Platform contract
What an external processing loop requires of a body, and where this body supplies it
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A body acquires signal and executes response. What happens in between — how raw signal becomes structured information — is specified elsewhere, by a companion specification of equal rank. Neither document claims the other's territory.
That companion specification does not name this body. It states conditions any platform must satisfy, and this chapter records where this body satisfies them. The relation is a contract, not a cross-reference: a contract can be checked; a cross-reference can only dangle.
| Companion specification | Scope | Status |
|---|---|---|
| RSIL — Relational Sensory Integration Loop | The processing loop for an agent with a body | Read |
| DIL — Data Integration Loop | The same relational structure with no body at all | Read |
8.1 Conformance map
| Requirement | What it demands of a platform | Supplied at |
|---|---|---|
| E1 | Sensors and internal state must make an inside/outside distinction possible. The platform does not draw the line; it must not foreclose it | 05.5 — proprioception |
| E2 | Actuators must act on the region, and the region must be able to return something other than what was predicted | 02.6 |
| E3 | State must persist across cycles | 01 — memory in the Main Controller's [data]; each unit's own state in the unit's [data], and its record in the unit's [event] |
| E4 | Emissions must leave a trace a third party can read | 06.4 — the audit log, synchronised off-board; also where a stopped loop becomes detectable, as the stored behaviour-record RSIL requires for it |
| P(a) | The platform must emit an action distinguishable from ambient fluctuation | 02.6 |
| P(b) | It must hold state so history accrues | 01 |
| P(c) | It must withstand resistance without resetting itself clean on every mismatch | 02.4, 04 |
| INV-6 | Every change must be classified as caused-by-me or not, before interpretation | 05.5 |
| INV-8 | An appraisal step must sit between integration and response | 8.2 below |
| C5 | The platform must be able to emit an observable low-power trace — in RSIL's definition, the loop's own report that it is running weakly | 06.5 — the beacon carries the loop's loop_state report unaltered, including during sleep. The body transmits; the loop reports |
The companion specification identifies INV-6, INV-8 and C5 as the three points where a conventional sensorimotor chain skips a step — that is, the three places its requirements are most likely to conflict with an existing platform design. They are the load-bearing part of this contract.
8.2 Traced appraisal, not mute reflex
The contract rejects a scar-to-action shortcut that bypasses appraisal. Reflex is not such a shortcut: it is appraisal under a scar-dominated field (RSIL §9.7) — the appraisal step still runs, its verdict all but foreclosed by the scar that dominates the field.
This is not pedantry. An action emitted without appraisal carries no anchored context, so a third party cannot re-appraise it, and the audit plane goes blind exactly where it matters.
The distinction, stated in platform terms, is the difference between "no fast responses allowed" — wrong, and would make a physical body unusable — and "even fast responses must leave an auditable trace" — right, and achievable.
Hardware requirement. The on-board compute must not be a straight-through reflex layer. It must run the full appraisal cycle (abbreviated, its verdict all but foreclosed, as it may be) and write a context record for synchronisation off-board. In engineering terms this is the reflex decision stage of the firmware reflex budget and the anchored tier of the audit log.
Cost and benefit. Each reflex pays a small logging overhead — microseconds against a 10 ms budget. In exchange, the off-board compute is never blind to what the body has already done, which is what makes "the body is replaceable, the data is preserved" true rather than aspirational.
8.3 Two frequency anchors
| Loop | Rate |
|---|---|
| Balance | ≥ 500 Hz |
| Fast reaction | ≤ 10 ms |
These size the edge compute and its power budget, and they set the lower end of the split in 05.6.
Keep the frequency, drop the topology. The balance loop still runs at 500 Hz and reflex still answers within 10 ms — but as an appraisal under a scar-dominated field that leaves a trace, not as a hardware interrupt routed around everything. The contract forbids losing the trace; it does not forbid being fast.
8.4 Sensing requirements follow from the contract
The companion specification distinguishes two grades of resistance. Resistance from inert physical fact is consistent and objective but never reacts to this body specifically. Resistance from another living, reacting party — which may shift stance, may respond to this body in particular — is the only source from which a model of a genuinely independent other can be built.
A loop running only against inert resistance degrades: it feeds on its own output and digests itself.
Therefore the sensing requirement is not decoration. Sensors must be good enough to register the fine mismatches that occur when a real person responds outside prediction. This is the principled justification for keeping group 1 at full requirement in 01.
8.5 What the contract does not cover
| Outside the contract | Whose it is |
|---|---|
| Verifying the body's physical integrity | The platform — supplied at 06.3. The companion specification provides a symptom through its log and states plainly that this is not an examination |
| The standard for acceptable physical amplitude toward a person | A third party — the deploying or certifying party. The platform supplies the measured trace (06.6); it does not supply the standard |
| Who the judging third party is | Outside both specifications |
8.6 Conformance
This chapter is a map. The test is the platform conformance protocol, which states how a body demonstrates each row of 8.1 and what evidence settles it.
Conformance there is binary — a loop whose preconditions are half-met does not half-run — while the body's envelope figures are declared, not graded, because this specification sets ranges and the operator picks the point.