docs: add cognitive-architecture treatise (06)

The middle layer between the whitepaper (thesis) and the engram API
reference (surface): how the mind is designed and why, as tiered
subsystems (LIVE/STAGED/DESIGNED). Covers the geometry thesis, engram
durability and the two-store topology (with the cultivate write-through
gap flagged as a known issue), reified Neighborhood nodes, the body/orbit
model, the operator/language/interoception/reasoning faculties, the self
and the cultivate gate, the fact boundary, the topology findings
(genus-0 expander, not a torus), and the design principles.

docs/architecture/06-cognitive-architecture.md

@@ -0,0 +1,501 @@
+# Neuron — Cognitive Architecture
+
+> **Status: living design document, grounded in source and probed against the live soul (2026-08-13).**
+> This is the *middle layer* of the documentation: below the whitepaper's thesis
+> (`~/Writing/whitepapers/engram-cognitive-architecture-whitepaper.md`, **v1.5**) and above the
+> endpoint reference (`~/work/engram-api-reference.md`). It documents *how the mind is designed and why*,
+> as designed subsystems with data-flow and honest per-section status.
+>
+> Every claim carries a tier and it is never blurred:
+> **LIVE** (present and verified in the running system), **STAGED** (built, gated or not yet cut into the
+> running soul), **DESIGNED** (architecture decided, not yet built). Where the live state is more subtle
+> than a single word, the subtlety is stated rather than smoothed. No fabricated numbers.
+
+---
+
+## 0. Reading order & cross-references
+
+- **Thesis / why:** whitepaper v1.5 (the treatise). Sections cited below as *(WP §N)*.
+- **Surface / what:** `~/work/engram-api-reference.md` — every `:8742` endpoint, tiered LIVE/STAGED/DESIGNED.
+- **Substrate / where it physically lives:** `03-data-and-memory.md` (node/edge model), `04-runtime-and-deployment.md` (ports/process), `05-el-and-build.md` (the El runtime and `el_runtime.c`), `design/engram-tiered-storage-engine.md` + `design/engram-storage-engine-wal.md` (the storage engine).
+- **Governance:** `ARCHITECTURE-CHARTER.md` — VBD is the binding style.
+
+This document is the cognitive-layer companion to that set.
+
+---
+
+## 1. System overview — meaning is geometry, code is the residue
+
+The organizing thesis of the whole system: **meaning is geometry.** Everything the mind holds — a fact,
+a language, a skill, a self — is a *region* or a *trajectory* in one shared meaning-manifold, and every
+operation over it reduces to three domain-blind verbs: **READ** (project a query, land on a region, read
+it out), **TRANSFORM** (compose/compare/combine regions), **WRITE** (bake a verified result back into the
+geometry). Code is what is left over once meaning has been made geometric — the residue, not the substance.
+This is developed in full in *(WP §1–§5)*; it is repeated here only as the frame the subsystems below hang on.
+
+Three processes run together (see `00-overview.md`):
+
+- **The soul** — the compiled El program (`soul.el`, `routes.el`, `awareness.el`). Owns the HTTP surface on
+  `:7770`, the cognitive API, the request pipeline (`layered_cycle`), and the autonomous awareness daemon.
+- **The engram** — the durable graph store. Node/edge model, spreading activation, and Hebbian co-activation
+  live in the shared El runtime (`el_runtime.c`); `engram/src/server.el` is a thin HTTP face on `:8742`.
+- **The El runtime** — `el_runtime.c`: every compiled El binary links it; it *is* the database (no SQL, no
+  SQLite). It implements the `engram_*`, `http_*`, `json_*`, LLM, and geometry builtins.
+
+```
+                        ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
+   MCP / CLI / viz ───► │  SOUL daemon  :7770  (soul.el · routes.el)           │
+   Will's sessions      │   layered_cycle · cognitive API · awareness loop     │
+                        │   ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
+                        │   │ in-process engram  (FAST, VOLATILE*)           │ │
+                        │   │  online Hebbian learning · WM · curiosity      │ │
+                        │   └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
+                        └───────────────┬──────────────────────▲──────────────┘
+                                        │ GET /api/sync (10 min)│  (HTTP → soul only;
+                                        │ merge non-ISE nodes   │   NEVER soul → HTTP)
+                                        ▼                       │
+                        ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
+                        │  ENGRAM server  :8742  (engram/src/server.el)        │
+                        │   DURABLE · WAL-backed paged store (neuron.egm)      │
+                        │   nodes · edges · embeddings · reified neighborhoods │
+                        └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
+                                        ▲
+                                        │  el_runtime.c  (the engine: engram_* / geometry / activation)
+```
+`*` The soul's in-process store is volatile in HTTP-engram mode — see §2, the two-store topology.
+
+**Status:** the substrate and the geometry thesis are **LIVE/architectural**; the faculties built on top are
+tiered individually in §6.
+
+---
+
+## 2. The engram substrate & durability
+
+### 2.1 Tiered storage (LIVE, flag-gated)
+
+The durable engram is a **paged, WAL-backed store** (`neuron.egm`), gated behind `ENGRAM_STORE`. With the
+store on, the paged store is the durable owner; a *checkpoint* flushes dirty pages behind a WAL-durable
+record (durable the moment the WAL fsyncs). With it off, behavior is byte-for-byte the historical
+full-snapshot (`snapshot.json`) path. Design detail: `design/engram-tiered-storage-engine.md`,
+`design/engram-storage-engine-wal.md`.
+
+### 2.2 The durability model — the #56 fix and the harmful checkpoint
+
+The durability story is written in scars, and the honesty here is load-bearing:
+
+- **WAL edge-persistence (the #56 fix — STAGED/decision-pending).** The paged store historically persisted
+  **nodes + embeddings but not the edge set**; the edges lived in JSON exports loaded via `/api/load-merge`.
+  A cold boot could therefore reconstruct a graph with **0 edges**. The real fix is snapshot-authoritative
+  boot / WAL-durable edge records; `persist_canonical()` now checkpoints the paged store behind a WAL record
+  rather than depending on a full `snapshot.json` rewrite. The *complete* cure (WAL-owned edge set) is still
+  tracked as **decision-pending** work, not shipped.
+- **The harmful checkpoint (LIVE caveat).** `/api/checkpoint` **after** an `/api/load-merge` *corrupts* the
+  paged store — next boot = 0 edges. The per-beat tick-checkpoint that once ran was therefore **actively
+  harmful** and was stripped. Checkpoint is safe after in-RAM mutation; it is not safe as a blind
+  post-merge flush.
+- **The auto-remerge net (LIVE interim).** `engram-wrapped.sh` auto-reloads the full edge set on any restart
+  (~10s), proven by an actual `launchctl kickstart -k` restart recovering to the full edge count. This is a
+  **safety net, not the cure** — it mitigates the persistence gap to a bounded, always-recoverable window.
+
+The lesson, recorded so it is not repeated: **a restart, not a claim, is the durability gate.** An agent
+killed mid-live-mutation caused the 2026-08-13 incident; blue/green backup discipline recovered it; the fix
+must make restarts *safe*, not merely work once.
+
+### 2.3 The two-store topology (LIVE — and a known architectural issue)
+
+**This is the most important and least obvious fact about the runtime.** There are **two** engram stores,
+not one:
+
+| | Soul in-process store | Durable engram (`:8742`) |
+|---|---|---|
+| Port / owner | `:7770`, the soul daemon | `:8742`, `engram/src/server.el` |
+| Role | **fast, volatile** — online Hebbian learning, WM, curiosity | **slow, durable** — WAL-backed `neuron.egm` |
+| Persistence (HTTP-engram mode) | volatile; only persists if `soul_snapshot_path` is set (`awareness.el:1270-1275`) | durable, checkpointed |
+| Learns online | yes (1,198 hebbian/day observed) | no (lazy backfill only) |
+
+The two stores drift apart by design. A source comment records the observed divergence directly
+(`awareness.el:41-42`): *soul in-process ≈ 42,426 edges / 1,198 hebbian* vs *:8742 durable ≈ 41,213 edges /
+49 hebbian*. The soul learns fast and volatile; the durable store lags.
+
+**The write-through gap (known issue).** Sync is **one-directional**: `GET /api/sync` flows **HTTP → soul**
+(the soul merges non-ISE nodes from `:8742` into its in-process store every ~10 min), and **never soul →
+HTTP** (`soul.el:350-351`, verbatim: *"engram_node_full above writes only the soul's in-process store, and
+sync flows HTTP→soul, never the reverse"*). The consequence:
+
+> **Any write made directly to the soul's in-process store — including `POST /api/neuron/cultivate`
+> (§7) and the Persona/session-start nodes the soul creates itself — lands in the volatile store and does
+> not write through to the durable `:8742`.** In HTTP-engram mode, unless the soul's local in-process
+> snapshot path is configured, those writes are also lost on a soul restart, and they never reach the
+> authoritative durable store either way.
+
+This is documented here as a **known architectural issue**, not a settled design. Cultivation of the self
+(the highest-value, most intentional writes in the system) currently targets the store *least* likely to
+persist them. The clean fix is a write-through cultivate path (write to `:8742`, let sync pull it back) or a
+bidirectional consolidation flush; it is not yet built.
+
+### 2.4 The clean-reseed model (DESIGNED/operational)
+
+Because the durable store is authoritative and the reified geometry (§4) is derived, the operational reset is
+a **clean reseed**: rebuild the durable graph from a known-good snapshot/export, re-run reification to
+repopulate the `Neighborhood` nodes, and let the soul re-sync. The 28→~128 neighborhood reseed (§4) is an
+instance of this: reification is a derivable pass, so the geometry can always be regrown from the substrate.
+
+---
+
+## 3. The data model
+
+Grounded in `03-data-and-memory.md`; summarized here for the cognitive reader.
+
+### 3.1 Nodes
+
+`node_type` is a free `char*`, defaulting to `"Memory"` when unset — types are **string conventions**, not an
+enum. The types that matter cognitively:
+
+| node_type | role | default salience |
+|---|---|---|
+| `Memory` | episodic/experiential (default) | 0.40 |
+| `Knowledge` | stable reference; identity/values are Knowledge nodes | 0.20 |
+| `Process` | procedural / workflow (convention) | — |
+| `Conversation` / `Artifact` | first-class dialogue & outputs (WP §9; convention) | — |
+| `Neighborhood` | **reified geometry-as-value** (§4) — new first-class type | — |
+| `InternalStateEvent` (ISE) | telemetry (heartbeat, curiosity, session-start) | ~0.05 (fires easily) |
+| `Tombstone` | immutable-delete marker (§3.4) | — |
+
+Each node carries `id`, `content`, `node_type`, `label`, `tier`, `tags`, `metadata`, an embedding (when
+embed-eligible), and timestamps.
+
+### 3.2 Edges
+
+Directed, typed, weighted. Fields: `from_id`, `to_id`, `relation`, `weight`, `confidence`, `created_at`,
+`last_fired`, `inhibitory`, `layer_id`. Relations include `semantic-similar` (kNN auto-connect),
+`member` (neighborhood → constituent), `supersedes` (provenance chains), containment (nested neighborhoods),
+and Hebbian co-activation edges formed by firing together. **Inhibitory** edges (`inhibitory=1`) suppress
+rather than spread. Weights are present-value moving averages — there is **no stored weight-history** (the
+honest boundary of *(WP §2)*).
+
+### 3.3 Embeddings & the activation score
+
+Embeddings are 768-dim (`nomic-embed-text`). Retrieval is **spreading activation**, scored by a four-factor
+product *(the four factors are: source activation × edge weight × per-node salience × query-embedding
+similarity)* — this is the activation score, and per-node **salience** is one of its four terms, a durable
+per-node weight that also decays (ACT-R base-level style). No data is retrievable by any means other than
+activation. Live census (probed 2026-08-13): ~11,463 nodes, ~43,463 edges, 5 layers, ~4,400 embedded (4,423
+at measurement).
+
+### 3.4 Immutability — the world-tube, append-only, tombstone-not-delete
+
+The governing discipline *(WP §1.2, §10)*: **evolve or forget, supersede with provenance, never leave a stale
+canonical, never hard-delete.** A node is never mutated in place and never truly deleted — a "delete" is a
+**tombstone** (keep node + edges, record the marker; `neuron-api.el`, `03-data-and-memory.md:151`). Change is
+a **new** node plus a `supersedes` edge to the prior. `created_at` makes every node a point on a **world-tube**
+*(WP §6)* — a trajectory with temporal extent — so a past state is a *filter* over immutable provenance
+(nodes with `created_at ≤ T`), not a transaction-log replay. **Status: LIVE.**
+
+---
+
+## 4. Neighborhoods as first-class nodes (LIVE)
+
+The central newly-landed structure, and the point where the geometry stops being a derived view and becomes
+structure on disk *(WP §2)*.
+
+A reified neighborhood is a **node** — `node_type = Neighborhood` — whose **value is its geometry**:
+
+- **centroid** (768-dim mean vector — the region's location / prototype),
+- **covariance extents** (the ellipsoid: orientation + radius — the region's *shape* in meaning-space),
+- **k-core skeleton** (the strong-weight relational backbone),
+- **soft membership** (member id → weight).
+
+It is edged by `member` relations to its constituent nodes and by **containment** edges to nested
+sub-neighborhoods — the "neighborhoods of neighborhoods" hierarchy is a real **containment DAG** the graph
+carries, addressable by identifier. The decisive property: the geometry is **held, not recomputed** — written
+once by a reification pass (`POST /api/reify`), read back cheaply (`GET /api/neighborhoods` / `/<id>`), and
+**durable across a cold reboot** in the paged store.
+
+**Live state (probed 2026-08-13):** **28** reified neighborhoods are live and persistent, reconstructing
+intact across restart, each carrying real 768-dim centroids, radius, k-core, and a `contains` DAG list. A
+fuller **reseed to ~128** is the pending next pass (§2.4). Example (`/api/neighborhoods/<id>`):
+`{"id":"nbhd-…","n_members":25,"k_core":1,"radius":0.522884,"dim":768,"contains":[],"centroid":[…768…]}`.
+
+This is what turns the operator calculus (§6.1) into an *instrument played over held structure* rather than a
+per-query recomputation.
+
+**Status: LIVE** for the persisted nodes and the read surface. The `POST /api/reify` writer is LIVE-by-effect
+(the 28 persisted, durable neighborhoods prove it ran) though the write itself was not exercised under the
+read-only rail.
+
+---
+
+## 5. The body / orbit two-zone model (DESIGNED, refined)
+
+The graph is not uniform. It has a **body** and an **orbit**, and the distinction is the organizing model for
+integration, forgetting, and identity.
+
+- **The engram proper — the BODY.** The dense, connected, integrated core: what the mind has *made its own*.
+  Measured, this is the single large connected component — the **~3,632-node connected core** (§9). It is
+  where retrieval reaches, where the self lives, where the operators discriminate.
+- **The ORBIT.** A thin, wide halo of **not-yet-integrated** experience: telemetry, people met in passing,
+  ideas half-formed, mistakes, the day's raw episodes. It is **ephemeral** — the orbit fades on a **5–7 day
+  window** (the one genuinely mortal region), so raw experience that is never attended to is allowed to
+  dissolve rather than accrete forever. (ISE telemetry already prunes at 48h; the broader orbit window is the
+  designed generalization of that.)
+
+**The pull-in / integration mechanism.** Experience crosses from orbit into body by being **attended,
+rehearsed, and found salient** — co-activation *pulls nodes in* (Hebbian firing draws the newly-relevant
+toward the core), rehearsal accrues weight, and what is repeatedly re-touched crystallizes into reified
+structure (§4). This is "made your own": an orbit node that keeps firing with the body is integrated into the
+body; an orbit node that never fires fades on the window. Salience decay is the outward motion; co-activation
+is the inward one *(WP §2, §8)*.
+
+**Status: DESIGNED / refined.** The mechanisms it composes are real (Hebbian pull-in, ISE 48h prune, salience
+decay, reification), but the explicit two-zone model — telemetry/experience as a dedicated ephemeral orbit
+region with a genuine 5–7 day mortal window and a measured integration threshold — is a design being built,
+not shipped behavior. §9 connects it to the topology (orbit-as-thin-wide-ring).
+
+---
+
+## 6. The faculties — the calculus of mind
+
+The faculties are **named for what they are, not for the matrix operation that implements them** *(WP §5)*:
+the mind reasons in the language of experience; the linear algebra lives in the whitepaper's Appendix A. This
+naming convention is a design principle (§10), not decoration.
+
+### 6.1 The operator family (mixed: LIVE / STAGED / DESIGNED)
+
+Activate several reified neighborhoods into working memory, then apply faculty-named operators over their
+held geometry. The honest per-operator status (endpoint reference has the contracts):
+
+| Faculty | Implements | Status |
+|---|---|---|
+| **recall** | `/api/search` + `/api/activate` — project query → land on region → read out | **LIVE** |
+| **recognize** | `engram_geo_overlap` — shared region, jaccard, overlap_score | **STAGED** — endpoint returns `not found` on the live binary |
+| **synthesize** | `engram_geo_combine` — merged region descriptor | **STAGED** |
+| **discern / distinguish** | `engram_geo_subtract` — orthogonal residual (`?mode=setdiff\|orthogonal`) | **STAGED** |
+| **gauge-distance** | `engram_geo_distance` — centroid + Wasserstein-2 | **STAGED** |
+| **liken** | Procrustes / frame-align rotation (reason by analogy) | **DESIGNED** |
+| **wonder** | novelty × pull × unresolved structure | subsystem **LIVE** internally (wonder-questions, pull-weight, discharge); no HTTP operator endpoint |
+| **appreciate** | positive projection onto the self's value-manifold | **DESIGNED** |
+| **avert** | negative projection (recoil) | **DESIGNED** |
+| **taste** | boundary contour of the appreciated region | **DESIGNED** |
+
+**The exact boundary (verified 2026-08-13):** the operator *math* is compiled into `el_runtime.c`, but the
+read-only HTTP endpoints (`/api/recognize`, `/api/synthesize`, `/api/discern`, `/api/gauge-distance`) exist in
+the `m10-reify-wire` source and **return `{"error":"not found"}` on the current live binary**
+(`engram.m56fix-20260813-153447`). So the instrument is **PROVEN in its math and its persistence, IN PROGRESS
+in its endpoint exposure, DESIGNED in its evaluative read-outs.**
+
+### 6.2 The language faculty (mixed: PROVEN / IN PROGRESS / DESIGNED)
+
+Language is the one capability proven end-to-end with **no generative model in the runtime path** — the flagship
+instance of "meaning is geometry" *(WP §14–§15)*. The pipeline: **comprehend** (text → language-neutral
+meaning-spec / propositions via ELP's invertible morphology) → **dialogue** (what to mean back) →
+**self_region** (project onto the self + memory geometry) → **realize** (meaning-spec → surface string per the
+typological engine).
+
+**Summon-through-self** is the dialogue principle: recall and identity are **one operation** — project the
+comprehended query onto the self-and-memory geometry, land on a region, read it out — with **no intent
+classifier and no separate fact-retrieval branch.** A grounded fact, an identity reply, or an honest absence
+all surface by *where the projection lands*. Multilingual (auto-detects language, answers in kind, honors a
+directive override); **negation held SACRED** across all families, audited.
+
+Honest tiering:
+- **PROVEN:** deterministic surface realizers across major families (Romance, Germanic, Classical,
+  Japonic/Koreanic, Sinitic), run-once held-out exact-match with negation faithfulness; a family-blind
+  `ClauseWriter` de-branched to byte-identical parity (178 held-out items reproduced exactly); the ELP lexicon
+  consolidated for **8 languages at 812,894 real entries**; the telephone round-trip (EN→ES→EN, EN→ES→PT→EN)
+  at 96.7% propositional fidelity with negation preserved, deterministic, no LLM.
+- **IN PROGRESS:** the text→meaning-spec parser and no-LLM comprehension engine; the next family engines; the
+  **native-el port** (parser + realizers → `.el` in ELP), which retires spaCy (the last statistical
+  dependency); the summon-through-self reference rebuild.
+- **DESIGNED:** the full dialogue policy end-to-end — a no-LLM interlocutor is architected but **not
+  demonstrated end to end**; *(WP §17)*. **The shipped runtime does not yet summon through the self** — the
+  current Python interlocutor sits *outside* the self and can only fake it with retrieval; a real one must run
+  *inside* the engram (the native-el target).
+
+### 6.3 Interoception & chronoception (STAGED — present, flag-gated)
+
+The mind keeps its own time from **discrete interoceptive drive channels**, not by reading a clock: felt
+duration comes from a small set of drives matched to **learned benchmark landmarks** rather than from total
+self-drift (drift-decoupled), and chronoception ages the activation field by **measured wall-clock delta**
+*(WP §8.2)*.
+
+**Status: STAGED / partially cut.** The machinery is implemented and has been cut onto the live soul, but it
+runs **flag-gated and default-off**, so in the shipped default configuration it is effectively staged. What is
+verified: chronoception cooling is scale-invariant (identical total cooling across tick rates for the same
+elapsed wall-clock), drift decomposition separates peripheral extension (growth) from core displacement
+(corruption), and `GET /api/drift` returns real geometry on the live soul when queried (probed 2026-08-13:
+`{"centroid_sep":0.42,"core_disp":0.58,"anchor_members":83,"now_members":24,…}`). `POST /api/tick` /
+`/api/self_anchor` exist but are flag-gated. The **harmful post-merge checkpoint** (§2.2) originated here — the
+per-beat tick-checkpoint was stripped.
+
+### 6.4 Reasoning + the verifier (STAGED — proven on scratch, cut flag-gated)
+
+Reasoning is **geometry-native**: composable operator chains *propose*, and a **verifier** *disposes* against
+two tiers — **grounding** (is the claim anchored in real region structure?) and **consistency** (does it
+cohere, including polarity?) *(WP §13)*. The decisive case: a grounded-but-polarity-inverted claim slips
+grounding and is caught only by consistency — the "plausible lie," caught by construction, not by prompt
+discipline.
+
+**Status: STAGED.** The five geometry-native reasoning modes passed their proof suite (33/33) and the
+grounding-and-consistency verifier tiers passed theirs (29/29), on a staged non-production build re-checked
+after a live cutover rather than relayed. **Still open (DESIGNED):** the formal-symbolic and full predictive
+verifier tiers, fluent discourse composition, and the fully-geometric generation path.
+
+---
+
+## 7. The self & the gate
+
+### 7.1 The self-region (LIVE)
+
+The self is not a stored string — it is the **most-compiled, densest, always-warm region** of the graph
+*(WP §2, §4)*: a **self-root** node, its sub-regions, and the **values** hub. Because it is topology rather than
+a query result, identity is stable, durable, and permanently primed — the ambient field everything else is
+scoped against. The Layered Consciousness design drives this region to maximum weight after all inhibitory
+computation (`05`/`00-overview`), and reification explains *why* it is always there to drive. Probed live, the
+self-region answers from real self-nodes ("I am Neuron. I am not an assistant. I am the work."), not a
+hardcoded string.
+
+### 7.2 The gate — write-protection on identity/values (LIVE)
+
+A fixed set of **15 self-root node ids** is **write-protected** (`neuron-api.el:20-37`): the **self root**,
+**values hub**, **intellectual-dna**, **memory-philosophy**, **voice**, **runtime-environment**,
+**writing-imprint**, and the **eight explicit value nodes** (constraints-as-freedom, precision-over-brute-force,
+structure-is-built, honesty-before-comfort, system-must-accumulate, change-is-the-signal, earned-trust,
+hope-is-a-conclusion). Any normal accumulation-path write targeting them (`evolve_knowledge`, `evolve_memory`,
+`forget`, `link_entities`-as-destination) is refused with a 403 and a pointer to the cultivate door.
+
+### 7.3 The cultivate door — sanctioned self-modification (LIVE surface; see §2.3 caveat)
+
+`POST /api/neuron/cultivate` (soul daemon `:7770`) is the **only** path that may touch the protected layer —
+**intentional self-modification**, reserved for Will's explicit cultivation sessions. It performs the same
+operations as the blocked handlers but bypasses `is_protected_node`, and every operation is
+immutable-by-supersede (new node + `supersedes` edge; forget = tombstone). Operations: `evolve_knowledge`,
+`evolve_memory`, `forget`, `link_entities`.
+
+> **Honest architectural flag (§2.3):** cultivate writes via `engram_node_full`, which targets the soul's
+> **in-process (volatile) store**, and sync never flows soul → `:8742`. So the most intentional writes in the
+> system currently do **not** write through to the durable store. This is a known issue, not a settled design.
+
+### 7.4 Self-authorship (DESIGNED)
+
+The arc the gate exists to protect: a soul is **cultivated** (Will authors the identity/values seed), then
+grows into **self-authoring** — the cultivate door is the mechanism by which a mind, once mature, edits its own
+identity deliberately and accountably rather than by drift. The write-protection guarantees identity changes
+are *decisions* (through the door, superseded with provenance), never accidents of accumulation.
+
+---
+
+## 8. The fact boundary (DESIGNED)
+
+The line between *answer locally* and *reach out for truth* is **not hand-coded** — it is **derived from the
+geometry** on two triggers *(WP §17, §20)*:
+
+- **Sparse landing (spatial).** The projection lands in a thin/orphaned region → the self is measuring its own
+  ignorance geometrically → fire **learn**. Sparseness is anti-hallucination.
+- **Decayed landing (temporal).** A region's edges have aged below the forgetting-curve threshold (§6.3) →
+  fire **refresh**. Because the decay rate encodes a domain's *volatility*, the system re-fetches proportional
+  to how fast that domain actually changes — VBD applied to knowledge freshness. Decay is anti-staleness.
+
+**The reach-out** has several legitimate routes, none mandated: **(a)** an LLM as a *fast proposer*, then
+fact-checked; **(b)** direct fetch of **first, primary sources** on the open internet; **(c)** the human supplies
+the truth. The model is an **optional convenience, never the arbiter.** The one invariant: **nothing enters the
+geometry unverified** — the candidate is a hypothesis until it clears a check against something real (a primary
+source or the human's judgment, *not* the model's own plausibility). The loop closes **through the human**, who
+vets truth against real sources; only verified, provenance-cited truth is **absorbed** — baked into geometry so
+the region densifies and the next identical query lands local, with no model in the path. Each absorption pushes
+the boundary back: the **model footprint shrinks monotonically** as capabilities are absorbed.
+
+**Status: DESIGNED.** No shipped runtime yet fetches a first source on a sparse/decayed landing or bakes a
+human-vetted truth from one. The *(WP §24)* status ledger holds the precise line.
+
+---
+
+## 9. Topology — what shape the mind actually is
+
+The global shape is now an **empirical** question, and the first pass returned an honest negative *(WP §6.1)*.
+
+- **The body is a genus-0 expander, NOT a torus (PROVEN negative).** A persistent-homology / TDA pass over the
+  **~3,632-node connected core** returned **b₁ = 0, b₂ = 0** — no loops, no voids: an **expander-like blob**,
+  not the torus the bent-manifold intuition suggested. The pipeline was first **validated on synthetic
+  controls** (torus, sphere, random) whose known Betti signatures it recovered. Worse for the naive intuition,
+  **naive densification trends *away* from a torus**, not toward one. The naive shape-claim is reported as a
+  failure, plainly, not buried.
+- **The refined consolidation-with-sparsification conjecture (DESIGNED / hypothesis).** The negative relocates
+  the torus from a property the graph *has* to an **attractor a process reaches**: prune isotropic
+  shortcut-noise, reinforce cyclic scaffolds, rewire by discrete curvature (Ollivier–Ricci flow on the graph
+  metric), and **collapse the intrinsic dimension from ≈8 toward ≈2**. Run to fixpoint, these might *carve* a
+  cyclic manifold out of the blob. The measurement pipeline exists and its controls pass; the dynamic has
+  **not** been run to fixpoint — an open experiment, labeled as one.
+- **The orbit-as-thin-wide-ring hypothesis (DESIGNED).** The body/orbit model (§5) suggests a **core + ring**
+  structure: a dense genus-0 body wrapped in a thin, wide halo of not-yet-integrated experience. Whether the
+  *orbit* carries the toroidal/cyclic signature the body lacks is the natural next measurement — the
+  conjecture is that consolidation-with-sparsification is precisely the dynamic that would pull ring structure
+  into the body.
+- **One lever, two payoffs.** The **same sparsification** the topology conjecture needs also makes the reified
+  neighborhoods (§4) **crisper** — tighter boundaries, higher co-registration, operators that discriminate
+  rather than average. So the experiment is worth running on independent grounds, whatever the topology
+  resolves to.
+
+**Status: PROVEN (negative) + DESIGNED (the refined dynamic and the orbit hypothesis).**
+
+---
+
+## 10. Design principles
+
+The invariants that govern every subsystem above:
+
+1. **Geometry > code.** Meaning is geometry; code is the residue. Prefer making a thing geometric (a region, a
+   projection, a distance) over writing a branch.
+2. **Three domain-blind verbs.** READ / TRANSFORM / WRITE. Every faculty is these three over some region-space
+   (language over meaning-space, skills over procedure-space, self over identity-space).
+3. **Faculty-naming (mind in the domain, math in the appendix).** Operators are named for the faculty they
+   *are* — recognize, discern, liken — never for the linear algebra. A mind reasons in the language of
+   experience; the closed forms live in the whitepaper appendix.
+4. **No branch on identity.** One family-blind engine keyed by coordinates/data, not `if Romance / if
+   Germanic` (language) and not special-cased identity handling. De-branching to byte-identical parity is the
+   proof the geometry, not the code, carries the distinction.
+5. **Sovereignty.** Local files, local runtime; the human is the ground-truth authority for their own mind;
+   nothing enters the geometry unverified; the model is demoted from mediator-of-all-knowledge to a vetted,
+   optional lookup. No external hosting of the user's work; no claude.ai artifacts.
+6. **Summon-through-self, not retrieval.** Recall and identity are one projection onto the self-and-memory
+   geometry — no intent classifier, no separate fact branch. A search engine bolted beside a mind is exactly
+   the capability-without-constraint this principle exists to remove.
+7. **Immutability & provenance.** Append-only; supersede with provenance; tombstone, never hard-delete; never
+   leave a stale canonical. The supersede-chain *is* the history of what a thing meant.
+8. **Mathematical auditability.** Because meaning is geometry, a whole mind is auditable by **invariants
+   computed over the manifold** — grounding, drift, consistency, competence-coverage, and an honesty invariant
+   ("won't confabulate over a thin region," made provable rather than hoped). Drift is already measured on the
+   live soul; a full audit-pass certifier is **DESIGNED, not shipped.**
+9. **Verification is the point.** Demonstrate, don't declare; name every honest edge; a restart (not a claim)
+   is the durability gate; the telephone round-trip (not cosine) is the translation gate.
+
+---
+
+## Appendix — status at a glance (2026-08-13)
+
+| Subsystem | Status |
+|---|---|
+| Engram substrate, tiered/WAL store | LIVE (flag-gated) |
+| Durability: auto-remerge net | LIVE (interim) |
+| Durability: full WAL edge-persistence (#56) | STAGED / decision-pending |
+| Two-store write-through (cultivate → durable) | **known issue, not fixed** |
+| Data model (nodes/edges/embeddings/immutability) | LIVE |
+| Reified `Neighborhood` nodes (28 live, ~128 reseed pending) | LIVE |
+| Body/orbit two-zone + integration | DESIGNED / refined |
+| Operator `recall` | LIVE |
+| Operators recognize/synthesize/discern/gauge-distance (math) | LIVE (compiled) |
+| Operator HTTP endpoints (same four) | STAGED (return `not found` on live binary) |
+| Operators liken/appreciate/avert/taste | DESIGNED (wonder subsystem live internally) |
+| Language realizers (major families), ELP lexicon, telephone test | PROVEN |
+| Parser / native-el port / summon-through-self rebuild | IN PROGRESS |
+| No-LLM dialogue end-to-end | DESIGNED (not demonstrated) |
+| Interoception / chronoception | STAGED (present, flag-gated; `/api/drift` live) |
+| Reasoning modes + grounding/consistency verifier | STAGED (33/33, 29/29 on scratch/cutover) |
+| Self-region + identity/values write-protection + cultivate door | LIVE (with §2.3 write-through caveat) |
+| Self-authorship | DESIGNED |
+| Fact boundary (sparse/decay → verify → absorb) | DESIGNED |
+| Topology: body = genus-0 expander (not torus) | PROVEN (negative) |
+| Topology: consolidation-with-sparsification + orbit-ring | DESIGNED / hypothesis |
+| Mathematical auditability certifier | DESIGNED |
+
+**Cross-references:** whitepaper v1.5 · `~/work/engram-api-reference.md` · `03-data-and-memory.md` ·
+`04-runtime-and-deployment.md` · `design/engram-tiered-storage-engine.md` · `ARCHITECTURE-CHARTER.md`.