{
  "schema": {
    "name": "qi-grounding-spine",
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "layer0_primitives_version": "0.3",
    "layer1_composites_version": "1.4"
  },
  "generated_at": "2026-02-23T00:00:00Z",
  "notes": [
    "Layer-0 primitives are structural; Layer-1 composites are portable bundles derived from Layer-0.",
    "Comparator (P10) includes two structural flavors: operational (revisable under feedback) and constitutional (guarded under governance).",
    "Layer-1 v1.3 updates: C5 renamed to 'Boundary-Accounting Misalignment' with power-aware aliases; C12 added for threshold cascades/phase transitions."
  ],
  "layer0_primitives": [
    {
      "id": "P1",
      "symbol": {
        "label": "boundary",
        "glyph": "🝚"
      },
      "title": "Boundary and Interface",
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Systems are separated by boundaries; interaction occurs only through interfaces with conditions.",
        "mirror": "What you fail to model as a boundary becomes an invisible coupling.",
        "shadow": "Ambiguous boundaries produce leakage, misattribution, and unintended propagation.",
        "shadow_mirror": "Over-rigid boundaries produce brittleness and block necessary exchange."
      },
      "diagnostics": [
        "What is inside vs outside?",
        "What conditions govern crossing?"
      ],
      "repairs": [
        "Define boundary explicitly",
        "Specify interface contracts",
        "Add buffers/guardrails"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "P2",
      "symbol": {
        "label": "witness",
        "glyph": "🜹"
      },
      "title": "Agency and Capacity",
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Claims about choice, responsibility, or consent presuppose an agent with sufficient capacity to understand and act.",
        "mirror": "When capacity is absent, responsibility shifts to guardianship or protocol.",
        "shadow": "Treating low-capacity agents as fully capable produces coercion and false accountability.",
        "shadow_mirror": "Over-removing agency suppresses participation and growth."
      },
      "diagnostics": [
        "Does the agent understand consequences?",
        "Can they meaningfully choose?"
      ],
      "repairs": [
        "Capacity checks",
        "Supported decision structures",
        "Graduated autonomy"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "P3",
      "symbol": {
        "label": "consent",
        "glyph": "🝁"
      },
      "title": "Authorization and Consent Gate",
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Cross-boundary intervention requires authorization (consent, mandate, or delegated authority).",
        "mirror": "Absent explicit authorization, systems default to force, drift, or accidental violation.",
        "shadow": "Unconsented intervention produces breach 🜬 and systemic instability.",
        "shadow_mirror": "Excessive gating can paralyze action; delegation mechanisms become necessary."
      },
      "diagnostics": [
        "Who authorized this?",
        "What scope and duration?"
      ],
      "repairs": [
        "Explicit permissioning",
        "Scoped delegation",
        "Revocation paths"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "P4",
      "symbol": {
        "label": "mirror",
        "glyph": "🝮"
      },
      "title": "Legibility and Interpretability",
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Authorization and governance require legibility of relevant consequences to affected agents.",
        "mirror": "If a decision cannot be explained in the receiver’s frame, it is not truly shared.",
        "shadow": "Opaque systems manufacture agreement without understanding.",
        "shadow_mirror": "Over-explanation overloads cognition; legibility must be right-sized."
      },
      "diagnostics": [
        "Can the affected party restate the implications?",
        "Is the reasoning traceable?"
      ],
      "repairs": [
        "Plain language",
        "Progressive disclosure",
        "Audit trails"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "P5",
      "symbol": {
        "label": "ledger",
        "glyph": "⚖️"
      },
      "title": "Conservation and Accounting",
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Flows (energy, time, money, risk, information, responsibility) must be conserved or accounted for across boundaries.",
        "mirror": "Unaccounted flows reappear as hidden debt.",
        "shadow": "Hidden debt accumulates until forced reconciliation or collapse 🜲.",
        "shadow_mirror": "Over-accounting stalls movement; choose appropriate ledger granularity."
      },
      "diagnostics": [
        "What ledger exists?",
        "Where is “missing mass”?"
      ],
      "repairs": [
        "Explicit accounting systems",
        "Reconciliation rituals",
        "Traceability mechanisms"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "P6",
      "symbol": {
        "label": "loop",
        "glyph": "🝳"
      },
      "title": "Feedback and Recursion",
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Actions propagate through feedback loops; systems stabilize, learn, or destabilize through recursion.",
        "mirror": "If you do not observe feedback, it will govern you invisibly.",
        "shadow": "Unchecked positive feedback amplifies error; delayed feedback causes oscillation.",
        "shadow_mirror": "Over-damping suppresses learning and adaptation."
      },
      "diagnostics": [
        "What are reinforcing vs balancing loops?",
        "What are delays and gains?"
      ],
      "repairs": [
        "Instrumentation",
        "Cadence reviews",
        "Loop dampening or gain adjustment"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "P7",
      "symbol": {
        "label": "vortex",
        "glyph": "🌀"
      },
      "title": "Incentive Drift and Attractors",
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Systems drift toward locally rewarded equilibria unless constrained.",
        "mirror": "What is rewarded—explicitly or implicitly—becomes dominant behavior.",
        "shadow": "Optimization toward proxies (Goodhart drift) detaches behavior from intended purpose.",
        "shadow_mirror": "Over-constraint freezes evolution and suppresses exploration."
      },
      "diagnostics": [
        "What behaviors are rewarded?",
        "What becomes easier over time?"
      ],
      "repairs": [
        "Incentive realignment",
        "Counter-metrics",
        "Governance checkpoints"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "P8",
      "symbol": {
        "label": "undo",
        "glyph": "↩️"
      },
      "title": "Reversibility and Exit",
      "statements": {
        "direct": "High-impact actions require reversibility paths proportional to potential harm.",
        "mirror": "If reversal is impossible, governance must scale accordingly.",
        "shadow": "Irreversible commitments create hostage dynamics and brittle lock-in.",
        "shadow_mirror": "Excessive reversibility prevents commitment and coherence."
      },
      "diagnostics": [
        "What is the rollback?",
        "What is the appeal path?"
      ],
      "repairs": [
        "Staged rollouts",
        "Kill switches",
        "Exit narratives"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "P9",
      "symbol": {
        "label": "matrix",
        "glyph": "🝖"
      },
      "title": "Power-Proportionate Governance",
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Controls and governance must scale with system impact (power, reach, irreversibility, externalities).",
        "mirror": "Large blast radius demands formal constraint.",
        "shadow": "Under-governed power produces abuse and catastrophic risk.",
        "shadow_mirror": "Over-governance of low-impact areas wastes capacity and kills agility."
      },
      "diagnostics": [
        "What is the impact radius?",
        "Who bears downside?"
      ],
      "repairs": [
        "Tiered controls",
        "Escalation protocols",
        "Separation of powers"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "P10",
      "symbol": {
        "label": "reflect",
        "glyph": "🪞"
      },
      "title": "Distinction and Comparator",
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Meaning, evaluation, and optimization require distinction; distinction requires a comparator.",
        "mirror": "If comparators are not chosen explicitly, they are chosen implicitly by incentives, defaults, or power.",
        "shadow": "Hidden or frozen comparators create invisible value systems; optimization then produces “success” that may be reality-misaligned.",
        "shadow_mirror": "Over-fluid comparators dissolve commitment and allow manipulation of evaluation criteria."
      },
      "comparator_flavors": {
        "operational": {
          "definition": "Comparators used for steering and measurement: metrics, KPIs, thresholds, performance indicators, risk tolerances.",
          "structural_requirement": "Operational comparators must be revisable under feedback (P6).",
          "revision_prompt": "What is the review cadence, evidence threshold, and authority to revise this comparator?"
        },
        "constitutional": {
          "definition": "Comparators used for non-tradeable constraints: dignity floors, harm ceilings, rights thresholds, red lines.",
          "structural_requirement": "Constitutional comparators are revisable only via power-proportionate governance (P9) with explicit legitimacy.",
          "revision_prompt": "What governance threshold and legitimacy process would be required to revise this comparator?"
        }
      },
      "diagnostics": [
        "What comparator defines better/worse here?",
        "Is it operational or constitutional?",
        "Who can revise it, how, and how often?"
      ],
      "repairs": [
        "Make comparators explicit",
        "Tier comparators (operational vs constitutional)",
        "Attach revision protocols (feedback-cadence vs governance-legitimacy)"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "layer1_composites": [
    {
      "id": "C1",
      "title": "Gradient Generates Flow",
      "depends_on": [
        "P1",
        "P5",
        "P6",
        "P7"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Differences across boundaries create gradients; gradients drive flows; flows generate patterns.",
        "mirror": "Persistent patterns imply maintained gradients.",
        "shadow": "Unmapped gradients create “mysterious” flows that appear irrational until the boundary and differential are exposed."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "Power asymmetry",
        "Information asymmetry",
        "Resource concentration"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Diagnosing polarization, churn, leakage, talent flight, regulatory arbitrage"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C2",
      "title": "Ledgered Reciprocity",
      "depends_on": [
        "P1",
        "P5",
        "P6",
        "P7",
        "P10"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Sustained exchange requires mutually reconcilable accounting.",
        "mirror": "Every repeated interaction forms a ledger, whether tracked or not.",
        "shadow": "Unreconciled exchange accumulates hidden debt that eventually forces correction."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "Short-term optimization",
        "Metric gaming",
        "Exploitation gradients"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Contracts, partnerships, APIs, stakeholder relationships, compensation structures"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C3",
      "title": "Compression Distortion",
      "depends_on": [
        "P4",
        "P5",
        "P6",
        "P7",
        "P10"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "All representations compress reality; optimizing the compression reshapes the system.",
        "mirror": "Metrics are maps; confusing the map for the territory produces distortion.",
        "shadow": "Proxy optimization detaches systems from lived impact."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "KPI fixation",
        "Dashboard simplification",
        "Reporting pressure"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Dashboards, AI evals, KPIs, performance reviews, regulatory metrics"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C4",
      "title": "Granularity Collapse",
      "depends_on": [
        "P10",
        "P4",
        "P7",
        "P9"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Under stress, evaluative granularity collapses into coarse binaries.",
        "mirror": "Time pressure reduces nuance in comparison.",
        "shadow": "Binary framing escalates conflict and removes repair pathways."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "Crisis urgency",
        "Media simplification",
        "Adversarial framing"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Crisis governance, polarization, litigation, media narratives"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C5",
      "title": "Boundary-Accounting Misalignment",
      "depends_on": [
        "P1",
        "P5",
        "P9",
        "P10"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Effects crossing boundaries without aligned accounting create structural imbalance.",
        "mirror": "If impact and ledger do not share the same boundary, correction will eventually occur.",
        "shadow": "Accumulated untracked effects force abrupt reconciliation (redistribution, collapse 🜲, backlash, or reorganization)."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "Boundary control asymmetry",
        "Ledger exclusion",
        "Regulatory arbitrage",
        "Siloed accountability"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Supply chains, platform governance, finance, healthcare, prisons, AI deployment"
      ],
      "aliases": [
        "Externalized Harm",
        "Externalized Benefit",
        "Unaccounted Externalities",
        "Cost Shifting",
        "Value Leakage",
        "Risk Export",
        "Subsidy Masking",
        "Hidden Debt"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C6",
      "title": "Consent Gradient",
      "depends_on": [
        "P2",
        "P3",
        "P4",
        "P8",
        "P9",
        "P10"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Consent varies with capacity, legibility, reversibility, and power balance.",
        "mirror": "Binary consent models obscure structural coercion.",
        "shadow": "Paper consent without structural support becomes compliance theater."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "Throughput pressure",
        "Authority gradients",
        "Liability minimization"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Healthcare, employment, AI interfaces, contracting"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C7",
      "title": "Comparator Substitution Under Hierarchy",
      "depends_on": [
        "P2",
        "P7",
        "P9",
        "P10"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "In hierarchical systems, the operative comparator shifts from “right” to “compliant.”",
        "mirror": "Punishment gradients redefine success as obedience.",
        "shadow": "Systems scale harm when compliance overrides ethical evaluation."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "Fear of punishment",
        "Career incentives",
        "Authority bias"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Corporate governance, military structures, bureaucracies"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C8",
      "title": "Causal Attribution Failure",
      "depends_on": [
        "P1",
        "P6",
        "P7",
        "P10"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "In recursive systems, outcomes are often misattributed to individuals rather than structural loops.",
        "mirror": "Scapegoating substitutes narrative simplicity for systemic correction.",
        "shadow": "Personal blame prevents loop repair and perpetuates instability."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "Public pressure",
        "Accountability theater",
        "Simplistic narratives"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Crisis review, regulatory investigations, organizational failure analysis"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C9",
      "title": "Dynamic Stability vs Snapshot Balance",
      "depends_on": [
        "P6",
        "P7",
        "P8",
        "P10"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Stability is dynamic correction over time, not static symmetry at a moment.",
        "mirror": "Snapshot “balance” can conceal accumulating instability.",
        "shadow": "Forcing static balance suppresses sensing and drives instability underground."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "PR symmetry",
        "Compromise theater",
        "Budget equalization rituals"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Public policy, negotiation, staffing models, budget allocation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C10",
      "title": "Level Mismatch (Suboptimization)",
      "depends_on": [
        "P1",
        "P5",
        "P6",
        "P7",
        "P10"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Optimizing a subsystem comparator can degrade system-level outcomes when boundaries and feedback are mis-modeled.",
        "mirror": "Local success can be global failure when comparators differ across levels.",
        "shadow": "Delayed systemic costs accumulate until crisis reveals misalignment."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "Siloed KPIs",
        "Delayed feedback",
        "Boundary blindness"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Benchmark vs deployment, quarterly earnings vs tail risk, throughput vs quality"
      ],
      "aliases": [
        "Suboptimization",
        "Local vs Global Misalignment",
        "Siloed Optimization Failure",
        "Cross-Level Drift",
        "KPI Misalignment"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C11",
      "title": "Illegitimate Constitutional Comparator (Sacralized Metric)",
      "depends_on": [
        "P4",
        "P7",
        "P9",
        "P10"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "An operational comparator becomes de facto constitutional without legitimate governance or explicit ratification.",
        "mirror": "When a metric becomes sacred, questioning it becomes taboo.",
        "shadow": "Systems reorganize around protecting the metric rather than protecting reality."
      },
      "common_examples": [
        "Growth at all costs",
        "Zero tolerance",
        "Compliance above all",
        "Engagement is value"
      ],
      "typical_attractors": [
        "Institutional inertia",
        "Status protection",
        "Metric-linked compensation"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Institutional critique, governance design, regulatory reform, AI optimization contexts"
      ],
      "aliases": [
        "Sacralized Metric",
        "Metric Capture",
        "Metric Idolatry",
        "Untouchable KPI",
        "Comparator Ossification"
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "C12",
      "title": "Threshold Cascade (Phase Transition)",
      "depends_on": [
        "P1",
        "P6",
        "P8",
        "P10"
      ],
      "statements": {
        "direct": "Near thresholds, small changes can trigger discontinuous state shifts that propagate through coupled systems.",
        "mirror": "Stable operation requires identifying thresholds and modeling how coupling transmits crossings.",
        "shadow": "Threshold-triggered cascades convert local perturbations into systemic transitions faster than governance can respond."
      },
      "typical_attractors": [
        "Tight coupling",
        "Delayed feedback",
        "Thresholded protections",
        "Stress-induced granularity collapse"
      ],
      "use_cases": [
        "Power grids, liquidity spirals, epidemics, wildfire spread, social contagion, platform dynamics, safety-critical incidents"
      ],
      "aliases": [
        "Cascade Failure",
        "Tipping Point",
        "Phase Shift",
        "Runaway Amplification",
        "Nonlinear Escalation"
      ]
    }
  ]
}