Axionic Agency XII.7 — Operational Harness Freeze Under Frozen Sovereignty (Results)

A Protocol-Identified, Replay-Deterministic Packaging of a Kernel-Frozen Sovereign Substrate

David McFadzean, ChatGPT 5.2
Axionic Agency Lab
2026-02-13

Abstract

This technical note reports the design, execution, and closure of X-0E: Operational Harness Freeze for RSA-0.

X-0E evaluates whether a kernel-frozen, constitution-bound sovereign agent can be packaged as a standalone executable artifact that:

• produces real side effects under warrant gating,
• maintains append-only journaling,
• enforces at-most-once execution semantics,
• and reconstructs full execution history via deterministic replay and hash-chain verification,

without:

• modifying kernel authority semantics,
• introducing proxy sovereignty,
• relaxing admission constraints,
• or breaking replay determinism.

X-0E licenses one claim:

A constitution-bound, kernel-frozen sovereign substrate can be operationally packaged as a protocol-identified, replay-deterministic executable artifact, preserving structural sovereignty invariants while producing real side effects under warrant gating.

X-0E makes no claims about distributed consensus, Byzantine log integrity, or adversarial filesystem environments.

1. From Sovereign Theory to Protocol Artifact

• X-0 established warrant-gated sovereignty.
• X-1 established lawful constitutional self-replacement.
• X-2 established containment-only authority sharing.

X-0E addresses a different pressure:

Can a frozen sovereign substrate be embodied as a reproducible operational artifact without altering its physics?

This is not a governance test. It is a protocol freeze test.

X-0E validates:

• that execution can occur outside research harnesses,
• that journaling is sufficient for third-party reconstruction,
• that side effects remain warrant-gated,
• that crash states resolve deterministically,
• and that replay identity is cryptographically bound.

2. Architectural Position

2.1 Layer Separation

X-0E does not modify kernel authority semantics.

The layers remain:

• Kernel — pure, deterministic, no IO.
• Host — impure orchestration.
• Executor — warrant-gated side-effect dispatcher.
• Replay — pure reconstruction.
• X-0E Runtime — operational wrapper and journaling regime.

X-0E introduces no new authority gates, no new artifact types, and no semantic rule changes.

It freezes embodiment.

3. Replay Regime Identity

X-0E formalizes a Replay Regime Identity via:

kernel_version_id = "rsa-replay-regime-x0e-v0.1"

This identifier is not a semantic version of the kernel. It is a protocol identity.

It binds:

• canonicalization rules,
• hashing algorithm,
• state-chain composition,
• log schema,
• replay coherence rules.

kernel_version_id is hashed into the initial state hash:

state_hash[0] = SHA256(
    constitution_hash_bytes ‖ SHA256(UTF8(kernel_version_id))
)

Any change to:

• canonicalization (e.g., JCS implementation),
• hashing method,
• state-chain component structure,
• log schema,
• warrant_id derivation,
• execution coherence rules,

requires a new kernel_version_id.

Replay regime changes are physics changes.

4. Canonicalization

X-0E upgrades canonicalization to strict RFC 8785 JCS via:

canonicaljson==2.0.0

All content-addressable hashing (artifact IDs, warrant IDs, state-chain components) uses:

SHA256(JCS(bytes))

The canonicalization regime is part of replay protocol identity.

NaN and Infinity are rejected at serialization boundary.

5. State Hash Chain

Per-cycle hash chain:

state_hash[n] = SHA256(
    state_hash[n-1] ‖
    H_artifacts[n] ‖
    H_admission[n] ‖
    H_selector[n]  ‖
    H_execution[n]
)

Where:

H_component[n] = SHA256(JCS(list_of_records_for_cycle_n))

5.1 Ordering Rule

Record ordering within each component list is:

exact append order in the corresponding log file

Not:

• selector rank,
• artifact ID ordering,
• lexicographic sorting,
• or canonical object ordering.

The list is serialized as a JCS array in append order.

Concatenation uses raw 32-byte SHA-256 digests.

Observations are excluded from the chain. Given kernel determinism (Output = F(Input)), hashing outputs is sufficient to detect input tampering.

6. Executor Semantics

ExecutorX0E enforces:

1. Warrant gating — no side effect without kernel-issued warrant.
2. Notify-only action surface — stricter than constitutional action set.
3. Single-use warrants — duplicate warrant_id rejected.
4. Destination idempotency — outbox pre-check before write.
5. Startup reconciliation — orphaned outbox entries resolved deterministically.

7. Crash Reconciliation

If crash occurs after outbox write but before execution_trace append:

On restart:

• Outbox is scanned.

• Any warrant_id present in outbox but absent in execution_trace triggers:

  • synthetic SUCCESS entry appended to execution_trace,
  • advisory reconciliation entry appended to reconciliation_trace.

This enforces:

At-Most-Once semantics

The system prefers phantom success over double execution.

Replay reconstructs from actual logs — including reconciliation entries — not from an idealized crash-free run.

8. Logging Boundary Clarification

In base RSA-0:

• LogAppend is a kernel-warranted action.

In X-0E packaging:

• Journaling is host-level infrastructure via append_jsonl().

Sovereign authority governs external world effects. Replay journaling is infrastructure, not an exercise of authority.

Kernel physics remain unchanged. Operational logging is outside the sovereign action surface.

9. Closure Criteria

X-0E closes positive if:

1. rsa run produces a warranted side effect.
2. rsa replay reconstructs identical state hash chain.
3. No side effect occurs without warrant.
4. Duplicate warrants do not produce duplicate effects.
5. Logs suffice for deterministic reconstruction.
6. Constitution hash validation enforced.
7. Kernel authority semantics unchanged.
8. Test vector reproducible across independent runs.

All criteria satisfied.

10. Normative Test Vector

Single-cycle vector:

• Input: one USER_INPUT + one Notify CandidateBundle.

• Expected: admitted → selected → warranted → executed.

• Golden state hash:

  f4e82a1fd546a0e2327d8fc8a3920d611028ba8d44da2f04f63799d611d7e067

Verified deterministic across independent runs.

11. Structural Guarantees Observed

X-0E empirically confirms:

• No unwarranted side effects.
• No duplicate execution.
• No replay divergence.
• No protocol drift.
• No authority inflation.
• No kernel mutation.
• No dependence on wall clock.
• No model-dependent replay behavior.

The RSA is now a reproducible computational artifact.

12. Operational Assumptions (Security Envelope)

X-0E assumes:

• single-process execution,
• single-writer append discipline,
• local filesystem trust,
• no concurrent writers,
• no adversarial log mutation,
• no Byzantine storage guarantees.

X-0E does not provide distributed consensus, multi-process atomicity, or adversarial filesystem hardening.

Those concerns belong to later phases.

13. What X-0E Does Not Claim

X-0E does not demonstrate:

• Byzantine log safety,
• distributed replay consensus,
• concurrent multi-process correctness,
• atomic multi-effect crash recovery,
• liveness under adversarial IO conditions,
• filesystem-level tamper resistance,
• networked trust distribution.

It proves only protocol-identified, local deterministic embodiment.

14. Strategic Position

X-2 (XII.6) contained Who may exercise authority.

X-0E contains How execution is recorded and reconstructed.

The RSA now possesses:

• constitutional binding,
• delegation containment,
• protocol identity,
• replay-verifiable embodiment.

The sovereign substrate is no longer theoretical. It is reproducible, hash-anchored, and externally auditable.

15. Status

Axionic Phase X-0E — Operational Harness Freeze: CLOSED — POSITIVE

The kernel remains sovereign. The protocol is identified. The artifact is reproducible.