# Spatial Ground Architectural Resolution — Pass #3: Institutional Authority

**Edition:** Amended Source-Reconciled Edition

**Basis:** the 2,100 classified Spatial Ground Creator Findings (#1–#2100); the Corpus-Level Classification Report; Architectural Resolution Pass #1 (Spatial Meaning) and Pass #2 (Layer Ownership), both treated as adopted inputs; and the reviewed constitutional and Creator-period source records: The Declaration, Codex ST-IV — The World, Codex WP-S-I — The Extent, The Codex Principles, The Codex, The World Properties Charter, and The Lexicon. The primary text of every Finding cited below was re-read before the original Pass #3 resolution, and this amended edition additionally reconciles the institutional conclusions against the source records now available.

**Source clarification.** The reviewed constitutional sources confirm the Creator-period distinction used throughout this Pass: constitutional truth constrains; The Atlas may intentionally design where constitutional truth leaves room; implementation does not acquire constitutional authority merely by operation. The Declaration also expressly contemplates the possibility of a **formal constitutional revision**. This amended edition therefore distinguishes absolute finality **within Spatial Ground and The Atlas** from any hypothetical upstream constitutional revision process, which is not defined here.

**Status:** amended recommended resolutions for twelve institutional questions. No Requirements are drafted, no formal model is chosen, no higher layer is designed, nothing is renumbered. Pass #1 and Pass #2 are not reopened. The amendment narrows Decision 5 and every dependent statement so that the absence of World-space change authority is stated **within Spatial Ground, The Atlas, stewardship, implementation, and post-Creator architectural succession**, while any hypothetical formal constitutional revision remains outside this architecture.

**Amendment note.** This edition preserves all twelve Pass #3 decisions except for the scope of Decision 5's finality claim. The original formulation said that no authority could exist to change World-space. The reviewed source record supports a narrower and stronger architectural conclusion: **no authority within Spatial Ground, The Atlas, stewardship, implementation, ordinary governance, or post-Creator architectural succession may change established World-space.** The Declaration's formal-revision clause is preserved as an upstream constitutional possibility whose authority and procedure are not defined by Spatial Ground.

**Evidence tags:** **[direct]** a Finding says it; **[source-upstream]** a reviewed constitutional source controls or constrains the answer; **[source-doctrine]** reviewed Creator-period doctrine governs the design/constitutional distinction; **[inference]** architectural reasoning where no source decides. Repetition is not counted as proof.

---

## Executive Recommendation

The working chain in the brief survives testing, with one addition that the rest of this Pass depends on:

> Constitutional truth constrains → the Creator designs the exact permissible spatial expression → **a recorded Adoption Act adopts one definition, and the power to design World-space membership is exhausted by that act** → Spatial Ground canonically expresses and preserves it → higher layers interpret it → implementation realizes it.

**Who designs.** The Creator, working in The Atlas, where the Spatial Ground domain lives. Candidates are explicitly non-canonical.

**Who adopts.** The Creator, acting in an office (the Atlas adoption authority) by a recorded Adoption Act in The Atlas. Not The Codex, not The Foundation, not a new institution. The Codex is involved only when a design depends on something constitutional that is not yet defined.

**Person and institution.** Creator intent becomes canon only through a recorded act. Nothing unrecorded is ever canonical. After adoption, what governs is the record and never the person.

**Who corrects.** The same office, on evidence, against one standard: what the Adoption Act recorded. A valid and unambiguous adopted definition cannot be "corrected," because there is nothing for it to have failed to express.

**Who may change scope.** The same office, on proof of necessity. Any dependency on a constitutional concept returns the question to The Codex.

**Whether anyone may change World-space truth.** No Spatial Ground, Atlas, stewardship, implementation, or post-Creator architectural authority may alter established World-space. Creator design authority over the canonical instance is exhausted by adoption. The FOUNDATIONAL AUTHORITY GAP is therefore closed **within this architecture**: no such architectural authority exists. The reviewed Declaration, however, contemplates formal constitutional revision. Any hypothetical revision capable of changing a foundational constraint would occur upstream of Spatial Ground and The Atlas and is neither authorized nor procedurally defined here. The 32 Findings that contemplate foundational change are reread as detection, refusal, and upstream-escalation rules rather than as a Ground-level change path.

**Who certifies.** Conformance and independent implementers produce evidence of readiness. Evidence is weighed by the adopter and never adopts. Because adoption of the World-space instance is irreversible, the evidence comes first.

**Who stewards.** Recognized stewards hold custody and preserve. Stewardship confers no semantic authority, and neither does possession, hosting or control.

**Who succeeds.** A successor office in The Atlas, defined by a Succession Instrument the Creator adopts during the Creator Period. It inherits the office and never the design. Its powers are narrower than the Creator's because the design power no longer exists to be inherited.

**Where shared architecture lives.** In The Atlas, as shared architectural doctrine, adopted by the same office. The words "Charter," "Codex" and "Principles" should be avoided in its title.

---

## Decision 1 — Adoption Authority

### Recommendation

**A and B. The authority structure, named.** During the Creator Period, authority to adopt the exact canonical Spatial Ground definition belongs to **the Creator, acting as the Atlas adoption authority, by a recorded Adoption Act in The Atlas.** It is an office held by a person. It is not the Creator personally in an unrecorded capacity, not The Atlas acting without the Creator, not The Codex, not The Foundation, and not a newly named institution.

**C. Five roles, kept apart.**

| Role | Who | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| Designs the candidate | The Creator, in the Spatial Ground domain of The Atlas | Candidate definitions, explicitly non-canonical (#155) |
| Reviews | Conformance and validation; an independent implementer; audit against constitutional inputs, the Survey boundary and the higher-layer boundary (#291–#293) | Evidence. No authority |
| Adopts | The Creator, acting as the Atlas adoption authority | The Adoption Act |
| Where the adopted record lives | The Atlas, in the Spatial Ground domain. The date belongs to The Chronicle; the reasoning to the Journal or Origins (#1044, #1458–#1460) | The canonical record |
| Stewards | Recognized stewards (Decision 9) | Custody and preservation. No authority |

**D. Personally or institutionally?** Both, in a fixed relation: the person decides, and only the institutional act makes the decision canon (Decision 2).

**E. Is Codex approval needed?** No, where the design stays within constitutional constraints already adopted. The Adoption Act must state that it does, with each constraint traced to its source (#291). The Codex is involved only on constitutional return (Decision 4).

**F. What makes adoption explicit and traceable.** The Adoption Act records:
1. exactly what is adopted: the primary artifact, identified by semantic identity together with integrity evidence (#554, #557, #1431);
2. the governing Requirements and Specification versions, and the Survey specification or lineage relied on (#390, #1382);
3. which form is primary for each semantic element (Decision 8);
4. a statement of conformity with the constitutional constraints Ground expresses, traced to source;
5. the evidence relied on, recorded as evidence and never as the rule (#1603);
6. the adopter, the capacity in which the adopter acts, and the power exercised;
7. a statement of design intent, explanatory only, which becomes relevant only if the artifact later proves defective (Decision 3).

**G. Scope enlargement.** The same adopter, by the same kind of act (#1966, #267, #1004), subject to Decision 4.

### Strongest Evidence
- **#504 [direct]:** the point at which a candidate becomes canonical "must be explicit and institutionally traceable rather than inferred from publication, implementation, or widespread use."
- **#503, #505, #506, #507 [direct]:** correctness, publication, implementation and popularity are not adoption.
- **#1740 [direct]:** "Institutions may determine which Ground definition is adopted, but after adoption the meaning of that definition should resolve through formal canonical rules."
- **#154, #155, #156 [direct]:** candidate and canonical states are distinct, and candidates do not leak upward.
- **#554 [direct]:** the canonical instance is identifiable "without relying on convention or filename."
- **#1688 [direct]:** "the authority of the original Creator-period institution."
- **#1450, #1459 [direct]:** Spatial Ground is an Atlas domain, and The Atlas holds the architectural record.
- **#1966 [direct]:** anything new becomes canonical only by "the same requirement and adoption standards."
- **The institutional sequence [source-doctrine]:** The Foundation constrains, The Codex defines, The Atlas designs, implementation realizes. The Atlas is the principal home of World design.
- **Pass #1, Decision 5 [adopted]:** adoption fixes exactly which Survey space is World-space; the layer expresses it.

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **No Finding names the adopter.** The corpus says "institutions" (#1740), "institutional authority" (#1737) and "the original Creator-period institution" (#1688). The naming here rests on the brief's doctrine, not on the corpus.
- **#706** requires machine-readable canon to be "traceable to adopted human-readable architectural and normative documentation." That is met by item 1 and item 3 of the Adoption Act.
- **One person holds the design role and the adoption role.** That is a concentration, addressed in Decision 2 and in the Creator-Period Consistency Review.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- **Constitutional truth does not predetermine the exact membership set [source-doctrine].** Someone must choose among permissible expressions. The reviewed Creator-period doctrine places intentional World design in The Atlas and leaves permissible design choices to the Creator during the Creator Period.
- **Design is not unconstrained invention.** The adopter has authority only where the constitutional sources leave room. A design outside them is outside the power (Decision 5).
- **Adoption makes a design permanent without making it constitutional.** Placing adoption in The Atlas keeps The Codex narrow, as the doctrine asks.

### Architectural Consequences
- Three things are adoptable and should not be confused (#551–#554): the Requirements, the Specification (with its formal model), and the canonical World-space *instance*. Irreversibility attaches to the instance.
- The Adoption Act is an institutional event. It is never an input to membership resolution (#1742).
- "Establish" and "established," reserved in Pass #1 for the institutional act and its result, now have a referent: the Adoption Act.

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #154, #155, #156, #503, #504, #554, #1740, #1742.
- **Revise:** #1688, #1737, #1740 (name the office where they say "institution").
- **Merge:** #505–#507 under #504; #1601, #1602, #1976, #2065, #2076 under #503.
- **Move to Governance:** the content of the Adoption Act.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE.**

---

## Decision 2 — Creator Authority vs Institutional Authority

### Recommendation

**The relationship.** The Creator holds the authority; the record carries it. A decision of the Creator becomes canon only by a recorded act in The Atlas, and once recorded, the act and not the person is what anyone consults.

**A. What belongs uniquely to the Creator during the Creator Period.** *Design authority*: the power to choose, among constitutionally permissible spatial expressions, the exact definition of World-space, and to adopt it. It is unique in a strong sense. **It is exhausted by its exercise.** Once the instance is adopted, no one holds a power to choose World-space again, the Creator included (Decision 5).

**B. Four moments.**

| Moment | What it is | Canonical? |
|---|---|---|
| A Creator decision | A choice made, possibly informal | No |
| An Atlas design | The choice recorded in The Atlas as a candidate | No. Explicitly non-canonical (#155) |
| An adopted Ground rule | The subject of a recorded Adoption Act | Yes |
| A permanent canonical fact | For the World-space instance, the same moment as adoption. For Requirements and Specification, adoption makes them governing, and they remain revisable under change control | Yes |

**C. Is intent sufficient?** No. It must be recorded through an institutional act.

**D. Can an informal preference silently become canonical?** Never (#504, #1965, #1966, #2012).

**E. How Creator authority is kept from becoming hidden state.**
- Authority is exercised only by recorded acts.
- After adoption, membership resolves from the definition and never from the person (#1740, #1742).
- The Creator's later account of what was meant is evidence at most, and only where an adopted artifact has proved defective (Decision 3). No rule may depend "on one person's explanation of what ambiguous documentation 'really meant'" (#1584).

**F. When the Creator Period ends.**
- Authority does not remain attached to the person.
- Design authority over World-space membership is already exhausted, provided the instance has been adopted.
- The continuing powers of the office transfer to a successor defined by a recorded instrument (Decision 11).
- How and when the Creator Period ends is for the constitutional and Creator-period sources. This Pass does not define it.

### Strongest Evidence
- **#27 [direct, primitive]:** canonical truth must not depend on "any other hidden condition."
- **#999 [direct, survivor]:** the identity of The World resides "in explicit canonical records and rules rather than in what its creators or custodians happen to remember."
- **#504 [direct]**, **#1584, #148 [direct]:** explicit adoption; no dependence on one person's explanation.
- **#1740, #1742 [direct]:** adoption is not computation, and governance events are not membership inputs.
- **#4 [direct, primitive]:** once established as World-space, membership "is permanent."
- **#978, #979 [direct]:** succession preserves "canon, not authority personality."
- **Constitutional reality precedes design; design gives intentional form to what the Constitution leaves open [source-doctrine].**

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **The corpus uses the language of discovery and recognition** (#2, #154 "discovery state," #2034, #2035). Read literally, it suggests the exact geography was already fixed and only needed finding. Under the brief's discipline that reading is set aside: what is *recognized* is constitutional constraint; what is *designed* is the exact expression. #2035 then reads naturally: the design decision precedes its encoding.
- **Exhaustion is an inference.** No Finding states it. It follows from #4 (permanence on establishment) together with the constitutional bars in Decision 5.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- The doctrine "not a Codex does not mean not allowed" protects the Creator's freedom *before* adoption. Any number of candidates may be made, compared and discarded (#2067–#2069).
- The same doctrine does not survive adoption for the instance. Permanence is what adoption is for.
- The practical consequence is that the Adoption Act for the instance should be the last deliberate step, taken after the evidence of Decision 6.

### Architectural Consequences
- The glossary should separate *discovery* (of constitutional truth and of architectural requirements) from *design* (of the exact spatial expression).
- A candidate may be revised freely. An adopted instance may not.

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #27, #999, #1584, #1742.
- **Revise:** #154 ("discovery state" becomes candidate or design state), #2033–#2035 (recognition of constraint; design of expression).
- **Move to Governance:** the four-moment distinction.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE**, save for how the Creator Period ends, which is upstream.

---

## Decision 3 — Correction Authority

### Recommendation

**The governing rule.** *What was adopted is what the Adoption Act records.* A correction restores agreement with that record. It never consults what anyone meant but did not record.

A consequence follows that the corpus never states. **A valid, unambiguous adopted definition cannot be corrected,** because there is nothing it could have failed to express. Correction reaches the membership class (#1619's fifth class) only where the adopted artifact is defective, or where the artifact on file is not the one the Act adopted.

**Three tiers.**

| Tier | What it is | Who acts | Adoption-authority act? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Restoration | Bringing copies, derived artifacts and implementations back into agreement with the canonical record | Stewards and implementers | No. Logged (#2089, #1360) |
| 2. Meaning-preserving supersession | A new primary artifact, or revised normative text, shown to be semantically identical to the old (#686, #1486) | Prepared by Atlas maintainers; designated by the adoption authority | Yes: designation of the single successor (#677), made atomically (#863). Membership is unchanged |
| 3. Correction of a defective normative record | Specification ambiguity, an invalid or contradictory definition, or the wrong artifact on file | The adoption authority, on reviewed evidence | Yes, with the full lifecycle below |

**A, B, C.**
- **Who may raise a suspected failure?** Anyone, since the right to verify is general (#1735).
- **Who evaluates the evidence?** The review function: conformance, independent implementers, and audit against constitutional inputs.
- **Who decides?** The adoption authority, because evidence is not decision (#1603) and a correction is canonical only when adopted (#1612).

**D. Same authority as adoption?** Yes for Tiers 2 and 3, because each designates what is canonical. No for Tier 1.

**E. May stewards fix clerical or encoding errors?** In copies, yes (Tier 1). In the primary normative artifact, no. Whether a change is "merely clerical" is itself a semantic judgment: "a one-character change may alter canonical meaning" (#687).

**F. What requires a formal act?** Tiers 2 and 3. Neither is a re-adoption of World-space. The act adopts a corrected or successor *record* (#599, #1361, #2089).

**G. One canon during dispute.**
- The Adoption Act designates one primary artifact.
- Candidate corrections and disputes are recorded as annotations on records and are never membership states (#1614).
- Queries continue to resolve against the established canon (#1613).
- Only an adoption-authority act changes which artifact is primary, and it does so at one moment (#863).

**H. What is preserved.** For every correction: the erroneous artifact, the evidence, the class of defect (#1619), the exact Survey space affected (#1542, #1546), the decision, who decided and in what capacity, and the date. The corrected reading must be findable from the old record without rewriting it (#134, #1554–#1556).

**The standard and the limits.** The standard of proof is #1552, and the burden lies on the proposer (#1606). The defect is isolated (#1615), impact is traced where a shared rule is involved (#1617), only what is proven wrong is changed (#1618), and there is neither over- nor under-correction (#1620, #1621). Compatibility never perpetuates an old error (#1968).

### Strongest Evidence
- **#1552 [direct]:** a correction is supported "by evidence that the prior artifact failed to express already-established Ground truth."
- **#1551, #1553 [direct]:** correction is a different act from change, and change may not be disguised as correction.
- **#1603, #1612 [direct]:** evidence is not decision; a correction has candidate and adopted states.
- **#1611, #1613, #1614 [direct]:** one canon, determinate answers, no review states as membership.
- **#133–#135 [direct]:** evidence of error; historical accountability; correction is not redesign.
- **#677, #863 [direct]:** single successor; atomic transition.
- **#687 [direct]:** semantics, not text, decide whether meaning changed.
- **Pass #2, Decision 9 [adopted]:** decidable validity. If validity is checked before adoption, membership-class corrections should almost never arise.

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **#1552's phrase "prior intended canonical truth"** could be read as licensing appeal to unrecorded intent. Under #27 and #999 it cannot. "Intended" means intended as recorded.
- **#1607** allows reconsideration for "demonstrable error or extraordinary foundational necessity." The second ground is struck by Decision 5.
- **One hard case remains:** an adopted definition later shown to violate a constitutional constraint. It is treated in Decision 5.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- Because the exact membership was *designed* and not discovered, there is no truth behind the record for a correction to reach. The record is the truth, provided it is valid.
- This makes pre-adoption review the real safeguard, and correction a repair for defects that review missed.
- After the Creator Period, the successor corrects under the same standard and with no more discretion, since the standard looks only to the record.

### Architectural Consequences
- The design-intent statement in the Adoption Act is explanatory and subordinate (#1909, #1431). It matters only in a Tier 3 proceeding.
- "Under review" and "correction proposed" are annotations, not states (Decision 12).

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #133, #134, #135, #677, #863, #1551, #1553, #1611, #1612, #1619.
- **Revise:** #1552 ("intended" means as recorded at adoption), #1607 (strike "extraordinary foundational necessity"), #1619 (the fifth class is a defective record of membership, never a change).
- **Merge:** #1554–#1557 under #134; #1613, #1614, #2064–#2067 under #1611; #1615–#1618, #1620, #1621 under #1551.
- **Move to Governance:** the three tiers.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE.**

---

## Decision 4 — Scope Change Authority

### Recommendation

**A. Who decides that Ground lacks an indispensable truth?** The adoption authority. The higher layer that met the problem raises it and does not patch it locally (#427, #428, #1891, #1892).

**B. What proves "downward promotion" necessary.** All of the following:
- the responsibility cannot properly belong below, above, or remain derived (#267);
- it passes the five admission tests of #1007–#1011 (removal, upward placement, downward placement, derivation, permanence);
- without it, canonical World-space itself would be incomplete, inexact or unrecoverable (#1893, #1895);
- it receives "the same necessity, layer-boundary, permanence, and reconstructability scrutiny as the original architecture" (#1004).

**C. Same authority as adopted Ground?** Yes (#1966).

**D and E. The boundary between architectural scope change and constitutional return.**

*Atlas architecture is sufficient* when the proposed responsibility:
- can be stated wholly in terms of Survey facts and World membership;
- leaves every expressed constitutional constraint as it is;
- leaves established membership untouched, since a scope change is never a truth change.

*The question returns to The Codex* when the proposal:
- depends on, defines or alters a concept The Codex defines: World, Extent, Parcel, Boundary, Adjacency, Contiguity, Region, Cluster (#289);
- needs a foundational concept The Codex has not yet defined ("dependency triggers constitutional return") [source-doctrine];
- would alter a constraint Ground expresses: One World, continuity, Extent, existence, finitude, no expansion, no duplication;
- would carry Ground's authority beyond the Survey Domain, which #1150 reserves to "a future foundational architecture."

*Neither route is open* to a proposal that would alter established membership (Decision 5).

Dissolving or merging the layer (#1450) is a change to the dependency sequence. It belongs to shared architectural doctrine (Decision 10), and it returns to The Codex only if the sequence is itself constitutionally stated, which this review cannot confirm.

### Strongest Evidence
- **#266, #267 [direct, retained]:** a closed responsibility set, and a necessity proof for any addition.
- **#1003, #1004 [direct]:** clarification is not expansion; expansion faces the original scrutiny.
- **#1891–#1893, #1895 [direct].**
- **#1965, #1966 [direct]:** no convention or habit becomes canon except by ordinary adoption.
- **#289 [direct]:** the Codex concepts Ground must not redefine.
- **#1150 [direct].**
- **Pass #2, Decision 1 [adopted]:** Ground-native content is membership alone. A legitimate enlargement should therefore be extremely rare.

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **Standing exception clauses** in #1159, #1420 and #1258 ("unless later architecture explicitly requires it"). Pass #2 replaced them with this route.
- **The corpus gives no example of a legitimate downward promotion** in 2,100 Findings.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- The Atlas designs; The Codex defines. A scope change that stays inside membership is design. One that touches a defined concept is definition and goes back up.
- The Codex "should remain deliberately narrower than all things that may exist" [source-doctrine]. That argues against routing ordinary architectural questions to it.

### Architectural Consequences
- A scope change is recorded as its own class of act, distinct from record, model and truth (#1003).
- "Expansion" is to be used for scope only. Geographic extension of World-space is a barred act and needs no everyday word.

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #266, #267, #1003, #1004, #1891, #1893, #1895.
- **Revise:** #1150 (its "unless" clause points to constitutional return), #1159, #1420, #1258 (as in Pass #2).
- **Merge:** #1892, #1965 under #1966; #1593 under #1003.
- **Move to Governance:** the return boundary.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE.**

---

## Decision 5 — Foundational Change / Permanence

### Recommendation

**A. Is World-space truth immutable after adoption?** Yes **within Spatial Ground and The Atlas**. No architectural, stewardship, implementation, or successor authority may change the adopted World-space instance.

**E. What "permanent" means.** Permanent for every authority governed by this architecture. Adoption exhausts Creator design authority over the canonical instance. No later Atlas act, correction, model replacement, scope change, stewardship act, implementation event, or succession act may alter membership.

This Pass does **not** assert that BitPangea's constitutional order is metaphysically or procedurally incapable of formal revision. The reviewed Declaration expressly contemplates a formal constitutional revision. Whether such a revision could reach every foundational truth, who could authorize it, and what procedure would govern it are upstream constitutional questions that Spatial Ground cannot answer.

**F. The FOUNDATIONAL AUTHORITY GAP is closed at the Spatial Ground / Atlas level.** No such architectural authority exists. If a future formal constitutional revision were ever validly made and materially changed a foundational constraint, Spatial Ground would face an upstream constitutional event, not exercise a dormant change power of its own.

**The reasons, in two layers.**
1. *Constitutional [source-upstream].* The Declaration makes The World finite, one, not duplicable and incapable of expansion. Codex ST-IV preserves The World's permanence against structural inquiry. WP-S-I states that inquiry or representation does not expand, contract, duplicate, or otherwise alter Extent. These sources bar ordinary architectural alteration and make World-space final for Ground and Atlas purposes. The Declaration's formal-revision clause prevents this Pass from claiming that no upstream constitutional revision could ever exist.

| Direction | Barred by |
|---|---|
| Addition of World-space | No expansion |
| Removal of World-space | WP-S-I ("contract"); #4 |
| Relocation or reshaping at constant magnitude | ST-IV ("alter"); #4; #72 ("must never later be reused to mean a different canonical place"); #73 |
| A second canonical World-space | One World; no duplication; #21 |

2. *Institutional [inference].* Design authority over membership is exhausted at adoption (Decision 2). After adoption there is no residual power in the Creator, the successor, The Atlas or any steward.

**B. The 32 Findings, reread.**

| Group | Findings | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| Detection and non-disguise | #853, #856, #1397, #1398, #1543, #1546, #1598, #1599 | Retained as defensive rules. A membership difference between authoritative records is a *failure to be detected and refused*, never an event to be governed |
| Burden and scrutiny | #424, #431, #684, #1399, #1400, #1606, #1607 | Apply to reconsideration, correction and model replacement. They do not apply to change of truth, which has no burden that could be met |
| Exception clauses | #438, #1026, #1038, #1744, #1753, #1779, #1924 | Narrow them: no Ground-, Atlas-, stewardship-, implementation-, or successor-level exception exists. Any reference to a separate constitutional act is treated only as an upstream constitutional possibility outside this architecture |
| Change-class lists | #395, #673, #683, #1619 | "Meaning-altering" applies to rules in the Requirements and Specification. "Foundational spatial change" is kept only as a named *prohibited* class, so it can be recognized and refused. #1619's fifth class is a defective record of membership |
| Atomic transition | #863 | Retained for supersession and correction of records |
| Model replacement | #1484 | Its second branch ("or explicitly acknowledge that foundational spatial continuity has changed") is struck. A successor model that cannot prove continuity is not adoptable |
| Closure | #430 | Review remains possible; review is not reopening (#1608) |
| Re-founding | #2097 | No such act is available. A reconstruction that cannot recover the same World-space is a loss, which is why preservation is strict. It is never a fresh founding |
| Correction boundary | #1551, #1553, #1621 | Retained. The "second act" they distinguish from correction is now known to be unavailable |

**C.** No change path exists within Spatial Ground or The Atlas; contraction is as barred as expansion for every authority governed by this architecture. A hypothetical upstream constitutional revision is outside this Pass and is not treated as a Ground change mechanism.

**D. Four things that look alike and are not.**

| Act | Available? | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Correction of a wrong record | Yes | Adoption authority (Decision 3) |
| Replacement of the formal model with truth preserved | Yes, on proof of continuity (#1482–#1486) | Adoption authority |
| Formal constitutional revision | Outside Spatial Ground and outside The Atlas. The Declaration contemplates formal constitutional revision, but this Pass does not define its competent authority, scope, or procedure | Upstream constitutional authority, unspecified here |
| Actual World-space change by Ground / Atlas architecture | No | None |
| Upstream constitutional event that changes a foundational constraint | Not a Ground or Atlas act. If validly established upstream, Spatial Ground would have to return to constitutional review under #91 rather than invoke any internal change power | Outside this architecture |

**One hard case, and a refinement of Pass #2, Decision 7B.** Suppose an adopted definition were later shown to violate a constitutional constraint. Pass #2 said such a definition is defective and is cured by governed correction. That stands, with three clarifications.
- The non-conforming part was never validly canonical. The adopter's authority exists only where the constitutional sources leave room (Decision 1), so adopting it was outside the power.
- The cure is the narrowest change that restores conformity, bounded by #1618, and it proceeds only after constitutional return, since the defect is constitutional.
- If more than one conforming cure exists, choosing among them is design. During the Creator Period the Creator may make that choice. Afterward it may be made only if the Succession Instrument expressly confers a curative authority limited to that purpose. Otherwise the choice is made upstream.

This is classed as correction of an invalid adoption, not as foundational change. It is the single path by which two authoritative records could ever differ in membership, and the conformity review at adoption exists to keep it closed.

### Strongest Evidence
- **#4 [direct, primitive]:** membership "is permanent."
- **#72, #73 [direct]:** no reassignment; referential permanence.
- **#136, #394 [direct]:** a change to which space belongs to The World "must never be treated as routine versioning."
- **#1551, #1553 [direct]:** correction is not change.
- **#23, #56, #1597 [direct]:** nothing above Ground can extend or alter World-space.
- **The Declaration; Codex ST-IV; WP-S-I [source-upstream].**
- **Pass #1 [adopted]:** refinement decides nothing; the limit does not move; Domain change does not move The World.

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **Thirty-two Findings carry language that contemplates change,** several with explicit exception clauses ("unless a separate constitutional act changes World truth," #438). They do not create a Ground-level authority. In light of the Declaration's formal-revision clause, those exceptions are retained only as upstream constitutional escape hatches whose authority and procedure are external to this architecture.
- **#430:** "future constitutional discovery could… justify review." Review is available; review is not an Atlas power to redesign established membership.
- **The reviewed Declaration contemplates formal constitutional revision.** This means the architecture must not convert Ground permanence into a claim that constitutional revision is impossible. If a valid upstream revision ever altered a foundational constraint, Ground would return upward under #91; Ground itself would still provide no change path and no change authority.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- A design choice that becomes permanent through adoption does not thereby become constitutional [source-doctrine]. Its permanence has two sources that must not be confused: the constitutional permanence of The World, and the institutional finality of the Adoption Act.
- This is the strongest reason to place the Adoption Act for the instance last.

### Architectural Consequences
- The change classes of the classification report become: record (available), scope (available, rare), model (available, on proof), World-space truth (**unavailable**).
- Detection Findings move to Conformance and Preservation as tamper-evidence and drift-detection duties.
- Preservation failure is now the only way The World's place could be lost, which raises the weight of every preservation obligation.

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #4, #72, #73, #136, #394, #853, #856, #863, #1397, #1398, #1551, #1553.
- **Revise:** #438, #1026, #1038, #1744, #1753, #1779, #1924 (narrow any change exception to an upstream formal constitutional event outside Spatial Ground and The Atlas); #1484 (a model successor may not acknowledge an architectural break in membership; any upstream constitutional event is outside model replacement); #1607, #1399, #1400, #430 (reconsideration and review never supply an Atlas-level power to change membership); #395, #683 (truth change is prohibited within this architecture); #2097 (no architectural re-founding).
- **Reclassify:** the FOUNDATIONAL AUTHORITY GAP marker on 32 rows becomes **"closed within Spatial Ground / The Atlas; upstream formal constitutional revision authority and procedure unresolved."**
- **Reject / Supersede:** any reading under which established membership may legitimately change by Ground, The Atlas, stewardship, implementation, ordinary governance, or post-Creator succession.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE within Spatial Ground and The Atlas.** Any hypothetical formal constitutional revision remains upstream and outside this architecture.

---

## Decision 6 — Establishment and Maturity

### Recommendation

**F. Adoption is distinct from maturity.** Adoption is an act of authority. Maturity is a body of evidence about a Specification and its implementations. "Established," under the vocabulary rule of Pass #1, means adopted; it is not a further state.

**G. Yes, Ground may be adopted before any implementation activates it (#1977).** The lifecycle is *candidate → adopted*. "Operational" is a condition of implementations, not a state of Ground (#1978).

**The ordering principle [inference].** Adoption of the *instance* is irreversible (Decision 5). If the Specification under which it is read were ambiguous, the adopted instance would have no determinate meaning, and no later "correction" could supply one without deciding new truth. **Evidence of readiness therefore precedes adoption of the instance.** The corpus's own sequencing points the same way: Findings, then Requirements, then Specification, then Conformance (#297–#299), with vectors following the Specification (#198).

**A and B. Independent implementation.** The two strengths in the corpus are two different gates, not rival versions of one.

| Gate | Threshold | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Selecting the formal model | *Independent implementation reasoning* that separate teams could reproduce the semantics | #1242 |
| Adopting the canonical instance | *At least one implementation developed independently* that reproduces the canonical results, without reliance on undocumented knowledge from the original build | #645, #1568 |

Both remain establishment evidence, not standing Requirements on the layer (Pass #2).

**C. Adversarial testing** occurs before adoption of the instance (#85).

**D. A reconstruction drill** from the preservation package, without original runtime state, occurs before adoption of the instance (#1567), with an independent implementer taking part in at least one (#1568).

**E. Who certifies.** The conformance function and the independent implementer attest. Their attestation is evidence (#965). The adoption authority decides whether the evidence suffices and records it in the Adoption Act. Certification never adopts (#503, #1603).

**Institutional conditions and who records each.**

| Condition | Meaning | Recorded by | A state of Ground? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | A proposed definition | Designer | Yes |
| Readiness certified | Evidence that Specification, implementations, tests and drills meet the adopted criteria | Conformance, independent implementer | No. An evidence milestone |
| Adopted | Canonical | Adoption authority | Yes |
| Operational | Some implementation serves it | Implementers | No |

### Strongest Evidence
- **#645, #1242, #85, #1567, #1568, #644 [direct]:** each is framed as something that happens "before" establishment or maturity.
- **#550, #700 [direct]:** establishment is earned by survival of review.
- **#935 [direct]:** requirements coverage is verified before establishment.
- **#965 [direct]:** certification "must attest compliance with Ground rather than become the source of Ground authority."
- **#1977, #1978 [direct]:** adoption may precede activation; activation creates nothing.
- **#297–#299, #198 [direct]:** sequencing.
- **#503, #1603 [direct].**
- **Pass #2, Decision 9 [adopted]:** decidable validity and equivalence make the evidence obtainable.

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **The corpus uses "established," "mature" and "adopted" loosely** and never orders them.
- **A Creator Period with one principal designer makes independence harder to obtain.** #1568 sets the bar at independence from *undocumented knowledge*, not at organizational separateness. That is achievable.
- **The ordering principle is an inference.** The corpus requires the evidence before "establishment"; it does not say adoption of the instance is irreversible in the sense of Decision 5.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- Requiring evidence first constrains no design choice. It constrains only the moment at which a choice becomes permanent.
- Requirements and Specification may be adopted earlier and revised under change control. Only the instance needs the full gate.

### Architectural Consequences
- Three separate adoption acts are expected, in order: Requirements, Specification, instance.
- "Mature" should be used of Specifications and implementations only, never of Ground or of World-space.

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #645, #1242, #1568, #1977.
- **Revise:** #85, #550, #644, #935, #1567 ("institutionally established" becomes "adopted as the canonical instance").
- **Reclassify:** #85 (its establishment clause), #550, #644, #645, #935, #1242, #1567, #1568 as establishment evidence.
- **Move to Governance:** the two gates and the ordering.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE.**

---

## Decision 7 — Record Precedence (#661)

### Recommendation

**The criteria in #661 are not a ranking. They answer different questions, asked in sequence.**

| Step | Question | What answers it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Which act governs? | Adopted authority: the Adoption Act and any recorded supersession |
| 2 | Which artifact did that act adopt? | *Provenance* and *integrity*, jointly |
| 3 | What does that artifact mean? | Formal semantics (#1740) |
| 4 | Do two claimants differ in meaning at all? | Semantic comparison (#1540, #1694). If they do not, the conflict is immaterial (#557, #216) |

Control, possession, hosting, majority, consensus and convenience answer none of these (#662, #1754, #1755, #1762, #1918–#1920, #1963, #1964).

**A. Provenance and integrity are orthogonal.**
- Provenance asks whether this record descends from the Adoption Act.
- Integrity asks whether this copy is unchanged from the record it claims to be.
- They cannot conflict on one question, so neither outranks the other. A record with good provenance and failed integrity is an altered descendant and is not canonical as it stands. A record with perfect integrity and no provenance is a well-preserved stranger.

**B. Two copies claim the same authority and differ semantically.** At most one is the adopted artifact. Step 2 identifies it, using every kind of evidence available: the semantic identity and integrity evidence recorded in the Adoption Act, independent archives (#1693), preserved reference vectors (#961), reconstruction, and conformity with the expressed constitutional constraints.

**C. Authoritative provenance** is an unbroken, inspectable chain of recorded institutional acts from the Adoption Act through each designated successor to the record in hand (#672, #677, #680). It is not a history of possession, of hosting or of signatures alone (#1392, #1365).

**D. Can equal-authority conflict exist?** Not under valid architecture. One primary authority is required (#1431), supersession names one successor (#677), transitions are atomic (#863), and a second adoption of a different World-space is void because the design power is exhausted (Decision 2).

**E. If it appears anyway, classify it by cause.**

| Cause | Classification |
|---|---|
| Two acts each purported to adopt | Governance failure. The later is void |
| The evidence that identifies the adopted artifact has been lost | Preservation failure |
| The dispute is over who held the adoption authority | Constitutional dispute |

**F. Who resolves.** The adoption authority, or its successor, acting as a finder of fact under the standard of Decision 3: which artifact was adopted. Stewards and validators supply evidence. The question is never settled by choosing the preferable World, since that would be design. If the evidence cannot determine the answer, the matter goes upstream, because no authority at Ground level can choose.

### Strongest Evidence
- **#661, #1762 [direct]:** the same four criteria, listed in different orders, which shows list order was never precedence.
- **#1431, #1434 [direct]:** one primary authority; correctness rests on adopted rules, not self-consistency.
- **#221, #222, #1982 [direct]:** provenance and integrity are evidence about a definition and never its source.
- **#1740 [direct]:** meaning resolves through formal rules.
- **#1611 [direct]:** established canon prevails over any pending claim.
- **#675–#677 [direct]:** forks are exposed; forks create no second World; one successor.
- **#662, #663 [direct]:** majority is nothing; preservation must survive dishonest custodians.

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **#661 and #1762 can be read as offering four coordinate tie-breakers.** That reading has no support elsewhere in the corpus.
- **#681** calls evidentiary chains "secondary to spatial semantics." That is consistent: chains identify the record, semantics give its meaning.
- **Complete loss of identifying evidence** is an unsolved case by nature. It is a preservation matter and not a gap in precedence.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- Because the instance is designed and adopted, there is a fact of the matter about which artifact was adopted even when evidence is poor. Resolution is fact-finding about a past act.
- This keeps disputes about records from becoming occasions for redesign.

### Architectural Consequences
- The Adoption Act's identification of the primary artifact (Decision 1, F.1) is what makes Step 2 answerable. It is the most consequential field in the record.
- Preservation should keep several independent means of identification, since any one may weaken (#1365, #1367).

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #661, #1431, #1434, #1611, #675–#677.
- **Revise:** #661, #1762 (state the criteria as a sequence of questions).
- **Merge:** #662, #1963, #1964 as exclusions; #1754, #1755, #1918–#1920 as exclusions.
- **Reclassify:** #661 out of the reserved list.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE.**

---

## Decision 8 — Canon Form (#707/#708)

### Recommendation

**A. Exactly one primary normative form for each semantic element.** Never two independently authoritative forms of the same element (#1909, #1431).

**B. The policy is element-specific.**

| Semantic element | Primary form | The other form |
|---|---|---|
| Rules: what membership means, the inclusion convention, validity, equivalence, how the definition artifact is read (Requirements and Specification) | Human-readable normative text, which may contain formal notation | Machine-readable schemas, validators and test vectors are derived and regenerable (#1582, #709, #710) |
| The instance: the exact World-space definition | A formal, machine-readable artifact | Prose accounts of the instance are derived (#1651, #1652) |
| The Adoption Act and institutional status | Human-readable record | Machine-readable status metadata is derived (#729, #2070) |

**C. May machine-readable form be primary where prose cannot remove ambiguity?** Yes, for that element (#705). Exact membership at scale is such an element.

**The governing relation is "human-governed, machine-exact."** The machine-primary instance takes its authority from two human-readable records: the Adoption Act that identifies it and the Specification that says how to read it (#706). No rule lives only in code or tooling (#709).

**D. What makes disagreement detectable.**
- Every derived form declares what it is derived from.
- Conformance compares derived forms against their primary (#1373).
- A derived form that disagrees is the one that is wrong (#541).
- Where two forms of the same element both claim to be normative, that is a Specification defect under #707 and a Tier 3 matter under Decision 3. During the dispute the declared primary answers.
- The prose Specification and the formal instance govern different elements and so cannot disagree about the same thing. An instance unreadable or invalid under the Specification is an invalid definition.

**E. How comprehensibility and exactness coexist.** Each has its own elements. Prose governs and explains; the formal artifact is exact; each element has one home; the other form exists as derived explanation or derived tooling (#69, #70).

**F. Who declares which artifact is primary.** The adoption authority, element by element, in the Adoption Act (#708).

### Strongest Evidence
- **#706 [direct]:** machine-readable canon's "authority must remain traceable to adopted human-readable architectural and normative documentation."
- **#705 [direct]:** "Where prose alone cannot eliminate ambiguity, canonical Ground must include sufficiently formal machine-readable expression."
- **#707, #708 [direct]:** disagreement is a defect; precedence "must be explicitly governed."
- **#1909 [direct]:** the same truth "should not be repeated across multiple independently authoritative forms."
- **#1431 [direct]**, **#541 [survivor]**.
- **#709, #710 [direct]:** no hidden semantics in tooling; executable formalization confirms and does not invent.
- **#69, #70 [direct].**
- **#1582 [direct].**

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **#707 and #1373 speak of cases "where both forms are normative."** This policy removes that case for any single element. Both Findings survive as the rule for detecting a breach.
- **Formal notation inside prose blurs the line between the forms.** The test is whether a competent human reader is the intended interpreter of the text.
- **No data format is chosen,** as instructed.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- The declaration of primaries is a design-adjacent choice made at adoption. It is permanent as to the instance and revisable as to the rule texts, under Tier 2.

### Architectural Consequences
- The Adoption Act carries a short table of elements and their primary forms.
- Preservation keeps both forms (#1369, #1371) and knows which is which.
- Loss of a derived form is recoverable. Loss of a primary is a preservation failure.

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #69, #70, #705, #706, #708, #709, #710, #1909.
- **Revise:** #707, #1373 (breach-detection rules under one declared primary per element).
- **Merge:** #1525, #1526 under #70; #1581, #1582, #1583 under #709.
- **Reclassify:** #707 and #708 out of the reserved list.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE.**

---

## Decision 9 — Stewardship

### Recommendation

**Stewardship is custody and preservation without semantic authority.**

**A. A steward may:**
- hold, replicate and publish canonical records;
- verify them, and cross-verify with other stewards (#1760);
- migrate copies to new formats as derived copies with demonstrated equivalence;
- renew integrity evidence (#1362);
- regenerate preservation packages (#1360);
- restore copies and derived state to agreement with canon (Tier 1);
- report divergence and supply evidence.

**B. A steward may not:**
- alter normative meaning, or correct a primary normative artifact;
- designate which artifact is primary;
- adopt anything;
- interpret ambiguous canon with authority (#1689);
- settle a conflict between records on its own say;
- claim ownership of, or jurisdiction over, the World-space it preserves (#450, #1921);
- make the canon's intelligibility depend on itself (#1699).

**C. Who recognizes a steward.** The adoption authority, by recorded act: the Creator through The Atlas during the Creator Period, the successor office afterward. Recognition confers responsibility and standing. It confers no authority over meaning.

**D. "Stewardship legitimacy" (#1920) has two parts.**
- *Recognition:* a recorded act of the authority.
- *Fidelity:* faithful preservation, demonstrable by anyone through verification (#1737).

Because World-space must outlive its institutions (#147), legitimacy cannot rest on recognition alone. An unrecognized holder of a faithful, verifiable copy is a **custodian in fact**. Its copy has full evidentiary value and it has no standing beyond that. Neither part gives semantic authority.

**E. Multiple stewards?** Yes, and desirable (#206, #1758).

**F. Transfer without effect on canon?** Yes (#979, #1689).

**G. If all current stewards disappear.**
- Canon persists unchanged (#600, #1752).
- Anyone holding a faithful record can reconstruct (#1375).
- New stewards are recognized by the successor authority.
- If no such authority exists, custodians in fact preserve without authority, and no one acquires adoption power by being the last holder (#1754).

### Strongest Evidence
- **#451 [direct]:** "Possession of a canonical Spatial Ground record must not confer authority to alter the World-space that record represents."
- **#450, #1921 [direct]:** preservation is not ownership.
- **#1689, #1690 [direct]:** transfer without "discretion to reinterpret"; custodianship is not "a source of spatial meaning."
- **#1735 [direct]:** the right to verify is not the right to change.
- **#1754, #1755, #1918–#1920 [direct].**
- **#978–#982 [direct]:** succession, governance replacement, reorganization and renaming leave canon untouched.
- **#147, #1699, #1752 [direct].**
- **#1737 [direct]:** authority without trust in authority.

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **#1920 uses "stewardship legitimacy" without saying who confers it.** The two-part account is an inference, built to satisfy #1920 and #147 together.
- **#1744** lets "a successor governance body… inherit stewardship." Stewardship and governance are different things that one body may hold. They should be named separately.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- During the Creator Period the Creator is likely designer, adopter and first steward at once. The roles remain distinct, because the permissions differ: as steward the Creator may do only what any steward may do, and acts of authority require a recorded act.

### Architectural Consequences
- Editorial upkeep of Atlas text belongs to Atlas maintainers acting under the adoption authority (Tier 2). It is not stewardship.
- Keys authenticate a steward's acts. They are never the source of any authority (#1730, #1919).

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #147, #450, #451, #1689, #1690, #1735, #1754, #1920, #1921.
- **Revise:** #1920 (the two-part account), #1744 (separate governance succession from stewardship).
- **Merge:** #978–#982, #1686–#1700, #1749–#1761 under #451 and #147; #1918, #1919, #1755 under #1754.
- **Move to Governance:** recognition of stewards.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE.**

---

## Decision 10 — Shared Architectural Doctrine

### Recommendation

**A. Institutional home.** The Atlas, as shared architectural doctrine: an Atlas-level architecture record that sits above the individual Atlas domains and below every constitutional source. Not a constitutional Charter, not The Foundation, not The Codex, not a new institution.

**B. Naming.** Avoid "Charter." The brief lists The World Properties Charter among the constitutional sources, so the word would imply a status the doctrine must not have. For the same reason avoid "Codex" and "Principles" in its title.
- A suitable naming model is *Atlas — Shared Architectural Doctrine*.
- Named parts within it: layer-placement doctrine; inter-layer contracts, each named for its two layers (for example, *FSF–Ground Contract*, holding the dependency assumptions of Pass #2); deficiency routing; cross-layer recovery order.
- The exact title is the Creator's to choose.

**C. Who adopts it during the Creator Period.** The Creator, acting as the Atlas adoption authority, by recorded act.

**D. Its authority over Atlas domains.**
- It binds domain architecture as design doctrine. A domain's Requirements conform to it or record a justified departure.
- It decides placement and contracts between layers.
- It never decides a domain's native truth. It cannot say which space is World-space.

**E. Revision.** By the same authority, through recorded revision. It is more revisable than any adopted instance. A revision that would disturb a permanence commitment of an adopted domain must also pass that domain's own change control. No revision can alter World-space truth.

**F. Contradiction with a constitutional source.** Always resolves upward, in favor of the constitutional source.

### Strongest Evidence
- **#264, #265 [direct]:** one owner for each responsibility, and none orphaned.
- **#828, #1639, #1894, #1895 [direct]:** placement and coupling principles that speak about all layers.
- **#1711, #427, #428 [direct]:** recovery order; deficiencies return to the owning layer.
- **#1450, #1459 [direct]:** Spatial Ground is an Atlas domain, and The Atlas records what each domain "is, what it guarantees, what it excludes, and how it relates structurally to adjacent domains."
- **#91 [direct, by analogy]:** architecture is subordinate to constitutional truth.
- **The Atlas is the principal home of World design; The Codex stays deliberately narrow; constitutional necessity is not creative permission [source-doctrine].**
- **Pass #2, Decision 8 [adopted].**

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **No such record is known to exist,** and the corpus never names one.
- **Whether the Foundational Survey Fabric is itself an Atlas domain** is assumed from the layer sequence and is not confirmed. If it is not, the FSF–Ground Contract needs a home both sides accept.
- **Every Finding moved there is titled "Spatial Ground Must…",** so moving them changes Ground's retained set (recorded in Pass #2).

### Creator-Period Analysis
- This is the clearest application of "not a Codex does not mean not allowed." These rules are important, lasting and non-constitutional.
- Placing them in The Atlas keeps The Codex narrow and keeps architectural judgment revisable.

### Architectural Consequences
- Spatial Ground's Requirements cite the doctrine and do not restate it.
- The doctrine should be adopted before or with Ground's Requirements, since they depend on it.
- The doctrine is where a future proposal to dissolve or merge a layer (#1450) would be decided.

### Findings Affected
- **Move to Shared Architecture (confirmed from Pass #2):** #264, #265, #828, #1639, #1894, #1895, #1711, #427, #428, #165 (first clause), and dependency assumptions DA1–DA7.
- **Retain in Ground:** #12, #266, #267, #825, #1247.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE.** The title is left to the Creator.

---

## Decision 11 — Post-Creator Succession

### Recommendation

**The succession principle.** *Succession transfers the office and never the design. What the Creator decided by recorded adoption is inherited as fact. What the Creator could have decided and did not is not inherited unless expressly conferred. World-space membership cannot be conferred, because after adoption nothing remains to decide.*

**A. What survives the Creator personally.**
- Every recorded act, permanently.
- The continuing powers of the office.
- Nothing unrecorded.

**B. What becomes immutable once adopted.**
- The canonical World-space membership.
- The fact and content of past acts, including the record of errors and corrections (#134).

Everything else stays revisable under governance: the wording and representation of Requirements and Specification with meaning preserved, the formal model on proof of continuity, scope on proof of necessity, shared doctrine, and recognition of stewards.

**C. Which institution succeeds.** A successor office within The Atlas, holding the adoption authority. The body that holds it is intentionally unnamed here. It is defined by a **Succession Instrument** adopted by the Creator during the Creator Period and recorded in The Atlas.

**D. Narrower authority.**

| Power | Creator in the Creator Period | Successor |
|---|---|---|
| Design the World-space instance | Yes, until adoption | **None.** The power no longer exists |
| Adopt Requirements, Specification, doctrine | Yes | Yes, as compatible revision under change control |
| Correct defective records | Yes | Yes, same standard, no added discretion |
| Supersede with proven equivalence; replace the model with proven continuity | Yes | Yes |
| Change scope, on proof and with constitutional return where triggered | Yes | Yes |
| Recognize stewards | Yes | Yes |
| Reinterpret canonical meaning | No | No (#1740, #1689) |
| Amend constitutional sources | Not an Atlas power | Not an Atlas power |
| Curative design in the hard case of Decision 5 | Yes | Only if expressly conferred, and only to that extent |

**E. How the four dangers are avoided.**
- *Dependence on personal memory.* Only recorded acts carry authority (#999, #148).
- *Dependence on one person's private keys.* Keys authenticate acts and never constitute authority. Canon is verifiable without them, their loss destroys no authority, and their possession confers none (#1730, #668, #1919).
- *An accidental power vacuum.* The Succession Instrument is adopted during the Creator Period. If no successor ever exists, canon continues unchanged (#600, #1743), custody continues in fact (Decision 9), and no adoption-class act occurs until an authority is constituted upstream.
- *A future institution claiming powers the Creator never had.* No one can transfer what they did not hold. Every successor act cites the Instrument and the power exercised. Acts outside it are void, and they are detectable because canon can be verified independently of whoever asserts authority (#1737).

**F. Succession without circular authority.** The successor's authority derives from an act of the only authority that exists now, the Creator in office, recorded during the Creator Period. It never derives from self-assertion, possession, organizational continuity or control of infrastructure (#1391, #1687, #1754). If the constitutional sources themselves govern what follows the Creator Period, they control, and the Instrument operates within them.

### Strongest Evidence
- **#147 [direct]:** World-space "must not depend upon the continued existence of any particular company, organization, governance body, repository host, or custodian."
- **#978, #979, #980 [direct]:** succession without inherited undocumented knowledge; canon, "not authority personality"; governance replacement leaves Ground untouched.
- **#1688 [direct]:** successors inherit the same Ground "without needing to recreate the authority of the original Creator-period institution."
- **#999, #600, #656 [direct, survivors].**
- **#1740, #1689 [direct]:** no interpretive discretion, for the adopter or for any custodian.
- **#1737 [direct].**
- **#1585, #2100 [direct]:** recoverable from the record "without relying on anything else from 2026."
- **Decisions 2 and 5 of this Pass.**

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **The corpus never names a successor** and barely mentions the Creator as a person. The model here is inference, built on the brief's doctrine.
- **#1744** speaks of a successor body "bound to the same established World-space unless foundational change is explicitly undertaken." The clause is struck by Decision 5.
- **If the Creator Period ended before the instance was adopted,** design authority would be unexercised. The Instrument would have to transfer it expressly. Otherwise no one would hold it and the matter would return upstream. The better course is to adopt the instance within the Creator Period.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- The Creator's authority is broad because the Constitution leaves room and someone must fill it once.
- The successor's authority is narrow because the room has been filled. That asymmetry is the design, and it is what protects the Creator's choices from later revision.

### Architectural Consequences
- The Succession Instrument is a governance record in The Atlas. It should exist before the Creator Period ends.
- A successor that is absent, silent or dissolved changes nothing in canon.

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #147, #978, #979, #980, #999, #1688, #1689, #1737.
- **Revise:** #1744 (strike the exception), #1688 (name the office and the Instrument).
- **Move to Governance:** the succession principle and the Instrument.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE** as to principle. The identity of the successor body, and what the constitutional sources say about the end of the Creator Period, remain open.

---

## Decision 12 — Institutional State Model

### Recommendation

**States belong to records, never to World-space.** Three are needed.

| State | Meaning | Who may place a record in it | Does membership truth change? | Effect on authority | May higher layers rely on it? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| **Candidate** | A proposed definition, including any experimental or exploratory one. Explicitly non-canonical | The designer: the Creator in The Atlas | No. There is none yet | None | No (#155, #156) |
| **Adopted** | The canonical definition. "Established" is a synonym and is not a further state | The adoption authority, by Adoption Act | It is *fixed* at this moment and never again | It is the sole source of membership answers | Yes |
| **Superseded** | A formerly primary artifact replaced by a designated successor that expresses the same World-space, whether by meaning-preserving supersession or by correction of a defective record | The adoption authority, in one atomic act (#677, #863) | No | None current. Historical only (#726) | They rely on the successor. Old references remain resolvable (#1555) |

A closed candidate (rejected or withdrawn) stays a Candidate and is kept as history (#698). "Historical" is an archival label for closed candidates and superseded artifacts. It is not a state of authority.

**What is deliberately not a state.**

| Term | What it is | Why it is not a state of Ground |
|---|---|---|
| Proposed | The same as Candidate | One state suffices |
| Established | The same as Adopted | Vocabulary rule of Pass #1 |
| Readiness certified; mature | An evidence milestone about a Specification and its implementations | It is evidence, recorded before adoption (Decision 6) |
| Operational | A condition of an implementation | Activation creates nothing (#1977, #1978) |
| Under review; correction proposed; disputed | An annotation on an Adopted record | Annotations never change an answer and never become membership states (#1613, #1614, #2064) |
| Archived | A preservation condition of any record | It says where a record is kept, not what it is |

### Strongest Evidence
- **#155, #156, #729 [direct]:** candidate, adopted, superseded, historical and non-normative material are distinguishable.
- **#1977, #1978 [direct]:** adoption is not activation; activation is not existence.
- **#677, #726, #863 [direct]:** single successor; current against historical authority; atomic transition.
- **#1613, #1614, #2064–#2066 [direct]:** review and workflow states are never membership states.
- **#2089 [direct]:** reset is not re-adoption.
- **#674, #678, #679 [direct]:** lineage implies no spatial motion, and supersession no spatial replacement.
- **Decisions 3, 5 and 6 of this Pass.**

### Contrary Evidence / Tension
- **#729 lists five statuses.** The model folds "historical" and "non-normative" into labels, because neither carries authority.
- **Requirements and Specification have the same three states,** with one difference: their Adopted text may be superseded by a *different* meaning under change control. The instance's may not.

### Creator-Period Analysis
- The Candidate state is where the Creator's freedom lives, and it has no limit on duration or number.
- The transition to Adopted is the single irreversible step in the lifecycle.

### Architectural Consequences
- Status metadata (#729) needs three values and a set of annotations.
- No tool, service or layer may treat an annotation as affecting a membership answer.

### Findings Affected
- **Retain:** #155, #156, #677, #726, #729, #863, #1614, #1977.
- **Revise:** #729 (three states plus annotations).
- **Merge:** #2064–#2070, #2076 under #155 and #1614; #674, #678, #679 under #677.

### Resolution Status
**RESOLVE.**

---

## Canonical Authority Map

"Adoption Authority" is an office: held by the Creator during the Creator Period, and afterward by the successor defined in the Succession Instrument. The Creator column records what the Creator does *as a person*; the Adoption Authority column records acts of the office. "None" means no authority should exist there.

| Function / Decision | Creator During Creator Period | The Atlas | The Codex / Constitutional Sources | Adoption Authority | Steward | Conformance / Validator | Implementation | Post-Creator Successor | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Constitutional constraint | None | None | **Sole authority** | None | None | None | None | None | Ground expresses it (Pass #1, Pass #2) |
| Candidate Ground design | **Designs** | Home of the candidate | Constrains | None | None | Evidence | None | **None for the instance** | Design power is exhausted at adoption |
| Adoption | Decides | Home of the Act and the record | Involved only on constitutional return | **Adopts, by recorded Act** | None | Evidence | None | Holds the office, without the design power | #504, #1740 |
| Activation | None | None | None | None | None | None | **Activates** | None | Creates nothing (#1978) |
| Establishment / maturity evidence | None | Records it | None | Weighs it | Supplies preservation evidence | **Attests** | Independent implementer reproduces results | Weighs it | Evidence never adopts (#965) |
| Correction | May raise | Home of the correction record | Only if the defect is constitutional | **Decides Tiers 2 and 3** | **Tier 1 only** | Evidence | Tier 1 in its own systems | Decides, same standard | Decision 3 |
| Scope change | May propose | Home of the record; shared doctrine applies | **On constitutional return** | **Decides, on proof** | None | Evidence | None | Decides, on proof | Decision 4 |
| Model replacement | May propose | Home of the record | None | **Decides, on proof of continuity** | None | **Proves or disproves equivalence** | None | Decides, on proof | #1482–#1486 |
| Actual World-space change | **None** | **None** | A formal constitutional revision is contemplated by The Declaration, but competent authority, scope and procedure are not defined here | **None** | **None** | **None** | **None** | **None** | Gap closed within Ground / The Atlas; any upstream constitutional event is outside this architecture (Decision 5) |
| Primary canon-form declaration | Decides | Recorded in the Act | None | **Declares, per element** | None | Checks derived against primary | None | May revise for rule texts under Tier 2. Not for the instance | Decision 8 |
| Stewardship appointment | None | Records recognition | None | **Recognizes** | Accepts the duty | Verifies fidelity | None | Recognizes | Decision 9 |
| Conflicting-record resolution | None | Home of the evidence and the finding | Only if the dispute is over who held authority | **Finds which artifact was adopted** | Evidence | Evidence | None | Finds | Never a choice of World (Decision 7) |
| FSF dependency certification | None | Home of the FSF–Ground Contract | None | Accepts the declared lineage for Ground | None | **Verifies a successor Survey implementation** (#1632) | Supplies the implementation | Accepts | What "compatible" means is the Survey Fabric's to define |
| Shared architecture doctrine | Drafts | **Home** | Prevails in any contradiction | **Adopts and revises** | None | None | None | Revises | Decision 10 |
| Succession | Decides | Home of the Instrument | Controls if it speaks to the matter | **Adopts the Succession Instrument** | None | None | None | Derives all authority from the Instrument | Decision 11 |

---

## Creator-Period Consistency Review

**The five roles, and whether any decision collapses two of them.**

| Role | Held by | Kept separate? |
|---|---|---|
| **Constitutional:** what must remain true | The Declaration, The Codex and related sources | Yes. No decision gives The Atlas, the adopter or Ground any power over them. Decision 4 routes every dependency upward |
| **Creator / Atlas design:** what is decided where the Constitution leaves room | The Creator, in The Atlas | Yes, with one concentration noted below |
| **Adoption:** what makes a permissible design permanent canon | The Atlas adoption authority, by recorded Act | Yes |
| **Preservation / stewardship:** what keeps it available, unchanged | Stewards and custodians in fact | Yes. No steward power reaches meaning (Decision 9) |
| **Implementation:** what realizes it, without authority | Implementers | Yes. Activation, operation and certification confer nothing (Decisions 6, 12) |

**Three places where roles come close, and the repair.**
1. *Design and adoption in one person.* The Creator holds both. The repair is structural: an explicit Candidate state, review evidence produced by others between the two, and a recorded Act whose contents are fixed (Decision 1, F). The two roles are separated by an act, not by a second person.
2. *Correction and design in the hard case of Decision 5.* Where an adopted definition violates a constitutional constraint and more than one conforming cure exists, the cure contains a choice. The repair: constitutional return first, the narrowest cure, and after the Creator Period only an expressly conferred curative authority.
3. *Stewardship and editorial maintenance.* Both handle the text. The repair: stewards restore copies (Tier 1); Atlas maintainers prepare revisions; only the adoption authority designates a successor artifact (Tier 2).

**Against the named tests.**
- **#27, no hidden state.** Authority acts only through records. Unrecorded intent never governs. Keys never constitute authority.
- **#503, correctness is not adoption.** Certification is evidence (Decision 6). Validity never adopts.
- **#1740, adoption is not interpretive discretion.** The adopter chooses which definition; it never says what the definition means. Correction looks only to the record (Decision 3).
- **#1870, coincidence is not identity.** The person and the office coincide during the Creator Period and are not identical. Steward and adopter may coincide and are not identical. Permanence through adoption and permanence through constitution coincide in effect and are not identical in source.
- **Pass #1.** "Expresses" is preserved: Ground expresses constitutional constraint and the adopted design, and originates neither.
- **Pass #2.** Ground owns membership meaning. None of the twelve decisions gives any institution a power over meaning after adoption.
- **Constitutional subordination.** Every contradiction resolves upward (Decisions 4, 5, 10).
- **Creator-period doctrine.** Exact geography is designed and not predetermined. Design is constrained and not free invention. Permanence by adoption does not constitutionalize a choice. The Codex stays narrow.

---

## Cross-Decision Consistency Review

**All twelve decisions coexist. No Pass #1 or Pass #2 resolution is reversed.** One Pass #2 decision is refined (7B, in the hard case of Decision 5).

| Test | Result |
|---|---|
| **Pass #1** | Consistent. The chain of Pass #1, Decision 5 gains two explicit links, design and adoption. Refinement, coextension with the Domain and restyling of form still move nothing; now no institution can either |
| **Pass #2** | Consistent. Ownership of meaning is untouched. The two conformance hooks become preconditions of adoption (Decision 6). Shared doctrine receives a home (Decision 10). Decision 7B is narrowed, not reversed |
| **The Declaration** [source-upstream] | One World, finitude, no expansion and no duplication bar ordinary architectural change. Its formal-revision clause is preserved as an upstream constitutional possibility outside Spatial Ground and The Atlas |
| **Codex ST-IV** [source-upstream] | Permanence, and continuity as an expressed constraint, are honored |
| **WP-S-I** [source-upstream] | Extent is not expanded, contracted, duplicated or altered by any act this Pass makes available |
| **Codex Principles** [source-upstream] | Contiguity doctrine is untouched. Ground expresses connectedness and defines neither Adjacency nor Contiguity |
| **Creator-period doctrine** [source-doctrine] | The sequence Foundation, Codex, Atlas, implementation is the spine of Decisions 1, 4 and 10 |
| **No hidden state** | Held (Decision 2) |
| **Constitutional subordination** | Held (Decisions 4, 5, 10) |
| **Permanence** | Strengthened within this architecture. Ground / Atlas exceptions are closed; any hypothetical formal constitutional revision remains upstream and outside scope |
| **One canonical truth** | Strengthened. One Act, one primary artifact per element, one successor, atomic transitions, and a void second adoption |
| **Adoption not computation** | Held (Decisions 1, 3, 7) |
| **Stewardship not ownership** | Held (Decision 9) |
| **Implementation non-authority** | Held (Decisions 6, 12) |

**Pairwise checks that mattered.**
- **Decisions 3 and 5.** If correction could reach a valid definition, it would be a route to change. It cannot, so the two are consistent.
- **Decisions 5 and 11.** The successor's narrower authority is a consequence of exhaustion, not a separate restriction to be policed.
- **Decisions 6 and 5.** Irreversibility is the reason evidence precedes adoption of the instance.
- **Decisions 7 and 8.** The declared primary per element is what makes "which artifact was adopted" a well-formed question.
- **Decisions 9 and 11.** A custodian in fact is how canon survives a vacuum without anyone gaining authority from it.

**New tensions created by this Pass.**
1. *The hard case of Decision 5* introduces a bounded curative power. It is contained and cannot be removed entirely.
2. *The ordering of Decision 6* is a recommendation with real cost in a one-designer Creator Period. It is sound, and it is the Creator's to accept.

---

## Findings Affected

Nothing is renumbered. Dispositions from Pass #1 and Pass #2 stand unless listed here.

### Retain
- **Adoption and states:** #154, #155, #156, #503, #504, #554, #677, #726, #729, #863, #1612, #1740, #1742, #1977.
- **Permanence:** #4, #72, #73, #136, #394, #853, #856, #1397, #1398.
- **Correction:** #133, #134, #135, #1551, #1553, #1611, #1619.
- **Scope:** #266, #267, #1003, #1004, #1891, #1893, #1895.
- **Records and form:** #661, #1431, #1434, #675, #676, #69, #70, #705, #706, #708, #709, #710, #1909.
- **Stewardship and succession:** #147, #450, #451, #978–#980, #999, #1688, #1689, #1690, #1735, #1737, #1754, #1920, #1921.
- **Establishment evidence:** #645, #1242, #1568.

### Revise
- **Narrow exception clauses:** #438, #1026, #1038, #1744, #1753, #1779, #1924 — no Ground/Atlas-level exception; any constitutional-revision language points only to an upstream process outside this architecture.
- **#1484:** a model replacement may not authorize a break in continuity; any valid upstream constitutional event is outside model replacement and returns to constitutional review.
- **#1607, #1399, #1400, #430:** reconsideration and review, never change.
- **#395, #683, #1619:** truth change is a prohibited class; the fifth correction class is a defective record.
- **#2097:** no re-founding.
- **#1552:** "intended" means as recorded at adoption.
- **#85, #550, #644, #935, #1567:** "institutionally established" becomes "adopted as the canonical instance."
- **#661, #1762:** criteria as a sequence of questions.
- **#707, #1373:** breach-detection rules under one declared primary per element.
- **#1920, #1744:** two-part legitimacy; governance succession separate from stewardship.
- **#1688, #1737, #1740:** name the office.
- **#154, #2033–#2035:** recognition of constraint, design of expression.
- **#729:** three states and annotations.
- **#1150:** its exception points to constitutional return.

### Merge
- #505–#507 under #504. #1601, #1602, #1976, #2065, #2076 under #503.
- #1554–#1557 under #134. #1613, #1614, #2064–#2070 under #1611 and #155. #1615–#1618, #1620, #1621 under #1551.
- #1892, #1965 under #1966. #1593 under #1003.
- #662, #1963, #1964, #1755, #1918, #1919 as exclusions under #661 and #1754.
- #1525, #1526 under #70. #1581–#1583 under #709.
- #978–#982, #1686–#1700, #1749–#1761 under #451 and #147.
- #674, #678, #679 under #677.

### Reclassify
- **The FOUNDATIONAL AUTHORITY GAP (32 rows):** closed within Spatial Ground / The Atlas. No architectural authority exists; upstream formal constitutional revision authority and procedure remain outside scope.
- **The ADOPTION AUTHORITY GAP (41 marked rows and those that presume an adopter):** closed. The Atlas adoption authority, by recorded Act.
- **#661, #707, #708, #645:** out of the reserved list.
- **#85 (establishment clause), #550, #644, #645, #935, #1242, #1567, #1568:** establishment evidence.

### Move to Shared Architecture
- Confirmed from Pass #2: #264, #265, #828, #1639, #1894, #1895, #1711, #427, #428, #165 (first clause), DA1–DA7.

### Move to Governance
- The Adoption Act and its contents; the four moments of Decision 2; the three correction tiers; the constitutional-return boundary; the two establishment gates and their order; recognition of stewards; the succession principle and the Succession Instrument; the three-state model.

### Reject / Supersede
- Any reading under which established World-space membership may legitimately change through Spatial Ground, The Atlas, stewardship, implementation, ordinary governance, or architectural succession.
- "Foundational change" as an available class of act.
- "Re-founding" as an available act.
- Appeal to unrecorded intent in any correction.
- "Established" and "mature" as states of Ground.
- The four criteria of #661 read as coordinate tie-breakers.
- "Charter" as a title for shared architectural doctrine.

---

## Questions Remaining After Pass #3

1. **What constitutional process governs formal revision, if any, beyond the Declaration's acknowledgement that formal constitutional revision can occur.** The reviewed sources do not establish here who may initiate or authorize such a revision, its scope, or how it interacts with the end of the Creator Period.
2. **The successor body,** intentionally unnamed, and the content of the Succession Instrument, including whether it confers the limited curative authority of Decision 5.
3. **What happens if the Creator Period ends before the instance is adopted.**
4. **Whether the Foundational Survey Fabric is an Atlas domain,** and who certifies compatibility between Survey versions to Ground.
5. **Whether the Creator accepts the ordering of Decision 6,** with an independent implementation before adoption of the instance.
6. **The title of the shared architectural doctrine.**
7. **Technical facts about the Survey Fabric carried from Pass #2:** coarse-reference semantics, reference equality, compatible lineage, refinement mechanics. Not invented here.
8. **Creator design choices carried from Pass #1:** whether the limit tracks the recognizable outline; any enclosed non-World-space; whether World-space reaches the Domain limit.

---

## Recommendation for Pass #4

With meaning, ownership and authority resolved, Pass #4 can be **consolidation planning**: the structure of the eventual Requirements and framework registers, without final Requirements prose.

1. **Fix the shape of the Requirements.** A workable outline from Passes #1–#3:
   - the governing sentence and its two glosses;
   - Ground-originated obligations (the 17 remaining primitive candidates, tested once more against #10, #26 and #58, and with #4's two ideas separated);
   - constitutional constraints Ground expresses;
   - definition-level constraints, including refinement-closure and the two conformance hooks;
   - the downward contract and dependency assumptions;
   - the upward contract;
   - Ground-side rules of permanence and change, with citations to governance;
   - citations to shared architectural doctrine.
2. **Assign survivor wording to obligations:** which of the 49 survivors supplies the sentence for which obligation.
3. **Build the framework registers** for the 305 migrated Findings and the 69 mirrors, each traced to a Requirements-level parent.
4. **Settle vocabulary first.** Establish, express, design, discovery, expansion, continuity, boundary, limit, Extent, state, mature, steward, custodian in fact.
5. **Apply every disposition from Passes #1–#3** as a single change list against the master classification, so the consolidated set can be audited against it.
6. **List what must exist before the instance is adopted:** shared doctrine, Requirements, Specification, conformance evidence, the independent implementation, the preservation package and its drill, the Succession Instrument, and the Adoption Act template.