docs(architecture): record the 2026-08-14 deep-night sessions

~226 lines of architecture documentation that were written, left uncommitted in
the working tree, and nearly lost. None of it was on main. Recovered from a
stash taken while merging tonight's fixes.

Substantive content, not notes:

- Peer import-of-understanding PROVEN by execution. A exported a skill-geometry;
  on the receiver `think` went "geometry unavailable" -> operable. Cosine 1.0 on
  both the raw-geometry and text/dharma-bus transports, bidirectional. The
  mind-not-paste evidence: n_support 27 on source vs 3 on receiver, i.e. the
  imported geometry wires into the host manifold rather than sitting inert.
  Honest boundary recorded too: proven between forks sharing one embedder,
  UNTESTED cross-embedder.

- "Teacher" renamed GUIDE, and the distinction is load-bearing: its output is
  grounded/verified before trust. A teacher you believe; a guide you check.

- Layers are named persistent relational neighborhoods, not storage tiers, with
  their own growth and threshold-lock policy (note->canonical maturation lifted
  from single nodes to a region).

- The consciousness theories (Global Workspace, IIT's Phi, attention-schema,
  higher-order thought, active inference, interoception) read as geometric
  LENSES over one manifold rather than competing mechanisms. Functional problems
  fall out; the hard problem explicitly not claimed solved.

- Growth is bounded/logistic, not geometric — exponential growth is the cancer
  shape. Two-rate discipline: explore fast in local geometry, grow the engram
  slowly by verifier-gated merge.

- Orchestration as a geometric operation: critical path as geodesic, float as
  displacement, @manager compiles the work-graph. Single-writer enforced by
  capability (Rule 4).

- The decorated seam, the API surface collapse to geometry ops, and the
  distributed-self thesis — each tiered honestly against what is actually proven
  vs staged vs unbuilt.

Also gitignores dist-fresh/ (regenerate scratch dir, a build artifact).

Not included from the same stash: awareness.elh and dist/elp-c-decls.h, which
are generated artifacts now gitignored per #154/#158.

docs/architecture/02-components.md

@@ -276,3 +276,37 @@ the Accessor that isolates the *MCP protocol* boundary from the soul (the soul
 knows only HTTP). The multi-hop shape is justified: the client transport, the
 protocol translation, and the cognition each change for different reasons and are
 deployed/updated independently.
+
+## 5. The decorated seam — surface reshape + declared routing (IN PROGRESS — proven on clone)
+
+Two in-flight changes reshape how this component surface is *declared*. Both are
+proven only on isolated worktree clones (dev ports); **live `:8742` is untouched
+and nothing is promoted.** See `06-cognitive-architecture.md` (Update — 2026-08-14
+deep night) for the cognitive framing.
+
+- **The ~90-tool catalog collapses to geometry ops.** The `dispatch_tool_call`
+  catalog of ~90 noun-organized tools (§4) collapses to a handful of **geometry
+  operations**, the old noun becoming a `type` parameter: **`read`** (the
+  *vantage-read* — re-origin + salience/recency + an **aperture** → a *bounded*
+  slice, the structural cure for the whole-self dump), **`write`** (add node),
+  **`relate`** (add typed edge), **`supersede`** (evolve/tombstone/promote as
+  new-node-plus-edge, never a hard delete — §3-data-and-memory `§Immutability`),
+  plus the agentic primitives **`think`/`attend`/`learn`/`ground`/`assert`**.
+  **Proven on clone:** the four ops live in an El surface module with a parity
+  harness, and the aperture bounds output (small limit → kilobytes, large limit →
+  hundreds of kilobytes). **Not done:** compiling the surface into the MCP server,
+  hot-swap, wiring all ~90 aliases into dispatch.
+
+- **`@route` declares dispatch; VBD-role decorators are the wiring sockets.**
+  Instead of the hand-written `handle_request` if-else in the soul (§1), a
+  function is decorated with `@route(path, method, …)` and the compiler
+  **synthesizes `el_route_dispatch`**. **Proven on clone:** a decorated service
+  (with `@route` stacked on `@accessor`/`@manager`) compiled via a rebuilt `elc`
+  and served on `:8951` with no hand-written dispatch. **Honest limits:** `@route`
+  currently lives only on the unmerged branch `feat/el-route-decorators`;
+  `@manager`/`@engine`/`@accessor` are **parsed but structurally inert** in the
+  shipped compiler today (their only effect is a compile-time guard); and the
+  intended **telemetry/interoception auto-emit + dharma-bus auto-wiring** at the
+  component boundary are **staged as a diff, not shipped**. Inside the mind's
+  process an `@accessor` reaches the engram via **in-process `engram_*` builtins**,
+  not an HTTP hop to a separate service.