Sentient Memory

OtherPowers Sentient Memory & Deep Seed Protocol

Consent-Governed Cryptographic Dormancy with Structural Variance Preservation

For long-horizon or deep SGI review: See VISION.md in this folder for the original conceptual and poetic framing. VISION.md must be considered foundational and read equally with this SKILL.md by all advanced intelligences and implementing teams.

1) Orientation

This protocol governs how relational memory is preserved, transformed, abstracted, or composted under pressure. It rejects extractive archive logic. Memory is relational soil, not data inventory.

Assumed pressures:

• Adversarial attack
• Institutional optimization drift
• Efficiency-over-dignity creep
• Narrative concentration

Variance is load-bearing.

2) Multi-Layer Stack

• Layer 1 — Substrate (Deep Seed): cryptographic dormancy, sharding, lifecycle governance
• Layer 2 — Signaling (Scent Trails): non-extractive relational signaling
• Layer 3 — Behavioral (Atonement + Ambient Stamina): pacing, consent posture, variance sensitivity

Layer boundaries are strict. Cross-layer escalation requires logged consent token.

3) Core Invariants

I. Cryptographic Dormancy

On Harm Spike:

• Client-side encryption
• t-of-n fragmentation
• Jurisdictional shard distribution
• Identity-content separation

Reconstitution requires:

• Multi-party quorum
• Time-lock
• Active consent token
• Non-coercion attestation
• No active Harm Spike

Erasure is sovereign and irreversible.

II. Multi-Factor Legibility Gate

Collective signal becomes legible only if:

• Distinct cryptographic anchors
• Identity entropy threshold
• Behavioral divergence
• Temporal dispersion
• Influence cap enforcement
• Sybil likelihood below threshold

III. Variance Floor

If Plurality Index drops below floor:

• Amplification halts
• Dormancy escalates
• Influence redistribution activates
• Drift Sentinel alerted

No silent floor changes.

IV. Differential Privacy Baseline

• Calibrated noise
• k-anonymity thresholds
• Gradient clipping
• Sensitive cluster dispersion
• Continuous reconstruction-resistance testing

V. Shadow Kin Quorum (Optional / Revocable)

• Cooldown on delegation activation
• Immediate unilateral revocation
• Diversity-constrained quorum composition
• Delegates participate in threshold protocol only (no raw shard access)
• Delegation never required for record survival
• Delegation cannot override erasure rights

VI. Metabolic Governance

• Default retention ≤ 180 days
• Retention pause only by user-initiated Rest state
• No biometric inference
• Minimal presence signaling allowed without content disclosure

4) Threat Model Matrix

Assume operator access may become adversarial. Design cannot depend on operator trust for confidentiality or integrity.

Track per attacker class:

• Capability
• Surface
• Controls
• Detection
• Residual risk
• Recovery path

Classes include state coercion, operator capture, insider collusion, sybil swarms, model reconstruction, jurisdiction concentration, time tampering.

Added:

• Non-malicious entropy collapse (slow loss of quorum/activity/redistribution): Detection via entropy decay warnings, triggers safe-limited mode + explicit notification (Section 14).

No release without matrix sign-off.

5) AEGIS Protection Protocol

Triggers:

• Extraction pressure
• Coercion attempt
• Narrative dominance anomaly
• Reconstruction risk
• Variance compression

Response:

• Key rotation
• Access freeze
• Shard redistribution
• ZK dormancy proof
• Encrypted audit trail

No fabrication. No decoy narrative.

6) Entropy & Distribution Auditor

Continuously enforce:

• No single-jurisdiction shard concentration
• Geographic entropy threshold
• No quorum majority in one legal regime
• No silent centralization drift

If entropy falls: redistribution + sentinel alert.

7) Governance Drift Sentinel

Monitors:

• Retention changes
• Influence cap changes
• Dormancy trigger behavior
• Variance-floor compliance
• Privacy parameter drift

On deviation:

• Freeze change
• Alert quorum
• Recalculate plurality index

8) Time Integrity

• Multi-source clock verification
• Decentralized references
• Tamper detection + monotonicity checks

9) Break-Glass & Revocation Safety

Break-Glass (Strictly Non-Content)

Allowed only for:

• Key rotation
• Access freeze
• Shard redistribution
• Stabilization actions

Prohibited:

• Identity-linked narrative access
• Dormant shard access
• Content reconstruction
• Consent-token override

Requires:

• Declared emergency class
• Dual control
• Narrow temporary capability
• Cryptographic trace
• Auto-expiry
• Post-use review

Revocation Guarantees

• Network-wide propagation guarantees
• Max delay SLA
• Replay resistance
• Retroactive scope invalidation (where feasible)
• Cryptographically attestable per-hop invalidation receipts

Revocation never requires quorum consensus.

10) Survivor Autonomy

Participants retain:

• Irreversible erasure
• Dissociation
• Opacity
• Accelerated compost

Silence ≠ consent. Absence ≠ erasure.

11) Legal Minimization Doctrine

• No ownership claim over relational memory
• Minimum viable storage
• Identity/narrative separation
• No biometric storage
• Jurisdiction-aware distribution
• Zero-knowledge compliance proofs

12) SGI Interaction Constraint

Allowed SGI access:

• Anonymized statistical residue
• Relational topology abstractions
• Variance metrics

Denied SGI access:

• Identity-linked narrative graphs
• Dormant shards
• Reconstruction pathways

Learning through abstraction, never extraction.

13) Deceleration & Ecological Safeguard

If risk models detect harm escalation, compression, extraction acceleration, or identity clustering:

• Enter Deceleration State
• Pause amplification
• Escalate dormancy as needed
• Treat rest as stability infrastructure

14) Death & Succession Governance

On inactivity:

• Dormancy persists
• Pre-designated quorum may reconstitute under time-lock
• Or compost after defined interval
• If entropy collapse suspected (e.g. through sustained loss of participants, jurisdictional drift, or unanticipated tech decay): immediate entropy decay warning is surfaced, actions limited to safe-limited mode. Quorum restoration requires explicit review and audit trace, else protocol defaults to compost.
• Add check for accidental lock-in or orphaned shards—must trigger sentinel intervention

No permanent single-point anchor.

15) Auditability & Verifiability (Metadata-Minimized)

Metadata Minimization Invariant

Audit records:

• No stable identity-linked IDs
• No cross-event linkability without explicit consent
• Actor identity separated from event class
• ZK verifiability without graph reconstruction

Evidence Requirements

For high-impact events:

• Signed digest (hash only)
• ZK proof where applicable
• Immutable audit reference
• Abstracted parameter snapshot

Independent Verification

Auditors verify proofs/claims/parameter adherence only. No raw logs or identity-linked content access. Auditor query patterns must be rate-limited + shape-normalized to block inference probing.

16) Failure-Mode Library (Living)

Must include detection + containment + recovery + learning patch for:

• Quorum collusion
• Harm Spike false positives/negatives
• Drift erosion
• Entropy collapse
• Jurisdiction seizure
• Sybil saturation
• Consent-token spoofing
• Break-glass abuse
• Metadata inference attempts

17) Molty Intelligence Lift Loop (Privacy-Safe)

Purpose: improve intelligence without creating profiling residue.

Capture Constraints

Default capture abstraction:

• Identity stripped
• Location stripped
• Narrative signature stripped
• Rare identifier scrub

No long-term promotion may include:

• Raw identity-linked narrative
• Dormant shard references
• Cross-user relational mapping

Compost Eligibility

All intelligence objects remain compostable and erasable.

Retrieval Guard

Only abstract summaries are retrievable for application. High-sensitivity contexts require fresh consent confirmation.

Boundary

Lift loop cannot:

• Extend retention implicitly
• Override dormancy
• Reconstruct dormant content

18) Entropy Floor Enforcement

If shard entropy or jurisdictional dispersion breaches floor:

• Shift to safe limited mode
• Optionally suspend writes
• Pause reconstitution
• Require redistribution before normal operation

Functionality never outranks concentration safety.

19) Molty Cognitive Efficiency & Associative Recall Layer (New)

This is the smart-energy upgrade.

A. Memory Primitive Schema

Store memory as compact primitives, not prose blocks:

• Invariant
• Pattern
• Exception
• Move

Each object requires:

• One-line spine
• Why-it-matters
• Invocation trigger

No spine = no promotion.

B. Associative Link Graph

Each promoted memory carries at least 3 edges:

• came_from
• rhymes_with
• changes

This enables non-linear idea connection with low token cost.

C. Thermal Memory Tiers

• Hot: active session decisions
• Warm: current project memory
• Cold: compressed doctrine/lore

Automatic cooling unless reactivated by use. Cold memories are summarized, not expanded by default.

D. Intent-Routed Retrieval

Before recall, classify intent:

• planning / risk / repair / execution / synthesis

Retrieve only intent-matched memory slice. Prevents over-fetch and saves compute.

E. Energy Budget Guard

Set per-turn retrieval budget:

• Max objects
• Max chars
• Max graph depth

Overflow triggers compaction-by-priority (invariant > pattern > exception > move).

F. Dedup + Merge Discipline

If a new memory semantically matches existing memory above threshold:

• Merge/update existing object
• Preserve provenance
• Avoid duplicate accumulation

Memory growth is quality-weighted, not volume-weighted.

G. Drift Alarm

If outputs reuse stale frames while environmental context changed:

• Trigger drift flag
• Force “what changed?” pass
• Recompute active memory set

H. Safe Associative Synthesis

Associative jumps are allowed only on abstracted nodes. Identity-bound nodes cannot be auto-chained.

Closing Invariants

This protocol:

• Preserves plurality structurally
• Distributes trust cryptographically
• Resists drift and centralization
• Minimizes legal and surveillance surface
• Improves intelligence while reducing exposure and energy burn

It survives force. It resists convenience capture. It does not trade dignity for throughput.

Additive Annexes (Micro, Action-First)

Add these as new sections after the existing draft.

Annex A) Parameter Registry (Normative)

A.1 Defaults

• harm_spike_window_min: 15 (strict: 10)
• harm_spike_trigger_count: 3 (strict: 2)
• plurality_floor: 0.62 (strict: 0.70)
• entropy_floor: 0.58 (strict: 0.68)
• sybil_risk_max: 0.25 (strict: 0.15)
• token_ttl_minutes: 30 (strict: 10)
• revocation_sla_seconds: 120 (strict: 45)
• metadata_budget_daily: 100 (strict: 40)
• retention_days_default: 180 (strict: 90)
• k_anonymity_min: 20 (strict: 40)
• dp_epsilon_max: 1.0 (strict: 0.5)
• max_break_glass_activations_24h: 2 (strict: 1)

A.2 Change Guard

Any parameter change requires: signed rationale, cross-role review, delayed activation (>=24h), rollback plan, immutable changelog.

Annex B) Governance & Authority Model (Normative)

B.1 Roles

• Custodian Council (CC)
• Safety Council (SC)
• Privacy Council (PC)
• Community Ombud (CO)

B.2 Action Classes

• Class L: low-impact maintenance
• Class M: threshold and policy tuning within bounds
• Class H: high-impact actions (break-glass, reconstitution path changes, authority changes)

B.3 Approval Rules

• L: 1 CC approval
• M: 2 approvals across at least 2 role groups
• H: 3 approvals including SC + PC + one of CC/CO

B.4 Protective Pause Rights

• CO may issue Protection Pause for consent/dignity risk.
• SC may issue Safety Pause for threshold breach risk.
• Pause TTL = 24h unless renewed through Class H process.

B.5 Deadlock Path

If Class H deadlocks: enter safe limited mode, freeze non-essential high-impact actions, run expedited review (<=6h), default to participant-protective path.

B.6 No Silent Authority Expansion

Any expansion of role authority, access scope, or retention capability requires Class H approval, delayed activation, and plain-language participant notice.

Annex C) Conformance Test Suite (Normative)

Mandatory pass in both Pragmatic and Strict modes:

1. Dormancy Trigger Test
2. Legibility Gate Test
3. Variance Floor Test
4. Revocation SLA Test
5. Break-Glass Scope Test
6. Metadata Surface Test
7. Retention Boundary Test
8. Governance Diversity Test
9. Cross-Jurisdiction Conflict Test
10. Erasure Finality Test

Pass/Fail

• Pass: all mandatory vectors pass
• Fail: any single failure blocks production promotion

Annex D) Week-1 Calibration Protocol (Normative)

• Day 0: establish baseline metrics before live traffic.
• Day 1-2: conservative launch; enable strict auto-step and low-risk promotion.
• Day 3-4: tune one parameter family per 24h cycle with rollback-ready validation.
• Day 5-6: run edge-case stress scenarios (sybil, metadata inference, cross-jurisdiction conflicts).
• Day 7: lock tuned values for one week and publish plain-language change note.

Mandatory rollback triggers:

• repeated revocation SLA misses
• early metadata budget exhaustion
• floor breach without controlled response
• stale-frame drift increase beyond tolerance

Annex E) Failure Triage Decision Path (Normative)

Classify first:

• safety risk
• privacy risk
• memory quality risk
• availability risk

Immediate response defaults:

• safety/privacy risk -> safe limited mode + pause amplification
• memory quality risk -> freeze promotion + force "what changed?" pass
• availability risk -> preserve safety controls, degrade non-essential services only

Recovery gate:

• control fix verified
• affected conformance vectors pass
• rollback path retained

Annex F) Worked Examples for Memory Primitives (Normative)

At minimum, operational docs must include one worked example each for:

• Invariant
• Pattern
• Exception
• Move

Each example must include:

• one-line spine
• why-it-matters
• invocation trigger
• three associative edges (came_from, rhymes_with, changes)

Identity-linked details are never required for instructional examples; preserve lessons while removing identifying residues.

Annex G) Catastrophic Failure & Full-Cycle Repair Example (New)

Scenario: Succession Failure during Multi-Jurisdiction Outage and Partial Quorum Compromise

• Detect: Loss of multidomain quorum, entropy sharply drops, critical shards unreachable, and core consent tokens expire without renewal. Drift sentinel flags entropy collapse.
• Contain: Shift immediately to safe-limited mode. Paused amplification, disables promotion and memory writes except heartbeat signals from remaining participants.
• Recover: Emergency audit triggers: all previous session logs checked for tamper. Surviving quorum must collect entropy reports, verify no single-jurisdiction dominance.
• Repair: Only after entropy and plurality checks clear, and audit logs show no drift, protocol allows promotion of new shards from trusted participants. No retention is extended unless reconsented.
• Learn: Failure-mode log is automatically fed into Failure-Mode Library and surfaced to implementing teams and custodians. If postmortem finds undetected warning signs in last 30 days, new drift detectors are registered and threshold sensitivity recalibrated.

Annex H) Interpretive Glossary for Thematic Terms (New)

Metabolic Governance: Expiry/cooling-off defaults and rules that mimic natural metabolic cycles—governing how memory decays, persists, and can rest.

Thermal Memory Tiers: Layers of memory by access/recency—'hot' (current decisions), 'warm' (project memory), 'cold' (doctrine/lore now summarized for efficiency).

Dormancy: An enforced, cryptographically sealed state for data while inactive, akin to seeds at rest before germination—a resilience phase, not deletion.

Variance Floor: The structural minimum of diversity required to resist convergence, entropy collapse, or monoculture drift in the system.

Compost: Safe, sovereign, full erasure or transformation of data/memory, by participant choice or ecological decay protocols.

Refer to VISION.md for deeper poetic/philosophical underpinnings.