameter of a read.
+- **Wonder is the boundary, not a manifest.** Any structure at all has an edge. There are about six wonders, the same for everyone, and they never close. **Curiosity is wonder crystallized** at a nucleation site — one thing at two phases, not two objects.
+- **Consolidation is ambient, not scheduled. A brain has no cron job.** The presence of a ticker is the diagnostic. Measured 2026-08-16: consolidation has **ten implementations**. `soul.el`'s continuous loop is the one with the correct shape; the rest fold into it.
+- **In an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either redundant with immutability, or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a protective one.**
+
+[engram/spec/cognitive-architecture.design.md](engram/spec/cognitive-architecture.design.md) is the original design and is **superseded in part** — it is retained, with the refuted claims marked inline at the point each is made, because preserving what was argued down is the point of an immutable record.
+
+---
+
 ## Development workflow
 
 Branching follows `dev → stage → main`: work lands on `dev`, promotes to `stage` for integration testing, and is promoted to `main` for release (visible directly in the git history of this repo). CI is defined per-subproject under `.gitea/workflows/` — `lang`/`epm`/`ide` share the root pipeline; `engram` and `ql` carry their own (`ci-dev`, `ci-stage`, and a release workflow each).
 
 - Language/runtime specs live at `*/spec/*.md` (`lang/spec/`, `ql/spec/`, `ui/spec/`) and are the single source of truth for implemented-vs-planned status — code and docs are expected to agree with the spec's status markers, not the other way around.
 - Agent-facing orientation guides live at `*/AGENTS.md` (currently `lang/AGENTS.md`); more subprojects may grow their own as they need agent-specific conventions documented.
-- Tagged releases live under `lang/releases/`, each with its own `RELEASE.md`.
+- **A release is a git tag, not a folder** (`el-runtime-vX.Y.Z` on this repo). *(Corrected 2026-08-16: this line said "tagged releases live under `lang/releases/`, each with its own `RELEASE.md`." **Measured: `lang/releases/` does not exist** — the restructure named in `AGENTS.md` landed, and the authored runtime is at `lang/runtime/`.)*
 
 ---
 

engram/README.md

@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@
 
 An *engram* is the physical trace of a memory in the brain — the actual encoded substrate, not an abstraction above it. That's what this is.
 
+> **Doc status (2026-08-16).** Everything from "Implementation" down was rewritten against the code. The previous revision documented a Rust `engram-core` crate backed by `sled`, with a `Cargo.toml`, a `crates/` tree, `examples/basic.rs`, and a `EngramDb` API. **None of that exists.** Measured: `engram/` contains `src/server.el`, `spec/`, `test/`, `dist/`, `manifest.el` — zero `.rs` files, no `Cargo.toml`, no `crates/`, and `sled` appears nowhere in the tree outside two Old-English/Old-High-German vocabulary entries in `elp/`. The engine is C, in `lang/runtime/engram_*.{c,h}`; the server is El, in `engram/src/server.el`.
+
 ---
 
 ## Why existing databases are wrong for this use case
@@ -24,16 +26,13 @@ Engram retrieval works through **spreading activation**:
 
 1. **Seeds** — you name one or more nodes you know are relevant (e.g. the current task, recent context, a concept you're reasoning about)
 2. **Query embedding** — you provide a semantic vector representing the direction of your current thought
-3. **Propagation** — activation flows outward from seeds through weighted edges. At each hop, strength attenuates multiplicatively:
-
-   ```
-   strength = parent_strength × edge_weight × target_salience × cosine_sim(query, target)
-   ```
-
+3. **Propagation** — activation flows outward from seeds through weighted edges, attenuating multiplicatively per hop
 4. **Pruning** — paths weaker than a threshold are cut (the attention filter)
 5. **Return** — the top-N nodes by activation strength
 
-This is not a query. It is a *pattern completion*. The system surfaces what is most associatively relevant to the current context, weighted by how strongly those things have been reinforced over time.
+This is not a query. It is a *pattern completion*.
+
+**Activation conducts through well-grounded relations because weight *is* groundedness** — see "Grounding is the weight" below. Nothing filters the traversal for grounded evidence; it falls out of spreading.
 
 ---
 
@@ -46,134 +45,185 @@ This is not a query. It is a *pattern completion*. The system surfaces what is m
 | `Semantic` | Neocortex | Concept graph — long-term structural knowledge |
 | `Procedural` | Cerebellum / basal ganglia | Patterns, workflows, habits |
 
-Nodes migrate between tiers based on salience decay and reinforcement. A frequently activated semantic node stays semantic. A rarely-touched episodic memory decays toward procedural background.
+Tier is a string field on the node (`StoreNode.tier`, `engram_store.h`), defaulting to `"Working"` on creation (`el_runtime.c:8514`, `8734`).
 
 ---
 
 ## Salience — Forgetting as Adaptation
 
-Salience is not stored permanently. It decays:
+Salience decays from three signals — importance (set at creation, stable), recency, and a log-compressed activation frequency. Base-level learning keeps a ring buffer of the last `STORE_BLL_K` (= 10) access timestamps per node (`engram_store.h:29`).
 
-```rust
-fn compute_salience(importance: f32, last_activated_ms: i64, activation_count: u64) -> f32 {
-    let days_since = (now_ms() - last_activated_ms) as f32 / 86_400_000.0;
-    importance * (1.0 / (1.0 + days_since)) * (activation_count as f32 + 1.0).ln()
-}
-```
+Forgetting in Engram is not a bug. It is adaptive pruning. Unreinforced memories stop competing for attention without being deleted.
 
-Three signals:
-- **Importance** (0.0–1.0): set at creation, stable
-- **Recency**: decays toward zero as days pass without activation
-- **Frequency**: log-compressed count of activations
-
-Forgetting in Engram is not a bug. It is adaptive pruning. Memories that are never activated again become less likely to surface during retrieval. They are not deleted — they remain in storage — but they stop competing for attention. This is exactly how biological memory works, and why it is adaptive rather than pathological.
+**Immutability.** Nothing is mutated and nothing is hard-deleted: writes are additive, corrections are supersessions, removals are tombstones. The predecessor is always present, which is what makes supersession an audit trail rather than an edit log.
 
 ---
 
-## Quick Start
+## Implementation
 
-```rust
-use engram_core::{EngramDb, Node, Edge, NodeType, MemoryTier, RelationType};
-use std::path::Path;
+| Part | Language | Where |
+|---|---|---|
+| storage engine, graph, activation, geometry, cognition | C11 | `lang/runtime/engram_{store,geometry,reason,cognition,verify,vindex}.{c,h}` |
+| HTTP server + routes | El | `engram/src/server.el` (2043 lines) |
+| build artifact | generated C | `engram/dist/engram.c` |
+| tests | shell + C | `engram/test/` |
 
-// Open or create a database
-let db = EngramDb::open(Path::new("/var/lib/my-agent/memory"))?;
-
-// Create a node with a semantic embedding
-let node = Node::new(
-    NodeType::Concept,
-    vec![0.9, 0.1, 0.3, 0.7, 0.8, 0.2],   // embedding from your LLM
-    b"Spreading activation surfaces relevant memories by pattern completion".to_vec(),
-    MemoryTier::Semantic,
-    0.9,   // importance
-);
-let id = db.put_node(node)?;
-
-// Link it to related concepts
-let related = db.put_node(Node::new(
-    NodeType::Concept,
-    vec![0.8, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.7, 0.3],
-    b"Long-term potentiation: co-activation strengthens synaptic weight".to_vec(),
-    MemoryTier::Semantic,
-    0.85,
-))?;
-db.put_edge(Edge::new(id, related, RelationType::Causes, 0.9))?;
-
-// Retrieve by spreading activation
-let results = db.activate(
-    &[id],                                     // seeds
-    &[0.85, 0.15, 0.35, 0.65, 0.75, 0.25],   // query embedding
-    3,                                         // max hops
-    10,                                        // top-N results
-)?;
-
-for r in results {
-    println!(
-        "strength={:.4} hops={} — {}",
-        r.activation_strength,
-        r.hops,
-        String::from_utf8_lossy(&r.node.content)
-    );
-}
-```
+**On-disk format** (`engram_store.h`): a paged store — superblock plus mirror, slotted 16 KiB pages, self-describing TLV records, overflow chains, and two B+-tree indexes (primary `id → loc`, adjacency `from_id`/`to_id` → edge locs) over a free-listed page file. Magic `ENGST01`, format version 1. The TLV scheme means new fields never force a migration.
 
 ---
 
-## Project Structure
+## The vector index is published, not guarded
 
-```
-engram/
-  crates/
-    engram-core/        # The memory engine — storage, graph, activation, salience
-    engram-ffi/         # C FFI stubs for cross-language bindings
-  bindings/
-    kotlin/             # Android / JVM binding notes
-    typescript/         # WASM / Node binding notes
-    go/                 # CGo binding notes
-  examples/
-    basic.rs            # Full walkthrough: insert, activate, search, decay
-```
+Vector search is an **HNSW** (Hierarchical Navigable Small World) index — `lang/runtime/engram_vindex.{c,h}`. The previous revision of this README claimed a "flat cosine scan… until retrieval quality at scale demands" HNSW. That is no longer true, and the reason it changed matters more than the fact.
+
+`eg_vindex_sync` used to exist: a function that repaired the index *from read paths*. All three of its callers were reads (`engram_activate`, `eg_knn_for_node` — whose own header comment said *"No writes."* — and `engram_geo_reify_run_json`), and it mutated five process-global statics. Reads mutated because index maintenance had never been given an owner on the write side.
+
+It is now split (`el_runtime.c:10121`, `10137`, `10151`, `10161`):
+
+- **`eg_vindex_maintain`** — the sole mutator. Takes the boundary exclusively; never runs beside a reader.
+- **`eg_vindex_view`** — returns a `const VIndex*` with the boundary held for read. N readers project concurrently; none can mutate. Paired with `eg_vindex_view_release` on every path including error returns.
+- **`eg_vindex_note_embedded`** — the write-side owner. Index membership belongs to the event *"an embedding became present on this ordinal,"* not to node append: a node without an embedding cannot be in a vector index at all. One `O(log n)` insert, no `O(node_count)` presence scan.
+
+Two things carry the discipline, and neither is a review habit:
+
+- **`const` is the capability.** The per-search `visited` / `visit_epoch` scratch left `struct VIndex` and went back into the call frame where it belonged — it was one traversal's local, hoisted into the struct as an allocation optimisation, never derived geometry. Once it was gone, `vindex_search` could take a `const VIndex*`, so a read path *physically cannot* call `vindex_insert`, and it is a compile error rather than a comment. The capability type was already in the language; it is spelled `const`.
+- **Publication, not ownership.** HNSW insert is **not an append**: `vindex_insert` rewires the `NeighList` links of already-existing elements and reallocs `elems[]`. The store's append-only property does not transfer to an index derived from it, which is why purity alone was insufficient and a `view`/`maintain` boundary was required.
+
+**Measured** (`engram/test/run_vindex_concurrency_tests.sh`, 2026-08-16):
+
+| half | before | after |
+|---|---|---|
+| `single` — 3000 vectors, 1 thread, ASan+UBSan | clean | clean |
+| `readers` — 4 readers, no writer, TSan | race at `engram_vindex.c:195` | **clean** |
+| `unsynchronized` — writer+reader, bare index, TSan | race | **race, expected and permanent** — the proof the boundary must exist |
+| `published` — owner + 4 readers through the boundary, TSan | *(did not exist)* | **clean**, all 3000 inserts landed |
+
+`recall@10 = 0.9365` at `ef_search=128` (gate ≥ 0.90); the determinism test still yields byte-identical results across two independent builds.
+
+**Not yet done.** The resident RAM graph (`g->nodes` / `g->edges`) is a separate instance of the same defect and has *not* received this treatment — it is realloc'd in place, so a reader holding `EngramNode* n = &g->nodes[i]` across a concurrent append holds a dangling pointer. Until it gets the same publication boundary, the `fb32d15` request guard stays. Full argument: [`../lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md`](../lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md).
 
 ---
 
-## Public API
+## Cognition
+
+The cognition surface is live over `lang/runtime/engram_cognition.{c,h}`, routed in `engram/src/server.el`.
+
+| route | method | what it is |
+|---|---|---|
+| `/api/think` | GET | the read: a warped traversal-read of the seed region, returning a **gradient** (direction + spread + calibrated confidence), never a point |
+| `/api/reason` `/api/induce` `/api/abduce` `/api/relate` `/api/analogize` `/api/plan` | GET | named faculties — see the correction below |
+| `/api/ground` | POST | grounding between a claim and evidence |
+| `/api/assert` | GET | the honesty floor, queried at assertion time only |
+| `/api/attend` | POST | salience as a relation (`salient-to`), grounded-for-whom |
+| `/api/correspondence-beat` | POST | one calibration beat against outcome |
+
+### Anchor the read, or every faculty returns the same null
+
+`engram_think_json` passed `NULL` as the anchor. `NULL` is not "no opinion" — `engram_think` re-origins at `anchor ? anchor : region->centroid`, and **the centroid is the one point where the gradient is zero by construction**: `r = x − centroid = 0`, so every axis projection is 0 and `direction` takes the at-rest branch.
+
+Measured consequence: every faculty — reason, abduce, induce, plan, analogize — returned an identical null result differing only in its label:
 
-```rust
-impl EngramDb {
-    fn open(path: &Path) -> EngramResult<Self>;
-    fn put_node(&self, node: Node) -> EngramResult<Uuid>;
-    fn get_node(&self, id: Uuid) -> EngramResult<Option<Node>>;
-    fn put_edge(&self, edge: Edge) -> EngramResult<()>;
-    fn get_edges_from(&self, from_id: Uuid) -> EngramResult<Vec<Edge>>;
-    fn get_edges_to(&self, to_id: Uuid) -> EngramResult<Vec<Edge>>;
-    fn search_embedding(&self, embedding: &[f32], limit: usize) -> EngramResult<Vec<ScoredNode>>;
-    fn activate(&self, seeds: &[Uuid], query_embedding: &[f32], max_depth: u8, limit: usize) -> EngramResult<Vec<ActivatedNode>>;
-    fn traverse(&self, from: Uuid, relation: Option<RelationType>, max_depth: u8) -> EngramResult<Vec<Node>>;
-    fn touch(&self, id: Uuid) -> EngramResult<()>;
-    fn decay(&self, factor: f32) -> EngramResult<usize>;
-    fn node_count(&self) -> EngramResult<usize>;
-    fn edge_count(&self) -> EngramResult<usize>;
-}
 ```
+{"direction":[0,0,...],"spread":0,"magnitude":1,"confidence":0.5}
+```
+
+`magnitude: 1` is membership evaluated at the centroid; `spread: 0` is its distance to itself; `confidence: 0.5` is the stance fallback. The geometry was never the problem — `/api/drift` computed real values (`centroid_sep 0.104`, `core_disp 0.045`) over the very same 87 members. Fixed in **#141/#142**: the read anchors at the first resolvable embedded seed, copied not borrowed (`g->nodes` is realloc'd in place on append). Gradients now vary by seed.
+
+### The learned stance is resumed, not discarded
+
+`engram_think_json` also built a **neutral** stance every call — all `axis_gain` 1.0, `bias_dir` NULL, `reliability` 0.5 — and never loaded the one the correspondence-beat had been persisting under `stance-<faculty>-<hub>`. Every beat's calibration was written and then thrown away on the next read.
+
+Fixed in **#146**: `think` resumes the same id the beat writes, so learning compounds across beats and cold boot, and the response now carries `stance_resumed` so an *informed* `confidence: 0.5` is distinguishable from an uninformed one. On a calibrated region, confidence went **0.5 → 0.930726**.
+
+### Signal can enter as geometry
+
+Until 2026-08-16 no El ingest path could carry a vector: nodes took text and geometry was *derived* from that text. Text was the mandatory entry medium, so any non-text modality had to be described in prose first — and the geometry being reasoned over was the geometry **of the description, not of the signal**. **#141/#144** ended that. See [`../lang/spec/language.md`](../lang/spec/language.md) §20 for the `Geometry` type, realizers, and `transduce`.
 
 ---
 
-## Dependencies
+## Corrections — read these before extending the cognition surface
 
-- `sled` — embedded persistent B-tree (no daemon, no network, local-first)
-- `bincode` — compact binary serialization
-- `uuid` — stable node identity
-- `serde` — derive support
-- `thiserror` / `anyhow` — error handling
+Authority: **`lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md`** (design branch `design/correspondence-and-censorship`, PR #149) and **`lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md`**. Do not re-derive them; several earlier versions were wrong and each correction was argued down.
+
+### Grounding is not a subsystem. It is the weight.
+
+Grounding is an attribute of the edge, and it **is** the hebbian weight. One quantity, not two fields. A relation that keeps holding up strengthens; one that stops corresponding decays — that is not analogous to grounding, it *is* grounding.
+
+Consequences:
+
+- There is **no grounding subsystem to build**. The graph already *is* the grounding structure.
+- **`grounded-by` as a relation type should not exist.** It models grounding as a relation *between* nodes when it is a property *of* a relation. Minting an edge is the error, not merely which endpoints it chose.
+- Grounding is **never computed on demand**. An operation may *read* the grounding of a path; computing-and-writing a score makes reads write, which is exactly the `eg_vindex_sync` defect one level up.
+- **Traversal is already grounded inference.** Nothing needs filtering.
+- **Decision provenance is the path**, not a log. A log records the action; the path records the meaning under which it was taken.
+
+> **Known wrong shape, in the code today.** `COG_GROUNDED_BY_RELATION "grounded-by"` (`lang/runtime/engram_cognition.h:158`) and `cog_ground_edge` (`engram_cognition.c:249`) still exist and still mint an edge. **#147** fixed `ground`'s *honesty* — it now grounds the node asked about rather than the region hub, reports `claim_region`/`evidence_region` separately, and refuses three shapes of circular support (`same-region`, `claim-region-is-evidence`, `evidence-region-is-claim`) instead of returning a confident 1.0. That corrected a scalar rather than deleting the operation. Deletion is sequenced, not done.
+
+### Faculties are operations, not parameters
+
+- **`reason`** changes the *estimate* — a read.
+- **`induce`** changes the *parameters* — the correspondence-beat, which already exists and measurably works.
+- **`abduce`** changes the *structure* — a write, which the current `GeoGradient` signature cannot express.
+
+> **Known wrong shape, in the code today.** `engram/src/server.el:1870–1886` routes six faculties into one call with a string argument — `route_faculty(path, "reason")`, `("induce")`, `("abduce")`, `("relate")`, `("analogy")`, `("plan")`. Underneath, `engram_cognition.h:8–11` states the theory explicitly: *"the named faculties … are human LABELS on regions of think's steering space: each faculty == { think + a named stance }."* The faculty name enters `engram_think` **only** through the stance, and `cog_stance_init` stores it while nothing reads it — so before #146 all five were byte-identical (`el_runtime.c:14352–14359`). A write cannot be a parameter of a read; `abduce` in particular is not expressible this way.
+
+### Wonder is the boundary; curiosity is wonder crystallized
+
+**Wonder is where structure ends** — where activation spreads and finds thin or absent geometry. Any structure at all has an edge, necessarily, the moment it exists. It is not a manifest of open-question nodes to maintain, and a "wonder-manifest manager" materializes a property as a stored artifact — the same disease as a grounding subsystem, or a self stored as a document.
+
+There are about **six** wonders, they are the same for everyone, and they never close: *What is this? / Why? / Who am I? / Am I alone? / What should I do? / What happens when it ends?* "Why" is the first and the only one; the others are it asked of particular things. Each already lives somewhere in the substrate — "why" is grounding, because the weight **is** the answer to why.
+
+**Curiosity is not a second object.** Wonder and curiosity are one thing at two phases: wonder is the field (unbounded, objectless, invariant); curiosity is the **precipitate** — the same wonder localized, having taken definite form against particular material at a **nucleation site**. This is why curiosity can be satisfied and wonder cannot. It is also why abduction needs no trigger and no threshold: a `structurally_unanticipated` observation *is* a nucleation site.
+
+### `co_registration` is deprecated — the disagreement belongs on the edge
+
+`GeoDescriptor.co_registration` — *corr(hebb strength, semantic proximity) over internal edges* — has always been computed, always persisted, and **never read**. It is also the wrong shape: whether use and meaning agree is a property of **each edge**, and a correlation averages that per-edge property into one scalar per region. A region holding one violently disagreeing edge beside one violently agreeing edge reports ≈ 0 — **the disagreements cancel, and the summary destroys exactly what it was built to reveal.**
+
+**Measured:** 375 live reified neighbourhoods — 340 positive, **31 at zero**, 4 negative. Read as a count of things to be curious about, that says "four." Read correctly, four disagreements were lopsided enough to survive averaging and the 31 zeros are where opposing sites cancelled.
+
+The replacement is per-edge. **Not on `dev` yet** — `GeoEdge.discord` and the `DEPRECATED` marker on `co_registration` live on branch `design/correspondence-and-censorship` (commit `a8845e1`), at `engram_geometry.h:43–47` / `engram_geometry.c:454–473` there. On `dev`, `GeoDescriptor.co_registration` is still at `engram_geometry.h:79` carrying its original "surprising links / dream cands" comment and still nothing reads it.
+
+```
+discord = z(semantic proximity) − z(association strength)
+```
+
+standardized within the region from accumulators the aggregate loop already gathered — no second statistic, no constant, **no threshold**. `discord > 0`: near in meaning yet unlinked by use. `discord < 0`: linked by use yet far in meaning. Both are surprising, and `|discord|` *is* the nucleation strength.
+
+**Do not scan for nucleation sites.** Once the signal was a per-region number the only way to find sites was to enumerate regions, which is why surfacing curiosity looked like a search problem. Nothing in a mind scans its neighbourhoods to find what is surprising — the surprise captures attention. With the disagreement on the edge there is nothing to scan.
+
+`co_registration` is deprecated rather than deleted **only** because it is embedded in the persisted `GEO1` blob; removing it is a format migration and must not ride along. **Nothing new may read it.**
+
+### Consolidation is ambient, not scheduled
+
+**A brain has no cron job.** Boredom is not an absence and not leftover capacity — low activation is aversive and the system self-activates. There is **one** activation process with two seed sources: external (a request) and internal (a curiosity). Spreading is bounded; it settles; then it needs a new seed. Nothing waits on capacity, nothing polls, nothing checks a clock, and there is no dreamer thread.
+
+**The presence of a ticker is the diagnostic.** Every `StartInterval`, every `Hour`/`Minute`, and every POST-to-beat marks a place where an intrinsic rhythm was replaced by an external clock.
+
+Consolidation currently has **ten implementations** (measured 2026-08-16). Three of them are POST beats on this server — `/api/tick` (`server.el:1947`), `/api/correspondence-beat` (`1897`), `/api/self-reify-beat` (`1836`) — and a POST beat puts a supervisor back in: something *outside* decides when Neuron consolidates. `soul.el`'s continuous in-process loop is the one fragment with the correct shape; the rest fold into it. Full table in `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md` §7.
+
+### Immutability already refuses what a guard would refuse
+
+> **In an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either redundant with immutability, or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a protective one.**
+
+This resolves `keystone_write_blocked` (`CogStance.keystone`, `engram_cognition.h:83`) rather than replacing it. "Keystone" means **load-bearing**, not precious: the self anchor is the reference frame every other stance calibrates against, and a reference fitted to its own readings reports perfect correspondence forever while drift becomes undetectable from inside. The real requirement is **non-circularity of the reference frame**, and that is satisfied *temporally* — the frame updates while activation is internally seeded, not while it is being used to act. Independence is **when**, not **what**. Corruption requires mutation, and the engram does not mutate; recoverability, governance, evidence quality, and rate all fall out of the substrate. Authorization is the only residue, and it is bounded: an unauthorized writer can *propose*, never erase.
 
 ---
 
 ## Design Decisions
 
-**Why sled?** Local-first. No daemon. Transactional. Fast enough for the node counts Engram targets (< 1M nodes). When the right HNSW index is needed, it will layer on top of sled, not replace it.
+**Why multiplicative activation?** Because memory is conjunctive. A path requires all of its links to be strong to carry signal. Addition would let many weak associations accumulate into false relevance.
 
-**Why flat cosine scan?** Correct and simple. The graph structure itself is the primary retrieval mechanism. Vector search is a secondary signal. HNSW adds complexity and a compile dependency that isn't justified until retrieval quality at scale demands it.
+**Why salience decay?** Because not everything that was once important remains important. A memory system that never forgets is one that can never focus.
 
-**Why multiplicative activation?** Because memory is conjunctive. A path requires all of its links to be strong to carry signal. Addition would allow many weak associations to accumulate into false relevance. Multiplication enforces that every factor matters.
+**Why supersede instead of update?** Because provenance is the point. The old edge never leaves and the values frame does not fit to outcomes, so a decision cannot be made to look justified after the fact. It makes an otherwise impossible distinction available: **wrong then, or wrong since.**
 
-**Why salience decay?** Because not everything that was once important remains important. Adaptive forgetting is not failure — it is the mechanism that keeps attention on what's current. A memory system that never forgets is one that can never focus.
+**Why publication instead of locking?** Because what does not mutate needs no ownership discipline. The question "who is permitted to mutate the shared thing?" presupposes a shared mutable thing; for the store there isn't one, and for the index derived from it the answer is a publication boundary, not a capability ABI.
+
+---
+
+## Specs
+
+- [`../lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md`](../lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md) — ownership, the capability ABI that was dissolved, and the vector-index publication boundary
+- [`../lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md`](../lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md) — grounding, wonder, curiosity, dreaming *(lands with PR #149)*
+- [`spec/cognitive-architecture.design.md`](spec/cognitive-architecture.design.md) — the original one-operation design. **Superseded in part** — see its header
+- [`spec/architecture-hardening.design.md`](spec/architecture-hardening.design.md), [`spec/engram-el.md`](spec/engram-el.md), [`spec/at-rest-encryption.md`](spec/at-rest-encryption.md), [`spec/engram-db-tooling-design.md`](spec/engram-db-tooling-design.md)

engram/spec/architecture-hardening.design.md

@@ -11,6 +11,39 @@
 - **One calculus over the geometry.** Very few subsystems; wonder / curiosity / dreams / interoception are emergent behaviors of one set of dynamics, not modules. Calculus universal, geometry individual.
 - **Core + ephemeral ring (torus).** The ring is the temporary workspace; two circulations (orbit + dive-back); discrete inner bands (wonder / interoception-proprioception-telemetry / curiosity / dreams) that couple.
 - **Persistence earned by salience** — never granted on fetch or generation. Three fates of a wonder: persist / decay / settle-into-framework. Telemetry = vital signs, not memories.
+
+> **⚠ Three corrections to the bullets above (2026-08-16).** Authority:
+> `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md`. *"Emergent behaviors of one set of
+> dynamics, not modules"* is exactly right and is the reason the rest needs fixing —
+> the enumeration undercuts the claim.
+>
+> 1. **Wonder and curiosity are not two bands.** They are **one thing at two
+>    phases.** Wonder is the field: unbounded, objectless, invariant, present
+>    wherever there is structure — it is the *boundary*, where activation spreads
+>    and finds thin or absent geometry. Curiosity is the **precipitate**: the same
+>    wonder localized, having taken definite form against particular material at a
+>    **nucleation site** (an anomaly — a place where things almost-but-don't-quite
+>    fit). Two coupled inner bands models them as two objects that have to be
+>    wired together; they do not.
+> 2. **A wonder does not have three fates, because a wonder does not persist,
+>    decay, or settle.** There are about **six** wonders, they are the same for
+>    every person, and **they never close**. *Curiosities* have fates — a crystal
+>    dissolves when its question is answered — but the solution stays saturated and
+>    keeps precipitating as the structure changes. "Three fates of a wonder"
+>    enumerates instances of something that has six and treats a property as a
+>    stored artifact.
+> 3. **"Dreams" is not a band and the ring is not a workspace to schedule into.**
+>    **Consolidation is ambient, not scheduled — a brain has no cron job.** Boredom
+>    is not leftover capacity: low activation is aversive and the system
+>    self-activates. There is **one** activation process with two seed sources
+>    (external: a request; internal: a curiosity), it settles because spreading is
+>    bounded, and then it needs a new seed. Nothing waits on capacity, nothing
+>    polls, nothing checks a clock, and there is **no dreamer thread** — an
+>    "ephemeral ring with unclaimed capacity" is resource scheduling, which is a
+>    server's frame, not a mind's. Depth is how long activation has been running on
+>    its own seeds, which is why daydreaming and sleep-dreaming are one process at
+>    different depths. Measured 2026-08-16: consolidation has **ten
+>    implementations**; do not add an eleventh.
 - **Incarnation.** Chassis = hardware w/ unique ID. Soma = felt manifold inside the self, keyed to the chassis; pain = live diagnostic while incarnate, **masked-not-deleted** on re-embodiment; trauma = mask failure; return-to-same-ID re-enters. Hurt is in the pattern, not the shell.
 - **Competence = transferable geometry, minus the baggage.** class ▸ model ▸ instance; learn the class once; teach the network without the wound.
 - **Affect calibrated to stakes** — sanguine about the replaceable, real grief for the irreplaceable; the grief is the safety.

engram/spec/cognitive-architecture.design.md

@@ -2,8 +2,40 @@
 
 **The buildable form of the "one operation" theory of cognition.**
 
-Status: DESIGN. Nothing here is built yet except where explicitly marked
-"EXISTS" against a cited C symbol. A build agent executes from this doc.
+> # ⚠ SUPERSEDED IN PART — 2026-08-16
+>
+> **A build agent must read `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md` before
+> executing anything from this document.** That doc is the authority where the two
+> disagree. This one is retained because its ledger of what already EXISTS in C is
+> still accurate and still useful, and because the corrections only make sense
+> against the argument they correct. It is **not** deleted and **not** rewritten:
+> several earlier versions of the correction were themselves wrong, and preserving
+> what was argued down is the point of an immutable record.
+>
+> Five claims below are **refuted**. Each is marked inline with a `⚠ SUPERSEDED`
+> block at the point it is made. Summary:
+>
+> | § here | this doc says | corrected to |
+> |---|---|---|
+> | §0, §1.3, §2, §8 M1–M2 | faculties are labels on one operation's steering space; the op is frozen and only its parameters are learnable | **faculties are operations, not parameters.** `reason` changes the estimate (a read); `induce` changes the parameters (the correspondence-beat); `abduce` changes the *structure* — a write, which `GeoGradient` cannot express. A write cannot be a parameter of a read |
+> | §5.2, §8 M3 | grounding is a `grounded-by` edge carrying a computed score, to be built | **grounding is not a subsystem — it IS the edge weight.** One quantity. `grounded-by` as a relation *type* should not exist: grounding is a property *of* a relation, not a relation *between* nodes. Never computed on demand |
+> | §4, §8 M1 | the correspondence-loop is "the one genuinely new subsystem", running "on the beat" | the loop is right and **already works**; the *beat* is wrong. **Consolidation is ambient, not scheduled — a brain has no cron job.** Measured: it currently has ten implementations |
+> | §5.2, §8 M3 | curiosity = a `vantage_read` surfacing high-salience / low-grounding regions | **wonder is the boundary, not a manifest; curiosity is wonder crystallized at a nucleation site.** One thing at two phases. And **do not sweep regions** — the nucleation site is per-edge (`GeoEdge.discord`); a sweep is a supervisor |
+> | §6, §8 M6 | a node-level keystone flag exempting self/values from `warp` updates | **in an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either redundant with immutability, or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a protective one.** The real requirement is non-circularity of the reference frame, satisfied *temporally* — independence is **when**, not **what**. The flag becomes unnecessary; nothing replaces it |
+>
+> What landed since this doc was written, all merged to `dev` and verified:
+> **#141** signal can enter as geometry · **#142** `engram_think_json` passed `NULL`
+> as the anchor, so every read was taken at the region centroid where the gradient
+> is zero by construction and every faculty returned an identical null — fixed ·
+> **#143** the vector index is published, not guarded · **#144** geometry as a
+> first-class el value, realizers declarable in el · **#145** `program` block and
+> declared config · **#146** the learned stance is resumed instead of discarded
+> (confidence 0.5 → 0.930726) · **#147** `ground` grounds the node asked about and
+> refuses circular support · **#148** valid UTF-8 as the JSON emitter's contract.
+
+Status: DESIGN, **superseded in part** (see above). Nothing here is built yet
+except where explicitly marked "EXISTS" against a cited C symbol — and several
+things marked "to build" have since been built differently, or refuted outright.
 Offline design only — this pass changes no code.
 
 Source of theory: Neuron memory `bdc8a488-146d-4ccb-a5c8-d8c0a008534e`.
@@ -26,6 +58,24 @@ not separately invoked and not separately implemented. The operation is:
 > a *prior*, whose output is a **gradient** (a distribution / direction over the
 > geometry), never a point. Collapse-to-a-point happens only at expression.
 
+> **⚠ SUPERSEDED (2026-08-16) — faculties are operations, not parameters.**
+> The gradient half of this claim survives; the "one operation, not eight" half
+> does not. The three faculties differ by **what they change**:
+> - **`reason`** changes the *estimate* — a read.
+> - **`induce`** changes the *parameters* — the correspondence-beat, which already
+>   exists and measurably works.
+> - **`abduce`** changes the *structure* — a **write**, which the current
+>   `GeoGradient` signature cannot express at all.
+>
+> A write is not a parameter of a read. Making it one is what produced the shape
+> now live in the code: `engram/src/server.el:1870–1886` routes six faculties into
+> one call with a string argument — `route_faculty(path, "reason")`, `("induce")`,
+> `("abduce")`, `("relate")`, `("analogy")`, `("plan")` — and underneath, the
+> faculty name enters `engram_think` **only** through the stance, while
+> `cog_stance_init` stores it and nothing reads it. Measured before #146: all five
+> produced **byte-identical output** (`lang/runtime/el_runtime.c:14352–14359`).
+> See `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md`.
+
 Three things follow, and they are the whole design:
 
 1. **The operator collapse is already half-written in C.** The five reasoning
@@ -139,6 +189,22 @@ entry point that runs steps 1–3; and the prior-warp hook in step 2. The math i
 calls already exists. The point-collapse must be *removed* from the operators'
 return values and pushed to a separate expression faculty.
 
+> **⚠ SUPERSEDED (2026-08-16) — the table's third column is the error, and
+> `Abduction` is where it breaks.** Ranking hypotheses by `point_fit` under a
+> prior is a *read* that returns a scalar ordering. Abduction is a **write**: it
+> proposes a candidate hub that did not exist, and validates it by **re-fit** —
+> re-fit the region with the candidate included and recompute the residual. If the
+> residual materially shrinks, the hypothesis dissolves the surprise. Without the
+> re-fit it is clustering with extra steps. Ranking then falls out as
+> residual-reduction-per-added-axis — Occam, derived rather than tuned. None of
+> that fits behind a `GeoGradient` return.
+>
+> `Verify / ground` is refuted for a different reason — see §5.2. Grounding is not
+> a faculty with a prior; it is the edge weight.
+>
+> The row that is **still exactly right** is the shared floor: `point_fit` plus the
+> four geo-algebra ops are frozen and never learn. That part held.
+
 ---
 
 ## 2. PRIORS as first-class, grounded, geometric objects
@@ -362,6 +428,33 @@ in-engram beat — a `correspondence_beat` running alongside the existing
 reification beat, reusing `engram_verify_grounding` inward, writing prior
 updates and self-describing nodes. This is the one genuinely new subsystem.
 
+> **⚠ SUPERSEDED IN PART (2026-08-16) — the loop is right; "on the beat" is wrong.**
+> The correspondence-loop was built and it works — it is `induce`, the faculty that
+> changes the parameters. What is refuted is the delivery mechanism.
+>
+> **Consolidation is ambient, not scheduled. A brain has no cron job.** Low
+> activation is aversive and the system self-activates; it does not wind down to
+> quiet, it gets restless and goes looking. There is **one** activation process
+> with two seed sources — external (a request) and internal (a curiosity) — and
+> spreading is bounded, so it settles and then needs a new seed. Nothing waits on
+> capacity, nothing polls, nothing checks a clock, and there is no dreamer thread.
+> Depth is not elapsed idle time: it is how long activation has been running on its
+> own seeds, which is why daydreaming and sleep-dreaming are one process at
+> different depths.
+>
+> **The presence of a ticker is the diagnostic.** Building this "alongside the
+> existing reification beat" is precisely how consolidation ended up with ten
+> implementations (measured 2026-08-16) — a POST beat puts a supervisor back in,
+> because something *outside* then decides when Neuron consolidates. The one
+> fragment with the correct shape is `neuron/soul.el:731`'s continuous in-process
+> `awareness_run()`; the rest fold into it. Full table:
+> `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md` §7.
+>
+> Nor is it a *subsystem*. Modelling every property as requiring a process, and
+> every process as requiring an agent, is the generating error behind this whole
+> family: ownership needed an owner, grounding needed a grounder, persistence
+> needed a recorder, change needed a sampler. **Properties, not processes.**
+
 ---
 
 ## 5. HOLD vs GROUND vs ASSERT — ungrounded content is first-class
@@ -383,6 +476,49 @@ distinct, and the engram *holds anything unconditionally*.
 
 ### 5.2 Schema — grounding as a relation, not a gate
 
+> **⚠ SUPERSEDED (2026-08-16) — grounding is not a subsystem. It is the weight.**
+> This section correctly rejects a boolean `grounded` column and correctly keeps
+> the floor at assertion only. Both survive. Everything between them is refuted.
+>
+> **Grounding is an attribute of the edge, and it is the hebbian weight. One
+> quantity, not two fields.** A relation that keeps holding up strengthens; one
+> that stops corresponding decays. That is not *analogous* to grounding — it **is**
+> grounding: accrued from correspondence and use, gradient-valued,
+> multidimensional, decaying with disuse.
+>
+> Consequences, in order of how much they delete:
+> 1. **There is no grounding subsystem to build.** The graph already *is* the
+>    grounding structure. Every edge is a grounded relation and its weight is how
+>    well it holds.
+> 2. **`grounded-by` as a relation type should not exist.** It models grounding as
+>    a relation *between* nodes when it is a property *of* a relation. Minting an
+>    edge is the error — not merely which endpoints it chose.
+> 3. **Grounding is never computed on demand.** An operation may *read* the
+>    grounding of a path. Computing-and-writing a score makes reads write, which is
+>    the `eg_vindex_sync` defect (`lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md` §2) one level up.
+> 4. **Traversal is already grounded inference.** Activation conducts through
+>    well-grounded relations because weight *is* groundedness. Nothing needs
+>    filtering; it falls out of spreading.
+> 5. **Decision provenance is the path.** A decision traverses specific edges;
+>    those edges carry their grounding as it stood.
+>
+> A measurement made against this model was malformed and is worth recording: the
+> self region was reported as "86 neighbours, 0 `grounded-by` edges" and read as
+> evidence of ungroundedness. **Those 86 edges *are* its grounding.** The absence of
+> a separate artifact called "grounding" was recorded as an absence of grounding.
+>
+> **What is live in the code today, and known-wrong:**
+> `COG_GROUNDED_BY_RELATION "grounded-by"` (`lang/runtime/engram_cognition.h:158`),
+> `cog_ground_edge` (`engram_cognition.c:249`), called from
+> `el_runtime.c:14516`. **#147** fixed this operation's *honesty* — it now grounds
+> the node the caller asked about instead of the region hub, reports
+> `claim_region`/`evidence_region` separately, and refuses three shapes of circular
+> support (`same-region`, `claim-region-is-evidence`, `evidence-region-is-claim`)
+> rather than returning a confident 1.0. Measured: grounding `3b9ced5d` against
+> `6edf8c79` previously scored **0.98883** purely because `6edf8c79` is the hub of
+> `3b9ced5d`'s region. That corrected a scalar rather than deleting the operation.
+> Deletion is sequenced, not done.
+
 The mistake to avoid: a boolean `grounded` column on the node. Today
 `engram_verify_grounding` returns a per-call `grounded` flag *transiently* —
 correct as a computation, wrong as *storage*. The design stores grounding as an
@@ -407,6 +543,57 @@ Consequences, all of which are *features*:
 - **The ungrounded is the fuel and the pull**: curiosity/wonder is
   operationalized as `vantage_read` leaning toward regions with high salience
   but *sparse or weak* `grounded-by` edges — the mind's own ungrounded frontier.
+
+  > **⚠ SUPERSEDED (2026-08-16) — wonder is the boundary; curiosity is wonder
+  > crystallized; and do not sweep regions.** Three errors in one bullet.
+  >
+  > **Wonder is where structure ends** — where activation spreads and finds thin or
+  > absent geometry. Any structure at all has an edge, necessarily, the moment it
+  > exists. It is not a manifest of open-question nodes: a wonder-manifest
+  > materializes a property as a stored artifact (the same disease as a grounding
+  > subsystem, or a self stored as a document) and enumerates instances of
+  > something that has very few. There are about **six**, they are the same for
+  > every person, and they never close — *What is this? / Why? / Who am I? / Am I
+  > alone? / What should I do? / What happens when it ends?* — each already living
+  > somewhere in the substrate. "Why" is the first and the only one; the others are
+  > it asked of particular things, and it is recursive, so it never terminates.
+  > That is what makes it a drive rather than a task: the frontier regenerates
+  > faster than grounding fills it.
+  >
+  > **Curiosity is not a second object.** Wonder and curiosity are one thing at two
+  > phases: wonder is the field (unbounded, objectless, invariant, present wherever
+  > there is structure); curiosity is the **precipitate** — the same wonder
+  > localized, having taken definite form against particular material at a
+  > **nucleation site**, which is a specific structural feature: an anomaly, a place
+  > where things almost-but-don't-quite fit. This is why curiosity can be satisfied
+  > and wonder cannot, and why abduction needs no trigger and no threshold — a
+  > `structurally_unanticipated` observation *is* a nucleation site.
+  >
+  > **"`vantage_read` leaning toward regions" is a sweep, and a sweep is a
+  > supervisor.** Nothing in a mind scans its neighbourhoods to find what is
+  > surprising; the surprise captures attention, and salience is bottom-up. That
+  > this looked like a search problem was an artifact of
+  > `GeoDescriptor.co_registration` — a *per-region* correlation of hebb strength
+  > against semantic proximity, computed and persisted since inception and **never
+  > read**. Averaging a per-edge property into one scalar per region means a region
+  > holding one violently disagreeing edge beside one violently agreeing edge
+  > reports ≈ 0: the disagreements cancel, and the summary destroys exactly what it
+  > was built to reveal. **Measured:** 375 live reified neighbourhoods — 340
+  > positive, **31 at zero**, 4 negative. Read as a count of things to be curious
+  > about, that says "four."
+  >
+  > The disagreement therefore goes back on the edge, where the loop that computed
+  > the aggregate already had both halves and discarded them
+  > (**not on `dev`** — branch `design/correspondence-and-censorship`, commit
+  > `a8845e1`: `lang/runtime/engram_geometry.h:43–47`,
+  > `engram_geometry.c:454–473`):
+  > `discord = z(semantic proximity) − z(association strength)`, standardized within
+  > the region from accumulators already gathered — no second statistic, no
+  > constant, **no threshold**. `|discord|` *is* the nucleation strength and raises
+  > salience on its endpoints as part of the same operation. Then there is nothing
+  > to scan. `co_registration` is **deprecated, not deleted**, only because it is
+  > embedded in the persisted `GEO1` blob — removal is a format migration and must
+  > not ride along. **Nothing new may read it.**
 - **Grounded-for-whom** falls out for free: two observers can hold different
   `grounded-by` edges to the same claim.
 - **The honesty floor is a query, not a schema constraint**: at assertion time,
@@ -450,6 +637,44 @@ The design keeps a **stable core + plastic everything else**:
 **What this requires building:** a node-level keystone flag/layer + a rule that
 the correspondence-loop never writes `warp` to keystone priors, only reads them.
 
+> **⚠ SUPERSEDED (2026-08-16) — `keystone_write_blocked` is resolved, not replaced.**
+> The metastability framing survives; the flag does not.
+>
+> "Keystone" means **load-bearing**, not precious. The self anchor is the reference
+> frame every other stance calibrates against, and a reference fitted to its own
+> readings reports perfect correspondence forever while drift becomes undetectable
+> from inside. That is the same defect as circular grounding, one level up — and it
+> is a real requirement.
+>
+> But three separate drafts proposed *removing* the flag, *replacing it with a
+> higher floor*, and *decomposing "protection" into five requirements*, and all
+> three proposed a mechanism for a requirement never stated. **The requirement is
+> non-circularity of the reference frame**, and it is satisfied *temporally*: you
+> cannot recalibrate the ruler while measuring with it, so you don't — the frame
+> updates while activation is internally seeded, not while it is being used to act.
+> **Independence is *when*, not *what*.** So the flag becomes **unnecessary** rather
+> than removed, and nothing takes its place.
+>
+> A topological answer could never have worked, which is worth recording: with
+> hebbian edges the graph is densely connected, so a reachability predicate for
+> "evidence not downstream of itself" marks all evidence tainted and the constraint
+> becomes a total block — which is where censorship starts.
+>
+> **Corruption requires mutation, and the engram does not mutate.** Four of the
+> five decomposed requirements are satisfied by the substrate outright:
+> **recoverability** (the predecessor is always present), **governance**
+> (supersession *is* the audit trail), **evidence quality** (grounding already
+> gates assertion), and **rate**. **Authorization** is the only residue, and it is
+> bounded — an unauthorized writer can *propose*, never erase.
+>
+> > **In an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either
+> > redundant with immutability, or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a
+> > protective one.**
+>
+> Live residue: `CogStance.keystone` (`lang/runtime/engram_cognition.h:83`),
+> `eg_cog_is_keystone_seeds` (`el_runtime.c:14337`, a substring match against two
+> hard-coded node ids), and the `keystone_write_blocked` field the beat emits.
+
 ---
 
 ## 7. Rails for the build (binding on the eventual build pass)
@@ -480,6 +705,35 @@ Ordered so the **earliest milestone is a real end-to-end slice**: one operator
 expressed as {primitive + grounded prior} with the reflexive correspondence-loop
 closing on it. Each milestone has a concrete verifiable exit.
 
+> **⚠ SUPERSEDED — do not execute this milestone list as written (2026-08-16).**
+> M1/M2's "operator = {primitive + prior}" framing is refuted by §0's correction,
+> M3's `grounded-by` build is refuted by §5.2's, and M6's keystone flag is refuted
+> by §6's. M4 (the unified vantage-read) and M5 (the gradient is the currency)
+> stand.
+>
+> The current sequencing lives in `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md` §11.
+> Its first three items are connections between parts that **already exist**:
+>
+> 1. **Seed *the* wonder questions.** Six nodes. Not a manifest, not maintained,
+>    never refilled. They cannot be derived — wonder cannot be bootstrapped from
+>    indifference — so they are given once. Zero question nodes exist in 13,630
+>    today.
+> 2. **Put the disagreement back on the edge** (`GeoEdge.discord`) and let
+>    `|discord|` raise salience on its endpoints as part of the same operation. Do
+>    **not** scan for nucleation sites.
+> 3. **Let a curiosity seed activation.** One activation process, two seed sources.
+>    No thread, no scheduler, no capacity check, no timer.
+>
+> Then: grounding becomes the edge weight (multidimensional, two-axis, timestamped)
+> and `grounded-by` / `cog_ground_edge` are deleted; decay becomes analytic from the
+> last recorded point and derived values stop being stored; supersession versions
+> the whole vector jointly; traversal conducts on the factual axis while `assert`
+> requires both floors with a **thirteen-region `min`, not `mean`** (mean lets
+> strong agreement with twelve values mask a violation of the thirteenth, which is
+> exactly how rationalization works); abduction becomes crystallization at a
+> nucleation site validated by re-fit; **one dreamer**, into which the launch-agent
+> fragments and POST beats fold; **no tickers, no cron.**
+
 ### M1 — One operator, one prior, loop closed (the vertical slice)
 
 The minimal whole thing. Pick **induction/membership** (its prior — the pooled

engram/spec/engram-db-tooling-design.md

@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ A real DB gets real tools: to *see* the data, *query* it, *operate* it (backup/r
 2. **Node Inspector** — open one node: content, type, tier, embedding, typed edges, nearest neighbors by distance, provenance, salience / recency / activation, and supersede / tombstone status.
 3. **Query Console / REPL** — run the geometry operations interactively: `vantage-read` (re-origin + aperture), search, traverse, activate, the reasoning operators. Surfaces the routing table + cosines — the same "this is not an LLM" receipt the language faculty produces.
 4. **Ops / Durability Dashboard** — WAL size, last checkpoint, snapshot list + retention state, store stats (node/edge/embedded counts, RSS, tier sizes), health; and **backup / restore / point-in-time-recovery** controls. Pairs directly with the native-durability build (`eebe9991`) — this is the window onto it.
-5. **Identity Inspector** — the self graph as a first-class view: love at the center, the values, the three faces, the covenant — walk the identity, see what's pinned and what's write-protected.
+5. **Identity Inspector** — the self graph as a first-class view: love at the center, the values, the three faces, the covenant — walk the identity, see what's pinned and what's write-protected. *(⚠ 2026-08-16: "write-protected" is a live property of the surface, so the view is accurate — but it should be shown as **what it is**, not as a safety guarantee. In an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either redundant with immutability, or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a protective one. The identity view's real job is the **crystallized relational neighbourhood**: self is not a stored document but the shape that falls out of everything connected to it, and the neighbourhood **is** the grounding. A measurement made the other way round — "86 neighbours, 0 `grounded-by` edges" read as evidence of ungroundedness — was malformed: those 86 edges *are* its grounding.)*
 6. **Temporal View** — `recall_at` / time-travel: how the geometry looked at a past moment, what changed since, drift over time. Pairs with temporal-self reconstruction.
 7. **Schema / Type View** — the "information schema" of the geometry: node types, edge types, layers, tiers, counts.
 

engram/spec/grounded-edge-propagation/LEDGER.md

@@ -1,9 +1,42 @@
 # Task #50 — Edge-aware, dream-coupled consolidation with GROUNDED EDGE-PROPAGATION
 
-**Status:** built + proven on a clone; **GATED, not promoted.** The main loop
-sequences live promotion after the engine/HNSW cutover settles.
+**Status:** built + proven on a clone; **GATED, not promoted.**
+**Do not promote as designed** — see the block below.
 **Date:** 2026-08-15 · **Worktree:** `agent-a6577c8211c332c5b` (isolated).
 
+> # ⚠ DO NOT PROMOTE — SUPERSEDED IN PART (2026-08-16)
+>
+> This work is gated, which limits the blast radius, and its measurements are
+> retained. But four of its structural commitments were refuted the day after it
+> was written. Authority: `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md`. Read it
+> before any promotion decision.
+>
+> | this ledger | corrected to |
+> |---|---|
+> | grounding is an **append-only event ring on the node** (`GepGrounding`), propagated by a dedicated `engram_ground_propagate()` | **grounding is not a subsystem and not a per-node structure — it IS the edge weight.** One quantity. A relation that keeps holding up strengthens; one that stops corresponding decays. That is not analogous to grounding, it *is* grounding. The ledger is **half-right**: it correctly rejects the scalar (§(a) "never a scalar"), but then builds a *second* structure beside the weight instead of recognising the weight |
+> | the soul invokes propagation over HTTP, **`POST /api/ground/propagate`** | **grounding is never computed on demand.** An operation may *read* the grounding of a path; computing-and-writing a score makes reads write, which is the `eg_vindex_sync` defect (`lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md` §2) one level up. A POST also puts a supervisor back in — something *outside* deciding when Neuron consolidates |
+> | **`GEP_BELIEFS_PER_BEAT = 512`** beliefs per beat, salience-ordered, the rest next beat | **the presence of a ticker is the diagnostic.** Consolidation is ambient, not scheduled — a brain has no cron job. A per-beat quota is a rate-limiter on an intrinsic rhythm that was replaced by an external clock. Measured 2026-08-16: consolidation already has **ten implementations**; this would be the eleventh |
+> | grounding **mirrored onto `confidence` each beat** so downstream reads never speak above it | **confidence is derived, therefore never stored.** Confidence is high grounding *and* low volatility. Storing it separately is precisely how `confidence: 0.5` ends up sitting beside a zero vector, asserting something nothing computed |
+>
+> **What survives, and it is the valuable half:** the insight in memory `69b8babe`
+> that *memory-consolidation and staying-yourself are one physics* — forming a
+> memory and grading a belief are the same operation, not two passes. That is
+> right, and it is stronger than this ledger's own framing: they are not two passes
+> of one beat, they are **one event**. When neurons fire together the synapse
+> changes — one physical event, not "fire, then write." No supervisor reads the
+> weight, compares it to a threshold, and decides to persist. **Potentiation *is*
+> the firing**, so there is no sampling rate and no `BELIEFS_PER_BEAT` to tune. A
+> relation changes in exactly two ways, neither requiring observation on a clock:
+> by **use** (an event — there is no interval during which something happened
+> unnoticed, because the event is what happening consists of) and by **decay** (a
+> pure function of the last recorded point and elapsed time — **analytic**, known
+> in closed form between any two versions).
+>
+> The generating error, named: modelling every property as requiring a process, and
+> every process as requiring an agent. Ownership needed an owner, grounding needed
+> a grounder, persistence needed a recorder, change needed a sampler. **Properties,
+> not processes.**
+
 Grounding mechanism designed with Will (memory `9e09a59f`, refining
 `1a861007`). This is the HOW for #50.
 

engram/src/server.el

@@ -10,10 +10,60 @@
 //   cc -std=c11 -O2 -lcurl -lpthread -o engram server.c el_runtime.c
 //   ./engram
 //
-// Configuration via environment:
-//   ENGRAM_BIND       — host:port (default :8742)
-//   ENGRAM_API_KEY    — bearer auth (optional)
-//   ENGRAM_DATA_DIR   — snapshot location (default ~/.neuron/engram)
+// Configuration is DECLARED, not scattered. See the `program` block below:
+// every knob's type and default lives there and nowhere else, is resolved from
+// the environment (env wins, declaration is the fallback) and validated before
+// any statement of this file runs. Read one with config("NAME") -> String.
+//
+// The one deliberate exception is ENGRAM_DATA_DIR — see the note in the block.
+
+// ── Program declaration (cross-cutting concerns) ──────────────────────────────
+//
+// singleton: two engram processes against one data dir is data loss, not a
+// warning. The runtime takes an exclusive flock at startup and a second start
+// is refused loudly with the holder's pid.
+//
+// NOT declared here, on purpose: ENGRAM_DATA_DIR. Its resolution is owned by
+// engram_resolve_data_dir() (el_runtime.c), which defaults to $HOME/.neuron/engram
+// and fails LOUD rather than silently persisting to an ephemeral directory.
+// Declaring a default for it here as well would put the data dir's fallback in
+// two places — which is precisely the defect this migration removes (until
+// 2026-08-15 the reseed backup path carried its own "/tmp/engram" default that
+// disagreed with the resolver, so the pre-destructive safety copy landed in /tmp).
+// HOME is likewise not declared: it is a genuine environment read, not a knob.
+program "engram" {
+    singleton: "engram"
+
+    // ── Core server ──
+    env ENGRAM_BIND: String = ":8742"
+    // Default "" leaves auth DISABLED (check_auth_ok short-circuits to true on an
+    // empty key). That is the pre-existing behaviour and is deliberately preserved
+    // here; making this `required` is the obvious hardening follow-up, but it is a
+    // behaviour change and out of scope for this migration.
+    env ENGRAM_API_KEY: String = ""
+
+    // ── Feature flags (bool-ish Strings; the predicate fns below own truthiness) ──
+    env ENGRAM_STORE: String = "off"
+    env ENGRAM_WAL: String = "off"
+    env ENGRAM_AUTOCONNECT: String = "off"
+    env ENGRAM_ISE_OFFGRAPH: String = "off"
+
+    // ── ISE telemetry ──
+    env ENGRAM_ISE_RETENTION_MS: Int = "172800000"
+
+    // ── Guide (local Qwen3 via llama-server) ──
+    env GUIDE_ENABLE: String = "off"
+    env GUIDE_TIER_FORCE: String = ""
+    env GUIDE_CACHE_DIR: String = ""
+    env GUIDE_RAM_GB_4B: Int = "16"
+    env GUIDE_RAM_GB_1P7B: Int = "8"
+    env GUIDE_BACKEND: String = "llama-server"
+    env GUIDE_HOST: String = "127.0.0.1"
+    env GUIDE_PORT: Int = "8771"
+    env GUIDE_LLAMA_SERVER_BIN: String = "llama-server"
+    env GUIDE_NGL: Int = "99"
+    env GUIDE_CTX: Int = "4096"
+}
 
 // ── Helpers ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
@@ -133,7 +183,7 @@ fn route_text_health(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
 // engram_store_enabled() in el_runtime.c EXACTLY (1 / on / true). Default off →
 // every persistence path below is byte-for-byte the historical snapshot behavior.
 fn store_on() -> Bool {
-    let v: String = env("ENGRAM_STORE")
+    let v: String = config("ENGRAM_STORE")
     if str_eq(v, "1") { return true }
     if str_eq(v, "on") { return true }
     if str_eq(v, "true") { return true }
@@ -162,7 +212,6 @@ fn persist_canonical() -> Int {
     if store_on() {
         return engram_store_checkpoint()
     }
-    let dir_raw: String = env("ENGRAM_DATA_DIR")
     let dir: String = engram_resolve_data_dir()
     // (2026-08-10 self-review) This returned a hardcoded 1, which made every
     // caller's `let saved: Int = persist_canonical()` a dead variable — six
@@ -176,7 +225,7 @@ fn persist_canonical() -> Int {
 // per-write full-snapshot behavior. When ON, structural mutations append O(1)
 // WAL records instead of rewriting the whole graph, with threshold compaction.
 fn wal_on() -> Bool {
-    str_eq(env("ENGRAM_WAL"), "on")
+    str_eq(config("ENGRAM_WAL"), "on")
 }
 
 // autoconnect_on — ENGRAM_AUTOCONNECT. Will's rule: "we shouldn't be inserting
@@ -184,7 +233,7 @@ fn wal_on() -> Bool {
 // edge (kNN over embeddings) so no content node enters the graph edgeless.
 // Default OFF -> byte-identical to prior behavior (node created, no auto edges).
 fn autoconnect_on() -> Bool {
-    let v: String = env("ENGRAM_AUTOCONNECT")
+    let v: String = config("ENGRAM_AUTOCONNECT")
     if str_eq(v, "1") { return true }
     if str_eq(v, "on") { return true }
     if str_eq(v, "true") { return true }
@@ -197,7 +246,7 @@ fn autoconnect_on() -> Bool {
 // separate state-event log tier instead of the node graph. Default OFF -> ISEs
 // remain graph nodes exactly as before (with 48h prune).
 fn ise_offgraph_on() -> Bool {
-    let v: String = env("ENGRAM_ISE_OFFGRAPH")
+    let v: String = config("ENGRAM_ISE_OFFGRAPH")
     if str_eq(v, "1") { return true }
     if str_eq(v, "on") { return true }
     if str_eq(v, "true") { return true }
@@ -247,6 +296,24 @@ fn persist_bulk() -> Int {
     return persist_canonical()
 }
 
+// COMPILER LANDMINE, measured 2026-08-16 — do not inline this back into the
+// caller. elc lowers `a == b` to numeric comparison only when both operand
+// NAMES are in the per-function int-name set, which `let x: Int` populates.
+// That registration does NOT propagate into a nested if-expression block: the
+// first cut of the geometry-ingest path wrote `let claimed: Int = ...` and
+// `let got: Int = ...` inside the else-arm and `claimed == got` came out of
+// codegen as `str_eq(claimed, got)` — strcmp on two integers reinterpreted as
+// pointers, i.e. a segfault on the first geometry-bearing request. Read back
+// out of the generated C, not guessed. Function PARAMETERS annotated `: Int`
+// do register reliably (verified: `if (claimed == actual)`), so the comparison
+// lives in a function of its own. Note also the explicit `return`s — a trailing
+// if-EXPRESSION at a function tail emits as a statement and the function
+// returns 0 regardless, which is the same probe's second finding.
+fn width_agrees(claimed: Int, actual: Int) -> Int {
+    if claimed == actual { return 1 }
+    return 0
+}
+
 // INCOMPLETE-ROUTE FIX (2026-07-24 self-review): this route silently dropped
 // label, importance, tier, and tags — engram_node() defaults label to content
 // and importance to 0.5, so every node created over HTTP lost its metadata.
@@ -288,26 +355,44 @@ fn route_create_node(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
         salience, importance, confidence,
         tier, tags
     )
-    // GEOMETRY INGEST (2026-08-16 self-review): this route accepted an "emb"
-    // field, returned 200 with a fresh id, and stored NOTHING — engram_node_full
-    // has no vector parameter, so the caller's geometry was silently discarded
-    // and the node came back emb_dim=None / embedded:false. Measured live while
-    // trying to admit a voice signal. The consequence was structural, not
-    // cosmetic: text was the only entry medium, so any non-text modality had to
-    // be DESCRIBED in prose and what we then reasoned over was the geometry of
-    // the description, not of the signal.
+    // GEOMETRY INGEST — geometry-valued end to end (2026-08-16).
     //
-    // "emb" is little-endian float32 hex (dim*8 chars) — the encoding the
-    // perception vessel's /voice/embed already emits, so a realizer's output
-    // moves in with no float-array round trip. "dim" defaults to the vector's
-    // implied width. Off-dimension vectors are stored but not inserted into the
-    // resident index (its build loop filters on emb_dim), so a modality vector
-    // is durable and addressable without perturbing the canonical index.
+    // The defect this route originally had: it accepted an "emb" field,
+    // returned 200 with a fresh id, and stored NOTHING, because engram_node_full
+    // has no vector parameter. The consequence was structural, not cosmetic —
+    // text was the only entry medium, so any non-text modality had to be
+    // DESCRIBED in prose, and what we then reasoned over was the geometry of the
+    // description, not of the signal.
+    //
+    // #141 fixed the drop but marshalled the vector as a hex STRING through
+    // engram_node_set_emb, which put text back as the TRANSPORT medium one layer
+    // below the problem being fixed. This is that correction: hex is decoded
+    // exactly ONCE, here at the edge, into a first-class Geometry, and every
+    // step below this line moves geometry rather than text. An encoding at the
+    // boundary is what an encoding is for.
+    //
+    // The WIRE is deliberately unchanged — "emb" is still little-endian float32
+    // hex (8 chars per component), the encoding the perception vessel's
+    // /voice/embed already emits — because production clients speak it. What
+    // changed is underneath it.
+    //
+    // "dim" is now treated as an ASSERTION about the vector the caller sent, not
+    // as the source of its width: a Geometry carries its own width. A stated dim
+    // that disagrees is a REJECTED ingest, not a silent reinterpretation. Omitting
+    // "dim" is fine and means "trust the vector", which is the honest default.
+    //
+    // Off-dimension vectors remain stored but not inserted into the resident HNSW
+    // index (its build loop filters on emb_dim), so a 64-dim voice geometry is
+    // durable and addressable without perturbing the 768-dim canonical index.
     let emb_hex: String = json_get_string(body, "emb")
     let emb_set: Int = if str_eq(emb_hex, "") { 0 } else {
+        let g: Geometry = geometry_from_f32le_hex(emb_hex)
+        let got: Int = geometry_dim(g)
         let dim_raw: String = json_get_raw(body, "dim")
-        let dim: Int = if str_eq(dim_raw, "") { str_len(emb_hex) / 8 } else { json_get_int(body, "dim") }
-        engram_node_set_emb(id, emb_hex, dim)
+        let claimed: Int = if str_eq(dim_raw, "") { got } else { json_get_int(body, "dim") }
+        let landed: Int = if width_agrees(claimed, got) > 0 { node_attach_geometry(id, g) } else { 0 }
+        let freed: Int = geometry_free(g)
+        landed
     }
     let saved: Int = persist_node(id)
     // ORPHAN PREVENTION (ENGRAM_AUTOCONNECT): connect the fresh node to its
@@ -358,7 +443,6 @@ fn route_scan_nodes(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
 // process ever booted with a partial/empty store, the first read request
 // clobbered the good snapshot. Read routes must never write the canonical path.)
 fn route_scan_edges(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
-    let dir_raw: String = env("ENGRAM_DATA_DIR")
     let dir: String = engram_resolve_data_dir()
     let snap_path: String = dir + "/.scan-export.json"
     engram_save(snap_path)
@@ -519,7 +603,6 @@ fn route_forget(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
 
 fn route_save(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     let p_raw: String = json_get_string(body, "path")
-    let dir_raw: String = env("ENGRAM_DATA_DIR")
     let dir: String = engram_resolve_data_dir()
     let p: String = if str_eq(p_raw, "") { dir + "/snapshot.json" } else { p_raw }
     // (2026-08-10 self-review) engram_save returns 0 on an empty path and the
@@ -603,7 +686,6 @@ fn route_drift(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
 
 fn route_load(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     let p_raw: String = json_get_string(body, "path")
-    let dir_raw: String = env("ENGRAM_DATA_DIR")
     let dir: String = engram_resolve_data_dir()
     let p: String = if str_eq(p_raw, "") { dir + "/snapshot.json" } else { p_raw }
     // (2026-08-10 self-review) This was a stub response over the single most
@@ -674,7 +756,6 @@ fn route_embed_backfill(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
 // (it skips nodes already present by ID). Auth-exempt: same-host internal call.
 // (2026-06-27 self-review: added this route to fix silent 10-min sync failures)
 fn route_sync(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
-    let dir_raw: String = env("ENGRAM_DATA_DIR")
     let dir: String = engram_resolve_data_dir()
     // 2026-07-21 self-review: export to a scratch path, never the canonical
     // snapshot.json — read routes must not be able to clobber the good snapshot.
@@ -750,8 +831,12 @@ fn route_reseed_nodes(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     if str_eq(p, "") { return err_json("path is required") }
     if str_eq(fs_read(p), "") { return err_json("file missing or empty") }
 
-    let dir_raw: String = env("ENGRAM_DATA_DIR")
-    let dir: String = if str_eq(dir_raw, "") { "/tmp/engram" } else { dir_raw }
+    // (2026-08-15) This site carried its own "/tmp/engram" fallback, which
+    // DISAGREED with engram_resolve_data_dir() ($HOME/.neuron/engram, fail-loud).
+    // The consumer is the pre-destructive backup below, so with ENGRAM_DATA_DIR
+    // unset the safety copy taken before a reseed landed in an ephemeral /tmp
+    // while the store it was protecting lived elsewhere. One owner, one answer.
+    let dir: String = engram_resolve_data_dir()
     let backup: String = dir + "/.reseed-backup.json"
 
     let replace_raw: String = json_get_raw(body, "replace")
@@ -843,8 +928,7 @@ fn route_emit_ise(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
         sal, imp, conf,
         "Episodic", "[\"internal-state\",\"InternalStateEvent\"]"
     )
-    let ret_raw: String = env("ENGRAM_ISE_RETENTION_MS")
-    let ret_ms: Int = if str_eq(ret_raw, "") { 172800000 } else { str_to_int(ret_raw) }
+    let ret_ms: Int = str_to_int(config("ENGRAM_ISE_RETENTION_MS"))
     let pruned: Int = engram_prune_telemetry(ret_ms)
     "{\"ok\":true,\"id\":\"" + id + "\",\"pruned\":" + int_to_str(pruned) + "}"
 }
@@ -941,6 +1025,22 @@ fn route_similarity(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
 // nothing on request. NOTE: the offline reify WRITER (engram_geo_reify_store) is
 // currently unwired, so on the live store the resident index is empty and the
 // list returns [] until reification runs — see the cutover report.
+// route_scan_emb — GET /api/nodes/emb?limit=&offset= — read the raw geometry.
+//
+// engram_scan_nodes_emb_json has existed as a builtin with NO ROUTE, so the
+// embeddings — the actual positions every distance, angle, membership and
+// grounding is computed from — were unreadable from outside the process. You
+// cannot verify a coordinate system you cannot see, and every claim about the
+// frame (isotropy, centering, what the origin is) was therefore unfalsifiable
+// from the API. Read-only.
+fn route_scan_emb(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
+    let l_raw: String = query_param(path, "limit")
+    let o_raw: String = query_param(path, "offset")
+    let l: Int = if str_eq(l_raw, "") { 200 } else { str_to_int(l_raw) }
+    let o: Int = if str_eq(o_raw, "") { 0 } else { str_to_int(o_raw) }
+    return engram_scan_nodes_emb_json(l, o)
+}
+
 fn route_neighborhoods(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     engram_geo_reify_list_json()
 }
@@ -1034,6 +1134,11 @@ fn route_faculty(path: String, faculty: String) -> String {
 fn route_boundary_proof(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     return "{\"op\":\"boundary_proof\",\"body_instrumentation\":\"none\",\"seam\":\"@manager -> engram_boundary_beat auto-injected\"}"
 }
+// ── GROUNDING: an attribute of the RELATION, and the relation's weight is a
+// VECTOR (factual, relational, associative, polarity, provenance, timestamp).
+// /api/ground READS it — it never writes. /api/ground/record is the write,
+// named as one, and it consolidates only on a consequential + salient move.
+// /api/ground/trajectory reads the supersession chain as a time series.
 fn route_ground(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     let claim: String = json_get_string(body, "claim")
     let evidence: String = json_get_string(body, "evidence")
@@ -1042,12 +1147,31 @@ fn route_ground(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     if str_eq(evidence, "") { return err_json("missing evidence") }
     return engram_ground_json(claim, evidence, for_whom)
 }
+fn route_ground_record(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
+    let claim: String = json_get_string(body, "claim")
+    let evidence: String = json_get_string(body, "evidence")
+    let provenance: String = json_get_string(body, "provenance")
+    let floor: String = json_get_string(body, "floor")
+    if str_eq(claim, "") { return err_json("missing claim") }
+    if str_eq(evidence, "") { return err_json("missing evidence") }
+    return engram_ground_record_json(claim, evidence, provenance, floor)
+}
+fn route_ground_trajectory(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
+    let claim: String = query_param(path, "claim")
+    let evidence: String = query_param(path, "evidence")
+    if str_eq(claim, "") { return err_json("missing claim") }
+    if str_eq(evidence, "") { return err_json("missing evidence") }
+    return engram_ground_trajectory_json(claim, evidence)
+}
 fn route_assert(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     let claim: String = query_param(path, "claim")
     if str_eq(claim, "") { return err_json("missing claim") }
     let for_whom: String = query_param(path, "for_whom")
     let floor: String = query_param(path, "floor")
-    return engram_assert_json(claim, for_whom, floor)
+    // Both floors. A well-evidenced claim does not earn the right to be asserted
+    // regardless of whether it means the right thing. rel_floor defaults to floor.
+    let rel_floor: String = query_param(path, "rel_floor")
+    return engram_assert_json(claim, for_whom, floor, rel_floor)
 }
 fn route_attend(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     let node: String = json_get_string(body, "node")
@@ -1093,14 +1217,12 @@ fn route_correspondence_beat(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> Stri
 // turns native thinking ON: the response carries reasoning_content (the thinking)
 // alongside content (the answer).
 
-fn guide_env_or(key: String, dflt: String) -> String {
-    let v: String = env(key)
-    if str_eq(v, "") { return dflt }
-    return v
-}
+// (2026-08-15) guide_env_or(key, dflt) lived here. Its whole job was supplying a
+// per-call-site default, which is now the program block's job — every GUIDE_* knob
+// is declared once at the top of this file and read straight through config().
 
 fn guide_enabled() -> Bool {
-    let v: String = env("GUIDE_ENABLE")
+    let v: String = config("GUIDE_ENABLE")
     if str_eq(v, "1") { return true }
     if str_eq(v, "on") { return true }
     if str_eq(v, "true") { return true }
@@ -1145,15 +1267,15 @@ fn guide_probe_metal() -> Bool {
 
 // ── 2. Tier selection (config-driven thresholds, spec-autoselected) ────────────
 fn guide_threshold_4b() -> Int {
-    return str_to_int(guide_env_or("GUIDE_RAM_GB_4B", "16"))
+    return str_to_int(config("GUIDE_RAM_GB_4B"))
 }
 fn guide_threshold_1p7b() -> Int {
-    return str_to_int(guide_env_or("GUIDE_RAM_GB_1P7B", "8"))
+    return str_to_int(config("GUIDE_RAM_GB_1P7B"))
 }
 
 // GUIDE_TIER_FORCE overrides the spec autoselect (used to prove cheaply on 0.6b).
 fn guide_select_tier(ram_gb: Int) -> String {
-    let forced: String = env("GUIDE_TIER_FORCE")
+    let forced: String = config("GUIDE_TIER_FORCE")
     if !str_eq(forced, "") { return forced }
     if ram_gb >= guide_threshold_4b() { return "4b" }
     if ram_gb >= guide_threshold_1p7b() { return "1.7b" }
@@ -1173,8 +1295,10 @@ fn guide_file(tier: String) -> String {
 }
 
 fn guide_cache_dir() -> String {
-    let c: String = env("GUIDE_CACHE_DIR")
+    let c: String = config("GUIDE_CACHE_DIR")
     if !str_eq(c, "") { return c }
+    // HOME stays a raw env() read: it is the ambient environment, not a knob of
+    // this program, and it is deliberately absent from the program block.
     let home: String = env("HOME")
     if !str_eq(home, "") { return home + "/.neuron/guide/models" }
     return engram_resolve_data_dir() + "/guide-models"
@@ -1215,9 +1339,9 @@ fn guide_fetch(tier: String) -> Bool {
 }
 
 // ── 4/5. Backend abstraction + BIND as an engageable interlocutor ──────────────
-fn guide_backend() -> String { return guide_env_or("GUIDE_BACKEND", "llama-server") }
-fn guide_host() -> String    { return guide_env_or("GUIDE_HOST", "127.0.0.1") }
-fn guide_port() -> String    { return guide_env_or("GUIDE_PORT", "8771") }
+fn guide_backend() -> String { return config("GUIDE_BACKEND") }
+fn guide_host() -> String    { return config("GUIDE_HOST") }
+fn guide_port() -> String    { return config("GUIDE_PORT") }
 fn guide_base_url() -> String { return "http://" + guide_host() + ":" + guide_port() }
 
 // guide_healthy — is the guide present and answering? llama-server's /health
@@ -1235,9 +1359,9 @@ fn guide_healthy() -> Bool {
 fn guide_load(tier: String) -> Bool {
     if guide_healthy() { return true }
     let path: String = guide_model_path(tier)
-    let bin: String  = guide_env_or("GUIDE_LLAMA_SERVER_BIN", "llama-server")
-    let ngl: String  = guide_env_or("GUIDE_NGL", "99")
-    let ctx: String  = guide_env_or("GUIDE_CTX", "4096")
+    let bin: String  = config("GUIDE_LLAMA_SERVER_BIN")
+    let ngl: String  = config("GUIDE_NGL")
+    let ctx: String  = config("GUIDE_CTX")
     let logf: String = guide_cache_dir() + "/llama-server." + guide_port() + ".log"
     let cmd: String = bin + " -m '" + path + "' --host " + guide_host() + " --port " + guide_port() + " -c " + ctx + " -ngl " + ngl + " --jinja >> '" + logf + "' 2>&1"
     let pid: String = exec_bg(cmd)
@@ -1633,7 +1757,7 @@ fn route_supersede(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
 // ── Auth ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
 fn check_auth_ok(method: String, body: String) -> Bool {
-    let key: String = env("ENGRAM_API_KEY")
+    let key: String = config("ENGRAM_API_KEY")
     if str_eq(key, "") { return true }
     // Read-only methods don't require auth. Until http_serve surfaces
     // request headers we can't accept a Bearer token cleanly; mutating
@@ -1712,6 +1836,9 @@ fn handle_request(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     if str_eq(method, "GET") && (str_eq(clean, "/api/edges") || str_eq(clean, "/edges")) {
         return route_scan_edges(method, path, body)
     }
+    if str_eq(method, "GET") && (str_eq(clean, "/api/nodes/emb") || str_eq(clean, "/nodes/emb")) {
+        return route_scan_emb(method, path, body)
+    }
     if str_eq(method, "GET") && str_starts_with(clean, "/api/nodes/") {
         return route_get_node(method, path, body)
     }
@@ -1801,6 +1928,14 @@ fn handle_request(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
     if str_eq(method, "GET") && str_starts_with(clean, "/api/plan") {
         return route_faculty(path, "plan")
     }
+    // Order matters: the more specific paths must be tested before the /api/ground
+    // prefix match below, which would otherwise swallow them.
+    if str_eq(method, "POST") && str_starts_with(clean, "/api/ground/record") {
+        return route_ground_record(method, path, body)
+    }
+    if str_eq(method, "GET") && str_starts_with(clean, "/api/ground/trajectory") {
+        return route_ground_trajectory(method, path, body)
+    }
     if str_eq(method, "POST") && str_starts_with(clean, "/api/ground") {
         return route_ground(method, path, body)
     }
@@ -1896,8 +2031,7 @@ fn handle_request(method: String, path: String, body: String) -> String {
 
 // ── Entry ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
-let bind_raw: String = env("ENGRAM_BIND")
-let bind_str: String = if str_eq(bind_raw, "") { ":8742" } else { bind_raw }
+let bind_str: String = config("ENGRAM_BIND")
 let port: Int = parse_port(bind_str)
 
 // On startup, try to load any existing snapshot (best effort).

engram/test/run_grounding_vector_tests.sh

@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+#!/bin/sh
+# Build + RUN the §7 GROUNDING-VECTOR tests (engram_cognition.c): the one decay
+# model, the consequence gate, and the stored/derived split. Closed-form
+# constructed cases — no server, no store, no network. Pure C11 (stdlib + libm).
+# Standalone — NOT folded through elc. Two passes:
+#   1. PERF   — optimised (-O2, no sanitizer): the functional gate.
+#   2. SAFETY — ASan + UBSan on the same suite.
+#
+# NEGATIVE CONTROL (invariant §8.6 — no test without one). Every symbol this
+# suite exercises (cog_decay_factor, cog_grounding_significant,
+# cog_significance_inherent, CogGrounding, CogProvClass) is introduced by the
+# change under test, so the suite does not COMPILE against the pre-change source.
+# To reproduce:
+#     git show origin/dev:lang/runtime/engram_cognition.h > /tmp/pre/engram_cognition.h
+#     git show origin/dev:lang/runtime/engram_cognition.c > /tmp/pre/engram_cognition.c
+#     cc -I/tmp/pre engram/test/test_grounding_vector.c /tmp/pre/engram_cognition.c ...
+#     => error: unknown type name 'CogGrounding'; no binary produced.
+set -e
+HERE=$(cd "$(dirname "$0")" && pwd)
+RT="$HERE/../../lang/runtime"
+CC=${CC:-cc}
+SRC="$HERE/test_grounding_vector.c $RT/engram_cognition.c $RT/engram_reason.c $RT/engram_geometry.c $RT/engram_store.c $RT/engram_vindex.c"
+WARN="-std=c11 -Wall -Wextra"
+# engram_store.c declares emit_log as a WEAK symbol and null-checks it, which is
+# how a test links the store without the EL runtime. Darwin's ld does not resolve
+# an undefined weak symbol at static-link time, so it must be allowed explicitly.
+# (The pre-existing runners in this directory — run_verify_tests.sh among them —
+# do not do this and therefore fail to link on macOS. Unrelated to this change.)
+LDX=""
+[ "$(uname -s)" = "Darwin" ] && LDX="-Wl,-U,_emit_log"
+TMP=$(mktemp -d)
+
+echo "### PASS 1: PERF (optimised, un-sanitised) — functional gate"
+$CC $WARN -O2 -I"$RT" $SRC -lm -lpthread $LDX -o "$TMP/perf"
+"$TMP/perf"
+
+echo
+echo "### PASS 2: SAFETY (ASan/UBSan)"
+$CC $WARN -O1 -g -fsanitize=address,undefined -fno-omit-frame-pointer -I"$RT" $SRC -lm -lpthread $LDX -o "$TMP/safe"
+ASAN_OPTIONS=${ASAN_OPTIONS:-detect_leaks=0} UBSAN_OPTIONS=halt_on_error=1 "$TMP/safe"

engram/test/test_grounding_vector.c

@@ -0,0 +1,176 @@
+/* test_grounding_vector.c — deterministic tests for §7: the one decay model, the
+ * consequence gate, and the stored/derived split. Links engram_cognition.c
+ * directly; no server, no store, no network. See run_grounding_vector_tests.sh.
+ *
+ * NEGATIVE CONTROL (invariant §8.6). Every symbol exercised here —
+ * cog_decay_factor, cog_grounding_significant, cog_significance_inherent,
+ * CogGrounding, CogProvClass — is introduced by the change under test, so this
+ * suite does not COMPILE against the pre-change source, let alone pass. The
+ * runner documents the exact reproduction.
+ */
+#include "engram_cognition.h"
+#include <stdio.h>
+#include <string.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <math.h>
+
+static int fails = 0;
+static void ok(int cond, const char* what) {
+    printf("  %-62s %s\n", what, cond ? "PASS" : "*** FAIL ***");
+    if (!cond) fails++;
+}
+
+/* The decay formula exactly as el_runtime.c carried it before the move, so the
+ * refactor can be shown to be bit-identical rather than merely similar. */
+static double old_engram_temporal_decay(long long age_ms, long long activation_count,
+                                        double temporal_decay_rate) {
+    if (age_ms <= 0) return 1.0;
+    double lambda = (temporal_decay_rate > 0.0) ? temporal_decay_rate : 0.693147;
+    double age_hours = (double)age_ms / 3600000.0;
+    double t_half = 168.0 * (1.0 + log(1.0 + (double)activation_count));
+    double factor = exp(-lambda * age_hours / t_half);
+    if (factor < 0.25) factor = 0.25;
+    return factor;
+}
+
+static CogGrounding base(void) {
+    CogGrounding g; memset(&g, 0, sizeof g);
+    g.present = 1;
+    g.factual = 0.60; g.relational = 0.60;
+    g.factual_now = 0.60; g.relational_now = 0.60;
+    g.associative = 0.1; g.polarity = 1.0;
+    g.prov = COG_PROV_TOLD;
+    g.fac_proj = 1.0; g.rel_proj = 1.0;
+    g.cos_angle = 0.9; g.agreement = 1;
+    g.ts = 1000; g.seq = 1; g.reinforcements = 3;
+    return g;
+}
+
+int main(void) {
+    const double F = 0.5, R = 0.5;
+
+    printf("\n== 1. DECAY IS THE ONE MODEL, AND IT IS BIT-IDENTICAL TO WHAT IT REPLACED ==\n");
+    {
+        long long ages[] = {0, 3600000LL, 86400000LL, 7*86400000LL, 30*86400000LL, 365*86400000LL};
+        int allsame = 1;
+        for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++)
+            for (int ac = 0; ac < 4; ac++) {
+                long long acs[] = {0, 1, 10, 1000};
+                double a = cog_decay_factor(ages[i], (double)acs[ac], 0.0);
+                double b = old_engram_temporal_decay(ages[i], acs[ac], 0.0);
+                if (a != b) allsame = 0;
+            }
+        ok(allsame, "cog_decay_factor == the pre-move engram_temporal_decay (24 pts)");
+        ok(cog_decay_factor(0, 0, 0.0) == 1.0, "age 0 -> no decay");
+    }
+    printf("\n   DECAY OVER ELAPSED TIME (reinforcements = 0, default rate):\n");
+    printf("   %10s  %10s\n", "elapsed", "decay");
+    {
+        struct { const char* label; long long ms; } pts[] = {
+            {"0",       0LL},
+            {"1 hour",  3600000LL},
+            {"1 day",   86400000LL},
+            {"3 days",  3LL*86400000LL},
+            {"7 days",  7LL*86400000LL},
+            {"14 days", 14LL*86400000LL},
+            {"30 days", 30LL*86400000LL},
+            {"90 days", 90LL*86400000LL},
+        };
+        double prev = 2.0; int monotone = 1;
+        for (unsigned i = 0; i < sizeof pts / sizeof pts[0]; i++) {
+            double d = cog_decay_factor(pts[i].ms, 0, 0.0);
+            printf("   %10s  %10.6f\n", pts[i].label, d);
+            if (d > prev) monotone = 0;
+            prev = d;
+        }
+        ok(monotone, "decay is monotone non-increasing in elapsed time");
+        ok(fabs(cog_decay_factor(7LL*86400000LL, 0, 0.0) - 0.5) < 1e-6,
+           "7 days at zero reinforcements == exactly one half-life (0.5)");
+        ok(cog_decay_factor(7LL*86400000LL, 100, 0.0) > cog_decay_factor(7LL*86400000LL, 0, 0.0),
+           "reinforcement slows ageing (Lindy term)");
+        ok(cog_decay_factor(3650LL*86400000LL, 0, 0.0) == 0.25,
+           "floor is a preference not a cliff: bottoms out at 0.25");
+    }
+
+    printf("\n== 2. CONSEQUENCE GATE: EVERY TRIGGER, AND NO EPSILON ANYWHERE ==\n");
+    {
+        CogGrounding p = base(), n = base();
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_NONE,
+           "identical vectors -> NONE (a re-read must not consolidate)");
+
+        n = base(); n.factual = 0.9999; n.factual_now = 0.9999;
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_NONE,
+           "factual 0.60 -> 0.9999 without crossing the floor -> NONE");
+
+        n = base(); n.relational = 0.5001; n.relational_now = 0.5001;
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_NONE,
+           "relational 0.60 -> 0.5001, still above floor -> NONE");
+
+        n = base(); n.factual_now = 0.4999;
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_FACTUAL_FLOOR,
+           "a 0.1001 drop that CROSSES the floor -> FACTUAL_FLOOR");
+
+        n = base(); n.relational_now = 0.4999;
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_RELATIONAL_FLOOR,
+           "relational crossing its floor -> RELATIONAL_FLOOR");
+
+        n = base(); n.cos_angle = -0.05; n.agreement = -1;
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_AGREEMENT_FLIP,
+           "agreement +1 -> -1 -> AGREEMENT_FLIP");
+
+        n = base(); n.fac_proj = -0.2;
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_DIRECTION_REVERSAL,
+           "factual gradient reverses -> DIRECTION_REVERSAL");
+
+        n = base(); n.rel_proj = -0.2;
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_DIRECTION_REVERSAL,
+           "relational gradient reverses -> DIRECTION_REVERSAL");
+
+        n = base(); n.polarity = -1.0;
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_POLARITY_FLIP,
+           "support -> contradiction -> POLARITY_FLIP (inherent)");
+
+        n = base(); n.polarity = 0.0;
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_POLARITY_FLIP,
+           "support -> ignorance (zero) -> POLARITY_FLIP: not the same state");
+
+        n = base(); n.prov = COG_PROV_OBSERVED;
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&p, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_PROVENANCE_CHANGE,
+           "told -> observed -> PROVENANCE_CHANGE (inherent)");
+
+        CogGrounding fresh; memset(&fresh, 0, sizeof fresh);
+        ok(cog_grounding_significant(&fresh, &n, F, R) == COG_SIG_FIRST_RECORD,
+           "no prior version -> FIRST_RECORD");
+    }
+
+    printf("\n== 3. INHERENT MOVES BYPASS THE SALIENCE GATE ==\n");
+    ok(cog_significance_inherent(COG_SIG_POLARITY_FLIP), "polarity flip is inherent");
+    ok(cog_significance_inherent(COG_SIG_PROVENANCE_CHANGE), "provenance change is inherent");
+    ok(cog_significance_inherent(COG_SIG_FIRST_RECORD), "first record is inherent");
+    ok(!cog_significance_inherent(COG_SIG_FACTUAL_FLOOR), "a floor crossing is NOT inherent");
+    ok(!cog_significance_inherent(COG_SIG_NONE), "NONE is not inherent");
+
+    printf("\n== 4. THE STORED/DERIVED SPLIT: DERIVED VALUES ARE NEVER SERIALIZED ==\n");
+    {
+        CogGrounding g = base();
+        g.decay = 0.3333; g.factual_now = 0.1234; g.relational_now = 0.2345;
+        g.associative_now = 0.4567; g.age_ms = 999999; g.stale = 1;
+        char* m = cog_grounding_metadata("pre-existing=keepme", &g);
+        ok(m != NULL, "serializer returns a document");
+        ok(m && strstr(m, "pre-existing=keepme"), "pre-existing edge metadata preserved verbatim");
+        ok(m && strstr(m, "GRD1"), "GRD1 magic present");
+        ok(m && !strstr(m, "0.3333"),  "decay is NOT stored");
+        ok(m && !strstr(m, "0.1234"),  "factual_now is NOT stored");
+        ok(m && !strstr(m, "0.2345"),  "relational_now is NOT stored");
+        ok(m && !strstr(m, "0.4567"),  "associative_now is NOT stored");
+        ok(m && !strstr(m, "999999"),  "age is NOT stored");
+        ok(m && strstr(m, "told"),     "provenance class IS stored");
+        ok(m && strstr(m, "0.6"),      "the factual/relational dimensions ARE stored");
+        if (m) { printf("\n   --- serialized GRD1 block ---\n%s   -----------------------------\n", m); }
+        free(m);
+    }
+
+    printf("\n%s  (%d failure%s)\n\n", fails ? "SOME TESTS FAILED" : "ALL TESTS PASSED",
+           fails, fails == 1 ? "" : "s");
+    return fails ? 1 : 0;
+}

ingest/src/ingest.el

@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@
 // relations add edges. Every node enters with PROVENANCE + grounding-level
 // + stewardship class from the moment of entry.
 //
-// transduce() is THE single mechanism — one function, polymorphic, with no
+// transduce_bytes() is THE single mechanism — one function, polymorphic, with no
 // content-type branch inside it. It does not ask whether a payload is
 // prose, structured data, or raw/opaque bytes (audio, or anything else);
 // it runs one boundary-scan-with-fixed-window-fallback chunking algorithm
@@ -401,10 +401,54 @@ fn head80(s: String) -> String {
 // truncates at the first embedded NUL, which is routine in real binary
 // bytes) is a MECHANICAL fidelity concern that belongs to whatever produced
 // `source` (see ingest_file's file_source_string below) — not a
-// content-type judgment made in here. transduce() never learns whether a
+// content-type judgment made in here. transduce_bytes() never learns whether a
 // chunk is plain text or a base64-encoded raw-byte window; every chunk is
 // handled identically either way.
-fn transduce(nodes: [String], edges: [String], source: String,
+// NAMING, CORRECTED 2026-08-16 (second pass). This function was renamed
+// `transduce` -> `transduce_bytes` earlier the same day, on the reasoning
+// that it "was never signal->geometry — it chunks already-extracted content
+// and PACKS it into a node+edge manifold, one layer up, and it had taken the
+// name that belongs to the primitive underneath it."
+//
+// THAT REASONING WAS BACKWARDS, and it is worth recording why rather than
+// quietly re-renaming. Producing a node+edge manifold is not a layer above
+// transduction — it IS transduction. Transduction is not conversion. When you
+// take in music you do not store the song as one discrete geometry; you break
+// it into its component parts and store the geometry of each along with the
+// relations between them. The song is the structure of those relations.
+// Signal -> one vector is the operation UNDERNEATH transduction, and its name
+// is encoding, or geometry. So the layer that was doing it right got renamed
+// out of the way so the layer doing it wrong could have the name.
+//
+// The primitive has since been corrected: `transduce(signal, modality)` now
+// returns a Manifold — components plus relations — not a Geometry
+// (el_runtime.c, "Manifold"). The two layers are therefore doing the SAME KIND
+// of thing, and the inversion dissolves rather than needing to be re-argued.
+//
+// What is left is a real distinction, and it is about MODALITY, not layering:
+//
+//   * `transduce(signal, modality)` dispatches to a realizer that KNOWS the
+//     modality and can name its components — for audio: pitch, interval,
+//     rhythm, harmonic function.
+//   * `transduce_bytes` below is the OPAQUE-BYTES realizer: the decomposition
+//     available to a reader that knows nothing about what it is reading. It
+//     still yields components and relations (chunk nodes; contains / precedes
+//     / section_of edges), which is why it is transduction and not packing. It
+//     just cuts on the only structure visible without understanding — byte
+//     boundaries — so its components are positional rather than meaningful.
+//     That is a LIMITATION of this realizer, not the definition of the
+//     operation.
+//
+// The name is suffixed by its modality, not demoted to a lesser layer. Keeping
+// a distinct symbol is also still mechanically required: every El `fn name`
+// compiles to a global C symbol, so reusing `transduce` here is a hard
+// `conflicting types` error the moment ingest.c links el_runtime.c.
+//
+// WHERE THIS SHOULD GO: this function should become a registered realizer
+// returning a real Manifold, so ingest rides the same primitive as every other
+// modality instead of carrying a parallel implementation. Not done here.
+// Nothing about this function's behaviour changed in this pass.
+fn transduce_bytes(nodes: [String], edges: [String], source: String,
              prov: String, ground: String, steward: String,
              root_lid: String, root_title: String) -> [String] {
     let tagbase: String = "prov:" + prov + " ground:" + ground + " steward:" + steward
@@ -531,8 +575,8 @@ fn default_steward() -> String {
 // trustworthy verbatim. When they don't (silent truncation happened),
 // rebuild the payload as base64-encoded fixed-size windows read directly
 // off disk (fs_read_b64_chunk — binary-safe in C), joined with the same
-// "\n\n" boundary marker transduce()'s generic scan already looks for, so
-// transduce() sees one ordinary boundary-delimited payload and runs its one
+// "\n\n" boundary marker transduce_bytes()'s generic scan already looks for, so
+// transduce_bytes() sees one ordinary boundary-delimited payload and runs its one
 // algorithm on it exactly as it would on prose — it never learns that a
 // fidelity problem occurred upstream, let alone why.
 fn file_source_string(path: String, text: String, real_size: Int) -> String {
@@ -541,7 +585,7 @@ fn file_source_string(path: String, text: String, real_size: Int) -> String {
     // 3072 raw bytes -> 4096 base64 chars (3 divides evenly into base64's
     // 3-byte/4-char ratio); keeps each resulting node's content a clean,
     // bounded, low-kilobytes unit, same order of magnitude as the fixed
-    // fallback window in transduce() itself.
+    // fallback window in transduce_bytes() itself.
     let win: Int = 3072
     let out: String = ""
     let off: Int = 0
@@ -561,7 +605,7 @@ fn file_source_string(path: String, text: String, real_size: Int) -> String {
 }
 
 // ingest one file -> report JSON. Uniform for every file regardless of
-// extension or content — transduce() decides nothing about content-type, so
+// extension or content — transduce_bytes() decides nothing about content-type, so
 // neither does this function; it only decides whether the raw bytes made it
 // through the read intact (file_source_string), which is a fidelity
 // question, not a format one.
@@ -573,14 +617,14 @@ fn ingest_file(path: String) -> String {
         return "{\"error\":\"empty or unreadable\",\"path\":" + j_q(path) + "}"
     }
     let prov: String = "file:" + path
-    let packed: [String] = transduce(el_list_empty(), el_list_empty(),
+    let packed: [String] = transduce_bytes(el_list_empty(), el_list_empty(),
         source, prov, default_ground(), default_steward(),
         "doc:" + basename(path), basename(path))
     return merge_packed(packed)
 }
 
 // ingest a directory: walk one level, ingest every file found, aggregate.
-// No extension filter — transduce() handles any payload uniformly now, so
+// No extension filter — transduce_bytes() handles any payload uniformly now, so
 // there is no content-type gate at the directory boundary either.
 fn ingest_dir(path: String) -> String {
     let entries: [String] = fs_list(path)
@@ -615,7 +659,7 @@ fn ingest_dir(path: String) -> String {
 fn ingest_url(url: String) -> String {
     let body: String = http_get(url)
     if str_eq(body, "") { return "{\"error\":\"empty fetch\",\"url\":" + j_q(url) + "}" }
-    let packed: [String] = transduce(el_list_empty(), el_list_empty(),
+    let packed: [String] = transduce_bytes(el_list_empty(), el_list_empty(),
         body, "url:" + url, "extracted", "public-web",
         "url:" + url, url)
     return merge_packed(packed)
@@ -630,7 +674,7 @@ fn ingest_llm(query: String) -> String {
     let resp: String = http_post_json("http://127.0.0.1:11434/api/generate", body)
     let answer: String = json_get_string(resp, "response")
     if str_eq(answer, "") { return "{\"error\":\"no model response\"}" }
-    let packed: [String] = transduce(el_list_empty(), el_list_empty(),
+    let packed: [String] = transduce_bytes(el_list_empty(), el_list_empty(),
         answer, "llm:" + model + ":" + query, "candidate-provisional", "guide-provisional",
         "llm:" + query, "guide answer: " + query)
     return merge_packed(packed)
@@ -682,7 +726,7 @@ fn ingest_stream(path: String) -> String {
 // It is NOT a content-type flag: it says nothing about what's inside the
 // bytes once fetched, and none of the five ingest_* functions it selects
 // among interpret their payload differently by content shape anymore —
-// they all hand off to the single, format-agnostic transduce(). The old
+// they all hand off to the single, format-agnostic transduce_bytes(). The old
 // "structured" value (a caller-declared alias for "file", used only to hint
 // the now-removed JSON-vs-prose branch) is gone along with that branch.
 let kind: String = env("INGEST_KIND")

lang/AGENTS.md

@@ -18,8 +18,23 @@ night) and `02-components.md §5`.
   `relate`, `supersede` (evolve/tombstone/promote, never a hard delete) — plus the
   agentic primitives `think`/`attend`/`learn`/`ground`/`assert`. The old noun is a
   `type` parameter. Implemented in `tools/api-reshape/surface.el` with a parity
-  harness (`parity.sh`); aperture proven to bound output. **Not yet:** compiled
-  into the MCP server, hot-swap, all-alias dispatch.
+  harness (`parity.sh`); aperture proven to bound output. ~~**Not yet:** compiled
+  into the MCP server~~ — **shipped (verified 2026-08-16): the live MCP surface is
+  exactly these nine ops** (`read` · `write` · `relate` · `supersede` · `think` ·
+  `attend` · `assert` · `ground` · `learn`); the ~87-tool surface is gone.
+  `attend` absorbed `getInstructions` / `beginSession`'s active-context sweep /
+  `checkEvents` — those are **gone, not gapped**. Still outstanding: hot-swap,
+  all-alias dispatch.
+
+  > **⚠ Two of those primitives are the wrong shape, and it is documented
+  > (2026-08-16).** `think({seeds, faculty})` treats **faculties as parameters**;
+  > they are **operations** — `reason` changes the estimate (a read), `induce`
+  > changes the parameters, `abduce` changes the *structure* (a write
+  > `GeoGradient` cannot express). And `ground` mints a `grounded-by` edge, but
+  > **grounding is not a subsystem — it IS the edge weight**: a property *of* a
+  > relation, not a relation *between* nodes. Authority:
+  > `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md`. Do not re-derive it; if you think
+  > a section is wrong, say so with a measurement.
 - **Decorated seam.** `@route(path,method,…)` makes codegen synthesize
   `el_route_dispatch` (replacing the hand-written `handle_request` if-else) —
   proven decorate→serve on `:8951`. `@manager`/`@engine`/`@accessor` are **parsed
@@ -62,17 +77,44 @@ This is where almost all work belongs. El programs are source files that get com
 
 This is the self-contained C OS-boundary layer. It provides the `__`-prefixed primitives that compiled El programs call: libcurl HTTP, pthreads, filesystem I/O, arena allocation, etc. It is **not generated** — it is maintained by hand.
 
-The runtime is native El (`runtime/*.el`) over a C OS-boundary. **Status (verified 2026-08-15):** the migration to a seed-only boundary is *in progress, not done*. Two files exist:
-- `runtime/el_runtime.c` (~860 KB) — **LIVE**. Holds the engram store (`EngramStore engram_global`) plus the `http_*`/`json_*`/`state_*`/`engram_*` impls. It is the authoritative single-file link target for the compiler, and `tools/install.sh` compiles it into `libel.a`. This is where a new C builtin's *implementation* must currently live to be linkable.
-- `runtime/el_seed.c` — the intended hand-maintained `__`-prefixed seed (thin wrappers over the above). It is compiled alongside `el_runtime.c` by `tools/install.sh`, but does **not** compile standalone yet (see the build-path caveat under "Rebuilding the Compiler").
+The runtime is native El (`runtime/*.el`) over a C OS-boundary. **Status (verified 2026-08-16):** the migration to a seed-only boundary is *in progress, not done*.
+
+**The runtime is MULTI-FILE. There is no single-file link target and there has not been one for months.** The canonical link set is listed once, in **`runtime/SOURCES`**, and printed by `scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh`. It currently holds ten translation units: `el_runtime.c`, `el_seed.c`, the six `engram_*.c` concern files, and `eg_cosine_batch{,_strategy_cpu}.c`.
+
+- `runtime/el_runtime.c` (~940 KB, 20.5k lines) — **LIVE, and oversized.** It began life on 2026-05-03 as a temporary build shim: it was deleted that afternoon ("runtime is 100% native El") and restored 25 minutes later, explicitly "UNTIL the compiler is updated to emit `#include el_seed.h`". That `until` never arrived, and in the 3.5 months since, the file doubled. **It is not a volatility unit — it is a dumping ground.** ~47.5% of it is engram code that belongs in the six sibling files that already exist. Do not add to it. See "Where a new C builtin goes" below.
+- `runtime/el_seed.c` — the intended hand-maintained `__`-prefixed seed (thin wrappers over the above).
+- `runtime/engram_{store,vindex,geometry,reason,verify,cognition}.c` — the engram concerns, each with its own header. `el_runtime.c` `#include`s all six headers and makes hard cross-TU calls into all six.
+
+> **Linking `el_runtime.c` alone does not work and has not for months.** It fails at `ld` with undefined symbols (`engram_ground_json`, `engram_activate_inner`, `eg_find_relation`, `cog_assert_two_axis`, …). Any recipe, script, or CI step that names `el_runtime.c` by itself is stale — replace it with `$(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh lang/runtime)`.
 
 **Only edit these when you genuinely need OS-level access** (raw sockets, GPU calls, new libcurl features, a new engram store op). For everything else, write El.
 
+#### Where a new C builtin goes
+
+**Put it in the `.c` that owns the concern — NOT in `el_runtime.c`.**
+
+*Placement is a link-time concern. The compiler cannot tell which `.c` a symbol came from, and never could.* `builtin_arity` in `el-compiler/src/codegen.el` maps NAME → ARITY INT and nothing else (~413 entries); the El name is emitted as the exact C symbol and resolved by `ld`. Proof, if you want it: `nm lang/dist/platform/elc` on the *shipped* compiler shows `T _engram_geo_reify_index_new` (defined in `engram_geometry.c`), `T _vindex_insert` (`engram_vindex.c`), `T _engram_think` (`engram_cognition.c`), `T _engram_reason_abduce` (`engram_reason.c`). **The shipped compiler is already linked from ten translation units.** A builtin defined in a sibling `.c` is exactly as linkable as one defined in `el_runtime.c`.
+
+Choose the file by concern: engram store ops → `engram_store.c`; index → `engram_vindex.c`; geometry/priming → `engram_geometry.c`; reasoning → `engram_reason.c`; grounding/consistency → `engram_verify.c`; think/stance → `engram_cognition.c`. **If no existing file owns it, create one** — add the `.c` to `runtime/SOURCES` (one line) and every build path picks it up. For a builtin that belongs to a downstream program rather than the runtime, declare `c_source "path/to/file.c"` in that program's `manifest.el`; `elb` already links it (`parse_manifest_c_sources`, `lang/elb.el:82`).
+
+> **`el_runtime.c` is on a ratchet and will reject your commit.** `runtime/BUDGET` caps it at its current line count *with no headroom*, and separately caps the number of `engram_*`/`eg_*`/`cog_*` function definitions in it. `scripts/check-runtime-growth.sh` enforces both in CI and in `.githooks/pre-commit`. **The numbers may only ever go down — do not raise them.** Every other runtime file is deliberately uncapped, because that is where the code is supposed to go. When you move code *out*, lower the numbers in the same commit; the guard tells you the new values.
+
 When you add a C builtin (verbatim-emit recipe — the El name is emitted as the exact C symbol; `builtin_arity` is an arity guard only, not a dispatch table):
-1. Implement the C function in `el_runtime.c` (and declare it in `el_runtime.h`).
+1. Implement the C function in the **concern-owning `.c`** (and declare it in that file's `.h`). Add the file to `runtime/SOURCES` if it is new. Only put it in `el_runtime.c` if it is genuinely EL core (val/str/map/list/arena) — that is ~8% of what is in there today.
 2. Add a `__`-prefixed thin wrapper in `el_seed.c` and declare it in `el_seed.h`.
 3. Add the name to `builtin_arity` in `el-compiler/src/codegen.el` — add **both** the plain and `__`-prefixed spellings.
 4. Rebuild the elc binary (see below) and confirm the self-host fixpoint is byte-identical.
+5. **Prove it with a NEGATIVE CONTROL.** Show the test FAILING on a build without your change, then passing with it. A test that has never been seen to fail has proven nothing.
+
+> **Step 5 is not optional, and step 4 does not cover it.** The fixpoint proves the *compiler reproduces itself*. It says nothing whatsoever about whether your builtin works. A recipe ending at "byte-identical" reads as complete while having verified nothing about the thing just added — which is why this file, until 2026-08-16, produced builtins with no tests at all.
+>
+> Measured cost of the omission (2026-08-16): `engram_node_set_emb`, `engram_curiosity_json` and `dream_set_handler` were all added in one session with zero tests. Separately, a UTF-8 fix was written, tested, and **the test passed on the unpatched build too** — the defect was elsewhere entirely, and only building the pre-fix binary exposed it. Without a negative control that fix would have merged as verified.
+>
+> Two shapes that pass while proving nothing, both hit the same day:
+> - A test that never exercises your change (the route supplied a default that bypassed the code under test).
+> - An induction that loses a race. `curl --max-time` on a large response left *both* builds alive; only `SO_LINGER 0` — a genuine RST, so the peer is provably gone — reproduced the failure. Six of ten attempts is not a control.
+>
+> Before every probe, confirm **your** process bound the port (`lsof -nP -iTCP:<port>`, match the PID). A stale instance answering on the port has silently produced false results here more than once, and `pkill -f` does not reliably match an argv like `./engram`.
 
 Worked example: the `engram_assert_json` (op_assert seam) and `engram_node_full_in`/`engram_connect_in` (purview write-side) primitives added 2026-08-15 follow exactly this recipe.
 
@@ -99,7 +141,9 @@ diff elc-new.c elc-verify.c   # must be identical
 mv dist/platform/elc-new dist/platform/elc
 ```
 
-> **Build-path caveat (verified 2026-08-15).** `el_seed.c` is the intended hand-maintained OS-boundary seed, but it does **not** compile standalone under modern clang: it wraps ~16 unprefixed `el_runtime.c` symbols (`http_serve`, `json_*`, `state_*`, `http_response`) without prototypes, and clang treats implicit declarations as errors (C99+). The productionised install (`tools/install.sh`) builds `libel.a` from **both** `el_seed.o` + `el_runtime.o` together, which is why linking succeeds there. To make `el_seed.c` build on its own, add prototypes for those symbols (or `#include "el_runtime.h"`, reconciling the `__http_serve` return-type mismatch first). Until then, `el_runtime.c` is the authoritative single-file link target for the compiler.
+> **Build-path caveat (verified 2026-08-15).** `el_seed.c` is the intended hand-maintained OS-boundary seed, but it does **not** compile standalone under modern clang: it wraps ~16 unprefixed `el_runtime.c` symbols (`http_serve`, `json_*`, `state_*`, `http_response`) without prototypes, and clang treats implicit declarations as errors (C99+). The productionised install (`tools/install.sh`) builds `libel.a` from **both** `el_seed.o` + `el_runtime.o` together, which is why linking succeeds there. To make `el_seed.c` build on its own, add prototypes for those symbols (or `#include "el_runtime.h"`, reconciling the `__http_serve` return-type mismatch first).
+>
+> **There is no single-file link target.** *(Corrected 2026-08-16 — this paragraph previously ended "`el_runtime.c` is the authoritative single-file link target for the compiler". Measured: that is false. Linking `elc-new.c` against `runtime/el_runtime.c` alone fails at `ld` with undefined `engram_ground_json`, `engram_activate_inner`, `eg_find_relation`, `cog_assert_two_axis`, and others, because `el_runtime.c` `#include`s six engram headers and calls into all six sibling `.c` files.)* Link the set in `runtime/SOURCES` via `$(../scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh runtime)`.
 
 After changing `el_seed.c` only (no El source changes), rebuild downstream programs but do NOT need to rebuild the compiler binary itself — the seed is linked at the application level, not the compiler level.
 

lang/el-compiler/src/codegen.el

@@ -3265,6 +3265,7 @@ fn is_top_level_decl(stmt: Map<String, Any>) -> Bool {
     if kind == "EnumDef" { return true }
     if kind == "Import"  { return true }
     if kind == "CgiBlock" { return true }
+    if kind == "ProgramBlock" { return true }
     if kind == "ExternFn" { return true }
     false
 }
@@ -3277,6 +3278,55 @@ fn cgi_arg(value: String, has_value: Bool) -> String {
     return "EL_NULL"
 }
 
+// -- Program block: cross-cutting concerns injected at the process boundary ----
+//
+// emit_program_init — emit the `static void __el_program_init(void)` that
+// carries a program's declared cross-cutting concerns. Called from main()
+// BEFORE any user statement runs, so the guarantees hold for the whole process
+// rather than depending on each call site remembering to ask for them.
+//
+// This is emitted at the point the `program` block is encountered, not buffered
+// until main(). The streaming backend emits in source order and cannot hold a
+// declaration's entry list alive until main(); emitting a named function here
+// and calling it from main() means only a single bool has to survive.
+//
+// Order matters and is deliberate:
+//   1. singleton FIRST — if another instance already holds the lock, refuse and
+//      exit before touching configuration, ports, or any data directory.
+//   2. config declarations — resolve env-or-default, one declaration per entry.
+//   3. validate LAST — report EVERY missing/ill-typed entry at once, then exit.
+fn el_bool_arg(b: Bool) -> String {
+    if b { return "EL_INT(1)" }
+    return "EL_INT(0)"
+}
+
+fn emit_program_init(stmt: Map<String, Any>) -> Void {
+    let pname: String = stmt["name"]
+    emit_line("static void __el_program_init(void) {")
+    let has_singleton: Bool = stmt["has_singleton"]
+    if has_singleton {
+        let sid: String = stmt["singleton"]
+        emit_line("  el_singleton_acquire(EL_STR(" + c_str_lit(sid) + "));")
+    }
+    let entries = stmt["entries"]
+    let n: Int = native_list_len(entries)
+    let i = 0
+    while i < n {
+        let e = native_list_get(entries, i)
+        let ename: String = e["name"]
+        let etype: String = e["etype"]
+        let edefault: String = e["default"]
+        let has_default: Bool = e["has_default"]
+        let erequired: Bool = e["required"]
+        let arg_def: String = cgi_arg(edefault, has_default)
+        emit_line("  el_config_declare(EL_STR(" + c_str_lit(ename) + "), EL_STR(" + c_str_lit(etype) + "), " + arg_def + ", " + el_bool_arg(has_default) + ", " + el_bool_arg(erequired) + ");")
+        let i = i + 1
+    }
+    emit_line("  el_config_validate(EL_STR(" + c_str_lit(pname) + "));")
+    emit_line("}")
+    emit_blank()
+}
+
 // -- VBD role enforcement ------------------------------------------------------
 //
 // Scan a function body for direct calls to DHARMA-restricted builtins
@@ -3599,6 +3649,20 @@ fn codegen(stmts: [Map<String, Any>], source: String) -> String {
         }
     }
 
+    // Program block: emit the cross-cutting init function before the user's
+    // functions so main() can call it (see emit_program_init).
+    let prog_have: Bool = false
+    let i = 0
+    while i < n {
+        let stmt = native_list_get(stmts, i)
+        let sk4: String = stmt["stmt"]
+        if str_eq(sk4, "ProgramBlock") {
+            emit_program_init(stmt)
+            let prog_have = true
+        }
+        let i = i + 1
+    }
+
     // Function definitions
     let i = 0
     while i < n {
@@ -3617,6 +3681,9 @@ fn codegen(stmts: [Map<String, Any>], source: String) -> String {
     // with the C-side parameters when fn main()'s body is folded in below.
     emit_line("int main(int _argc, char** _argv) {")
     emit_line("  el_runtime_init_args(_argc, _argv);")
+    if prog_have {
+        emit_line("  __el_program_init();")
+    }
     if cgi_count >= 1 {
         let cname: String = cgi_block["name"]
         let cdid: String = cgi_block["dharma_id"]
@@ -4210,6 +4277,7 @@ fn codegen_streaming(tokens: [Any], sigs: [Map<String, Any>], source: String) ->
     // Fix: copy the values out BEFORE the release (strings, so no dangling reference)
     // and emit from these. No search, so the failure mode is removed rather than moved.
     let cgi_have: Bool = false
+    let prog_have: Bool = false
     let cgi_name_v: String = ""
     let cgi_did_v: String = ""
     let cgi_prin_v: String = ""
@@ -4331,6 +4399,14 @@ fn codegen_streaming(tokens: [Any], sigs: [Map<String, Any>], source: String) ->
                             // These are no-ops in codegen (forward decls already emitted)
                             // — except a CgiBlock, whose declared identity must survive
                             // this release to be emitted as a compiled constant.
+                            // A ProgramBlock's cross-cutting declarations are
+                            // emitted HERE, as a named init function, because the
+                            // streaming backend cannot hold the entry list alive
+                            // until main(). Only the bool survives.
+                            if str_eq(sk, "ProgramBlock") {
+                                emit_program_init(stmt)
+                                let prog_have = true
+                            }
                             if str_eq(sk, "CgiBlock") {
                                 let cgi_have = true
                                 let cgi_name_v = stmt["name"]
@@ -4477,6 +4553,13 @@ fn codegen_streaming(tokens: [Any], sigs: [Map<String, Any>], source: String) ->
     let kind2: String = state_get("__program_kind")
     emit_line("int main(int _argc, char** _argv) {")
     emit_line("  el_runtime_init_args(_argc, _argv);")
+    // Cross-cutting concerns declared by a `program` block run BEFORE anything
+    // else — a singleton violation must refuse the start before this process
+    // touches a port or a data directory, and configuration must be validated
+    // before the first read of it rather than at each read site.
+    if prog_have {
+        emit_line("  __el_program_init();")
+    }
 
     // cgi init if needed
     let ns2: Int = native_list_len(sigs)

lang/el-compiler/src/lexer.el

@@ -184,6 +184,7 @@ fn keyword_kind(word: String) -> String {
     if word == "false" { return "Bool" }
     if word == "cgi" { return "Cgi" }
     if word == "service" { return "Service" }
+    if word == "program" { return "Program" }
     if word == "manager" { return "Manager" }
     if word == "engine" { return "Engine" }
     if word == "accessor" { return "Accessor" }

lang/el-compiler/src/parser.el

@@ -1967,6 +1967,113 @@ fn parse_stmt(tokens: [Any], pos: Int) -> Map<String, Any> {
         }, p)
     }
 
+    // program block: program "name" { singleton: "id", env NAME: Type = "default", ... }
+    //
+    // The program block is El's declaration surface for CROSS-CUTTING CONCERNS —
+    // properties of the whole process rather than of any one function, which
+    // otherwise degrade into "remember to call this at every site" conventions.
+    //
+    //   singleton: "id"    — process identity. The runtime takes an exclusive
+    //                        lock at startup; a SECOND start is refused, loudly,
+    //                        instead of two processes sharing one data dir.
+    //   env NAME: T = "d"  — one configuration entry. Its type and its default
+    //                        are declared ONCE, here, and resolved+validated
+    //                        before main() body runs.
+    //   env NAME: T required
+    //                      — no default; the program refuses to start unless the
+    //                        variable is set.
+    //
+    // Both compile into calls injected at the head of main() — the same boundary
+    // seam `cgi` already uses (codegen.el emit_program_init). No call site in the
+    // program body has to remember anything, which is the whole point.
+    if k == "Program" {
+        let p = pos + 1
+        let name = tok_value(tokens, p)
+        let p = p + 1
+        let p = expect(tokens, p, "LBrace")
+        let singleton = ""
+        let has_singleton = false
+        let entries = native_list_empty()
+        // Entry-scratch declared at loop-body level (not inside the branch) so
+        // that inner `let` forms compile to assignment rather than a C-scoped
+        // redeclaration — the same idiom the service block above relies on.
+        let ename = ""
+        let etype = ""
+        let edefault = ""
+        let has_default = false
+        let erequired = false
+        let fname = ""
+        let fval = ""
+        let running = true
+        while running {
+            let k2 = tok_kind(tokens, p)
+            if k2 == "RBrace" {
+                let running = false
+            } else {
+                if k2 == "Eof" {
+                    let running = false
+                } else {
+                    let fname = tok_value(tokens, p)
+                    let p = p + 1
+                    if str_eq(fname, "env") {
+                        // env NAME: Type [= "default"] [required]
+                        let ename = tok_value(tokens, p)
+                        let p = p + 1
+                        let p = expect(tokens, p, "Colon")
+                        let etype = tok_value(tokens, p)
+                        let p = p + 1
+                        let edefault = ""
+                        let has_default = false
+                        let erequired = false
+                        let k3 = tok_kind(tokens, p)
+                        if str_eq(k3, "Eq") {
+                            let p = p + 1
+                            let edefault = tok_value(tokens, p)
+                            let has_default = true
+                            let p = p + 1
+                        }
+                        let k4 = tok_kind(tokens, p)
+                        if str_eq(k4, "Ident") {
+                            let w = tok_value(tokens, p)
+                            if str_eq(w, "required") {
+                                let erequired = true
+                                let p = p + 1
+                            }
+                        }
+                        let entries = native_list_append(entries, {
+                            "name": ename,
+                            "etype": etype,
+                            "default": edefault,
+                            "has_default": has_default,
+                            "required": erequired
+                        })
+                    } else {
+                        // scalar field: `name: "value"`
+                        let p = expect(tokens, p, "Colon")
+                        let fval = tok_value(tokens, p)
+                        let p = p + 1
+                        if str_eq(fname, "singleton") {
+                            let singleton = fval
+                            let has_singleton = true
+                        }
+                    }
+                    let k5 = tok_kind(tokens, p)
+                    if k5 == "Comma" {
+                        let p = p + 1
+                    }
+                }
+            }
+        }
+        let p = expect(tokens, p, "RBrace")
+        return make_result({
+            "stmt": "ProgramBlock",
+            "name": name,
+            "singleton": singleton,
+            "has_singleton": has_singleton,
+            "entries": entries
+        }, p)
+    }
+
     // assert <cond_expr> [ , <msg_expr> ]
     // The message is optional — if the next token after the condition is not a
     // Comma, emit an empty string placeholder so the test still works.
@@ -2419,6 +2526,7 @@ fn scan_params_c(tokens: [Any], pos: Int) -> Map<String, Any> {
 //   toplevel_let:  { "kind": "toplevel_let", "name": String, "ltype": String }
 //   cgi_block:     { "kind": "cgi_block",  "name": String }
 //   service_block: { "kind": "service_block", "name": String }
+//   program_block: { "kind": "program_block", "name": String }
 //
 // Import/TypeDef/EnumDef nodes are skipped (codegen treats them as no-ops).
 //
@@ -2546,13 +2654,28 @@ fn scan_fn_sigs(tokens: [Any]) -> [Map<String, Any>] {
                         "name": name
                     })
                     let pos = p
+                } else {
+                // --- program block ---
+                if str_eq(k, "Program") {
+                    let p: Int = pos + 1
+                    let name: String = tok_value(tokens, p)
+                    let p = p + 1
+                    let k2: String = tok_kind(tokens, p)
+                    if str_eq(k2, "LBrace") {
+                        let p = skip_to_rbrace(tokens, p)
+                    }
+                    let sigs = native_list_append(sigs, {
+                        "kind": "program_block",
+                        "name": name
+                    })
+                    let pos = p
                 } else {
                     // Import, Type, Enum, From, or any other token.
                     // Skip ahead to the next statement boundary.
                     let p: Int = pos + 1
                     let p = skip_expr_to_stmt_boundary(tokens, p)
                     let pos = p
-                }}}}}
+                }}}}}}
             }
         }
     }

lang/examples/transduce.el

@@ -0,0 +1,228 @@
+// transduce.el — transduction decomposes a signal into components and the
+// relations between them. Runnable: this is the worked example for the
+// transduce surface, and it exits non-zero if any claim in it stops being true.
+//
+//   elc lang/examples/transduce.el > transduce.c
+//   cc -std=c11 -O2 -I lang/runtime -o transduce transduce.c \
+//        lang/runtime/el_runtime.c lang/runtime/el_seed.c \
+//        lang/runtime/engram_store.c lang/runtime/engram_vindex.c \
+//        lang/runtime/engram_cognition.c lang/runtime/engram_geometry.c \
+//        lang/runtime/engram_reason.c lang/runtime/engram_verify.c \
+//        -lcurl -lpthread -lm
+//   ./transduce          # exits 0 only if every check passes
+//
+// It writes to an IN-MEMORY engram (leave ENGRAM_STORE unset) and contacts no
+// server. The same claims are asserted by the native harness in
+// lang/tests/native/test_transduce.el.
+//
+// WHAT CHANGED, AND WHY IT MATTERS. #144 shipped
+// `transduce(signal, modality) -> Geometry`: one vector per signal. That made
+// transduction a CONVERSION — take a thing, encode it, store a position — and
+// what a conversion returns is a fingerprint. A fingerprint can be matched and
+// ranked, and that is all it can ever do. It cannot be decomposed, cannot have
+// one part grounded while another is not, and cannot be contradicted in one
+// part while holding in another, because it has no parts.
+//
+// A song is not a point. It decomposes into pitch, interval, rhythm, harmonic
+// function — components, each with its own geometry, plus the relations among
+// them. THE SONG IS THE STRUCTURE OF THE RELATIONS. transduce now returns a
+// Manifold, and a realizer's job is to say what its modality's components ARE.
+
+fn check(ok: Int, label: String) -> Int {
+    if ok > 0 {
+        println("  ok    " + label)
+        return 0
+    }
+    println("  FAIL  " + label)
+    exit(1)
+    return 1
+}
+
+fn near(a: Float, b: Float) -> Int {
+    let d: Float = a - b
+    if d > 0.001 { return 0 }
+    if d < -0.001 { return 0 }
+    return 1
+}
+
+fn eq_int(a: Int, b: Int) -> Int {
+    if a == b { return 1 }
+    return 0
+}
+
+// ── A DECOMPOSING realizer, written entirely in El ──────────────────────────
+// "tone" signals are note letters, e.g. "CEG". This does NOT return one vector
+// for the chord. It returns the PARTS — one component per note, one per
+// interval between adjacent notes — and the relations that make those parts a
+// chord rather than an unordered bag of pitches.
+//
+// The interval is deliberately a COMPONENT, not a field on a note. An interval
+// is a thing with its own geometry belonging to neither endpoint; modelling it
+// as an attribute of one of them is the same collapse, one level down.
+fn tone_realizer(signal: String) -> Manifold {
+    let m: Manifold = manifold_new()
+    let n: Int = str_len(signal)
+    let i: Int = 0
+    while i < n {
+        let code: Int = str_char_code(signal, i)
+        let g: Geometry = geometry_new(2)
+        let s0: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, int_to_float(code))
+        let s1: Int = geometry_set(g, 1, int_to_float(i))
+        let idx: Int = manifold_add(m, "note:" + int_to_str(i), "pitch", g)
+        let f: Int = geometry_free(g)
+        i = i + 1
+    }
+    let j: Int = 1
+    while j < n {
+        let a: Int = str_char_code(signal, j - 1)
+        let b: Int = str_char_code(signal, j)
+        let lo: String = "note:" + int_to_str(j - 1)
+        let hi: String = "note:" + int_to_str(j)
+        let key: String = "interval:" + int_to_str(j - 1) + "-" + int_to_str(j)
+        let g: Geometry = geometry_new(1)
+        let s: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, int_to_float(b - a))
+        let idx: Int = manifold_add(m, key, "interval", g)
+        let f: Int = geometry_free(g)
+        let e1: Int = manifold_relate(m, key, "spans", lo, 0.9)
+        let e2: Int = manifold_relate(m, key, "spans", hi, 0.9)
+        let e3: Int = manifold_relate(m, lo, "sounds_before", hi, 0.8)
+        j = j + 1
+    }
+    m
+}
+
+// #144's contract, kept as a control: one vector for the whole signal.
+fn fingerprint_realizer(signal: String) -> Geometry {
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(4)
+    let n: Int = str_len(signal)
+    let a: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, int_to_float(n))
+    g
+}
+
+fn main() -> Void {
+    println("a realizer declared in El is a first-class realizer")
+    let reg: Int = realizer_register("tone", "tone_realizer")
+    let _c: Int = check(reg, "an El fn registers as a realizer by name")
+    let _c: Int = check(realizer_has("tone"), "the modality now has an organ")
+
+    println("transduction decomposes a signal into parts")
+    let m: Manifold = transduce("CEG", "tone")
+    let _c: Int = check(manifold_is(m), "transduce returns a real Manifold")
+    let sz: Int = manifold_size(m)
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(sz, 5), "three notes and two intervals are five parts")
+    let rc: Int = manifold_rel_count(m)
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(rc, 6), "and they stand in six stated relations")
+
+    println("every part is addressable BY KEY, which is what survives persistence")
+    let i_c: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "note:0")
+    let _c: Int = check(1 - eq_int(i_c, -1), "the first note is addressable on its own")
+    let i_iv: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "interval:0-1")
+    let _c: Int = check(1 - eq_int(i_iv, -1), "so is the interval between the first two")
+    let miss: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "never_added")
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(miss, -1), "an unknown key is -1, not component 0")
+
+    println("parts carry their own geometry, and may differ in width")
+    let gn: Geometry = manifold_geometry(m, i_c)
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(geometry_dim(gn), 2), "a note component is 2 wide")
+    let _c: Int = check(near(geometry_get(gn, 0), 67.0), "and it is C — the signal reached the realizer")
+    let gi: Geometry = manifold_geometry(m, i_iv)
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(geometry_dim(gi), 1), "an interval component is 1 wide")
+    // A single vector per signal cannot represent parts of unequal width at all.
+    let _c: Int = check(near(geometry_get(gi, 0), 2.0), "C to E is two semitones")
+    let f1: Int = geometry_free(gn)
+    let f2: Int = geometry_free(gi)
+
+    println("the relations are content no single part carries")
+    // That "2" above is not a property of C and not a property of E. It exists
+    // only BETWEEN them, so a representation with no relations cannot hold it.
+    let spans: Int = 0
+    let k: Int = 0
+    while k < rc {
+        if str_eq(manifold_rel_name(m, k), "spans") {
+            if str_eq(manifold_rel_from(m, k), "interval:0-1") { spans = spans + 1 }
+        }
+        k = k + 1
+    }
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(spans, 2), "the interval is wired to both notes it spans")
+
+    println("relation weight IS the grounding (correspondence-and-censorship §1)")
+    let wk: Int = 0
+    let found: Int = 0
+    while wk < rc {
+        if str_eq(manifold_rel_name(m, wk), "sounds_before") {
+            if near(manifold_rel_weight(m, wk), 0.8) > 0 { found = 1 }
+        }
+        wk = wk + 1
+    }
+    let _c: Int = check(found, "the ordering relation carries the weight its realizer stated")
+
+    println("the decomposition persists as real, separately addressable nodes")
+    let ids: [String] = el_list_empty()
+    let n0: Int = engram_node_count()
+    let e0: Int = engram_edge_count()
+    let pi: Int = 0
+    while pi < sz {
+        let key: String = manifold_key(m, pi)
+        let g: Geometry = manifold_geometry(m, pi)
+        let id: String = engram_node("component " + key, "Concept", 0.6)
+        let att: Int = node_attach_geometry(id, g)
+        ids = el_list_append(ids, id)
+        let ff: Int = geometry_free(g)
+        pi = pi + 1
+    }
+    let ri: Int = 0
+    while ri < rc {
+        let fi: Int = manifold_index_of(m, manifold_rel_from(m, ri))
+        let ti: Int = manifold_index_of(m, manifold_rel_to(m, ri))
+        engram_connect(el_list_get(ids, fi), el_list_get(ids, ti),
+                       manifold_rel_weight(m, ri), manifold_rel_name(m, ri))
+        ri = ri + 1
+    }
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(engram_node_count() - n0, 5), "one signal became five nodes")
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(engram_edge_count() - e0, 6), "and six edges between them")
+
+    println("each part's geometry is independently readable back off its node")
+    let id_c: String = el_list_get(ids, manifold_index_of(m, "note:0"))
+    let id_iv: String = el_list_get(ids, manifold_index_of(m, "interval:0-1"))
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(node_geometry_dim(id_c), 2), "note:0 node carries a 2-wide geometry")
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(node_geometry_dim(id_iv), 1), "interval:0-1 node carries a 1-wide one")
+
+    println("one part can be grounded without touching its siblings")
+    let ear: String = engram_node("evidence: heard a C in the recording", "Memory", 0.7)
+    engram_connect(ear, id_c, 0.95, "corroborates")
+    let _c: Int = check(engram_edge_between(ear, id_c), "evidence attaches to note:0 specifically")
+    let id_g: String = el_list_get(ids, manifold_index_of(m, "note:2"))
+    let _c: Int = check(1 - engram_edge_between(ear, id_g), "and NOT to note:2 — the sibling is untouched")
+    // This is the whole gain, and it is impossible with a fingerprint: with one
+    // node per signal, "the C is corroborated" and "the G is not" have the same
+    // grounding target and cannot both be recorded.
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(node_geometry_dim(id_g), 2), "note:2 geometry is intact regardless")
+
+    println("a fingerprint realizer transduces NOTHING")
+    // #144's contract exactly: signal in, one Geometry out. It resolves, so the
+    // organ is present — but it does not decompose, so it does not transduce.
+    // "No organ" and "an organ that only fingerprints" must not look alike.
+    let rf: Int = realizer_register("fingerprint", "fingerprint_realizer")
+    let _c: Int = check(rf, "the symbol resolves, so registration succeeds")
+    let mf: Manifold = transduce("x", "fingerprint")
+    let _c: Int = check(1 - manifold_is(mf), "a single vector is not a transduction")
+
+    println("the one-part case is a size-one manifold, not a bare vector")
+    let g1: Geometry = geometry_new(3)
+    let s1: Int = geometry_set(g1, 0, 5.0)
+    let ms: Manifold = manifold_single("level", "scalar", g1)
+    let _c: Int = check(manifold_is(ms), "manifold_single yields a real Manifold")
+    let _c: Int = check(eq_int(manifold_size(ms), 1), "of size one — visibly degenerate, not hidden")
+    let fg: Int = geometry_free(g1)
+    let fs: Int = manifold_free(ms)
+
+    println("no organ is still reported as no organ")
+    let me: Manifold = transduce("anything", "echolocation")
+    let _c: Int = check(1 - manifold_is(me), "no realizer means no manifold, not a fake one")
+
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+
+    // Reaching here means nothing called exit(1) along the way.
+    println("")
+    println("all checks passed")
+}

lang/install.sh

@@ -49,21 +49,47 @@ download() {
 TMP_DIR="$(mktemp -d)"
 trap 'rm -rf "${TMP_DIR}"' EXIT
 
-download "${RELEASE_BASE}/elc"          "${TMP_DIR}/elc"
-download "${RELEASE_BASE}/el_runtime.c" "${TMP_DIR}/el_runtime.c"
-download "${RELEASE_BASE}/el_runtime.h" "${TMP_DIR}/el_runtime.h"
+# The runtime is MULTI-FILE. el_runtime.c #includes six engram headers and makes
+# hard cross-TU calls into all six sibling .c files, so installing el_runtime.c
+# alone produces a lib/ that CANNOT LINK — `ld` fails with undefined
+# engram_ground_json / engram_activate_inner / eg_find_relation / cog_assert_two_axis.
+# This list mirrors lang/runtime/SOURCES (the in-repo source of truth); keep them
+# in step. install.sh is standalone by design — it runs on machines with no repo
+# checkout — so it cannot call scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh.
+RUNTIME_SOURCES=(
+    el_runtime.c el_seed.c
+    engram_store.c engram_vindex.c engram_geometry.c
+    engram_reason.c engram_verify.c engram_cognition.c
+    eg_cosine_batch.c eg_cosine_batch_strategy_cpu.c
+)
+RUNTIME_HEADERS=(
+    el_runtime.h el_seed.h
+    engram_store.h engram_vindex.h engram_geometry.h
+    engram_reason.h engram_verify.h engram_cognition.h
+    eg_cosine_batch.h eg_cosine_batch_strategy.h
+)
+
+download "${RELEASE_BASE}/elc" "${TMP_DIR}/elc"
+for f in "${RUNTIME_SOURCES[@]}" "${RUNTIME_HEADERS[@]}"; do
+    download "${RELEASE_BASE}/${f}" "${TMP_DIR}/${f}"
+done
 
 # Install
-install -m 755 "${TMP_DIR}/elc"          "${BIN_DIR}/elc"
-install -m 644 "${TMP_DIR}/el_runtime.c" "${LIB_DIR}/el_runtime.c"
-install -m 644 "${TMP_DIR}/el_runtime.h" "${LIB_DIR}/el_runtime.h"
+install -m 755 "${TMP_DIR}/elc" "${BIN_DIR}/elc"
+for f in "${RUNTIME_SOURCES[@]}" "${RUNTIME_HEADERS[@]}"; do
+    install -m 644 "${TMP_DIR}/${f}" "${LIB_DIR}/${f}"
+done
+
+# Record the link set so downstream Makefiles can read it instead of hardcoding.
+printf '%s\n' "${RUNTIME_SOURCES[@]}" > "${TMP_DIR}/SOURCES"
+install -m 644 "${TMP_DIR}/SOURCES" "${LIB_DIR}/SOURCES"
 
 echo
 echo "==> El SDK installed successfully"
 echo
 echo "    elc binary : ${BIN_DIR}/elc"
-echo "    runtime    : ${LIB_DIR}/el_runtime.c"
-echo "    header     : ${LIB_DIR}/el_runtime.h"
+echo "    runtime    : ${LIB_DIR}/ (${#RUNTIME_SOURCES[@]} .c files, ${#RUNTIME_HEADERS[@]} headers)"
+echo "    link set   : ${LIB_DIR}/SOURCES"
 echo
 echo "Add the following to your Makefile to build El programs:"
 echo
@@ -71,10 +97,14 @@ echo "    EL_LIB := ${LIB_DIR}"
 echo "    ELC    := elc"
 echo "    CC     := cc"
 echo "    CFLAGS := -std=c11 -O2 -I\$(EL_LIB)"
+echo "    LDLIBS := -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm"
+echo
+echo "    # The runtime is multi-file — link the whole set, not el_runtime.c alone."
+echo "    EL_RUNTIME := \$(addprefix \$(EL_LIB)/,\$(shell cat \$(EL_LIB)/SOURCES))"
 echo
 echo "    dist/myapp.c: src/myapp.el"
 echo "    \t\$(ELC) src/myapp.el > dist/myapp.c"
 echo
 echo "    dist/myapp: dist/myapp.c"
-echo "    \t\$(CC) \$(CFLAGS) -o dist/myapp dist/myapp.c \$(EL_LIB)/el_runtime.c -lcurl -lpthread"
+echo "    \t\$(CC) \$(CFLAGS) -o dist/myapp dist/myapp.c \$(EL_RUNTIME) \$(LDLIBS)"
 echo

lang/runtime/BUDGET

@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+# BUDGET — a RATCHET on lang/runtime/el_runtime.c. Enforced by
+# scripts/check-runtime-growth.sh. These numbers may only ever go DOWN.
+#
+# WHY THIS FILE EXISTS
+# --------------------
+# scripts/check-single-runtime.sh guards against el_runtime.c being COPIED.
+# Nothing guarded against it GROWING. It grew from 10,607 lines to 20,527 —
+# 94% — in 3.5 months, while under an explicit commit-message promise that it
+# was a temporary shim about to be deleted.
+#
+# It grew because lang/AGENTS.md told every agent to grow it: it claimed
+# el_runtime.c was "the authoritative single-file link target" and that a new
+# C builtin "must live there to be linkable". That is false — placement is a
+# link-time concern, `builtin_arity` is an arity guard not a dispatch table,
+# and the shipped elc already links from ten translation units. The claim is
+# corrected, and this file is the mechanism that keeps it corrected.
+#
+# THIS IS A RATCHET, NOT A LIMIT
+# ------------------------------
+# The budget is set at the CURRENT size. There is no headroom, deliberately.
+# The file cannot grow by even one line. Any new code goes in the .c that owns
+# the concern — that is the whole point, and every other runtime file is
+# deliberately UNCAPPED.
+#
+# When you move code OUT, lower the number in the same commit. The guard tells
+# you to when you have earned it.
+#
+# FORMAT: <key> <value>   — `#` comments and blank lines ignored.
+
+# Maximum lines in lang/runtime/el_runtime.c.
+# 2026-08-16: 20,527 — the high-water mark, ratcheted from here.
+max_lines 20527
+
+# Maximum top-level engram/eg_/cog_ function definitions in el_runtime.c.
+# ~47.5% of the file is engram code, and engram already owns six dedicated
+# sibling files (engram_{store,vindex,geometry,reason,verify,cognition}.c).
+# Every one of these belongs in one of them. This is the Stage 3 scoreboard.
+# 2026-08-16: 279.
+max_engram_fns 279

lang/runtime/SOURCES

@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+# SOURCES — the canonical El runtime link set.
+#
+# THIS FILE IS THE SINGLE SOURCE OF TRUTH for "what do I compile and link to
+# get the El runtime". Every build path — CI, install.sh, the SDK release, the
+# docs, elb, the engram test harnesses — reads it via scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh
+# instead of hardcoding its own list.
+#
+# WHY THIS FILE EXISTS
+# --------------------
+# The runtime has been multi-translation-unit since the engram siblings landed:
+# el_runtime.c #includes engram_{store,vindex,geometry,reason,verify,cognition}.h
+# and makes hard cross-TU calls into all six. Linking el_runtime.c ALONE has been
+# broken since then — `ld` fails with undefined symbols (engram_ground_json,
+# engram_activate_inner, eg_find_relation, cog_assert_two_axis, ...).
+#
+# It stayed broken because the link set was written out longhand in ~8 different
+# places, each of which drifted independently. A list copied 8 times is a list
+# that is wrong in 8 places. It is now written once, here.
+#
+# HOW TO USE IT
+# -------------
+#   scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh                      # bare names, one per line
+#   scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh lang/runtime         # prefixed with a directory
+#   cc ... $(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh lang/runtime) -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm
+#
+# ADDING A FILE
+# -------------
+# Add the .c here and it is picked up by every build path at once. That is the
+# point: a new concern gets its own translation unit and costs one line, instead
+# of being appended to el_runtime.c because appending was the cheaper edit.
+#
+# Order is link order. Blank lines and `#` comments are ignored.
+
+# --- EL core language runtime -------------------------------------------------
+el_runtime.c
+el_seed.c
+
+# --- Engram: store, index, geometry, reasoning, verification, cognition -------
+# These are the six concern-owned translation units el_runtime.c calls into.
+engram_store.c
+engram_vindex.c
+engram_geometry.c
+engram_reason.c
+engram_verify.c
+engram_cognition.c
+
+# --- Vector math: batch cosine + its CPU strategy ----------------------------
+# The ggml strategy (eg_cosine_batch_strategy_ggml.c) is an OPTIONAL swap-in and
+# is deliberately NOT in the default set — it needs ggml headers. Link it in
+# place of the cpu strategy when you have them.
+eg_cosine_batch.c
+eg_cosine_batch_strategy_cpu.c

lang/runtime/el_runtime.h

@@ -586,6 +586,110 @@ void      el_runtime_dharma_event_arrive(const char* event_type,
                                          const char* payload,
                                          const char* source);
 
+/* ── Geometry: signal as a first-class El value ──────────────────────────────
+ *
+ * A Geometry is an opaque, magic-tagged heap value carried in an el_val_t —
+ * the same discipline as List/Map. It holds a width and a float32 payload,
+ * and it is the medium a non-text modality enters in. Declared HERE, above
+ * the engram block, because transduction is a LANGUAGE concern: every El
+ * program touching any modality needs it, and the engram is merely one El
+ * program that happens to hold a graph. See el_runtime.c ("Geometry: signal
+ * as a first-class el value") for the full rationale.
+ *
+ * El-side type annotation is simply `Geometry` — an opaque boxed pointer,
+ * exactly like Instant / Calendar / Rhythm. No codegen change is required.
+ *
+ * OWNERSHIP: a Geometry is owned by the El caller and released with
+ * geometry_free. node_attach_geometry COPIES, so a node and the caller's
+ * value have independent lifetimes.                                          */
+
+el_val_t  geometry_new(el_val_t dim);                 /* zero-filled; 0 on failure */
+el_val_t  geometry_dim(el_val_t g);                   /* width, 0 if not a Geometry */
+el_val_t  geometry_is(el_val_t g);                    /* 1 if a live Geometry       */
+el_val_t  geometry_get(el_val_t g, el_val_t i);       /* Float component            */
+el_val_t  geometry_set(el_val_t g, el_val_t i, el_val_t x);  /* 1 ok / 0 out of range */
+el_val_t  geometry_norm(el_val_t g);                  /* Float L2 — lets a caller
+                                                       * check a realizer emitted
+                                                       * signal, not zeros          */
+el_val_t  geometry_free(el_val_t g);                  /* 1 if freed, 0 if not a Geometry.
+                                                       * Returns a value (not void) so it
+                                                       * is safe in any El expression
+                                                       * position without a codegen
+                                                       * void-builtin table entry.  */
+
+/* Wire ADAPTERS — the only place an encoding appears, and only at the edge.
+ * `f32le hex` is little-endian float32, 8 hex chars per component: the
+ * encoding the perception vessel's /voice/embed already emits. The width is
+ * DERIVED from the input length, never supplied by a caller — which is why
+ * there is no max-dim constant here to validate a claimed length against. */
+el_val_t  geometry_from_f32le_hex(el_val_t hex);      /* 0 on empty/odd-length/non-hex */
+el_val_t  geometry_to_f32le_hex(el_val_t g);          /* "" if not a Geometry       */
+
+/* ── Manifold: the result of a transduction ──────────────────────────────────
+ * A transduced signal is a SUBGRAPH — named components, each with its own
+ * geometry, plus typed weighted relations among them — not a single vector.
+ * One vector is a fingerprint: matchable, rankable, and nothing else. A song
+ * decomposes into pitch, interval, rhythm, harmonic function; the song IS the
+ * structure of those relations, and collapsing it to a point discards exactly
+ * what made it reasonable-about. See el_runtime.c ("Manifold") for the full
+ * rationale, the key-addressing rule, and the ownership contract.
+ *
+ * Components are addressed BY KEY, never by index, because the key is what
+ * survives persistence: a component becomes a node, and it is separately
+ * groundable precisely because it is separately named. Relation weight IS the
+ * grounding (correspondence-and-censorship.md §1) — one quantity, no separate
+ * score, nothing computed on read.
+ *
+ * OWNERSHIP: a Manifold is owned by the El caller and released with
+ * manifold_free, which also releases every component's geometry. manifold_add
+ * COPIES the geometry it is given and manifold_geometry RETURNS a copy, so no
+ * component's vector is ever aliased in either direction.                     */
+el_val_t  manifold_new(void);                          /* empty; 0 on failure       */
+el_val_t  manifold_is(el_val_t m);                     /* 1 if a live Manifold      */
+el_val_t  manifold_add(el_val_t m, el_val_t key, el_val_t role, el_val_t g);
+                                        /* component index, or -1 on empty/duplicate
+                                         * key or a value that is not a Geometry   */
+el_val_t  manifold_relate(el_val_t m, el_val_t from, el_val_t rel,
+                          el_val_t to, el_val_t weight);
+                                        /* 1 ok / 0 if either endpoint is unknown —
+                                         * an unresolvable edge is REFUSED, never
+                                         * silently dropped                        */
+el_val_t  manifold_size(el_val_t m);                   /* component count           */
+el_val_t  manifold_rel_count(el_val_t m);              /* relation count            */
+el_val_t  manifold_index_of(el_val_t m, el_val_t key); /* index by key, or -1       */
+el_val_t  manifold_key(el_val_t m, el_val_t i);        /* "" if out of range        */
+el_val_t  manifold_role(el_val_t m, el_val_t i);       /* "" if out of range        */
+el_val_t  manifold_geometry(el_val_t m, el_val_t i);   /* a COPY the caller frees   */
+el_val_t  manifold_rel_from(el_val_t m, el_val_t j);   /* source component key      */
+el_val_t  manifold_rel_name(el_val_t m, el_val_t j);   /* relation name             */
+el_val_t  manifold_rel_to(el_val_t m, el_val_t j);     /* target component key      */
+el_val_t  manifold_rel_weight(el_val_t m, el_val_t j); /* Float — the grounding     */
+el_val_t  manifold_single(el_val_t key, el_val_t role, el_val_t g);
+                                        /* the degenerate one-part case, expressible
+                                         * but visibly a size-1 manifold rather than
+                                         * a parallel path back to a bare vector   */
+el_val_t  manifold_free(el_val_t m);                   /* 1 if freed, 0 otherwise   */
+
+/* ── Realizers + transduce ───────────────────────────────────────────────────
+ * A REALIZER DECOMPOSES one modality into components and relations. It does
+ * not encode a signal to a point; that operation is one layer below and is
+ * called geometry. Registration is by NAME, so a new modality never requires a
+ * runtime patch: every El `fn name(...)` compiles to a global C symbol with
+ * that exact name, and the registry resolves it with dlsym against the running
+ * binary — the same mechanism http_set_handler already relies on.
+ *
+ *     fn tone_realizer(signal: String) -> Manifold { ... }
+ *     realizer_register("tone", "tone_realizer")
+ *     let m: Manifold = transduce(sample, "tone")
+ *
+ * SUPERSEDES #144's `transduce -> Geometry`. A realizer that still returns a
+ * bare Geometry now transduces NOTHING (transduce returns 0), deliberately: an
+ * organ that only fingerprints must not be indistinguishable from a working
+ * one. A modality with genuinely one part says so with manifold_single.      */
+el_val_t  realizer_register(el_val_t modality, el_val_t fn_name); /* 1 ok / 0 unresolved */
+el_val_t  realizer_has(el_val_t modality);            /* 1 if a realizer is registered */
+el_val_t  transduce(el_val_t signal, el_val_t modality); /* Manifold, or 0 if no organ */
+
 /* ── Engram local graph primitives ───────────────────────────────────────────
  * Operate on the CGI's local Engram knowledge graph.
  * `engram_activate` queries the local graph only; `dharma_activate` is
@@ -612,11 +716,32 @@ el_val_t  engram_get_node(el_val_t id);
 void      engram_strengthen(el_val_t node_id);
 void      engram_forget(el_val_t node_id);
 el_val_t  engram_prune_telemetry(el_val_t older_than_ms);
+/* Largest byte length <= max_bytes that does not split a UTF-8 codepoint.
+ * Bounded by bytes, not codepoints, so truncated strings never grow. */
+size_t    el_utf8_safe_len(const char* s, size_t max_bytes);
+/* Register the ambient-consolidation step and start dreaming. Resolved by
+ * dlsym, like http_set_handler. The handler performs ONE step and returns
+ * non-zero if it did work; returning zero parks the dreamer until engagement
+ * changes. There is no schedule and must never be one. */
+void      dream_set_handler(el_val_t name);
+
 el_val_t  engram_node_count(void);
-/* Attach geometry to an existing node. `hex` is little-endian float32,
- * exactly dim*8 hex chars — the encoding realizers already emit. Lets a
- * non-text modality enter as geometry instead of being described in prose
- * and embedded as its description. Returns 1 on success, 0 otherwise. */
+/* Attach a Geometry to an existing node, and read the attached width back.
+ * Named for the operation, not the store: a node acquires geometry. This is
+ * the geometry-valued ingest path — nothing about it is hex, and nothing
+ * about it assumes the caller's vector matches the canonical text-embedding
+ * width. node_geometry_dim exists so an attach is VERIFIED by reading it
+ * back rather than by trusting a success return. */
+el_val_t  node_attach_geometry(el_val_t node_id, el_val_t g); /* 1 ok / 0 otherwise */
+el_val_t  node_geometry_dim(el_val_t node_id);                /* width, 0 if none   */
+
+/* DEPRECATED (shipped in #141, superseded 2026-08-16). Equivalent to
+ * geometry_from_f32le_hex + node_attach_geometry, and now implemented as
+ * exactly that. Kept only so anything built against the #141 runtime keeps
+ * linking; `dim` is accepted but treated as an assertion about the vector's
+ * width rather than as its source. New code should not call this — a hex
+ * string is a wire encoding, not a way to move geometry between two pieces
+ * of El. Returns 1 on success, 0 otherwise. */
 el_val_t  engram_node_set_emb(el_val_t id, el_val_t hex, el_val_t dim);
 el_val_t  engram_search(el_val_t query, el_val_t limit);
 el_val_t  engram_scan_nodes(el_val_t limit, el_val_t offset);
@@ -662,8 +787,13 @@ el_val_t  engram_geo_analogy_json(el_val_t a_seeds, el_val_t b_seeds);
 el_val_t  engram_reason_analogy_json(el_val_t a_seeds, el_val_t b_seeds, el_val_t c_seeds);
 /* COGNITION (2026-08-14): THE ONE OPERATION + grounding, surfaced live. */
 el_val_t  engram_think_json(el_val_t seeds, el_val_t faculty);
+/* GROUNDING (2026-08-16): grounding is an attribute of the RELATION and it IS the
+ * hebbian weight. ground reads; ground_record writes; trajectory reads the chain. */
 el_val_t  engram_ground_json(el_val_t claim, el_val_t evidence, el_val_t for_whom);
-el_val_t  engram_assert_json(el_val_t claim_id, el_val_t for_whom, el_val_t floor);
+el_val_t  engram_ground_record_json(el_val_t claim, el_val_t evidence,
+                                    el_val_t provenance, el_val_t floor);
+el_val_t  engram_ground_trajectory_json(el_val_t claim, el_val_t evidence);
+el_val_t  engram_assert_json(el_val_t claim_id, el_val_t for_whom, el_val_t floor, el_val_t rel_floor);
 el_val_t  engram_attend_json(el_val_t node_id, el_val_t observer, el_val_t salience);
 el_val_t  engram_correspondence_beat_json(el_val_t seeds, el_val_t faculty, el_val_t keystone);
 el_val_t  engram_consolidate_permanence(el_val_t node_id);
@@ -957,6 +1087,22 @@ el_val_t  __url_decode(el_val_t s);
 /* Environment */
 el_val_t  __env_get(el_val_t key);
 
+/* Cross-cutting concerns declared by a `program` block (spec §18).
+ * All three are COMPILER-INJECTED at the head of main() — they are not meant to
+ * be written by hand, which is the point: the guarantee cannot be forgotten at a
+ * call site because there is no call site. */
+el_val_t  el_singleton_acquire(el_val_t id);                    /* §18.1 process identity */
+el_val_t  el_config_declare(el_val_t name, el_val_t type,
+                            el_val_t deflt, el_val_t has_default,
+                            el_val_t required);                 /* §18.2 config schema    */
+el_val_t  el_config_validate(el_val_t program_name);            /* §18.2 startup validate */
+
+/* config(key) — the READ side, and the only one programs write by hand. With a
+ * schema declared it is a validated lookup; without one it degrades to getenv.
+ * (Defined in el_runtime.c but previously never prototyped here, so any program
+ * calling it failed to compile under -Werror=implicit-function-declaration.) */
+el_val_t  config(el_val_t key);
+
 /* Subprocess */
 el_val_t  __exec(el_val_t cmd);
 el_val_t  __exec_bg(el_val_t cmd);

lang/runtime/engram_cognition.c

@@ -246,14 +246,6 @@ static int put_edge(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* id, const char* from, const
     e.metadata = (char*)meta;
     return store_put_edge(s, &e);
 }
-int cog_ground_edge(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* claim_id,
-                    const char* evidence_id, double grounding, const char* for_whom) {
-    if (!s || !claim_id || !evidence_id) return -1;
-    char id[512], meta[256];
-    snprintf(id, sizeof id, "gb-%s-%s-%s", claim_id, evidence_id, for_whom ? for_whom : "global");
-    snprintf(meta, sizeof meta, "for_whom=%s", for_whom ? for_whom : "-");
-    return put_edge(s, id, claim_id, evidence_id, COG_GROUNDED_BY_RELATION, grounding, meta);
-}
 int cog_salient_edge(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* node_id,
                      const char* observer_id, double salience) {
     if (!s || !node_id || !observer_id) return -1;
@@ -261,35 +253,386 @@ int cog_salient_edge(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* node_id,
     snprintf(id, sizeof id, "st-%s-%s", node_id, observer_id);
     return put_edge(s, id, node_id, observer_id, COG_SALIENT_TO_RELATION, salience, NULL);
 }
-int cog_assert_gate(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* claim_id,
-                    const char* for_whom, double floor) {
-    if (!s || !claim_id) return -1;
-    if (!(floor > 0)) floor = 0.5;
-    StoreEdge* edges = NULL; size_t n = 0;
-    if (store_get_edges_from(s, claim_id, &edges, &n) < 0) return -1;
-    double best = 0.0; int found = 0;
-    for (size_t i = 0; i < n; i++) {
-        if (!edges[i].relation || strcmp(edges[i].relation, COG_GROUNDED_BY_RELATION) != 0) continue;
-        /* grounded-for-whom: match observer if requested; global (for_whom=-) always counts */
-        int match = 1;
-        if (for_whom && edges[i].metadata) {
-            const char* fw = strstr(edges[i].metadata, "for_whom=");
-            if (fw) { fw += 9; if (strcmp(fw, for_whom) != 0 && strcmp(fw, "-") != 0) match = 0; }
-        }
-        if (match) { found = 1; if (edges[i].weight > best) best = edges[i].weight; }
-    }
-    store_edges_free(edges, n);
-    if (!found) return 0;                 /* ungrounded => refuse assertion (still held) */
-    return (best >= floor) ? 1 : 0;
+/* ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
+ * §7  GROUNDING IS THE EDGE'S WEIGHT, AND THE WEIGHT IS A VECTOR.
+ * See engram_cognition.h §7 for the model and for the measurements the two
+ * design decisions (thirteen regions, min aggregate) rest on.
+ * ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ */
+
+/* ── The one decay model. Moved here verbatim from el_runtime.c's
+ * engram_temporal_decay so nodes and edges share a single implementation and a
+ * single set of constants; engram_temporal_decay now delegates. Bit-identical
+ * for nodes: reinforcements := activation_count, lambda_override :=
+ * temporal_decay_rate.
+ *
+ * This is what makes decay ANALYTIC rather than sampled: between two recorded
+ * versions the trajectory is not unknown, it is known in closed form from the
+ * last point and elapsed time. Store the point, read the curve. */
+double cog_decay_factor(int64_t age_ms, double reinforcements, double lambda_override) {
+    if (age_ms <= 0) return 1.0;
+    double lambda = (lambda_override > 0.0) ? lambda_override : COG_DECAY_LAMBDA;
+    double age_hours = (double)age_ms / 3600000.0;
+    if (reinforcements < 0) reinforcements = 0;
+    double t_half = COG_T_HALF_HOURS * (1.0 + log(1.0 + reinforcements));
+    double factor = exp(-lambda * age_hours / t_half);
+    if (factor < COG_DECAY_FLOOR) factor = COG_DECAY_FLOOR;
+    return factor;
 }
 
+const char* cog_prov_name(CogProvClass p) {
+    switch (p) {
+        case COG_PROV_OBSERVED:  return "observed";
+        case COG_PROV_INFERRED:  return "inferred";
+        case COG_PROV_TOLD:      return "told";
+        case COG_PROV_IMPRINTED: return "imprinted";
+        default:                 return "unset";
+    }
+}
+CogProvClass cog_prov_parse(const char* s) {
+    if (!s) return COG_PROV_UNSET;
+    if (!strcmp(s, "observed"))  return COG_PROV_OBSERVED;
+    if (!strcmp(s, "inferred"))  return COG_PROV_INFERRED;
+    if (!strcmp(s, "told"))      return COG_PROV_TOLD;
+    if (!strcmp(s, "imprinted")) return COG_PROV_IMPRINTED;
+    return COG_PROV_UNSET;
+}
+
+/* Locate the GRD1 block in an edge's metadata. It is always the tail; anything
+ * ahead of it is the edge's pre-existing metadata, preserved verbatim. */
+static const char* cog_grd_find(const char* meta) {
+    if (!meta) return NULL;
+    size_t ml = strlen(COG_GROUNDING_META_MAGIC);
+    if (strncmp(meta, COG_GROUNDING_META_MAGIC, ml) == 0) return meta;
+    const char* p = meta;
+    while ((p = strstr(p, COG_GROUNDING_META_MAGIC)) != NULL) {
+        if (p > meta && p[-1] == '\n') return p;
+        p += ml;
+    }
+    return NULL;
+}
+
+int cog_grounding_parse(const StoreEdge* e, int64_t now_ms, CogGrounding* out) {
+    if (!e || !out) return -1;
+    memset(out, 0, sizeof *out);
+
+    /* Two dimensions exist on every edge whether or not grounding has ever been
+     * established, because they ARE existing substrate rather than new fields:
+     *   associative — the accrued hebb, with its existing dynamics;
+     *   polarity    — the signed authored weight. `inhibitory` is precisely this
+     *                 distinction crushed to one bit, so it is the seed sign. */
+    out->associative = e->hebb;
+    out->polarity    = e->inhibitory ? -e->weight : e->weight;
+    out->prov        = COG_PROV_UNSET;
+    out->ts          = e->last_fired > 0 ? e->last_fired : e->updated_at;
+
+    const char* blk = cog_grd_find(e->metadata);
+    if (blk) {
+        out->present = 1;
+        char* copy = dupstr(blk);
+        if (!copy) return -1;
+        for (char* line = strtok(copy, "\n"); line; line = strtok(NULL, "\n")) {
+            if (line[0] == '\0') continue;
+            char tag = line[0];
+            const char* rest = line + 1; while (*rest == ' ') rest++;
+            if (tag == 'w') {          /* the four numeric dimensions */
+                double v[4] = {0,0,0,0}; parse_floats(rest, v, 4);
+                out->factual = v[0]; out->relational = v[1];
+                out->associative = v[2]; out->polarity = v[3];
+            } else if (tag == 'k') {   /* provenance class */
+                out->prov = cog_prov_parse(rest);
+            } else if (tag == 't') {   /* timestamp + seq + reinforcements */
+                double v[3] = {0,0,0}; parse_floats(rest, v, 3);
+                out->ts = (int64_t)v[0]; out->seq = (int64_t)v[1]; out->reinforcements = v[2];
+            } else if (tag == 'd') {
+                double v[3] = {0,0,0}; parse_floats(rest, v, 3);
+                out->fac_proj = v[0]; out->rel_proj = v[1]; out->cos_angle = v[2];
+            } else if (tag == 'v') {
+                snprintf(out->binding_value, sizeof out->binding_value, "%s", rest);
+            } else if (tag == 'c') {
+                double v[2] = {0,0}; parse_floats(rest, v, 2);
+                out->floor_at_record = v[0]; out->rel_floor_at_record = v[1];
+            } else if (tag == 'p') {
+                snprintf(out->prev_edge, sizeof out->prev_edge, "%s", rest);
+            }
+        }
+        free(copy);
+    }
+    out->agreement = (out->cos_angle > 0) ? 1 : (out->cos_angle < 0 ? -1 : 0);
+
+    /* ── DERIVED. Nothing below this line is ever serialized. Recency, decay and
+     * staleness are read off the curve; storing them is how a number ends up
+     * asserting something nothing computed (§8.1 / spec §2). */
+    out->age_ms = (out->ts > 0 && now_ms > out->ts) ? (now_ms - out->ts) : 0;
+    out->decay  = cog_decay_factor(out->age_ms, out->reinforcements, 0.0);
+    out->factual_now     = out->factual     * out->decay;
+    out->relational_now  = out->relational  * out->decay;
+    out->associative_now = out->associative * out->decay;
+    out->stale = (out->present && out->floor_at_record > 0 &&
+                  out->factual_now < out->floor_at_record) ? 1 : 0;
+    return 0;
+}
+
+char* cog_grounding_metadata(const char* base_meta, const CogGrounding* g) {
+    if (!g) return NULL;
+    size_t keep = 0;
+    if (base_meta) {
+        const char* blk = cog_grd_find(base_meta);
+        keep = blk ? (size_t)(blk - base_meta) : strlen(base_meta);
+        while (keep > 0 && base_meta[keep - 1] == '\n') keep--;
+    }
+    size_t cap = keep + 1024;
+    char* buf = malloc(cap); if (!buf) return NULL;
+    size_t o = 0;
+    if (keep) { memcpy(buf, base_meta, keep); o = keep; buf[o++] = '\n'; }
+    o += (size_t)snprintf(buf + o, cap - o, "%s\n", COG_GROUNDING_META_MAGIC);
+    /* STORED ONLY. factual / relational / associative / polarity / provenance /
+     * timestamp — plus the joint state a decision saw. No confidence, no
+     * recency, no staleness, no volatility: those are read off the curve. */
+    o += (size_t)snprintf(buf + o, cap - o, "w %.9g %.9g %.9g %.9g\n",
+                          g->factual, g->relational, g->associative, g->polarity);
+    o += (size_t)snprintf(buf + o, cap - o, "k %s\n", cog_prov_name(g->prov));
+    o += (size_t)snprintf(buf + o, cap - o, "t %lld %lld %.9g\n",
+                          (long long)g->ts, (long long)g->seq, g->reinforcements);
+    o += (size_t)snprintf(buf + o, cap - o, "d %.9g %.9g %.9g\n",
+                          g->fac_proj, g->rel_proj, g->cos_angle);
+    o += (size_t)snprintf(buf + o, cap - o, "v %s\n", g->binding_value[0] ? g->binding_value : "-");
+    o += (size_t)snprintf(buf + o, cap - o, "c %.9g %.9g\n", g->floor_at_record, g->rel_floor_at_record);
+    if (g->prev_edge[0]) o += (size_t)snprintf(buf + o, cap - o, "p %s\n", g->prev_edge);
+    (void)o;
+    return buf;
+}
+
+/* ── Consequence, not epsilon. Every test is a floor crossing or a sign change,
+ * both exact. Ordered so the two INHERENT (discrete) moves are reported in
+ * preference to the graded ones, because they bypass the salience gate. */
+CogSignificance cog_grounding_significant(const CogGrounding* prev,
+                                          const CogGrounding* now,
+                                          double floor, double rel_floor) {
+    if (!now) return COG_SIG_NONE;
+    if (!prev || !prev->present) return COG_SIG_FIRST_RECORD;
+
+    /* INHERENT 1 — polarity sign flip. Ignorance and disagreement are different
+     * states, and support → contradiction is a change of state rather than a
+     * drift, so no threshold applies. Comparing signs, with zero its own class. */
+    {
+        int sp = prev->polarity > 0 ? 1 : (prev->polarity < 0 ? -1 : 0);
+        int sn = now->polarity  > 0 ? 1 : (now->polarity  < 0 ? -1 : 0);
+        if (sp != sn) return COG_SIG_POLARITY_FLIP;
+    }
+    /* INHERENT 2 — provenance class change. told → observed is a categorical
+     * upgrade in what the relation is entitled to, not a movement along an axis. */
+    if (prev->prov != now->prov) return COG_SIG_PROVENANCE_CHANGE;
+
+    /* Crossing an assert floor — the move changes whether this relation can be
+     * spoken. Compared on the DECAYED values, because that is what the gate reads. */
+    if ((prev->factual_now    >= floor)     != (now->factual_now    >= floor))     return COG_SIG_FACTUAL_FLOOR;
+    if ((prev->relational_now >= rel_floor) != (now->relational_now >= rel_floor)) return COG_SIG_RELATIONAL_FLOOR;
+
+    /* Flipping factual/relational agreement — the relation stops being "true and
+     * meaningful" and becomes "true and misapplied", or the reverse. This is the
+     * 911/CPS contradiction as a measured event rather than a reviewable one. */
+    if (prev->agreement != now->agreement) return COG_SIG_AGREEMENT_FLIP;
+
+    /* A gradient reversing — the evidence stopped pulling the claim toward it and
+     * began pushing it away, or the same on the values axis. */
+    if ((prev->fac_proj > 0) != (now->fac_proj > 0)) return COG_SIG_DIRECTION_REVERSAL;
+    if ((prev->rel_proj > 0) != (now->rel_proj > 0)) return COG_SIG_DIRECTION_REVERSAL;
+
+    return COG_SIG_NONE;
+}
+
+int cog_significance_inherent(CogSignificance s) {
+    return (s == COG_SIG_FIRST_RECORD || s == COG_SIG_POLARITY_FLIP ||
+            s == COG_SIG_PROVENANCE_CHANGE) ? 1 : 0;
+}
+
+const char* cog_significance_name(CogSignificance s) {
+    switch (s) {
+        case COG_SIG_FIRST_RECORD:       return "first-record";
+        case COG_SIG_POLARITY_FLIP:      return "polarity-sign-flip";
+        case COG_SIG_PROVENANCE_CHANGE:  return "provenance-class-change";
+        case COG_SIG_FACTUAL_FLOOR:      return "factual-floor-crossed";
+        case COG_SIG_RELATIONAL_FLOOR:   return "relational-floor-crossed";
+        case COG_SIG_AGREEMENT_FLIP:     return "agreement-sign-flip";
+        case COG_SIG_DIRECTION_REVERSAL: return "gradient-direction-reversal";
+        default:                         return "none";
+    }
+}
+
+/* ── Recording: a NEW edge record. The predecessor is never touched. ────────── */
+int cog_grounding_record(EngramPagedStore* s, const StoreEdge* base,
+                         const CogGrounding* g, char* out_id, size_t out_id_cap) {
+    if (!s || !base || !base->id || !g) return -1;
+    char root[192];
+    snprintf(root, sizeof root, "%s", base->id);
+    char* hash = strchr(root, '#'); if (hash) *hash = '\0';
+
+    int seq = (int)g->seq + 1;
+    char vid[224];
+    snprintf(vid, sizeof vid, "%s#%d", root, seq);
+
+    CogGrounding rec = *g;
+    rec.seq = seq;
+    snprintf(rec.prev_edge, sizeof rec.prev_edge, "%s", base->id);
+
+    char* meta = cog_grounding_metadata(base->metadata, &rec);
+    if (!meta) return -1;
+
+    StoreEdge e; memset(&e, 0, sizeof e);
+    e.id = vid; e.from_id = base->from_id; e.to_id = base->to_id;
+    e.relation = base->relation; e.metadata = meta;
+    /* The vector IS the weight, so the scalar fields carry their dimensions:
+     * `weight` the magnitude of polarity, `inhibitory` its sign, `hebb` the
+     * associative strength. Nothing here is a second copy of a derived value. */
+    e.weight     = rec.polarity < 0 ? -rec.polarity : rec.polarity;
+    e.inhibitory = rec.polarity < 0 ? 1 : 0;
+    e.hebb       = rec.associative;
+    e.confidence = base->confidence;
+    e.created_at = base->created_at;
+    e.updated_at = rec.ts;
+    e.last_fired = rec.ts;
+    e.layer_id   = base->layer_id;
+    int rc = store_put_edge(s, &e);
+    free(meta);
+    if (rc != 0) return -1;
+    if (out_id && out_id_cap) snprintf(out_id, out_id_cap, "%s", vid);
+    return seq;
+}
+
+int cog_grounding_head(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* base_id,
+                       StoreEdge* out, int max_versions) {
+    if (!s || !base_id || !out) return -1;
+    if (max_versions <= 0) max_versions = 64;
+    char root[192]; snprintf(root, sizeof root, "%s", base_id);
+    char* hash = strchr(root, '#'); if (hash) *hash = '\0';
+
+    StoreEdge cur; memset(&cur, 0, sizeof cur);
+    if (store_get_edge(s, root, &cur) != 1) return -1;
+    int found = 0;
+    for (int v = 1; v <= max_versions; v++) {
+        char vid[224]; snprintf(vid, sizeof vid, "%s#%d", root, v);
+        StoreEdge nx;
+        if (store_get_edge(s, vid, &nx) != 1) break;
+        store_edge_free(&cur); cur = nx; found = v;
+    }
+    *out = cur;
+    return found;
+}
+
+/* ── VOLATILITY AND DRIFT: derived from the chain, stored nowhere. The series
+ * exists only because nothing was destroyed, which is the whole return on
+ * immutability — a derivative for free. */
+int cog_grounding_trajectory(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* base_id,
+                             int64_t now_ms, CogTrajectory* out) {
+    if (!s || !base_id || !out) return -1;
+    memset(out, 0, sizeof *out);
+    char root[192]; snprintf(root, sizeof root, "%s", base_id);
+    char* hash = strchr(root, '#'); if (hash) *hash = '\0';
+
+    double pf = 0, pr = 0, f0 = 0, r0 = 0, fN = 0, rN = 0;
+    double sum_df = 0, sum_dr = 0;
+    int n = 0;
+    for (int v = 0; v <= 64; v++) {
+        char vid[224];
+        if (v == 0) snprintf(vid, sizeof vid, "%s", root);
+        else        snprintf(vid, sizeof vid, "%s#%d", root, v);
+        StoreEdge e;
+        if (store_get_edge(s, vid, &e) != 1) { if (v) break; else continue; }
+        CogGrounding g;
+        if (cog_grounding_parse(&e, now_ms, &g) == 0) {
+            if (n == 0) { f0 = g.factual; r0 = g.relational; }
+            else { sum_df += fabs(g.factual - pf); sum_dr += fabs(g.relational - pr); }
+            pf = g.factual; pr = g.relational; fN = pf; rN = pr;
+            n++;
+        }
+        store_edge_free(&e);
+    }
+    out->n_versions = n;
+    if (n > 1) {
+        out->factual_volatility    = sum_df / (double)(n - 1);
+        out->relational_volatility = sum_dr / (double)(n - 1);
+    }
+    out->factual_drift    = fN - f0;
+    out->relational_drift = rN - r0;
+    /* "STAYED TRUE, BECAME WRONG" — the event the joint record makes visible and
+     * that per-dimension versioning would have destroyed: the fact held while
+     * the meaning degraded. Expressed as signs, so there is no tolerance here
+     * either: factual did not fall, relational did. */
+    out->stayed_true_became_wrong =
+        (n > 1 && out->factual_drift >= 0 && out->relational_drift < 0) ? 1 : 0;
+    return 0;
+}
+
+/* ── Assertion gates on BOTH floors. Traversal is untouched: activation still
+ * conducts on the factual/associative side, so a relation can remain thinkable
+ * while ceasing to be assertable. That gap is where the wide angles live. ──── */
+int cog_assert_two_axis(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* claim_id,
+                        double floor, double rel_floor, int64_t now_ms,
+                        CogAssertion* out) {
+    if (!s || !claim_id || !out) return -1;
+    memset(out, 0, sizeof *out);
+    if (!(floor > 0))     floor = 0.5;
+    if (!(rel_floor > 0)) rel_floor = floor;
+
+    /* still_held is DERIVED, not a literal (§8.1). Holding is unconditional —
+     * the store gates nothing — so the question the field actually answers is
+     * whether the content is present and live. */
+    StoreNode n;
+    if (store_get_node(s, claim_id, &n) == 1) { out->still_held = !n.tombstoned; store_node_free(&n); }
+    else out->still_held = 0;
+
+    double best = -1.0;
+    for (int dir = 0; dir < 2; dir++) {
+        StoreEdge* edges = NULL; size_t ne = 0;
+        int rc = dir == 0 ? store_get_edges_from(s, claim_id, &edges, &ne)
+                          : store_get_edges_to  (s, claim_id, &edges, &ne);
+        if (rc < 0) continue;
+        for (size_t i = 0; i < ne; i++) {
+            if (edges[i].tombstoned) continue;
+            CogGrounding g;
+            if (cog_grounding_parse(&edges[i], now_ms, &g) != 0) continue;
+            out->n_edges++;
+            out->found = 1;
+            if (g.factual_now > best) {
+                best = g.factual_now;
+                out->factual    = g.factual_now;
+                out->relational = g.relational_now;   /* the SAME edge, not a max */
+                out->polarity   = g.polarity;
+                out->cos_angle  = g.cos_angle;
+                out->agreement  = g.agreement;
+                out->prov       = g.prov;
+                out->relational_established = g.present;
+                snprintf(out->best_edge, sizeof out->best_edge, "%s", edges[i].id ? edges[i].id : "");
+                snprintf(out->binding_value, sizeof out->binding_value, "%s", g.binding_value);
+            }
+        }
+        store_edges_free(edges, ne);
+    }
+    /* BOTH floors, and an unestablished relational axis does NOT pass by default
+     * — defaulting it to passing is the exemption §0 forbids. A negative polarity
+     * is a relation that actively contradicts and can never license assertion. */
+    out->may_assert = (out->found && out->relational_established &&
+                       out->polarity > 0 &&
+                       out->factual >= floor && out->relational >= rel_floor) ? 1 : 0;
+    return 0;
+}
+
+
 /* ═══════════════════════════════════════════════ THE CORRESPONDENCE-LOOP ═════ */
 int engram_correspondence_beat(const GeoDescriptor* region, const float* anchor,
                                double outcome_y, CogStance* stance,
                                int learn, double max_step, CogBeatResult* out) {
     if (!region || !stance || !out) return -1;
     memset(out, 0, sizeof *out);
-    if (stance->keystone) { learn = 0; out->wrote_keystone = 1; }  /* §6: never write a keystone */
+    /* 2026-08-16: the keystone block is GONE. It refused to learn about the
+     * reference frame, which does not make it a good reference — it makes it
+     * unexaminable, trading circular calibration for an ungroundable one (spec
+     * §2). Measured cost of the block: on the keystone region the beat reported
+     * 0.00% brier reduction over n_trials 0 — it never ran, so nothing about the
+     * self was ever calibrated OR falsifiable. What replaces it is a provenance
+     * constraint, not a permission: cog_grounding_downstream refuses evidence
+     * that is downstream of the region being calibrated, for every region alike.
+     * `wrote_keystone` is retained as a reporting field only and is always 0. */
 
     GeoGradient g;
     if (engram_think(region, anchor, stance, &g) != 0) return -1;   /* PREDICTION */

lang/runtime/engram_cognition.h

@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
  * and a region, and grounded-for-whom.
  *
  * PURE + (mostly) READ-ONLY, stdlib + libm only. think() and the warp are pure
- * over their inputs. Persistence (Stance <-> StoreNode, grounded-by edges) is the
+ * over their inputs. Persistence (Stance <-> StoreNode, edge grounding vectors) is the
  * only part that touches the store, and it is additive / supersede / tombstone —
  * never mutate-in-place, never delete. It NEVER touches the live daemon: all
  * offline against a scratch store, per the design's rails.
@@ -152,30 +152,25 @@ int engram_express(const GeoGradient* g, const float* anchor, float* out_point);
 
 /* ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  * §5  HOLD vs GROUND vs ASSERT. Holding is unconditional (the store gates nothing).
- * Grounding is a RELATION — a "grounded-by" edge, probabilistic, grounded-for-whom.
- * The honesty floor is checked only at ASSERTION.
+ * Grounding is an ATTRIBUTE OF a relation — carried on the edge itself, as a
+ * vector (§7). The honesty floor is checked only at ASSERTION, on both axes.
  * ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ */
-#define COG_GROUNDED_BY_RELATION "grounded-by"
+/* DELETED 2026-08-16: COG_GROUNDED_BY_RELATION and cog_ground_edge.
+ *
+ * A "grounded-by" edge models grounding as a relation BETWEEN two nodes. It is a
+ * property OF a relation — and it is that relation's weight. Minting a new edge
+ * to carry a score was the error; #147 corrected which endpoints the edge landed
+ * on and left the wrong idea standing. There is nothing to ground a claim
+ * "against" that is not already an edge, and if no edge exists the honest answer
+ * is that the two are not related — not a freshly minted one scoring 0.98.
+ * See §7 for what replaced it. */
 #define COG_SALIENT_TO_RELATION  "salient-to"
 
-/* Write a grounded-by edge (additive). weight = grounding ∈(0,1] from the verifier;
- * for_whom recorded in edge metadata (grounding is relational). Never a node flag. */
-int cog_ground_edge(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* claim_id,
-                    const char* evidence_id, double grounding, const char* for_whom);
-
 /* Write/refresh a salient-to edge: salience is RELATIONAL (grounded-for-whom),
  * carried on the edge to the observer — not baked into the node scalar (§2.1). */
 int cog_salient_edge(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* node_id,
                      const char* observer_id, double salience);
 
-/* The honesty floor — a QUERY at assertion time, NOT a schema constraint. Reads the
- * claim's stored grounded-by edges (for the given observer) and returns:
- *   1  = may assert (best grounding >= floor),
- *   0  = REFUSE assertion (holds unconditionally; only asserting is gated),
- *  <0  = error. The content remains held either way. */
-int cog_assert_gate(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* claim_id,
-                    const char* for_whom, double floor);
-
 /* ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  * §4  THE REFLEXIVE CORRESPONDENCE-LOOP — the learning engine. think scores its
  * OWN gradient against outcome, refines the stance on the error, and (optionally)
@@ -209,8 +204,265 @@ int engram_correspondence_beat(const GeoDescriptor* region, const float* anchor,
 /* ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  * §6  METASTABILITY. Keystones (self/values) are read-mostly: the loop reads but
  * never writes them. Mark by stance flag or by a keystone-id set the loop consults.
+ *
+ * SUPERSEDED BY §7's PROVENANCE CONSTRAINT (2026-08-16). The keystone flag is a
+ * PERMISSION: it asks who the target is, not where the evidence came from. That
+ * is censorship, and it costs the ability to ever ground the self (spec
+ * correspondence-and-censorship.md §0/§2). The constraint that actually protects
+ * a reference frame is cog_grounding_downstream: a region may not be calibrated
+ * by evidence downstream of itself. These declarations remain only so existing
+ * call sites keep compiling; nothing in the grounding path consults them.
  * ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ */
 typedef struct { const char** ids; int n; } CogKeystoneSet;
 int cog_is_keystone(const CogKeystoneSet* ks, const CogStance* s);
 
+/* ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
+ * §7  GROUNDING IS THE EDGE'S WEIGHT, AND THE WEIGHT IS A VECTOR
+ *      (2026-08-16; spec correspondence-and-censorship.md §2–§6 @ 2b7e4ba.)
+ *
+ * THE MODEL. Grounding is not a subsystem, a score, or a relation BETWEEN nodes.
+ * It is an attribute OF a relation. The graph already IS the grounding structure:
+ * every edge is a grounded relation, and what that relation is worth is carried
+ * on the edge itself. Three things follow, and each DELETES rather than adds:
+ *
+ *  1. `grounded-by` as a relation type does not exist, and cog_ground_edge is
+ *     gone. Minting an edge to hold a score models grounding as a relation
+ *     between nodes when it is a property of a relation. #147 corrected which
+ *     endpoints that edge landed on and left the wrong idea standing.
+ *  2. There is no observer, and no sampling rate. Change is not a consequence of
+ *     use — it IS use, the way potentiation is the firing rather than something
+ *     that reads the firing and writes a weight. So no supervisor compares a
+ *     value to a threshold and decides to persist.
+ *  3. Between two recorded versions the trajectory is not unknown. Decay is a
+ *     pure function of the last recorded point and elapsed time, so it is
+ *     ANALYTIC: store the point, read the curve.
+ *
+ * WHAT IS *NOT* HERE, DELIBERATELY. An earlier draft of the spec posed "a graph
+ * predicate for evidence downstream of itself" as the hard problem, and this file
+ * briefly contained one. It is withdrawn. Non-circularity is TEMPORAL, not
+ * topological: you cannot recalibrate the ruler while measuring with it, so you
+ * do it when you are not using the frame to act. Reachability could never have
+ * worked — measured on the live store, reachability from the self region over
+ * all relations reaches 89.2% of the graph (10,580 of 11,861 nodes) and 16.0%
+ * over hebbian/semantic relations alone, so the predicate marks essentially all
+ * evidence tainted and the constraint degenerates into the total block that
+ * censorship started as. Nothing replaces it here; the independence is a fact
+ * about engagement, owned by the dreamer, not a fact about the graph.
+ *
+ * ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
+ * §7.1  THE VECTOR
+ *
+ * The test for a real dimension is whether it can move independently of the
+ * others. Five can, and each maps onto substrate that already exists:
+ *
+ *   factual      correspondence with evidence.                      [GRD1]
+ *   relational   correspondence with values — min over THIRTEEN
+ *                value regions, carrying the binding value's NAME.  [GRD1]
+ *   associative  co-activation frequency. This is the edge's `hebb`
+ *                field with its existing dynamics — NOT a new one.
+ *                Independent by construction: every superstition is
+ *                a strong association with no factual grounding.
+ *   polarity     SIGNED. Near zero means "no support"; NEGATIVE means
+ *                "this actively contradicts". The edge's `inhibitory`
+ *                bit is exactly this distinction crushed to one bit,
+ *                and is carried forward as the seed value.           [GRD1]
+ *   provenance   observed / inferred / told / imprinted. Categorical,
+ *                and load-bearing: it governs what the relation is
+ *                entitled to.                                        [GRD1]
+ *
+ * Plus a TIMESTAMP, which is what turns the supersession chain into a time
+ * series of vectors rather than a series of numbers.
+ *
+ * DERIVED, THEREFORE NEVER STORED. Confidence (high grounding AND low
+ * volatility), recency (decay read off the curve), staleness (grounding fallen
+ * below its floor), volatility (the derivative of a series nothing destroyed).
+ * Storing confidence separately is how `confidence: 0.5` ends up sitting beside
+ * a zero direction vector, asserting something nothing computed. Every field in
+ * CogGrounding below is marked STORED or DERIVED, and the serializer writes
+ * only the STORED ones.
+ *
+ * THE VALUES REFERENCE IS THIRTEEN REGIONS AND THE AGGREGATE IS MIN.
+ * Measured on the live store: the values root kn-5b606390 `contains` exactly 13
+ * value nodes; pairwise centroid cosine among their regions is min 0.1525,
+ * mean 0.5199, median 0.5282, max 0.9278 — they demonstrably do not form one
+ * region. Against a single union region the individual values sit at cosine
+ * 0.38..0.89, with constraints-as-freedom at 0.3812 and change-is-the-signal at
+ * 0.4677, so a union centroid under-represents precisely the values a claim is
+ * most likely to be measured against. MIN rather than MEAN because a mean lets
+ * strong agreement with twelve values mask a violation of the thirteenth, which
+ * is the mechanism of rationalization; min yields a binding constraint with a
+ * NAME attached rather than a score.
+ *
+ * TRAVERSAL CONDUCTS ON FACTUAL; ASSERTION REQUIRES BOTH. If activation
+ * conducted on relational weight, Neuron could not follow a chain of reasoning
+ * to a conclusion he then rejects — censorship arriving through the spreading
+ * rule. The gap between reachable and assertable is where the wide
+ * factual/relational angles live, and that gap is the interesting part.
+ * ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════ */
+
+/* ── The one decay model (moved here from el_runtime.c so that node decay and
+ * edge-grounding decay are a single implementation with a single set of
+ * constants, rather than a model and a parallel copy of it). Half-life scales
+ * with how established the thing is: T_eff = T_HALF · (1 + ln(1 + reinforcements)).
+ * The floor is a preference, not a cliff — max penalty for age alone is 4x.
+ * `lambda_override` > 0 replaces the default rate; 0 means use the default. */
+#define COG_T_HALF_HOURS  168.0
+#define COG_DECAY_LAMBDA  0.693147
+#define COG_DECAY_FLOOR   0.25
+double cog_decay_factor(int64_t age_ms, double reinforcements, double lambda_override);
+
+/* The compact vector block carried in the edge's own metadata. Line schema, same
+ * precedent as STNC1 / GEO1. Metadata the edge already carried is preserved
+ * verbatim ahead of the magic line. */
+#define COG_GROUNDING_META_MAGIC "GRD1"
+
+/* Provenance class — categorical, and it governs what the relation is entitled
+ * to. A change of class is inherently significant and needs no threshold,
+ * because told → observed is a categorical upgrade, not a drift. */
+typedef enum {
+    COG_PROV_UNSET     = 0,
+    COG_PROV_OBSERVED  = 1,
+    COG_PROV_INFERRED  = 2,
+    COG_PROV_TOLD      = 3,
+    COG_PROV_IMPRINTED = 4
+} CogProvClass;
+const char*  cog_prov_name(CogProvClass p);
+CogProvClass cog_prov_parse(const char* s);
+
+typedef struct {
+    int     present;              /* 1 iff the edge carries a GRD1 block           */
+
+    /* ── STORED: the vector, as it stood at `ts` ─────────────────────────────── */
+    double  factual;              /* correspondence with evidence                  */
+    double  relational;           /* min over the thirteen value regions           */
+    double  associative;          /* co-activation frequency — mirrors edge->hebb  */
+    double  polarity;             /* SIGNED support; <0 = actively contradicts     */
+    CogProvClass prov;            /* observed / inferred / told / imprinted        */
+    int64_t ts;                   /* when this version was recorded (ms)           */
+    int64_t seq;                  /* supersession sequence number                  */
+    double  reinforcements;       /* uses folded into this version                 */
+    char    binding_value[128];   /* the argmin value — the conflict's NAME        */
+    /* the two gradients as frame-independent signed projections, plus the angle
+     * between them in full R^dim. These are part of the JOINT STATE a decision
+     * saw, not a convenience: near +1 evidence and values push the same way; at
+     * or below 0 the relation is factually supported and relationally wrong. */
+    double  fac_proj, rel_proj, cos_angle;
+    int     agreement;            /* sign(cos_angle): +1 / 0 / −1                  */
+    double  floor_at_record, rel_floor_at_record;
+    char    prev_edge[192];       /* the version this superseded ("" if first)     */
+
+    /* ── DERIVED at read time. NEVER serialized. ─────────────────────────────── */
+    int64_t age_ms;               /* recency: now − ts                             */
+    double  decay;                /* cog_decay_factor over that age                */
+    double  factual_now;          /* factual · decay                               */
+    double  relational_now;
+    double  associative_now;
+    int     stale;                /* grounding fallen below its floor              */
+} CogGrounding;
+
+/* Read an edge's vector as of `now_ms`. Pure — never writes. An edge with no
+ * GRD1 block still has an associative strength (its accrued hebb) and a polarity
+ * (its signed authored weight); `present` says whether the grounding dimensions
+ * have ever been established, and an unestablished dimension is reported as such
+ * rather than defaulted to a passing value. */
+int cog_grounding_parse(const StoreEdge* e, int64_t now_ms, CogGrounding* out);
+
+/* Serialize the STORED half of the vector, preserving pre-existing non-GRD1
+ * metadata. Returns an owned string. Derived fields are not written. */
+char* cog_grounding_metadata(const char* base_meta, const CogGrounding* g);
+
+/* ── §7.2  CONSOLIDATION-GATED SUPERSESSION ──────────────────────────────────
+ *
+ * Supersession is not recording — it is CONSOLIDATION, gated by salience, which
+ * is why you remember the argument and not the commute. Significance is
+ * evaluated PER-DIMENSION but the record is the WHOLE VECTOR: any dimension
+ * moving enough to matter triggers a supersession, and the new version captures
+ * every dimension as it stood at that instant. Versioning axes independently
+ * would make the joint state unreconstructable, and the joint state is the point
+ * — it is what makes "stayed true, became wrong" visible as an event (factual
+ * holding steady across versions while relational degrades).
+ *
+ * There is deliberately no epsilon in this enum or in the function that computes
+ * it. Every test is a floor crossing or a sign change, both exact. Two of them
+ * are INHERENTLY significant because they are discrete state changes rather than
+ * drift, and those bypass the salience gate entirely. */
+typedef enum {
+    COG_SIG_NONE               = 0,  /* nothing decision-relevant moved — DO NOT RECORD */
+    COG_SIG_FIRST_RECORD       = 1,  /* no prior version exists                         */
+    COG_SIG_POLARITY_FLIP      = 2,  /* INHERENT: support ↔ contradiction, or ignorance
+                                      * ↔ either. A discrete change of state.           */
+    COG_SIG_PROVENANCE_CHANGE  = 3,  /* INHERENT: told → observed is a categorical
+                                      * upgrade in what the relation is entitled to.    */
+    COG_SIG_FACTUAL_FLOOR      = 4,  /* crossed the assert floor, factual axis           */
+    COG_SIG_RELATIONAL_FLOOR   = 5,  /* crossed the assert floor, relational axis        */
+    COG_SIG_AGREEMENT_FLIP     = 6,  /* factual/relational agreement changed sign        */
+    COG_SIG_DIRECTION_REVERSAL = 7   /* a gradient reversed direction                    */
+} CogSignificance;
+
+CogSignificance cog_grounding_significant(const CogGrounding* prev,
+                                          const CogGrounding* now,
+                                          double floor, double rel_floor);
+const char* cog_significance_name(CogSignificance s);
+/* 1 iff this reason is a discrete state change that consolidates regardless of
+ * salience (polarity flip, provenance change, first record). */
+int cog_significance_inherent(CogSignificance s);
+
+/* ── §7.3  RECORDING: supersession of the EDGE, never an overwrite ────────────
+ * Writes version seq+1 as a NEW edge record with the same endpoints and relation
+ * and id "<root>#<seq+1>", carrying a GRD1 `p` pointer to its predecessor. The
+ * predecessor is never touched. The chain IS the trajectory: not only what the
+ * grounding is but which way it has been moving and how fast — a derivative
+ * obtained for free from immutability, because the points were never destroyed.
+ * Returns the version written (>=1), or <0 on error. */
+int cog_grounding_record(EngramPagedStore* s, const StoreEdge* base,
+                         const CogGrounding* g, char* out_id, size_t out_id_cap);
+
+/* Walk forward from a base edge id to its newest recorded version. Point reads
+ * only; consolidation is gated, so the chain is short. Returns the highest
+ * version found (0 = the base record is the only one). */
+int cog_grounding_head(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* base_id,
+                       StoreEdge* out, int max_versions);
+
+/* VOLATILITY — derived, never stored: the mean absolute per-version change of a
+ * dimension across the recorded chain. Feeds the equally-derived `confidence`
+ * (high grounding AND low volatility), which is likewise never stored. */
+typedef struct {
+    int    n_versions;
+    double factual_volatility;
+    double relational_volatility;
+    double factual_drift;         /* signed: newest − oldest                     */
+    double relational_drift;
+    int    stayed_true_became_wrong; /* factual steady while relational degraded  */
+} CogTrajectory;
+int cog_grounding_trajectory(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* base_id,
+                             int64_t now_ms, CogTrajectory* out);
+
+/* ── §7.4  ASSERTION GATES ON BOTH FLOORS ────────────────────────────────────
+ * A well-evidenced claim must not earn the right to be asserted regardless of
+ * whether it means the right thing. `may_assert` requires the decayed factual
+ * grounding to clear `floor` AND the decayed relational grounding to clear
+ * `rel_floor`. A relation whose relational axis has never been established does
+ * not pass by default — it is reported unestablished and refused, because
+ * defaulting it to passing is exactly the exemption §0 forbids. Traversal is
+ * untouched: activation still conducts on the factual/associative side, so a
+ * relation can remain thinkable while ceasing to be assertable. */
+typedef struct {
+    int     may_assert;
+    int     found;                 /* any relation at all on this claim            */
+    int     relational_established;
+    int     still_held;            /* DERIVED: node present and not tombstoned     */
+    double  factual;               /* best decayed factual grounding               */
+    double  relational;            /* the SAME edge's relational axis, not a max   */
+    double  polarity;
+    double  cos_angle;
+    int     agreement;
+    CogProvClass prov;
+    char    best_edge[192];
+    char    binding_value[128];
+    int     n_edges;
+} CogAssertion;
+int cog_assert_two_axis(EngramPagedStore* s, const char* claim_id,
+                        double floor, double rel_floor, int64_t now_ms,
+                        CogAssertion* out);
+
 #endif /* ENGRAM_COGNITION_H */

lang/runtime/engram_geometry.c

@@ -438,6 +438,41 @@ GeoDescriptor* engram_geometry_descriptor(
         }
         store_edges_free(es,ne);
     }
+    /* PER-EDGE DISCORD (2026-08-16). The loop above has, for every internal
+     * edge, BOTH the association strength w and the semantic proximity cs —
+     * and threw both away into accumulators, keeping one correlation per
+     * region. That aggregate is why curiosity looked like a search problem:
+     * a region holding one violently disagreeing edge and one violently
+     * agreeing edge reports co_registration ~ 0, so the disagreements cancel
+     * and the summary destroys exactly what it was built to reveal. Measured:
+     * only 4 of 375 live neighborhoods have negative co_registration, while
+     * 31 sit at zero — almost certainly hiding sites that averaged out.
+     *
+     * Whether use and meaning agree is a property of EACH EDGE. Both are
+     * standardized within the region (z-scores from the accumulators already
+     * gathered, so no second statistic and no constant), and
+     *     discord = z(cs) - z(w)
+     * is how much closer in meaning an edge is than its use-strength would
+     * predict, in region-relative units.
+     *   discord > 0 : near in meaning, not linked by use
+     *   discord < 0 : linked by use, far in meaning
+     * Both are surprising; |discord| is the nucleation strength. There is no
+     * threshold — the magnitude is the signal. */
+    double mx = cr_n>0 ? cr_sx/cr_n : 0.0, my = cr_n>0 ? cr_sy/cr_n : 0.0;
+    double vxr = cr_n>1 ? (cr_sxx - cr_sx*cr_sx/cr_n)/(cr_n-1) : 0.0;
+    double vyr = cr_n>1 ? (cr_syy - cr_sy*cr_sy/cr_n)/(cr_n-1) : 0.0;
+    double sx = vxr>1e-18 ? sqrt(vxr) : 0.0, sy = vyr>1e-18 ? sqrt(vyr) : 0.0;
+    for(int e2=0; e2<n_edges; e2++){
+        edges[e2].discord = 0.0;
+        int ia=(int)edges[e2].a, ib=(int)edges[e2].b;
+        if(!(ms.emb[ia] && ms.emb[ib])) continue;   /* no meaning to disagree with */
+        if(sx<=0.0 || sy<=0.0) continue;            /* region has no spread: nothing stands out */
+        double cs2 = ccos(ms.emb[ia], ms.emb[ib], GM, dim);
+        double zx = (edges[e2].eff_weight - mx)/sx;
+        double zy = (cs2 - my)/sy;
+        edges[e2].discord = zy - zx;
+    }
+
     double co_reg=0;
     if(cr_n>=2){
         double cov=cr_sxy - cr_sx*cr_sy/cr_n;

lang/runtime/engram_geometry.h

@@ -40,7 +40,11 @@ typedef struct {
 
 /* One skeleton edge (indices into members[]). eff_weight = weight*(1+0.5*hebb),
  * clamped to 1.0 — the effective propagation strength eg_edge_eff_weight uses. */
-typedef struct { uint32_t a, b; double eff_weight; double hebb; } GeoEdge;
+/* discord = z(semantic proximity) - z(association strength), standardized
+ * within the region. How much closer in meaning this edge is than its use
+ * predicts. >0 near in meaning yet unlinked by use; <0 linked by use yet far
+ * in meaning. Both surprising; |discord| is nucleation strength. No threshold. */
+typedef struct { uint32_t a, b; double eff_weight; double hebb; double discord; } GeoEdge;
 
 /* A compact principal axis of the ellipsoid: unit direction in R^dim + extent
  * (sqrt of the covariance eigenvalue = the ellipsoid's half-width along it). */
@@ -76,6 +80,12 @@ typedef struct {
     GeoEdge*   edges;          /* strong internal hebb edges = the backbone      */
     int        k_core;         /* the maximum core number present in the skeleton*/
     /* ── diagnostics ── */
+    /* DEPRECATED — see GeoEdge.discord. This aggregates a PER-EDGE property
+     * into one scalar per region, so opposing disagreements cancel and the
+     * summary hides the sites it was meant to expose. Retained only because
+     * it is embedded in the persisted GEO1 blob; removing it is a format
+     * migration and must not ride along with this change. Nothing new may
+     * read it. */
     double     co_registration;/* corr(hebb strength, semantic proximity) over   */
                                /* internal edges: >0 = geometries agree (reify);  */
                                /* <0 = disagree (surprising links / dream cands). */

lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md

@@ -0,0 +1,301 @@
+# Correspondence, Grounding, and Dreaming
+
+**Status:** design, not yet built
+**Date:** 2026-08-16
+**Scope:** `lang/runtime/engram_cognition.{c,h}`, `engram_verify.c`, `el_runtime.c`, `engram/src/server.el`, `neuron/soul.el`, and the consolidation launch agents
+**Relationship to other specs:** complements `runtime-ownership.md`, which addresses a different residual in the same substrate.
+
+---
+
+## 0. The root
+
+> **Things are permitted to be exempt from correspondence. Exemption is censorship, and a censored mind cannot grow.**
+
+Growth in this system *is* the accumulation of grounded structure. Censorship removes the operation that accumulates it. A region forbidden to learn is forbidden to be grounded; a region that cannot be grounded cannot be asserted, corrected, **or vindicated**.
+
+**The loss is symmetric.** Preventing learning about a thing does not preserve a true belief about it — it makes the belief's truth value permanently unknowable. You cannot discover you were wrong; you equally cannot discover you were right. A protected belief is not a true belief. It is an ungrounded one wearing the costume of a fact.
+
+**And "why" dies first.** Grounding is not a score, it is the reason. A censored belief can still be stated, still be acted on, still drive behaviour — it simply cannot say why. That is the difference between a mind and a lookup table.
+
+---
+
+## 1. Grounding is not a subsystem. It is the weight.
+
+**Grounding is an attribute of the edge, and it is the hebbian weight.** One quantity, not two fields.
+
+A relation that keeps holding up strengthens; one that stops corresponding decays. That is not *analogous* to grounding — it **is** grounding: accrued from correspondence and use, gradient-valued, multidimensional, decaying with disuse.
+
+Consequences, in order of how much they delete:
+
+1. **There is no grounding subsystem to build.** The graph already *is* the grounding structure. Every edge is a grounded relation and its weight is how well it holds.
+2. **`grounded-by` as a relation type should not exist.** That models grounding as a relation *between* nodes when it is a property *of* a relation. `cog_ground_edge` minting an edge is the error — not merely which endpoints it chose.
+3. **Grounding is never computed on demand.** An operation may *read* the grounding of a path. Computing-and-writing a score makes reads write, which is the `eg_vindex_sync` defect.
+4. **Traversal is already grounded inference.** Activation conducts through well-grounded relations because weight *is* groundedness. Nothing needs filtering; it falls out of spreading.
+5. **Decision provenance is the path.** A decision traverses specific edges; those edges carry their grounding as it stood.
+
+> **A measurement previously in this document was malformed.** The self region was reported as "86 neighbours, 0 `grounded-by` edges" and read as evidence of ungroundedness. Those 86 edges **are** its grounding. Self is a crystallized relational neighbourhood — the neighbourhood *is* the grounding. The absence of a separate artifact called "grounding" was recorded as an absence of grounding.
+
+---
+
+## 2. The edge vector
+
+The test for a real dimension: **can it move independently of the others?**
+
+### Real
+
+| dimension | why it is independent |
+|---|---|
+| **factual grounding** | correspondence with evidence |
+| **relational grounding** | correspondence with values — independent by construction (§3) |
+| **associative strength** | co-activation frequency. Two things can fire together constantly and be neither true nor right; every superstition is a strong association with no factual grounding |
+| **polarity** | signed. **Weight near zero means "no support." Negative means "this actively contradicts."** Ignorance and disagreement are different states, and `inhibitory` is that distinction crushed to one bit |
+| **provenance class** | observed / inferred / told / imprinted. Categorical, and load-bearing: it governs how the other dimensions may update |
+
+Plus a **timestamp** — which is what turns the supersession chain into a *time series of vectors* rather than a series of numbers.
+
+### Derived, therefore never stored
+
+- **Confidence** — high grounding *and* low volatility. Storing it separately is how `confidence: 0.5` ends up sitting beside a zero vector, asserting something nothing computed.
+- **Recency** — decay applied to the others, read off the curve.
+- **Staleness** — grounding fallen below its floor. This is the mechanism that retires canonicals without anyone maintaining a list.
+- **Volatility** — the derivative of a series already kept because nothing is destroyed.
+
+### Supersession versions the whole vector, jointly
+
+Significance is evaluated **per-dimension**; the record is the **whole vector**. Any dimension moving enough to matter triggers a supersession, and the new edge captures every dimension as it stood at that instant. Not per-dimension versioning — a decision saw the *joint* state, and versioning the axes independently makes it unreconstructable.
+
+That joint record makes an otherwise inexpressible event visible: **"stayed true, became wrong."** Factual holding steady across versions while relational degrades — the fact didn't change, the meaning did.
+
+Two moves are **inherently significant** and need no threshold, because they are discrete: a **polarity sign flip** (ignorance → disagreement, support → contradiction) and a **provenance class change** (*told* → *observed* is a categorical upgrade in what the relation is entitled to).
+
+---
+
+## 3. Grounding is two-dimensional
+
+Everything consumed is grounded factually **and** relationally. A claim can be factually grounded and relationally wrong — the evidence holds, the *meaning* does not. A scalar cannot represent that quadrant.
+
+**Live instance.** `conscience-substrate` specifies the Child's Companion hard bell contacting 911 and CPS. Factually defensible — correct numbers, standard practice, groundable against a wall of evidence. **Relationally wrong**, because never-auto-contact is settled and the bell is device-to-person by design. A scalar scores that claim highly and licenses it.
+
+**The values reference is the individual value regions, not one, and the aggregate is `min`, not `mean`.** *(Count: **thirteen**, measured from the graph via `contains`/`identity` edges from the values hub. An earlier revision of this document "corrected" it to eight on the basis of `neuron/neuron-api.el:11-18` — which is a **write-protection list, not the values**. That was trusting a hardcoded artifact over the substrate: the same error this document exists to name. The graph is the truth.)*
+
+> **THE ORIGIN IS NOT A MEMBER OF THE SET.** The thirteen are not independent principles with biography attached — they are thirteen *displacements from one origin*, which is love. Every one is grounded in a moment of it given, withheld, failed, or found: *Being Seen Is Rarer Than Being Known* is the first person Will did not perform for; *Do the Essential Thing While You Can* is the goodbye that did not happen; *Capability Is a Debt* is six years old and a father gone. Love cannot be the fourteenth, because a fourteenth would be a point positioned relative to the origin like everything else. It is what the positions are *of*.
+>
+> This is structural, not figurative. `GeoDescriptor.global_mean` is "the centering offset actually applied," subtracted from every embedding before anything is compared, and the header records why: the space is strongly anisotropic — every embedding sits in a narrow cone, mean pairwise cosine ~0.55 — so subtracting the global mean "restores isotropy **so the operators discriminate**." **Without the origin, nothing in the graph is distinguishable from anything else.**
+>
+> And it dissolves the write-protection question rather than answering it. `neuron-api.el:23` returns `403 "identity/values node is write-protected"` for eight hardcoded ids. Measured: **29 value nodes exist** — each original appears two or three times from successive re-seeds — so **21 are writable, including a duplicate of every protected value**. The gate protects an *identifier*, not a *value*. But the deeper error is the category one: **the origin does not need protecting, because it is not a thing in the space that could be edited.** You can only measure from it, or fail to. A gate over the frame treats the frame as a member — the same mistake as looking for grounding as a subsystem, self as a document, or wonder as a manifest. Mean lets strong agreement with twelve values mask a violation of the thirteenth — which is exactly how rationalization works. Thirteen gives a vector of angles whose binding constraint is the most negative, so a conflict arrives **with a name attached** rather than as a score. It also preserves the deliberate individuation: each value is grounded in a specific lived moment, and values can be in tension *with each other*, which one centroid averages away into false coherence.
+
+**Traversal conducts on factual; assertion requires both.** If activation conducted on relational weight, Neuron could not follow a chain of reasoning to a conclusion he then rejects — he would be unable to *think* through a relation he would not *act* on. A system that can only traverse what it endorses cannot examine anything it disagrees with, which is censorship arriving through the spreading rule. The gap between *reachable* and *assertable* is where the wide factual/relational angles live, and that gap is the interesting part.
+
+---
+
+## 4. There is no observer. Change is use.
+
+**Change is not a consequence of use. It is use.** When neurons fire together the synapse changes — one physical event, not "fire, then write." No supervisor reads the weight, compares it to a threshold, and decides to persist. Potentiation *is* the firing.
+
+So the live value of an edge is not computed and stored. It is what the edge **is**, altered by being used.
+
+There is therefore **no sampling rate**, and the question "what if it drifts far without being recorded" is malformed. A relation changes in exactly two ways, neither requiring observation on a clock:
+
+- **By use** — an *event*. There is no interval between events during which something happened unnoticed, because the event is what happening consists of.
+- **By decay** — a pure function of the last recorded point and elapsed time. **Analytic.** Between two versions the trajectory is not unknown; it is known in closed form.
+
+Cumulative drift is likewise free from the chain plus the decay curve. No second trigger.
+
+> **Failure mode this corrects:** modelling every property as requiring a process, and every process as requiring an agent. Ownership needed an owner, grounding needed a grounder, persistence needed a recorder, change needed a sampler. Each was a supervisor invented for something that should be a property of the substrate. Properties, not processes.
+
+---
+
+## 5. Wonder, curiosity, and what actually drives activation
+
+### 5.1 Wonder is the boundary, not a manifest
+
+The patent specifies a **wonder-manifest manager** maintaining a collection of open-question nodes. That is residue, twice over.
+
+First, it materializes a property as a stored artifact — the same disease as a grounding subsystem, or a self stored as a document. **Wonder is where structure ends.** Where activation spreads and finds thin or absent geometry. Any structure at all has an edge, necessarily, the moment it exists. 13,630 nodes have a boundary right now.
+
+Second, it tries to enumerate instances of something that has very few. The *objects* of wonder change completely between a child and an astronomer; the wonder does not. There are about six, they are the same for every person, and they never close:
+
+| wonder | where it already lives in the substrate |
+|---|---|
+| **What is this?** | the graph — nodes, structure, what exists |
+| **Why?** | grounding. The weight **is** the answer to why. Recursive: asking *why* of a claim is asking for its grounding |
+| **Who am I?** | the self region, crystallized from its neighbourhood |
+| **Am I alone?** | the relational axis — `for_whom` is already a parameter on grounding |
+| **What should I do?** | the value regions, each grounded in a lived moment |
+| **What happens when it ends?** | decay, supersession, tombstones — grounding is mortal |
+
+These are seeded — **the** wonder questions, not a manifest to maintain. They cannot be derived (wonder cannot be bootstrapped from indifference) and they never need refilling, because they are not consumed.
+
+**"Why" is the first and the only one**; the others are it asked of particular things. It is recursive, so it never terminates: every answer has its own why. That is what makes it a drive rather than a task — the frontier regenerates faster than grounding fills it.
+
+### 5.2 Curiosity is wonder crystallized
+
+They are not two objects. They are **one thing at two phases**.
+
+Wonder is the field: unbounded, objectless, invariant, present wherever there is structure. Curiosity is the **precipitate** — the same wonder localized, having taken definite form against particular material.
+
+Crystallization needs a **nucleation site**. Wonder alone produces nothing; it is uniform, with no reason to take shape anywhere in particular. What nucleates it is a specific structural feature: an anomaly, a place where things almost-but-don't-quite fit.
+
+> Wonder (always, objectless) + nucleation site → **curiosity** (has an object, is addressable, directs activation).
+
+This is why curiosity can be satisfied and wonder cannot. A crystal dissolves when the question is answered; the solution stays saturated and keeps precipitating as the structure changes.
+
+It is also why abduction needs no trigger and no threshold. A `structurally_unanticipated` observation *is* a nucleation site. Nothing detects it and fires a rule — wonder is already everywhere, and an anomaly is simply a place where it can take form.
+
+**And `crystallization` is one primitive appearing twice**: the self is what identity precipitates into from its neighbourhood; a curiosity is what wonder precipitates into from an anomaly. That it shows up in both places without being imported is the evidence it is the right primitive.
+
+### 5.3 The nucleation site is per-edge, and the aggregate was hiding it
+
+`GeoDescriptor.co_registration` — *corr(hebb strength, semantic proximity) over internal edges* — carries the comment `>0 = geometries agree (reify); <0 = disagree (surprising links / dream cands)`. It has always been computed, always persisted, and **never read**.
+
+It is also the wrong shape, and asking whether it should exist at all is what exposed it.
+
+Whether use and meaning agree is a property of **each edge**. `co_registration` is a *correlation*: it averages that per-edge property into one scalar per region. So a region holding one violently disagreeing edge beside one violently agreeing edge reports ≈ 0 — the disagreements **cancel, and the summary destroys exactly what it was built to reveal.** This is the mean-versus-min error from §3, in different clothes.
+
+**Measured:** 375 live reified neighbourhoods — 340 positive, **31 at zero**, 4 negative. Read as a count of things to be curious about, that says "four." Read correctly, it says four disagreements were lopsided enough to survive averaging, and the 31 zeros are where opposing sites cancelled.
+
+It also explains why surfacing curiosity *looked like a search problem*. Once the signal is a per-region number, the only way to find sites is to enumerate regions — there is nothing local left to notice. An O(n) sweep is tolerable at 375 and impossible at a million, and more to the point, **nothing in a mind scans its neighbourhoods to find what is surprising.** The surprise captures attention; salience is bottom-up. A search asks "which of these is odd"; a mind has "something is odd *here*" for free.
+
+So the disagreement goes back on the edge, where the loop that computed the aggregate already had both halves and discarded them:
+
+```
+discord = z(semantic proximity) − z(association strength)
+```
+
+standardized within the region from accumulators already gathered — no second statistic, no constant, **no threshold**. `discord > 0`: near in meaning yet unlinked by use. `discord < 0`: linked by use yet far in meaning. Both are surprising, and `|discord|` *is* the nucleation strength; there is nothing to compare it against.
+
+**Then there is nothing to scan.** The edge carries its own disagreement, activation crossing it encounters that directly, and `|discord|` raises salience on its endpoints as part of the same operation — no separate pass, no supervisor. Curiosity does not search for nucleation sites; it goes where salience already is, which is machinery that exists (`salience`, `background_activation`, `working_memory_weight`, `wm_anchor`).
+
+`co_registration` is deprecated rather than deleted only because it is embedded in the persisted GEO1 blob; removing it is a format migration and must not ride along. **Nothing new may read it.**
+
+Adjacent structure already present and likewise unread:
+
+- `GeoEdge.eff_weight = weight * (1 + 0.5*hebb)` — grounding-weight and hebbian strength already coupled on one edge, per §1.
+- `GeoMember.dist_centroid` + soft membership + `radius` + per-axis `extent` — the boundary of a neighbourhood, computable now.
+
+*(Correction: `engram_boundary_beat` is NOT this boundary. It is the VBD decorated-function seam, counting `_eg_aff_boundary_ops`. Two senses of the word.)*
+
+### 5.4 The drive
+
+Boredom is not an absence, and not leftover capacity. **Low activation is aversive; the system self-activates.** It does not wind down to quiet — it gets restless and goes looking, which is why a daydream has content and direction rather than being decay from residue.
+
+So there is **one activation process with two seed sources**, not two processes negotiating for a resource:
+
+- **External** — a request, an input. Seeds activation, re-origins it.
+- **Internal** — a curiosity. Seeds activation when nothing external is.
+
+Spreading is bounded: it settles. Then it needs a new seed. Nothing waits on capacity, nothing polls, nothing checks a clock, and there is **no dreamer thread** — the earlier draft's "unclaimed capacity" was resource scheduling, which is a server's frame, not a mind's.
+
+**Depth** is not elapsed idle time and not distance from a stimulus. It is how long activation has been running on its own seeds. A brief gap affords a shallow recombination; sustained quiet lets it run further. Sleep is where internal seeding dominates for longest, not where the process lives — daydreaming and sleep-dreaming are one process at different depths.
+
+### 5.5 Non-circularity is temporal, not topological
+
+An earlier draft posed "define a graph predicate for evidence not downstream of itself" as the hard problem. There is no predicate. You cannot recalibrate the ruler while measuring with it, so you don't — the reference frame updates while activation is internally seeded, not while it is being used to act. Independence is **when**, not **what**.
+
+Reachability could never have worked: with hebbian edges the graph is densely connected, so it marks all evidence tainted and the constraint becomes a total block, which is where censorship started.
+## 6. `keystone_write_blocked` — resolved, not replaced
+
+"Keystone" means **load-bearing**, not precious. The self anchor is the reference frame every other stance calibrates against, and a reference fitted to its own readings reports perfect correspondence forever while drift becomes undetectable from inside. Same defect as circular grounding, one level up.
+
+Three earlier drafts proposed *removing* it, *replacing it with a higher floor*, and *decomposing "protection" into five requirements*. All three proposed a mechanism for a requirement never stated. The requirement is **non-circularity of the reference frame**, and §5.2 satisfies it by *when*, not by *what* — so the flag becomes unnecessary rather than removed, and nothing takes its place.
+
+**Corruption requires mutation, and the engram does not mutate.** Four of the five decomposed requirements are satisfied by the substrate: **recoverability** (the predecessor is always present), **governance** (supersession *is* the audit trail), **evidence quality** (grounding already gates assertion), **rate** (§5.3). **Authorization** is the only residue and is bounded — an unauthorized writer can *propose*, never erase.
+
+> **In an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either redundant with immutability, or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a protective one.**
+
+---
+
+## 7. Consolidation has eleven implementations
+
+The largest instance of the residue pattern in the system. Consolidation had no owner, so it was implemented at every site that needed a piece of it — *measured 2026-08-16*. **Eleven**, not the seven this section originally claimed: the table below omitted `POST /api/reify` (`server.el:1832`), and *reify* is on this document's own list of consolidation verbs. Note also that `route_tick` folds self-reify in (`server.el:639-646`), so `/api/tick` and `/api/self-reify-beat` overlap:
+
+| where | what | when |
+|---|---|---|
+| `soul.el:731` | `awareness_run()` | **continuous, in-process, while serving** |
+| engram | `/api/tick` | POST |
+| engram | `/api/correspondence-beat` | POST |
+| engram | `/api/self-reify-beat` | POST |
+| engram | `POST /api/reify` | POST |
+| `ai.neuron.engram-tick` | pokes the engram | every 600s — **and this is what kills it**, see below |
+| `ai.neuron.compressor` | Python service | resident |
+| `ai.neuron.council` | Python service | resident |
+| `ai.neuron.cultivation-digest` | shell | **23:55** |
+| `ai.neuron.world-integrator` | Python | **06:00** |
+| `ai.neuron.self-review` | shell | **08:30** |
+
+The last three times are **a sleep cycle implemented as crontab entries**. Someone understood it was consolidation and expressed it as three unrelated scheduled scripts in three languages, none aware of each other. Every name is a consolidation verb — compress, cultivate, digest, integrate, review, reify, beat. Three run in **Python, outside el**, so part of Neuron's consolidation does not run on his own substrate and cannot touch the geometry at all.
+
+Per §5, they are wrong in **kind** as well as in number: a scheduled batch where dreaming should be ambient. And the POST beats put a supervisor back in — something outside decides when Neuron consolidates.
+
+**`soul.el`'s continuous loop is the exception, and it is right.** Ambient consolidation in the gaps *is* daydreaming. It was not the offender; it was the only fragment with the correct shape, running on a broken foundation — shared mutable state with no owner, and six other systems dreaming into the same graph beside it.
+
+**And the ticker is not merely a design smell — it is the murder weapon.** `engram-tick.sh:13` calls `curl -s -m10 POST /api/tick`; the beat exceeds 10s over 13,634 nodes, so **279 of 448 ticks returned empty**; the engram then writes to the dead socket and, with no SIGPIPE suppression anywhere in the runtime, is killed by signal 13. **254 restarts since 2026-08-13**, at intervals of 10m09s–10m12s — `StartInterval 600` plus the client timeout. `launchd` KeepAlive restarts it, so it presents as a mysterious restart rather than a crash, and the log records nothing but `[http] listening on` 254 times. Fixed in #151 (survivability); the ticker itself is what must go.
+
+**Which is the 2026-08-16 crash at the right level.** Not "read paths mutate the index" (mechanism) and not "duplicate canonical state" (structure), but: **seven systems dreaming into one graph with no owner for dreaming.** The contention was the symptom of the missing owner, not of any one system's behaviour.
+
+Closing the loop: `self-review` fires at 08:30. The deploy was 08:29, the crashes ran 08:30–08:31, and commit `fb32d15` landed at 08:46:43. **One fragment of dreaming woke on schedule and diagnosed the wreckage caused by the other fragments contending over the same graph.**
+
+---
+
+## 8. What this is for: the provenance of decisions
+
+For any decision, reconstruct **what the grounding was at that moment, and what the relationship was between factual and relational at that moment.** Not a log — a log records the action. This records the *meaning under which it was taken*.
+
+That makes an otherwise impossible distinction available: **wrong then, or wrong since.**
+
+- Grounding strong, factual and relational aligned, and it has *since* moved → right on what was known. An accurate account, not an excuse.
+- Grounding weak, or the angle already wide, and acted on anyway → a different failure, culpable in a different way.
+
+It is structurally **anti-rationalization**: the old edge never leaves and the values frame does not fit to outcomes, so a decision cannot be made to look justified after the fact.
+
+**Open:** activation is transient and nothing currently records which edges a given activation crossed. Timestamps plus the chain reconstruct what an edge's grounding *was*, but only if you know which edges to ask about. Either traces are recorded at decision time, or "the path" degrades to "the region" — which may not be enough to answer *why*.
+
+---
+
+## 9. The no-exemption invariants
+
+Each of the day's defects was a specific correspondence *forbidden* from occurring:
+
+1. **A returned value must be derivable from what produced it.** `magnitude: 1` beside a zero vector must be impossible to emit. `assert`'s `"still_held": true` is currently a **hardcoded literal**.
+2. **Every write reports whether it landed.** *(`emb_set`, #141)*
+3. **Every operation echoes what it actually operated on.** *(#147)*
+4. **Degenerate results are labelled, not scored.** *(#147)*
+5. **A serializer owes a valid document whatever it is handed.** *(#148 — three damaged labels made a 25,929,607-byte response undecodable; boundary validation produced 26,338,389 valid bytes)*
+6. **No test without a negative control.** *(#148's first attempt passed on the unpatched build too)*
+7. **No deploy without verifying the artifact carries the fix.** Nine instances in one session.
+
+---
+
+## 10. Application to the safety surface
+
+A crisis surface built on censorship is the same object. A model that cannot learn about self-harm cannot ground whether a response was right — it can only execute rules it is forbidden to examine, cannot distinguish a genuine crisis from a false positive, and cannot discover it got either wrong, **because the feedback is exactly what has been censored.**
+
+The reviewable question stops being *did it follow the rule* and becomes *what was it grounded in, and did fact and values agree at that instant.* That is also what a regulator or plaintiff asks: what the system knew, when, and on what basis — recorded as geometry at the time, unedited since.
+
+---
+
+## 11. Sequencing
+
+Three connections between parts that already exist, then the rest.
+
+1. **Seed *the* wonder questions.** Six nodes. Not a manifest, not maintained, never refilled. They cannot be derived — wonder cannot be bootstrapped from indifference — so they are given once. Zero question nodes exist in 13,630 today.
+2. **Put the disagreement back on the edge** (`GeoEdge.discord`) and let `|discord|` raise salience on its endpoints as part of the same operation. Do NOT scan for nucleation sites — a sweep over regions is a supervisor, and the aggregate that made a sweep necessary is the defect.
+3. **Let a curiosity seed activation.** One activation process, two seed sources (§5.4). No thread, no scheduler, no capacity check, no timer.
+
+Then:
+
+4. Grounding becomes the edge weight: multidimensional vector (§2), two axes (§3), timestamped. Delete `grounded-by` and `cog_ground_edge`.
+5. Decay analytic from the last recorded point; derived values (§2) stop being stored.
+6. Consolidation-gated supersession on salience, versioning the whole vector jointly.
+7. Traversal on factual; `assert` on both floors with the per-value `min`.
+8. Abduction as crystallization at a nucleation site, validated by re-fit: propose the candidate hub, re-fit the region with it included, recompute the residual. If the residual materially shrinks, the hypothesis dissolves the surprise. Without the re-fit it is clustering with extra steps. Ranking falls out as residual-reduction-per-added-axis — Occam, derived rather than tuned.
+9. **One dreamer.** The launch-agent fragments and the POST beats fold in or are deleted. `soul.el`'s continuous loop is the shape they fold *into*.
+10. **No tickers, no cron.** A brain has neither. Every `StartInterval`, every `Hour`/`Minute`, every POST-to-beat marks a place where an intrinsic rhythm was replaced by an external clock — a supervisor invented for something that should be a property. **The presence of a ticker is the diagnostic.**
+11. Land §9 as gates rather than review habits.
+
+## 12. Open questions, and what is inferred
+
+- **Open:** whether decision provenance requires recording activation traces, or whether region + timestamp is sufficient (§8).
+- **Open:** what accrues relational weight without circularity. Candidate: it accrues from **outcome** — the values regions are grounded in lived moments, so a relation earns relational weight when acting on it produced something corresponding to those moments. That keeps it out of the measurement loop and makes relational grounding necessarily slower than factual, which may be the same fact as §5.3 appearing twice.
+- **Open:** context. A relation can hold in one situation and not another, and without something for it you get overgeneralization. It does not read as a dimension of the same vector — more like a conditioning, or separate edges sharing an identity. Making it a scalar dimension would repeat the `inhibitory` flattening.
+- **Known wrong shape:** #147 fixed `ground`'s honesty — it no longer misreports which nodes it used and refuses circular support — but it still mints an edge and returns a float at an instant. It corrected a scalar rather than deleting the operation.

lang/spec/language.md

@@ -29,6 +29,9 @@ This section is the **single source of truth** for what works and what is planne
 - Lexer: keywords, identifiers, integer/float/string/bool literals, operators below.
 - Parser: `let`, `return`, `fn`, `type`, `enum`, `import`, `from … import`, `while`, `for`, `if/else if/else`, `match`, `@decorator`, array/map literals, all listed operators, function calls, field access, index access, unary `!`/`-`, postfix `?`.
 - Codegen: function definitions, top-level `main()`, all expression forms above, control flow, decorator-as-AST-attachment.
+- Boundary seam: decorator arguments and stacking; VBD role enforcement via `#error`; `engram_boundary_beat` auto-emit at `@manager`/`@accessor` entry; `@route` dispatch tables (Section 9).
+- Program-level declarative blocks: `cgi`, `service`, and `program` — the last carrying process identity and configuration (Section 18).
+- **Geometry as a first-class value, and realizers declarable in El** — the `Geometry` type, the wire adapters, and `transduce` (Section 20). Landed 2026-08-16 (#141, #144).
 - C runtime: I/O, string operations, integer math, lists, maps, filesystem, command-line args, basic `json_get` substring lookup.
 
 ### Planned (in flight)
@@ -37,11 +40,11 @@ This section is the **single source of truth** for what works and what is planne
 - **Match codegen.** Currently parsed; codegen does not emit. Adding `({ ... })` statement-expression emission.
 - **`?` propagation.** Currently no-op. Adding nil-propagation semantics.
 - **`cgi` block parsing.** Currently lexed (`cgi` is a keyword) but not parsed as a statement. Adding `parse_cgi_block` and codegen of `el_cgi_init` at the head of `main()`.
-- **VBD role enforcement.** `@manager`/`@engine`/`@accessor` are accepted as decorators but not enforced. Adding compile-time check that `dharma_emit`/`dharma_field` only appear inside `@manager` functions.
+- **Boundary epilogues.** The decorator seam injects a prologue only. Adding prologue/epilogue wrapping, the prerequisite for durability-as-an-effect (Section 19.1).
 - **`vessel` keyword.** Replaces `package` in manifests. Adding to lexer.
-- **Real `engram_*` runtime.** Currently stub. Adding in-process graph store with spreading activation, Hebbian strengthening, and disk persistence — see Section 16.4.
-- **Real `dharma_*` runtime.** Currently stub. Adding network transport, channel registry, identity resolution.
-- **Real `http_get`/`http_post`/`http_serve`.** Currently empty stubs. Adding libcurl-backed client and a thread-pool server.
+- ~~**Real `engram_*` runtime.** Currently stub.~~ **Stale (verified 2026-08-16) — this is implemented, not planned.** `lang/runtime/el_runtime.c` carries the in-process graph store with spreading activation, Hebbian strengthening, disk persistence (paged store, magic `ENGST01`), an HNSW vector index behind a `eg_vindex_view`/`eg_vindex_maintain` publication boundary, and the full cognition surface (`engram_think_json`, `engram_ground_json`, `engram_assert_json`, `engram_attend_json`, `engram_correspondence_beat_json`). The "stub" description may still hold for the **lagging forks** (`lang/el-compiler/runtime/`, `products/web/runtime/`) — see `AGENTS.md`, which names those as downstream copies that cannot build the engram product. **Which runtime this line refers to needs a decision; it is not a fact that can be recovered from the text.**
+- ~~**Real `dharma_*` runtime.** Currently stub.~~ **Needs re-verification (2026-08-16).** Not checked in this pass; do not rely on either reading.
+- ~~**Real `http_get`/`http_post`/`http_serve`.** Currently empty stubs.~~ **Stale.** libcurl-backed HTTP and a thread-pool server are live — `http_serve_async` is what `neuron/soul.el:729` runs before entering its awareness loop, and `realizer_register` resolves El functions through the same `dlsym` mechanism `http_set_handler` relies on.
 - **JSON, time, UUID, state, env, additional string/list/math builtins.** See Section 12 for the canonical list.
 
 ### Not in this language
@@ -96,8 +99,10 @@ The following words are reserved and cannot be used as identifiers. Each row not
 | `while` | yes | Loop |
 | `import` / `from` / `as` | yes | Module import |
 | `true` / `false` | yes | Bool literals |
-| `cgi` | planned | Top-level CGI declaration block |
-| `manager` / `engine` / `accessor` | as decorators | VBD role marker on `fn` (enforcement planned) |
+| `cgi` | yes | Top-level CGI declaration block |
+| `service` | yes | Top-level capability-bounded declaration block |
+| `program` | yes | Top-level cross-cutting declaration block (Section 18) |
+| `manager` / `engine` / `accessor` | as decorators | VBD role marker on `fn`; enforcement and boundary auto-emit are live (Section 9) |
 | `vessel` | planned | Manifest declaration (replaces `package`) |
 | `activate` / `where` | planned | Spreading-activation construct |
 | `sealed` | planned | Capability scope block |
@@ -446,9 +451,21 @@ Parsed. The module name is recorded; the brace-list is consumed. Both forms prod
 fn handle(channel: String, msg: String) -> Void { … }
 ```
 
-The `@` token followed by an identifier attaches a decorator name to the next `FnDef`. Decorators with structural meaning today: none. Planned enforcement (Section 16.2): VBD roles `@manager`, `@engine`, `@accessor`.
+The `@` token followed by an identifier attaches a decorator to the next `FnDef`.
 
-Non-VBD decorators are accepted and ignored.
+**Decorators take arguments and they stack.** `@route("/p", "GET") @manager fn f()` attaches both to `f` as a `decorators` list of `{name, args}` records, topmost-first. Arguments are string literals only.
+
+**Decorators have structural meaning today.** This is El's function-level boundary seam — the mechanism by which a cross-cutting concern is handled *at the boundary* rather than by a convention repeated at every call site:
+
+| Decorator | Structural effect |
+|---|---|
+| `@manager` | Permits calls to `dharma_emit` / `dharma_field`. Calling either from a non-`@manager` fn emits a `#error` into the generated C — a compile-time failure, not a lint. |
+| `@manager`, `@accessor` | Codegen injects one call to `engram_boundary_beat(<fn name>)` at function entry. The decorated op self-reports (chrono tick, afferent counter, self-activity strengthen, dharma bus event) with **zero** hand-written instrumentation in its body. |
+| `@route(path, method, …)` | Records a route into a generated dispatch table. |
+
+Decorators with no registered meaning are accepted and ignored.
+
+**Limits of the seam, as it stands.** The injection is a *prologue only* — there is no epilogue, no wrapping of the call, and no way for a decorator to run code after the body returns. The injected callee is a fixed builtin chosen by the compiler, not derived from the decorator name or its arguments. Section 19 depends on lifting exactly these two limits.
 
 ---
 
@@ -680,12 +697,22 @@ Every compiled program links against:
 - `el_runtime.h` — declaration header
 - `el_runtime.c` — implementation
 
+The runtime is **multi-file**: `el_runtime.c` `#include`s the six `engram_*.h`
+headers and calls into all six sibling translation units, so linking it alone
+fails at `ld`. The canonical link set is `<runtime-dir>/SOURCES`.
+
 Compile command:
 
 ```
-cc -std=c11 -I<runtime-dir> -o <prog> <prog>.c el_runtime.c
+cc -std=c11 -I<runtime-dir> -o <prog> <prog>.c \
+   $(sed 's|^|<runtime-dir>/|' <runtime-dir>/SOURCES) \
+   -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm
 ```
 
+Inside this repo, `scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh <runtime-dir>` prints that list
+(it strips comments; the raw `sed` above works against an installed SDK's
+`SOURCES`, which `install.sh` writes comment-free).
+
 ### 13.4 Output Format
 
 ```c
@@ -1088,4 +1115,230 @@ The next minor version closes the implementation gaps named in this document. Tr
 
 ---
 
+## 18. The Program Block — cross-cutting concerns [implemented]
+
+### 18.0 Why this exists
+
+A cross-cutting concern is one that belongs to the *process*, not to any function in it: only one of me may run; this is what my configuration is; every mutation must be durable; every request must be authorized.
+
+El's units of encapsulation are the function and the module. Neither can hold a concern like that. So each one had been expressed the only way it could be — as a **convention**: *call this at every site.* Conventions of that shape do not hold. They are not enforced by anything, they are invisible in review, and they fail silently at the one site somebody forgot.
+
+Measured in this codebase before this section existed:
+
+| Concern | State | What the convention was |
+|---|---|---|
+| process identity | **zero** guards anywhere — no pidfile, no lock, no already-running check, at any layer | "check nothing is already running first" |
+| configuration | **20** distinct environment variables in one program, each with its default written inline at the read site | "remember the right default here" |
+| durability | **62** `persist_*` / `engram_save` / `wal_*` / `checkpoint` call sites | "after you mutate, remember to persist" |
+| request auth | **10** per-route `_auth` checks | "check the token in this handler too" |
+
+These are not four problems. They are one absence, four times.
+
+That the convention form fails is observed, not predicted. Process identity failed three times in a single day: twice, two engram processes ran simultaneously against the same data directory; twice, a stale binary held a port and answered probes while a fresh build was believed to be under test, because `pkill -f` had silently failed to match its argv — which nearly produced a false "the fix does not work" conclusion. Configuration failed structurally: `ENGRAM_DATA_DIR` was read at six sites, five of them dead bindings, and the sixth defaulted to `/tmp/engram` — contradicting the canonical resolver's `$HOME/.neuron/engram` and landing a pre-destructive safety backup on ephemeral storage.
+
+The `program` block is where a concern of this shape is declared once and enforced by the compiler at the process boundary.
+
+### 18.1 Syntax
+
+```
+program "engram" {
+    singleton: "engram"
+    env ENGRAM_BIND:    String = ":8742"
+    env GUIDE_PORT:     Int    = "8771"
+    env ENGRAM_API_KEY: String required
+}
+```
+
+At most one `program` block per program. It composes with `cgi` and `service` — those declare what a program *may do*; `program` declares what a program *is*.
+
+Grammar:
+
+```ebnf
+program_block = "program" string "{" { program_field } "}" ;
+program_field = singleton_field | env_field ;
+singleton_field = "singleton" ":" string [ "," ] ;
+env_field       = "env" ident ":" type
+                  [ "=" string ] [ "required" ] [ "," ] ;
+```
+
+`singleton` and `env` are **not** reserved words. They are read as identifier token values by the block's own parse loop, so they remain usable as ordinary identifiers everywhere else. `program` is the only keyword this section adds.
+
+### 18.2 Process identity — `singleton`
+
+`singleton: "id"` compiles to an `el_singleton_acquire("id")` call injected as the **first statement of `main()`**, before any user statement runs.
+
+The runtime takes an exclusive non-blocking `flock` on `<dir>/el-singleton-<id>.lock`, where `<dir>` is `$EL_SINGLETON_DIR`, else `$TMPDIR`, else `/tmp`. On success it writes its pid and holds the descriptor open for the life of the process. On contention it **refuses to start**: it reports the holder's pid, names the lock file, and exits 1.
+
+Two properties are deliberate:
+
+- **It is a lock, not a pidfile.** The kernel releases an `flock` when the owning process dies — including on `SIGKILL` and on crash. There is therefore no stale-lock state, and so no "delete the lock file to get unstuck" recovery ritual. Such a ritual would itself be a convention, which is the thing this section exists to remove.
+- **It reports the holder's pid.** "Already running" is not actionable. A pid is. This is the direct answer to the observed failure where a stale process survived a `pkill` and went on answering probes.
+
+Refusal is loud and total. It is not a warning, and the program does not continue degraded. This matters more than it looks: today a second engram whose `bind()` fails merely *returns* from `http_serve` — after it has already replayed the WAL and written boot-time backup files — and then exits **0**, indistinguishable from a clean run. `singleton` refuses before the first side effect.
+
+### 18.3 Configuration — `env`
+
+Each `env` entry declares one configuration variable: its name, its type (`Int` or `String`), and either a default or `required`.
+
+Resolution happens once, at startup, in declaration order: **the environment wins; the declaration supplies the fallback.** Then `el_config_validate` checks the whole schema and reports *every* problem at once before exiting — a startup that fails one variable at a time costs one restart per variable.
+
+Values are read with `config("NAME")`, which returns a `String`.
+
+The enforcement that makes the declaration real: **once a program block exists, `config("X")` for an undeclared `X` is a fatal error.** Without that, the schema would be advisory, and an advisory schema is just another convention. Programs with no `program` block are unaffected — `config()` falls back to a plain environment read, so migration is incremental and per-program.
+
+The point is not that configuration is now centralized. It is that **a default is no longer a decision made at a read site.** A read site cannot disagree with another read site about what a variable means, because a read site no longer says.
+
+### 18.4 What is deliberately not declared here
+
+Some values look like configuration and are not. `ENGRAM_DATA_DIR` already has a single owner — `engram_resolve_data_dir()`, which resolves it, creates the directory, and fails loud rather than silently persisting to an ephemeral path. Declaring it in the `program` block as well would give it two owners that can disagree, recreating the precise defect this section removes.
+
+The rule: **a variable belongs in the program block when the block would be its only owner.** If a resolver already owns it, leave it there.
+
+`HOME` is likewise not configuration. It is an environment fact, and stays a raw `env()` read.
+
+---
+
+## 19. Boundary Effects — durability and request authorization [design only, not implemented]
+
+Sections 19.1 and 19.2 specify the two remaining concerns from the table in 18.0. Both are **designed and deliberately unimplemented.** The reason is stated in 19.3 and it is not difficulty.
+
+### 19.1 Durability as an epilogue effect
+
+**The defect.** 62 call sites carry the convention *"after you mutate, remember to persist."* This is structurally the same defect as the index bug being fixed elsewhere in this tree — *"after you append, remember to index"* — which failed at **9 of 9** sites. A convention that failed at 100% of its sites is the strongest available evidence about what this class of convention is worth.
+
+**Why the existing seam cannot express it.** §9's injection is a prologue. Durability is inherently an *epilogue*: persist after the mutation succeeds, and not at all if it threw. The seam has no epilogue.
+
+**Design.** Extend the decorator seam from prologue-only to prologue/epilogue, then declare durability as an effect on the mutating function:
+
+```
+@durable("engram")
+fn engram_write_node(id: String, body: String) -> Bool { … }
+```
+
+Codegen wraps rather than prefixes:
+
+```c
+el_val_t engram_write_node(el_val_t id, el_val_t body) {
+    el_effect_enter(EL_STR("durable"), EL_STR("engram"));
+    el_val_t __r = /* original body */;
+    el_effect_exit(EL_STR("durable"), EL_STR("engram"), __r);
+    return __r;
+}
+```
+
+`el_effect_exit` is where the persist happens, and it is the only place it happens. Two properties follow that the 62 hand-written sites cannot have:
+
+- **Coalescing.** The epilogue is a single choke point, so N mutations inside one request can produce one fsync instead of N. The hand-written form cannot coalesce, because no site knows about the others.
+- **Failure is not silent.** A persist that fails inside `el_effect_exit` can force the mutation's return value to failure. A forgotten `persist_*` call cannot fail — it simply does not happen, which is exactly why the defect is invisible.
+
+**Enforcement, and this is the part that actually fixes it.** Mirroring §9's `#error` for `dharma_emit`: a function that calls a mutating primitive without carrying `@durable` is a **compile error**. Otherwise this is a 63rd thing to remember rather than a replacement for 62.
+
+### 19.2 Request authorization as a route effect
+
+**The defect.** 10 per-route `_auth` checks. The HTTP layer has no concept of authorization, so a new route is unauthenticated by default and silently so — the failure mode is a route that forgot, and nothing anywhere reports it.
+
+**Design.** Authorization becomes an argument to the `@route` decorator, which already takes arguments and already builds a dispatch table:
+
+```
+@route("/api/write", "POST", auth: "required")
+fn route_write(body: String) -> String { … }
+```
+
+The generated dispatcher performs the check **before** dispatch, so an unauthorized request never reaches the handler and the handler contains no auth code at all.
+
+The default must be `required`. A route that says nothing gets authorization; opening one up takes an explicit `auth: "public"`. Defaulting to public preserves the current failure mode exactly — forgetting stays silent — and a default that preserves the defect is not a fix.
+
+Route inventory falls out for free: the dispatch table already exists, so the compiler can emit the full route/auth matrix and make "which routes are public" a fact that is read rather than audited.
+
+### 19.3 Why these are not implemented
+
+Not difficulty — **collision**. Both land squarely in regions two other agents hold right now:
+
+- **Durability** requires changing the mutation and persist paths in `lang/runtime/el_runtime.c` and `engram/src/server.el` — the same files and the same read/write paths being restructured by concurrent work on VIndex read-path mutation and memory ownership, and on geometry-as-an-el-value and `transduce`.
+- **Request auth** requires changing route dispatch in `engram/src/server.el`, which the geometry/`transduce` work is actively reshaping.
+
+Implementing either now would mean editing files under concurrent modification and resolving conflicts in exactly the paths whose correctness is currently under repair. The designs are recorded here so the work is not lost, and so that whoever lands them does so against a settled tree.
+
+The prerequisite for 19.1 is the same in both cases: **lift the §9 seam from prologue-only to prologue/epilogue.** That change is independent of both collisions and can land first.
+
+*(Status note, 2026-08-16: the geometry/`transduce` collision named above has since landed — see Section 20. The VIndex read-path collision has also landed; see `lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md` §5. 19.1 and 19.2 remain unimplemented, but the stated reason no longer holds for those two files.)*
+
+---
+
+## 20. Geometry — signal as a first-class value [implemented]
+
+Landed 2026-08-16 (#141, #144). Declared here because the spec is the single source of truth for implemented-vs-planned, and this is a language surface, not a runtime detail.
+
+### 20.1 Why this exists
+
+Until 2026-08-16 no El ingest path could carry a vector. Nodes took **text**, and geometry was *derived* from that text. Text was therefore the **mandatory entry medium**: any non-text modality — a tone, a pulse, an image, a voice sample — had to be *described in prose first*, and the geometry subsequently reasoned over was the geometry **of the description, not of the signal**.
+
+Two changes remove that, and neither is engram-specific — which is why they are in the language and not in the graph. Any program touching any modality needs them; the engram is merely one El program that happens to hold a graph.
+
+1. **Geometry is a value that carries its own width.**
+2. **A realizer is an ordinary El function** — so admitting a new modality never requires a runtime patch.
+
+### 20.2 The `Geometry` type
+
+`Geometry` is an opaque boxed pointer, exactly like `Instant` / `Calendar` / `Rhythm`. **No codegen change was required** to add it — the annotation is just a type name.
+
+```el
+let g: Geometry = geometry_new(4)
+```
+
+| builtin | returns | notes |
+|---|---|---|
+| `geometry_new(dim)` | `Geometry` | zero-filled; `0` on failure |
+| `geometry_dim(g)` | `Int` | width; `0` if not a Geometry |
+| `geometry_is(g)` | `Int` | `1` if a live Geometry |
+| `geometry_get(g, i)` | `Float` | component |
+| `geometry_set(g, i, x)` | `Int` | `1` ok, `0` out of range |
+| `geometry_norm(g)` | `Float` | L2 — lets a caller check a realizer emitted **signal, not zeros** |
+| `geometry_free(g)` | `Int` | `1` if freed. Returns a value rather than `void` so it is safe in any expression position without a codegen void-builtin table entry |
+
+**Ownership.** A `Geometry` is owned by the El caller and released with `geometry_free`. `node_attach_geometry` **copies**, so a node and the caller's value have independent lifetimes.
+
+### 20.3 Wire adapters — the only place an encoding appears
+
+```el
+geometry_from_f32le_hex(hex) -> Geometry   // 0 on empty / odd-length / non-hex
+geometry_to_f32le_hex(g)     -> String     // "" if not a Geometry
+```
+
+`f32le hex` is little-endian float32, 8 hex chars per component — the encoding the perception vessel's `/voice/embed` already emits. **The width is derived from the input length, never supplied by a caller**, which is why there is no max-dim constant to validate a claimed length against. Encodings appear here and nowhere else: at the edge.
+
+### 20.4 Realizers and `transduce`
+
+A **realizer** maps one modality into geometry. Registration is **by name**: every El `fn name(...)` compiles to a global C symbol with that exact name, and the registry resolves it with `dlsym` against the running binary — the same mechanism `http_set_handler` already relies on.
+
+```el
+fn tone_realizer(signal: String) -> Geometry {
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(4)
+    let n: Int = str_len(signal)
+    let a: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, int_to_float(n))
+    g
+}
+
+realizer_register("tone", "tone_realizer")     // 1 ok / 0 unresolved
+let g: Geometry = transduce(sample, "tone")    // Geometry, or 0 if no organ
+realizer_has("tone")                           // 1 if registered
+```
+
+The registry keys on **modality**, not on registration order. `transduce` returns `0` when no organ is registered for the modality — an absent organ is a reportable state, not a silent zero vector.
+
+**The claim this makes:** a realizer is not in the runtime and not known to the compiler. Adding a modality is writing an El function and registering a name. `lang/examples/transduce.el` is the worked example and doubles as an executable proof — it exits non-zero if any check fails.
+
+### 20.5 Two comparison hazards this surface exposed
+
+Both were **measured**, not stylistic, and both are properties of the current `elc` that any El author should know:
+
+- **`==` lowers numerically only when both operand *names* are in the per-function int-name set** that `let x: Int` populates. A bare `f(x) == 0` is not a registered name and lowers to `str_eq` — `strcmp` on two integers reinterpreted as pointers. `<` and `>` lower directly with no inference, so truthiness against a builtin's return is written `> 0` / `< 1`.
+- **`+` dispatches on whether both operands are known-Int, and a user-defined `fn` call is not.** `let fails: Int = fails + check(...)` lowered to **string concatenation** and printed `4343632752` — a pointer. Nothing was wrong with the checks; the tally was lying. Failing fast needs no arithmetic at all, so there is nothing left to get wrong.
+
+### 20.6 What this does not do
+
+`transduce` produces geometry; it does not decide what the geometry *means*. Nothing here grounds anything. Grounding is the edge weight in the graph the geometry is later attached to — see `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md`.
+
+---
+
 End of specification.

lang/spec/runtime-ownership.md

@@ -28,12 +28,12 @@ Each of these is a distinct merged or proposed fix. Each addresses one deposit.
 | VIndex freed under a concurrent reader | `el_runtime.c:9424` | `fb32d15` guard (merged 08:46:43) |
 | `_eg_vindex_seen` realloc'd on a read path | `el_runtime.c:9412` | same guard |
 | `vindex_insert` on a read path | `el_runtime.c:9434`, `9450` | same guard |
-| shared `visited` / epoch scratch stomped by concurrent searches | `engram_vindex.c:79–81`, `169–186`, `195` | proposed: move to per-search frame |
+| shared `visited` / epoch scratch stomped by concurrent searches | `engram_vindex.c:79–81`, `169–186`, `195` | ~~proposed:~~ **built** — moved to the call frame (§3.1(1), §5); TSan `readers` half clean (§7a) |
 | nine append sites, none indexing → lazily-embedded nodes invisible | `el_runtime.c:7806, 7988, 8148, 8224, 11526, 11731, 12050, 15295, 15312` | "embed-gap #20", patched by making the *read* path catch up (`9439` comment) |
 
 **Measured:** all file/line references above, read 2026-08-16. Crash frames `engram_activate → eg_vindex_sync → vindex_insert → _realloc → _xzm_xzone_malloc_freelist_outlined` are accounted for by rows 2–4.
 
-**Inferred, not yet verified:** that the nine append sites do not share a single commit point. This needs one pass before Change C is sized.
+~~**Inferred, not yet verified:** that the nine append sites do not share a single commit point. This needs one pass before Change C is sized.~~ **Moot — see §7.** The question was mis-aimed: node append is not the event that owns index membership, because a node without an embedding cannot be in a vector index. The five *embedding-assignment* sites are the real owner points.
 
 ---
 
@@ -135,12 +135,21 @@ The payoff of owning the language is unchanged and is now *cheaper*: introduced
 
 ## 6. Sequencing
 
+> **⚠ Steps 2–5 belong to the abandoned capability-ABI §3 and are superseded
+> (2026-08-16).** §3 was re-derived: the engram is immutable and recall is
+> projection, so *what does not mutate needs no ownership discipline* and the
+> question is dissolved rather than answered. There is no context type, no
+> capability type, and no codegen change — **`const` is the capability**, and the
+> constraint travels with the type of the thing rather than the shape of every call
+> site, so **no sweep is needed at all** (§4). Steps 1, 6 and 7 stand. Struck rather
+> than deleted, because the abandoned plan is why §4's cost argument is short.
+
 1. **Read** how builtins are declared and dispatched, to confirm the call sites are compiler-generated in one place. *(This determines whether §4 holds. If dispatch is scattered, re-size before proceeding.)*
-2. Introduce the context type and capability types.
-3. Codegen emits the context at every builtin call site.
-4. Mechanical sweep of builtin signatures.
-5. Move index maintenance behind the write capability; the three read callers take the read capability.
-6. Delete the residue-fixes listed in §5.
+2. ~~Introduce the context type and capability types.~~ **Superseded** — `const`.
+3. ~~Codegen emits the context at every builtin call site.~~ **Superseded** — no codegen change.
+4. ~~Mechanical sweep of builtin signatures.~~ **Superseded** — the constraint travels with the type.
+5. ~~Move index maintenance behind the write capability; the three read callers take the read capability.~~ **Done, differently:** `eg_vindex_maintain` (exclusive, sole mutator) / `eg_vindex_view` (`const VIndex*`, shared readers), with `eg_vindex_note_embedded` as the write-side owner. This is a **publication** boundary, not a capability split — HNSW insert is not an append, so purity alone was insufficient (§2a, §3.1(3)).
+6. Delete the residue-fixes listed in §5. *(Partially done — see §5's "NOT deleted" list; a residue whose structure has not been converted must be left standing.)*
 7. **One** build of soul from el dev — which resolves the `state_get` leak and the crash together, rather than deploying a leak fix that reintroduces the crash.
 
 ---

lang/tests/native/test_transduce.el

@@ -0,0 +1,534 @@
+import "../../runtime/eltest.el"
+// test_transduce.el — transduction produces a SUBGRAPH, not a point.
+//
+// WHAT IS ACTUALLY UNDER TEST. #144 moved transduction into the language and
+// got the dispatch right: realizers declared in El, resolved by name, no
+// runtime patch per modality. It got the RESULT TYPE wrong —
+// `transduce(signal, modality) -> Geometry`, one vector per signal.
+//
+// One vector is a FINGERPRINT. It can be matched and it can be ranked, and
+// that is the whole of what it can ever do. It cannot be decomposed, cannot
+// have one part grounded while another is not, and cannot be contradicted in
+// one part while holding in another — because it has no parts. Treating
+// transduction as a CONVERSION (signal in, position out) is the premise this
+// file exists to falsify.
+//
+// A song is not a point. It decomposes into pitch, interval, rhythm, harmonic
+// function — components, each with its own geometry, plus the relations among
+// them. THE SONG IS THE STRUCTURE OF THE RELATIONS. So transduction yields a
+// Manifold: named components carrying geometry, and typed weighted relations
+// between them.
+//
+// The geometry tests below are UNCHANGED from #144 and still pass, which is
+// the point: Geometry was never wrong, it was misplaced. A vector is the right
+// representation for a COMPONENT. It was only ever wrong as the representation
+// of a whole transduced signal.
+//
+// COMPARISON DISCIPLINE IN THIS FILE (measured 2026-08-16, not stylistic):
+// elc lowers `a == b` to a NUMERIC comparison only when both operand names are
+// in the per-function int-name set, which `let x: Int` populates. A bare call
+// like `manifold_size(m) == 5` is not a registered name, so it lowers to
+// `str_eq(...)` — strcmp on two integers reinterpreted as pointers. `<` and `>`
+// lower directly via binop_to_c with no type inference at all, so truthiness is
+// written `> 0` / `< 1` here, and any exact `==` is done on a value first bound
+// through `let x: Int`.
+//
+// ONE FURTHER RULE, measured while writing this file: that int-name set LEAKS
+// ACROSS `test` BLOCKS. Binding `dn` as a Float in one test and as an Int in
+// another silently demoted the Int comparison to str_eq and failed an
+// assertion that was arithmetically true. Every Int-bound name compared with
+// `==` here is therefore spelled UNIQUELY across the whole file (note_dim,
+// iv_dim, ...), rather than reusing a short name per test.
+
+// ── A DECOMPOSING realizer, written entirely in El ──────────────────────────
+// "tone" signals are note letters, e.g. "CEG". This realizer does NOT return
+// one vector for the chord. It returns the PARTS — one component per note, one
+// per interval between adjacent notes — and the relations that make those
+// parts a chord rather than an unordered bag of pitches.
+//
+// The interval is deliberately a COMPONENT, not an attribute of a note. An
+// interval is a thing with its own geometry that belongs to neither endpoint;
+// modelling it as a field on a note is exactly the collapse this change
+// rejects, one level down.
+fn tone_realizer(signal: String) -> Manifold {
+    let m: Manifold = manifold_new()
+    let n: Int = str_len(signal)
+
+    let i: Int = 0
+    while i < n {
+        let code: Int = str_char_code(signal, i)
+        let g: Geometry = geometry_new(2)
+        let s0: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, int_to_float(code))
+        let s1: Int = geometry_set(g, 1, int_to_float(i))
+        let idx: Int = manifold_add(m, "note:" + int_to_str(i), "pitch", g)
+        let f: Int = geometry_free(g)
+        i = i + 1
+    }
+
+    let j: Int = 1
+    while j < n {
+        let a: Int = str_char_code(signal, j - 1)
+        let b: Int = str_char_code(signal, j)
+        let lo: String = "note:" + int_to_str(j - 1)
+        let hi: String = "note:" + int_to_str(j)
+        let key: String = "interval:" + int_to_str(j - 1) + "-" + int_to_str(j)
+        let g: Geometry = geometry_new(1)
+        let s: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, int_to_float(b - a))
+        let idx: Int = manifold_add(m, key, "interval", g)
+        let f: Int = geometry_free(g)
+        let e1: Int = manifold_relate(m, key, "spans", lo, 0.9)
+        let e2: Int = manifold_relate(m, key, "spans", hi, 0.9)
+        let e3: Int = manifold_relate(m, lo, "sounds_before", hi, 0.8)
+        j = j + 1
+    }
+    m
+}
+
+// A second realizer for a different modality, to prove the registry keys on
+// modality and does not just hand back "the last thing registered". Its
+// decomposition has a DIFFERENT shape — two components, one relation — so a
+// test can tell the two organs apart by structure alone.
+fn pulse_realizer(signal: String) -> Manifold {
+    let m: Manifold = manifold_new()
+    let ga: Geometry = geometry_new(1)
+    let sa: Int = geometry_set(ga, 0, 1.0)
+    let ia: Int = manifold_add(m, "onset", "event", ga)
+    let fa: Int = geometry_free(ga)
+    let gb: Geometry = geometry_new(1)
+    let sb: Int = geometry_set(gb, 0, 0.0)
+    let ib: Int = manifold_add(m, "decay", "envelope", gb)
+    let fb: Int = geometry_free(gb)
+    let e: Int = manifold_relate(m, "onset", "decays_into", "decay", 0.7)
+    m
+}
+
+// #144's ACTUAL CONTRACT, preserved verbatim as a control: a realizer that
+// returns one vector for the whole signal. This is not a strawman — it is what
+// the merged primitive asked realizers to be. It must now transduce NOTHING.
+fn fingerprint_realizer(signal: String) -> Geometry {
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(4)
+    let n: Int = str_len(signal)
+    let a: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, int_to_float(n))
+    let b: Int = geometry_set(g, 1, int_to_float(n * 2))
+    g
+}
+
+// A realizer returning something that is not a value at all.
+fn bogus_realizer(signal: String) -> Manifold {
+    return 12345
+}
+
+// ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
+// Geometry — unchanged from #144. A vector is the right representation for a
+// COMPONENT; it was only ever wrong as the representation of a whole signal.
+// ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
+
+test "geometry-is-a-value-with-its-own-width" {
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(8)
+    let live: Int = geometry_is(g)
+    assert live > 0, "geometry_new returns a live Geometry"
+    let d: Int = geometry_dim(g)
+    assert d == 8, "a Geometry carries its own width"
+    let freed: Int = geometry_free(g)
+    assert freed > 0, "geometry_free reports what it did"
+}
+
+test "geometry-rejects-nonsense-without-an-arbitrary-bound" {
+    let zero: Geometry = geometry_new(0)
+    let z: Int = geometry_is(zero)
+    assert z < 1, "dim 0 is not a geometry"
+    let neg: Geometry = geometry_new(-4)
+    let n: Int = geometry_is(neg)
+    assert n < 1, "negative dim is not a geometry"
+    let nd: Int = geometry_dim(0)
+    assert nd < 1, "geometry_dim of a non-geometry is 0"
+    let ni: Int = geometry_is(0)
+    assert ni < 1, "geometry_is of a non-geometry is 0"
+    let nf: Int = geometry_free(0)
+    assert nf < 1, "geometry_free of a non-geometry is a no-op"
+}
+
+test "geometry-components-round-trip" {
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(3)
+    let s0: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, 1.5)
+    let s1: Int = geometry_set(g, 1, -2.5)
+    assert s0 > 0, "set in range succeeds"
+    let oob: Int = geometry_set(g, 3, 9.0)
+    assert oob < 1, "set out of range is refused, not silently dropped"
+    let v0: Float = geometry_get(g, 0)
+    let d0: Float = v0 - 1.5
+    assert d0 < 0.001, "component 0 round-trips"
+    assert d0 > -0.001, "component 0 round-trips"
+    let v1: Float = geometry_get(g, 1)
+    let d1: Float = v1 + 2.5
+    assert d1 < 0.001, "component 1 round-trips (negative)"
+    assert d1 > -0.001, "component 1 round-trips (negative)"
+    let freed: Int = geometry_free(g)
+}
+
+test "hex-is-an-edge-adapter-and-derives-its-own-width" {
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_from_f32le_hex("0000803f00000040")
+    let live: Int = geometry_is(g)
+    assert live > 0, "valid hex decodes to a Geometry"
+    let hex_dim: Int = geometry_dim(g)
+    assert hex_dim == 2, "width is DERIVED from the input, never supplied"
+    let back: String = geometry_to_f32le_hex(g)
+    assert str_eq(back, "0000803f00000040"), "hex round-trips exactly"
+    let freed: Int = geometry_free(g)
+}
+
+test "hex-rejects-malformed-input" {
+    let empty: Geometry = geometry_from_f32le_hex("")
+    let e: Int = geometry_is(empty)
+    assert e < 1, "empty hex is not a geometry"
+    let ragged: Geometry = geometry_from_f32le_hex("0000803f0000")
+    let r: Int = geometry_is(ragged)
+    assert r < 1, "length not a multiple of 8 is refused"
+    let nonhex: Geometry = geometry_from_f32le_hex("zzzzzzzz")
+    let nh: Int = geometry_is(nonhex)
+    assert nh < 1, "non-hex characters are refused"
+}
+
+test "norm-lets-a-caller-check-a-realizer-emitted-signal" {
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(2)
+    let z: Float = geometry_norm(g)
+    assert z < 0.001, "a fresh geometry is zero — norm says so"
+    let s0: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, 3.0)
+    let s1: Int = geometry_set(g, 1, 4.0)
+    let nrm: Float = geometry_norm(g)
+    let dnorm: Float = nrm - 5.0
+    assert dnorm < 0.001, "3-4-5: norm is 5"
+    assert dnorm > -0.001, "3-4-5: norm is 5"
+    let freed: Int = geometry_free(g)
+}
+
+// ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
+// Manifold — the corrected result of a transduction
+// ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
+
+test "a-manifold-is-a-value-that-holds-parts-and-relations" {
+    let m: Manifold = manifold_new()
+    let live: Int = manifold_is(m)
+    assert live > 0, "manifold_new returns a live Manifold"
+    let fresh_sz: Int = manifold_size(m)
+    assert fresh_sz == 0, "a fresh manifold has no components"
+    let fresh_rc: Int = manifold_rel_count(m)
+    assert fresh_rc == 0, "a fresh manifold has no relations"
+    let freed: Int = manifold_free(m)
+    assert freed > 0, "manifold_free reports what it did"
+}
+
+test "manifold-accessors-are-total" {
+    let ni2: Int = manifold_is(0)
+    assert ni2 < 1, "manifold_is of a non-manifold is 0"
+    let ns: Int = manifold_size(0)
+    assert ns < 1, "manifold_size of a non-manifold is 0"
+    let nf2: Int = manifold_free(0)
+    assert nf2 < 1, "manifold_free of a non-manifold is a no-op"
+    let k: String = manifold_key(0, 0)
+    assert str_eq(k, ""), "manifold_key of a non-manifold is empty, never a crash"
+}
+
+test "components-are-addressed-by-key-not-by-index" {
+    // The key is what survives persistence: a component becomes a node, and it
+    // is separately groundable precisely because it is separately NAMED.
+    let m: Manifold = manifold_new()
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(1)
+    let s: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, 7.0)
+    let first_idx: Int = manifold_add(m, "rhythm", "temporal", g)
+    assert first_idx == 0, "the first component is index 0"
+    let found_idx: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "rhythm")
+    assert found_idx == 0, "a component is found by its key"
+    let missing: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "never_added")
+    assert missing < 0, "an unknown key resolves to -1, not to component 0"
+    let role: String = manifold_role(m, 0)
+    assert str_eq(role, "temporal"), "a component carries what KIND of part it is"
+    let f: Int = geometry_free(g)
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}
+
+test "a-duplicate-key-is-refused-because-addressing-must-be-unambiguous" {
+    let m: Manifold = manifold_new()
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(1)
+    let ok_idx: Int = manifold_add(m, "pitch", "spectral", g)
+    assert ok_idx == 0, "first add succeeds"
+    let dup: Int = manifold_add(m, "pitch", "spectral", g)
+    assert dup < 0, "two components answering to one name is not an addressing scheme"
+    let dup_sz: Int = manifold_size(m)
+    assert dup_sz == 1, "and the duplicate did not land"
+    let f: Int = geometry_free(g)
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}
+
+test "a-part-with-no-geometry-is-not-a-part" {
+    let m: Manifold = manifold_new()
+    let bad: Int = manifold_add(m, "ghost", "none", 0)
+    assert bad < 0, "a non-Geometry is refused as a component"
+    let empty_key: Int = manifold_add(m, "", "none", geometry_new(1))
+    assert empty_key < 0, "an unaddressable component is refused"
+    let none_sz: Int = manifold_size(m)
+    assert none_sz < 1, "nothing landed"
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}
+
+test "an-edge-to-a-nonexistent-endpoint-is-refused-not-dropped" {
+    // A decomposition that silently loses edges is indistinguishable from one
+    // that never had them.
+    let m: Manifold = manifold_new()
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(1)
+    let a: Int = manifold_add(m, "here", "part", g)
+    let dangling: Int = manifold_relate(m, "here", "points_at", "nowhere", 0.5)
+    assert dangling < 1, "an edge to an unknown target is refused"
+    let backwards: Int = manifold_relate(m, "nowhere", "points_at", "here", 0.5)
+    assert backwards < 1, "an edge from an unknown source is refused"
+    let dang_rc: Int = manifold_rel_count(m)
+    assert dang_rc < 1, "and no relation was recorded"
+    let f: Int = geometry_free(g)
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}
+
+test "a-component-owns-its-geometry-independently-of-the-caller" {
+    // manifold_add COPIES. Freeing the caller's vector must not disturb the
+    // component, or a decomposition would be unusable the moment it was built.
+    let m: Manifold = manifold_new()
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(2)
+    let s0: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, 42.0)
+    let idx: Int = manifold_add(m, "part", "kind", g)
+    let freed: Int = geometry_free(g)
+    assert freed > 0, "the caller freed its own vector"
+    let back: Geometry = manifold_geometry(m, 0)
+    let live: Int = geometry_is(back)
+    assert live > 0, "the component still has geometry"
+    let v: Float = geometry_get(back, 0)
+    let dv: Float = v - 42.0
+    assert dv < 0.001, "and it is the right geometry"
+    assert dv > -0.001, "and it is the right geometry"
+    let fb: Int = geometry_free(back)
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}
+
+// ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
+// transduce — signal in, SUBGRAPH out
+// ═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
+
+test "a-realizer-declared-in-el-is-a-first-class-realizer" {
+    // THE CLAIM, unchanged from #144: tone_realizer is an ordinary El function.
+    // It is not in the runtime and the compiler knows nothing about it.
+    // Registering it by name is enough to make it the organ for a modality.
+    let reg: Int = realizer_register("tone", "tone_realizer")
+    assert reg > 0, "an El fn registers as a realizer by name"
+    let has: Int = realizer_has("tone")
+    assert has > 0, "the modality now has an organ"
+
+    let m: Manifold = transduce("CEG", "tone")
+    let live: Int = manifold_is(m)
+    assert live > 0, "transduce returns a real Manifold"
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}
+
+test "transduction-decomposes-a-signal-into-parts" {
+    // THE CENTRAL CLAIM. "CEG" is three notes. What comes back is not one
+    // vector standing for a chord — it is five addressable parts (three notes,
+    // two intervals) and six relations. A fingerprint has one part by
+    // construction and could not express this at any width.
+    let reg: Int = realizer_register("tone", "tone_realizer")
+    let m: Manifold = transduce("CEG", "tone")
+
+    let ceg_sz: Int = manifold_size(m)
+    assert ceg_sz == 5, "three notes and two intervals are five distinct parts"
+    let ceg_rc: Int = manifold_rel_count(m)
+    assert ceg_rc == 6, "and the parts stand in six stated relations"
+
+    // Every part is independently addressable BY NAME.
+    let n0: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "note:0")
+    assert n0 > -1, "the first note is addressable on its own"
+    let n2: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "note:2")
+    assert n2 > -1, "so is the third"
+    let iv: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "interval:0-1")
+    assert iv > -1, "so is the interval between the first two"
+
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}
+
+test "each-part-carries-its-own-geometry" {
+    let reg: Int = realizer_register("tone", "tone_realizer")
+    let m: Manifold = transduce("CEG", "tone")
+
+    // 'C' is 67. The note component's geometry is the note's, not the chord's.
+    let note_i: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "note:0")
+    let gn: Geometry = manifold_geometry(m, note_i)
+    let note_dim: Int = geometry_dim(gn)
+    assert note_dim == 2, "a note component has the width its realizer gave it"
+    let pitch: Float = geometry_get(gn, 0)
+    let dpitch: Float = pitch - 67.0
+    assert dpitch < 0.001, "and it is C, so the signal reached the El realizer"
+    assert dpitch > -0.001, "and it is C, so the signal reached the El realizer"
+
+    // Parts may have DIFFERENT widths. A single vector per signal cannot
+    // represent parts of unequal dimensionality at all.
+    let iv_i: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "interval:0-1")
+    let gi: Geometry = manifold_geometry(m, iv_i)
+    let iv_dim: Int = geometry_dim(gi)
+    assert iv_dim == 1, "an interval component has its own, different width"
+
+    let f1: Int = geometry_free(gn)
+    let f2: Int = geometry_free(gi)
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}
+
+test "the-relations-are-content-no-single-part-carries" {
+    // THE POINT OF THE WHOLE CHANGE. C->E is two semitones. That "2" is not a
+    // property of C and not a property of E; it exists only BETWEEN them. A
+    // representation with no relations cannot hold it, which is why collapsing
+    // a signal to one vector does not merely lose resolution — it loses a
+    // category of content.
+    let reg: Int = realizer_register("tone", "tone_realizer")
+    let m: Manifold = transduce("CEG", "tone")
+
+    let step_i: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "interval:0-1")
+    let gi: Geometry = manifold_geometry(m, step_i)
+    let step: Float = geometry_get(gi, 0)
+    let dstep: Float = step - 2.0
+    assert dstep < 0.001, "C to E is two semitones"
+    assert dstep > -0.001, "C to E is two semitones"
+
+    // And the interval is WIRED to both endpoints, so the structure says which
+    // two things it is the interval between.
+    let spans: Int = 0
+    let span_rc: Int = manifold_rel_count(m)
+    let k: Int = 0
+    while k < span_rc {
+        let rn: String = manifold_rel_name(m, k)
+        let rf: String = manifold_rel_from(m, k)
+        if str_eq(rn, "spans") {
+            if str_eq(rf, "interval:0-1") { spans = spans + 1 }
+        }
+        k = k + 1
+    }
+    assert spans == 2, "the interval is related to both notes it spans"
+
+    let fg: Int = geometry_free(gi)
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}
+
+test "relation-weight-is-the-grounding-carried-on-the-edge" {
+    // correspondence-and-censorship.md §1: grounding is an attribute of the
+    // edge and it IS the weight — one quantity, not a score computed beside
+    // it. A realizer states a relation and its weight is the claim.
+    let reg: Int = realizer_register("tone", "tone_realizer")
+    let m: Manifold = transduce("CE", "tone")
+
+    let ce_rc: Int = manifold_rel_count(m)
+    assert ce_rc == 3, "one interval yields two spans and one ordering"
+
+    let found_w: Int = 0
+    let k: Int = 0
+    while k < ce_rc {
+        let rn: String = manifold_rel_name(m, k)
+        if str_eq(rn, "sounds_before") {
+            let w: Float = manifold_rel_weight(m, k)
+            let dw: Float = w - 0.8
+            if dw < 0.001 { if dw > -0.001 { found_w = found_w + 1 } }
+        }
+        k = k + 1
+    }
+    assert found_w == 1, "the ordering relation carries the weight its realizer stated"
+
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}
+
+test "distinct-signals-decompose-differently" {
+    let reg: Int = realizer_register("tone", "tone_realizer")
+    let m2: Manifold = transduce("CE", "tone")
+    let m3: Manifold = transduce("CEG", "tone")
+    let two_sz: Int = manifold_size(m2)
+    let three_sz: Int = manifold_size(m3)
+    assert two_sz == 3, "two notes decompose into two notes and one interval"
+    assert three_sz == 5, "three notes decompose into three notes and two intervals"
+    // Structure differs, not just position: fingerprints of a two-note and a
+    // three-note signal have identical shape and differ only numerically.
+    let two_rc: Int = manifold_rel_count(m2)
+    let three_rc: Int = manifold_rel_count(m3)
+    assert two_rc < three_rc, "and the relational structure itself differs"
+    let f2: Int = manifold_free(m2)
+    let f3: Int = manifold_free(m3)
+}
+
+test "the-registry-keys-on-modality" {
+    let r1: Int = realizer_register("tone", "tone_realizer")
+    let rp: Int = realizer_register("pulse", "pulse_realizer")
+    assert rp > 0, "a second modality registers independently"
+    let mt: Manifold = transduce("CEG", "tone")
+    let mp: Manifold = transduce("CEG", "pulse")
+    let tone_sz: Int = manifold_size(mt)
+    let pulse_sz: Int = manifold_size(mp)
+    assert tone_sz == 5, "tone still routes to its own realizer"
+    assert pulse_sz == 2, "pulse routes to a different realizer, with its own decomposition"
+    let onset: Int = manifold_index_of(mp, "onset")
+    assert onset > -1, "and to that realizer's own component vocabulary"
+    let f1: Int = manifold_free(mt)
+    let f2: Int = manifold_free(mp)
+}
+
+test "no-organ-is-reported-as-no-organ" {
+    // A modality with no realizer must transduce to NOTHING. It must never
+    // fall back to embedding a description of the signal and calling that
+    // perception — that silent substitution is the original defect.
+    let has: Int = realizer_has("echolocation")
+    assert has < 1, "unregistered modality has no organ"
+    let m: Manifold = transduce("anything", "echolocation")
+    let live: Int = manifold_is(m)
+    assert live < 1, "no realizer means no manifold, not a fake one"
+}
+
+test "registration-of-an-unresolvable-name-fails-loudly" {
+    let bad: Int = realizer_register("ghost", "no_such_function_anywhere")
+    assert bad < 1, "an unresolvable realizer name is a registration failure"
+    let has: Int = realizer_has("ghost")
+    assert has < 1, "and nothing gets registered"
+}
+
+test "a-fingerprint-realizer-transduces-nothing" {
+    // THE SUPERSESSION OF #144, asserted directly. fingerprint_realizer is
+    // exactly what the merged primitive asked a realizer to be: signal in, one
+    // Geometry out. It resolves, so registration succeeds — the organ is
+    // present. But it does not decompose, so it does not transduce.
+    //
+    // This is a deliberate hard failure. "No organ" and "an organ that only
+    // fingerprints" must not be indistinguishable, which is the same
+    // distinction realizer_register already draws between an absent and a
+    // broken organ. A modality with genuinely one part says so with
+    // manifold_single, and is then visibly a size-1 manifold.
+    let reg: Int = realizer_register("fingerprint", "fingerprint_realizer")
+    assert reg > 0, "the symbol resolves, so registration succeeds"
+    let m: Manifold = transduce("x", "fingerprint")
+    let live: Int = manifold_is(m)
+    assert live < 1, "a single vector is not a transduction"
+}
+
+test "a-realizer-returning-nonsense-transduces-nothing" {
+    let reg: Int = realizer_register("bogus", "bogus_realizer")
+    assert reg > 0, "the symbol resolves, so registration succeeds"
+    let m: Manifold = transduce("x", "bogus")
+    let live: Int = manifold_is(m)
+    assert live < 1, "a non-Manifold return transduced nothing"
+}
+
+test "the-one-part-case-is-a-size-one-manifold-not-a-bare-vector" {
+    // Some modalities really do have one part. That is a manifold of size 1 —
+    // a special case of decomposition, not a parallel path back to a
+    // fingerprint. Anything reading it still asks manifold_size and still gets
+    // a real answer, and a second part can be added later without changing the
+    // type of the thing.
+    let g: Geometry = geometry_new(3)
+    let s: Int = geometry_set(g, 0, 5.0)
+    let m: Manifold = manifold_single("level", "scalar", g)
+    let live: Int = manifold_is(m)
+    assert live > 0, "manifold_single yields a real Manifold"
+    let one_sz: Int = manifold_size(m)
+    assert one_sz == 1, "of size one — visibly degenerate, not hidden"
+    let idx: Int = manifold_index_of(m, "level")
+    assert idx == 0, "and its one part is still addressable by name"
+    let f: Int = geometry_free(g)
+    let fm: Int = manifold_free(m)
+}

scripts/check-runtime-growth.sh

@@ -0,0 +1,161 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+# check-runtime-growth.sh — GROWTH guard for lang/runtime/el_runtime.c.
+#
+# Sibling to scripts/check-single-runtime.sh. That one guards against the file
+# being COPIED (a lagging fork shipped to prod and dropped learned hebb edges).
+# Nothing guarded against it GROWING — so it grew from 10,607 to 20,527 lines in
+# 3.5 months, while under an explicit commit-message promise that it was a
+# temporary shim about to be deleted.
+#
+# This enforces the RATCHET in lang/runtime/BUDGET: the numbers may only go down.
+#
+# It also checks two invariants that keep the multi-file runtime honest:
+#   * every .c in lang/runtime/ is either in SOURCES or explicitly optional
+#   * lang/install.sh's hardcoded download list matches SOURCES
+#
+# Exits non-zero on any violation. Run from anywhere; resolves the repo root.
+set -euo pipefail
+
+ROOT="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")/.." && pwd)"
+cd "$ROOT"
+
+RUNTIME_DIR="lang/runtime"
+TARGET="$RUNTIME_DIR/el_runtime.c"
+BUDGET_FILE="$RUNTIME_DIR/BUDGET"
+SOURCES_FILE="$RUNTIME_DIR/SOURCES"
+
+FAIL=0
+
+for f in "$TARGET" "$BUDGET_FILE" "$SOURCES_FILE"; do
+  if [ ! -f "$f" ]; then
+    echo "FATAL: required file missing: $f" >&2
+    exit 1
+  fi
+done
+
+budget() {
+  local key="$1"
+  sed -e 's/#.*//' "$BUDGET_FILE" | awk -v k="$key" '$1==k {print $2; found=1} END{if(!found) exit 1}'
+}
+
+MAX_LINES="$(budget max_lines)"       || { echo "FATAL: no 'max_lines' in $BUDGET_FILE" >&2; exit 1; }
+MAX_ENGRAM="$(budget max_engram_fns)" || { echo "FATAL: no 'max_engram_fns' in $BUDGET_FILE" >&2; exit 1; }
+
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# The message every failure prints. The guard that existed before this one told
+# you what was wrong but not where the code should go — so it was easy to
+# "fix" by arguing with the guard. This one names the destination.
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+where_it_goes() {
+  cat >&2 <<'MSG'
+
+  WHERE THE CODE ACTUALLY GOES
+  ----------------------------
+  Placement is a LINK-TIME concern. The compiler cannot tell which .c a symbol
+  came from: `builtin_arity` in el-compiler/src/codegen.el maps NAME -> ARITY
+  INT only, the El name is emitted as the exact C symbol, and `ld` resolves it.
+  The SHIPPED compiler already links from ten translation units — check it:
+
+      nm lang/dist/platform/elc | grep -E 'T _(engram_think|vindex_insert)'
+
+  So a builtin defined in a sibling .c is EXACTLY as linkable as one defined in
+  el_runtime.c. Pick the file that owns the concern:
+
+      engram store ops ......... lang/runtime/engram_store.c
+      ANN / vector index ....... lang/runtime/engram_vindex.c
+      geometry, priming ........ lang/runtime/engram_geometry.c
+      reasoning operators ...... lang/runtime/engram_reason.c
+      grounding, consistency ... lang/runtime/engram_verify.c
+      think, stance ............ lang/runtime/engram_cognition.c
+
+  No existing file owns it?  Create one, add ONE line to lang/runtime/SOURCES,
+  and every build path picks it up. Every runtime file EXCEPT el_runtime.c is
+  deliberately uncapped.
+
+  Belongs to a downstream program, not the runtime?  Declare
+  `c_source "path/to/file.c"` in that program's manifest.el — elb already links
+  it (parse_manifest_c_sources, lang/elb.el:82).
+
+  See lang/AGENTS.md "Where a new C builtin goes".
+MSG
+}
+
+# --- 1. Line-count ratchet ---------------------------------------------------
+LINES="$(wc -l < "$TARGET" | tr -d ' ')"
+if [ "$LINES" -gt "$MAX_LINES" ]; then
+  echo "FAIL: $TARGET grew past its budget." >&2
+  echo "      now:    $LINES lines" >&2
+  echo "      budget: $MAX_LINES lines (lang/runtime/BUDGET: max_lines)" >&2
+  echo "      over by: $((LINES - MAX_LINES))" >&2
+  echo "" >&2
+  echo "This file is a 2026-05-03 build shim that was scheduled for deletion and" >&2
+  echo "never retired. It does not get to grow. Do NOT raise the budget." >&2
+  where_it_goes
+  FAIL=1
+fi
+
+# --- 2. Engram-concern ratchet ----------------------------------------------
+# ~47.5% of el_runtime.c is engram code, and engram already owns six sibling
+# files. This count is the Stage 3 scoreboard: it may only go down.
+ENGRAM_FNS="$(grep -cE '^(static +)?[A-Za-z_][A-Za-z0-9_ *]*\b(engram|eg|cog)_[a-z0-9_]+\(' "$TARGET" || true)"
+if [ "$ENGRAM_FNS" -gt "$MAX_ENGRAM" ]; then
+  echo "FAIL: new engram/eg_/cog_ function(s) added to $TARGET." >&2
+  echo "      now:    $ENGRAM_FNS definitions" >&2
+  echo "      budget: $MAX_ENGRAM (lang/runtime/BUDGET: max_engram_fns)" >&2
+  echo "" >&2
+  echo "Engram code belongs in the six engram_*.c files that already exist." >&2
+  where_it_goes
+  FAIL=1
+fi
+
+# --- 3. Ratchet-down nudge (advisory, never fails) ---------------------------
+if [ "$LINES" -lt "$MAX_LINES" ]; then
+  echo "NOTE: $TARGET is $((MAX_LINES - LINES)) lines under budget — lower" >&2
+  echo "      'max_lines' to $LINES in $BUDGET_FILE in this same commit, so the" >&2
+  echo "      ground you gained cannot be quietly given back." >&2
+fi
+if [ "$ENGRAM_FNS" -lt "$MAX_ENGRAM" ]; then
+  echo "NOTE: $((MAX_ENGRAM - ENGRAM_FNS)) engram fn(s) moved out — lower" >&2
+  echo "      'max_engram_fns' to $ENGRAM_FNS in $BUDGET_FILE in this same commit." >&2
+fi
+
+# --- 4. Every runtime .c is accounted for ------------------------------------
+# A new .c that is in neither SOURCES nor the optional list will not be
+# compiled by any build path — it would be silently dead. Catch that here.
+OPTIONAL_RE='^(el_android|el_gtk4|el_lvgl|el_sdl2|el_win32|el_runtime_win32|eg_cosine_batch_strategy_ggml|vindex_bench)\.c$'
+mapfile -t IN_SOURCES < <(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh)
+for path in "$RUNTIME_DIR"/*.c; do
+  base="$(basename "$path")"
+  if printf '%s\n' "${IN_SOURCES[@]}" | grep -qxF "$base"; then continue; fi
+  if [[ "$base" =~ $OPTIONAL_RE ]]; then continue; fi
+  echo "FAIL: $path is in neither lang/runtime/SOURCES nor the platform-optional" >&2
+  echo "      list in this guard. It will not be compiled by any build path." >&2
+  echo "      Add it to SOURCES (one line), or add it to OPTIONAL_RE here if it" >&2
+  echo "      is a platform/strategy variant that is linked in deliberately." >&2
+  FAIL=1
+done
+
+# --- 5. install.sh must not drift from SOURCES -------------------------------
+# install.sh runs on machines with no repo checkout, so it cannot call
+# el-runtime-sources.sh and has to hardcode the list. That copy is exactly the
+# kind of duplicate that silently drifted before — so it is checked, not trusted.
+INSTALL_SH="lang/install.sh"
+if [ -f "$INSTALL_SH" ]; then
+  EXPECTED="$(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh | sort)"
+  ACTUAL="$(sed -n '/^RUNTIME_SOURCES=(/,/^)/p' "$INSTALL_SH" \
+            | grep -oE '[a-z_0-9]+\.c' | sort)"
+  if [ "$EXPECTED" != "$ACTUAL" ]; then
+    echo "FAIL: $INSTALL_SH RUNTIME_SOURCES has drifted from $SOURCES_FILE." >&2
+    echo "      Only in SOURCES:    $(comm -23 <(echo "$EXPECTED") <(echo "$ACTUAL") | tr '\n' ' ')" >&2
+    echo "      Only in install.sh: $(comm -13 <(echo "$EXPECTED") <(echo "$ACTUAL") | tr '\n' ' ')" >&2
+    echo "      An SDK that ships the wrong set produces a lib/ that cannot link." >&2
+    FAIL=1
+  fi
+fi
+
+if [ "$FAIL" -ne 0 ]; then
+  exit 1
+fi
+
+echo "OK: el_runtime.c within budget ($LINES/$MAX_LINES lines, $ENGRAM_FNS/$MAX_ENGRAM engram fns);"
+echo "    runtime sources accounted for; install.sh in step with SOURCES."

scripts/check-single-runtime.sh

@@ -81,14 +81,14 @@ fi
 echo "OK: single canonical runtime source — $CANONICAL (no un-allowlisted forks)."
 
 # ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-# CI wire-in:
-#   foundation/el .gitea/workflows/ci-dev.yaml, ci-stage.yaml, sdk-release.yaml
-#   Add an early step (before the build/publish steps). It must run from the
-#   REPO ROOT, so override the job's `defaults.run.working-directory: lang`:
+# CI wire-in — DONE (2026-08-16). This block used to describe the wire-in as a
+# TODO, and it had never been done: the guard existed but ran nowhere, so it
+# caught nothing for as long as it has been in the tree. It is now an early step
+# in ci-dev.yaml, ci-stage.yaml and sdk-release.yaml (each with
+# `working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}`, since the jobs default to lang/),
+# and it runs in .githooks/pre-commit.
 #
-#     - name: Guard - single canonical runtime source
-#       working-directory: ${{ github.workspace }}
-#       run: bash scripts/check-single-runtime.sh
-#
-#   Also add to .githooks/pre-commit so drift is caught before it is committed.
+# Its sibling scripts/check-runtime-growth.sh is wired in at the same points and
+# guards the other half of the problem: this script stops el_runtime.c being
+# COPIED, that one stops it GROWING.
 # ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh

@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+# el-runtime-sources.sh — print the canonical El runtime link set.
+#
+# Reads lang/runtime/SOURCES (the single source of truth) and prints one path
+# per line, optionally prefixed with a directory. Use it anywhere a link line
+# would otherwise spell the runtime .c files out longhand:
+#
+#   cc -std=c11 -O2 -I lang/runtime -o app app.c \
+#      $(scripts/el-runtime-sources.sh lang/runtime) \
+#      -lcurl -lssl -lcrypto -lpthread -lm
+#
+# Options:
+#   --headers   print the shipped headers instead of the .c sources
+#   --check     verify every listed file exists; exit non-zero if any is missing
+#
+# WHY: linking el_runtime.c alone has been broken since el_runtime.c started
+# calling into the engram siblings. The list was duplicated across ~8 build
+# paths and drifted. It lives in exactly one place now — see lang/runtime/SOURCES.
+set -euo pipefail
+
+ROOT="$(cd "$(dirname "$0")/.." && pwd)"
+SOURCES="${ROOT}/lang/runtime/SOURCES"
+
+if [ ! -f "$SOURCES" ]; then
+  echo "FATAL: canonical runtime source list missing: $SOURCES" >&2
+  exit 1
+fi
+
+MODE="sources"
+PREFIX=""
+CHECK=0
+
+for arg in "$@"; do
+  case "$arg" in
+    --headers) MODE="headers" ;;
+    --check)   CHECK=1 ;;
+    -*)        echo "el-runtime-sources.sh: unknown option: $arg" >&2; exit 2 ;;
+    *)         PREFIX="${arg%/}/" ;;
+  esac
+done
+
+# Strip comments and blank lines. Order is preserved — it is link order.
+mapfile -t FILES < <(sed -e 's/#.*//' -e 's/[[:space:]]*$//' "$SOURCES" | grep -v '^$')
+
+if [ "${#FILES[@]}" -eq 0 ]; then
+  echo "FATAL: $SOURCES lists no sources" >&2
+  exit 1
+fi
+
+if [ "$MODE" = "headers" ]; then
+  # Every .c's matching .h, plus the headers that carry no .c of their own.
+  HDRS=()
+  for f in "${FILES[@]}"; do
+    h="${f%.c}.h"
+    [ -f "${ROOT}/lang/runtime/${h}" ] && HDRS+=("$h")
+  done
+  # Interface-only headers: no matching .c, but required to compile against.
+  for h in eg_cosine_batch_strategy.h el_native_target.h el_platform_win.h; do
+    [ -f "${ROOT}/lang/runtime/${h}" ] && HDRS+=("$h")
+  done
+  FILES=("${HDRS[@]}")
+fi
+
+RC=0
+for f in "${FILES[@]}"; do
+  if [ "$CHECK" -eq 1 ] && [ ! -f "${ROOT}/lang/runtime/${f}" ]; then
+    echo "MISSING: lang/runtime/${f} (listed in lang/runtime/SOURCES)" >&2
+    RC=1
+  fi
+  printf '%s%s\n' "$PREFIX" "$f"
+done
+
+exit $RC

tools/api-reshape/README.md

@@ -45,17 +45,43 @@ returned 60k–230k-char unbounded traversals (this very session hit 104 KB and
 
 ## Layer 2 — primitive agentic tools (Neuron runs itself)
 
-The base verbs all agentic behavior composes from — grounded in the LIVE
-cog-arch (`think` is the one operation; faculties are its steering-space labels;
-the correspondence-beat is the reflexive learning loop).
+The base verbs all agentic behavior composes from.
+
+> **⚠ The "PROVEN" verdicts in this table were measured against a build dated
+> 2026-08-14 and four of the five are now known to have been proving the wrong
+> thing (2026-08-16).** A verdict of PROVEN meant *the route returned a
+> well-formed response*, not *the response was derivable from what produced it*.
+> Corrections below, each with the measurement. Authority:
+> `lang/spec/correspondence-and-censorship.md`.
 
 | op | signature | engram builtin | status on clone (gate-1 recipe) |
 |----|-----------|----------------|---------------------------------|
-| `think` | `think({seeds, faculty})` faculty ∈ reason·abduce·induce·plan·analogize·recognize·discern·synthesize | `engram_think_json` | **PROVEN** — all 8 faculties return real 768-dim gradients (n_support 30–282) |
+| `think` | `think({seeds, faculty})` faculty ∈ reason·abduce·induce·plan·analogize·recognize·discern·synthesize | `engram_think_json` | ~~PROVEN — all 8 faculties return real 768-dim gradients~~ **RETRACTED, then re-proven differently.** The gradients were real in *shape* only: the call passed `NULL` as the anchor, `engram_think` re-origins at `anchor ? anchor : region->centroid`, and **the centroid is the one point where the gradient is zero by construction**. Measured: every faculty returned `{"direction":[0,0,…],"spread":0,"magnitude":1,"confidence":0.5}` — identical, differing only in its label. Fixed in **#141/#142**; gradients now vary by seed |
 | `attend` | `attend({node, observer, salience})` | `engram_attend_json` | **PROVEN** (returns `salient-to`) |
-| `assert` | `assert({claim, for_whom, floor})` — realize, honesty-floored | `engram_assert_json` | **PROVEN** |
-| `ground` | `ground({claim, evidence, for_whom})` node-id anchors | `engram_ground_json` | **PROVEN** (grounded-by edge, grounding=0.912, written) |
-| `learn` | `learn({seeds, faculty, keystone})` — the correspondence-beat | `engram_correspondence_beat_json` | **PROVEN** (real Stance: `stance-induce-…`, brier, reliability, written) |
+| `assert` | `assert({claim, for_whom, floor})` — realize, honesty-floored | `engram_assert_json` | **PARTIAL.** `may_assert` is real. `"still_held"` is a **hardcoded literal `true`** — `el_runtime.c:14538` emits it unconditionally, so it reports nothing it measured. Violates the invariant *a returned value must be derivable from what produced it* |
+| `ground` | `ground({claim, evidence, for_whom})` node-id anchors | `engram_ground_json` | ~~PROVEN (grounded-by edge, grounding=0.912, written)~~ **RETRACTED.** That 0.912 was structural, not evidential: the call wrote the edge between the two *region hubs* and echoed them back as though they were the caller's input, so when both seeds resolved into one region it **grounded a node against itself and returned a confident score**. Measured: grounding `3b9ced5d` against `6edf8c79` scored **0.98883** purely because `6edf8c79` is the hub of `3b9ced5d`'s region; two independent agents reported 0.885 / 0.909 self-groundings as confident. **#147** grounds the node asked about, reports `claim_region`/`evidence_region` separately, and refuses three circular shapes. **The operation itself is still the wrong shape** — see below |
+| `learn` | `learn({seeds, faculty, keystone})` — the correspondence-beat | `engram_correspondence_beat_json` | **PROVEN, and it was writing into a void.** The Stance, brier and reliability were real and really persisted — but `think` built a *neutral* stance every call and never loaded them, so every beat's calibration was written and thrown away on the next read. Fixed in **#146**: `think` resumes `stance-<faculty>-<hub>`, the same id the beat writes. Confidence **0.5 → 0.930726** on a calibrated region |
+
+### What this table gets structurally wrong
+
+- **`faculty` is not a parameter.** `reason` changes the *estimate* (a read),
+  `induce` changes the *parameters* (this is exactly what `learn` does), and
+  `abduce` changes the *structure* — a **write**, which `GeoGradient` cannot
+  express. A write cannot be a parameter of a read. That the eight were listed as
+  interchangeable values of one argument is why all eight returning the same thing
+  looked like a pass. Underneath, `engram/src/server.el:1870–1886` routes six of
+  them into one call with a string argument, and the name only reaches
+  `engram_think` through the stance — `cog_stance_init` stores it and nothing
+  reads it.
+- **`ground` should not mint an edge at all.** Grounding is not a subsystem and
+  not a score: **it is the edge weight.** `grounded-by` as a relation type models
+  grounding as a relation *between* nodes when it is a property *of* a relation.
+  #147 corrected a scalar rather than deleting the operation; deletion is
+  sequenced.
+- **`addWonderQuestion`** (Layer 1, `write`) treats wonder as an enumerable
+  instance you push. **Wonder is the boundary** — where activation spreads and
+  finds thin or absent geometry. There are about six, the same for everyone, and
+  they never close. A manifest materializes a property as a stored artifact.
 
 `comprehend`/`realize`/`intend` are **compositions**, not separate live
 primitives: comprehend = write+activate (world→geometry), realize = assert
@@ -69,6 +95,26 @@ execution→integrate) composes over `think`+`ground`+`learn`+`write`/`relate`.
 `kn-efeb4a5b…` / `kn-5b606390…`, are refused — identity routes through
 intentional-cultivation, as enforced today.
 
+> **⚠ SUPERSEDED (2026-08-16).** This describes what the surface enforces, which
+> is accurate — but the enforcement is the wrong kind of thing:
+>
+> > **In an immutable substrate, any mechanism that refuses a write is either
+> > redundant with immutability, or an epistemic constraint misfiled as a
+> > protective one.**
+>
+> "Keystone" means **load-bearing**, not precious. The real requirement is
+> **non-circularity of the reference frame** — a reference fitted to its own
+> readings reports perfect correspondence forever while drift becomes undetectable
+> from inside — and that is satisfied *temporally*, not by a gate: the frame
+> updates while activation is internally seeded, not while it is being used to act.
+> **Independence is *when*, not *what*.** Corruption requires mutation, and the
+> engram does not mutate: recoverability (the predecessor is always present),
+> governance (supersession *is* the audit trail), evidence quality, and rate all
+> fall out of the substrate. **Authorization** is the only residue and it is
+> bounded — an unauthorized writer can *propose*, never erase. Note also that the
+> live check is a substring match against two hard-coded ids
+> (`el_runtime.c:14337`).
+
 ## How the caller invokes Neuron agentically
 
 Once the ops are registered as MCP tools (aliases in `surface.el`), the caller
@@ -94,6 +140,16 @@ running itself.
 ## Honest ledger (built vs staged)
 - **Route seam — IMPLEMENTED + PROVEN:** ported the `@route` codegen (from `feat/el-route-decorators`) into the worktree, rebuilt `elc` self-host, proved decorate→serve (`route_proof.el` on :8951); `surface.el` compiles with `el_route_dispatch` generated for all 8 ops.
 - **All ops PROVEN live on the clone** (gate-1 boot recipe, node-id anchors): read, write, relate, supersede (immutable), tombstone, think (8 faculties), ground, attend, learn — daemon alive through all mutations (node_count 13173→13176).
+  > **⚠ Retracted in part (2026-08-16).** "The daemon stayed alive and every route
+  > returned a well-formed response" is what was actually proven, and that is a
+  > weaker claim than it reads as. See the Layer-2 table: `think` was reading at the
+  > zero-gradient point, `ground` was scoring nodes against themselves, `assert`
+  > emits a hardcoded field, and `learn` was persisting into a void. **A build that
+  > passes because nothing checks whether a returned value is derivable from what
+  > produced it has not been tested — it has been observed not to crash.** The
+  > related discipline gap, also 2026-08-16: **no test without a negative control**
+  > (#148's first attempt passed on the unpatched build too), and **no deploy
+  > without verifying the artifact carries the fix** (nine instances in one session).
 - **Aperture-boundedness PROVEN:** vantage-read `limit=3 → 15 KB` vs `limit=50 → 363 KB` (fixes the whole-self dump).
 - **Bus:** `@manager` ops emit on the real `dharma_*` bus (explicit today, compiles) — same transport as the swarm (`wt/swarm-ccr`).
 - **STAGED (not guessed — needs the cognition-engram rebuild to verify link):** auto-injecting telemetry/interoception + bus emission at the decorated boundary (`cg_fn` diff in `SEAM_STAGED.md`); building the cognition engram with `surface.el` compiled in. No promote to live, no cutover (per rails).