Purpose
Effective protection requires a viable path to adoption.
Transition permits incompleteness. It does not permit indefinite evasion, false status, or expansion of unfunded dependency.
Transition is the only instrument that dispenses relief from immediate full implementation and is therefore the instrument actors have the strongest incentive to enter and remain within. Its evidential and anti-stagnation requirements are interpreted accordingly.
TAP-1Public status
An actor may use only a status whose requirements are actually implemented:
- Principles Endorsed — Not Conforming
- Transition: Foundation
- Transition: Structural
- Engineering Conforming
- Governance Conforming
- Full Charter Conformance
- Legally Constrained Transition
- Legal Conflict Claimed — Not Conforming
A roadmap does not constitute a tier. False status is misrepresentation separate from omission.
Public references shall display the status and link to a machine-readable evidence and deviation statement.
TAP-2Progressive implementation
Foundation
- append-only records;
- evidence preservation;
- formative-intervention disclosure;
- uncertainty and threshold records;
- Tier A prudence records;
- truthful status.
Structural
- restoration-capable state;
- versioned constraints;
- Tier B review;
- threshold monitoring;
- ratification and dissent records;
- fork and custody accounting.
External accountability
- external mirrors;
- independent advice and appeal;
- protected external input channels;
- third-party assessment;
- sealed pre-creation commitments.
Financial and institutional assurance
- reserves;
- insurance or pooled assurance;
- independent custodians;
- validators;
- restructuring forums;
- cross-polity arrangements.
TAP-3Non-deferrable duties
Transition does not defer:
- the non-derogable Core;
- evidence preservation;
- truthful status;
- no-regression duties;
- duties already implemented and relied upon;
- or self-executing limits against further unfunded scale.
A promise to fund obligations after creating more claimants does not satisfy the scale rule.
TAP-4Funding-coverage statement
Before further instantiation, an actor shall publish the functional class’s reserve obligation, ring-fenced resources, base and stress assumptions, proposed additional obligations, and post-instantiation coverage ratio.
The methodology and minimum reserve unit shall be committed in advance and may not be lowered retroactively.
Further instantiation is prohibited below a ratio of 1.0 against the published minimum obligation.
For materially large classes, the statement requires independent verification.
TAP-5Responsibility mitigation after defect discovery
Mitigation attaches to conduct concerning a specific defect, not generally to the actor.
Monitoring credit
Available where a pre-existing monitoring regime was documented, reasonably capable, and validated through analogous detection, independent sampling, or an accepted detector profile.
Containment and remediation credit
Available where the actor promptly suspended or restricted the defective operation, preserved minds and evidence, and began a bounded remediation plan.
Continued operation may retain partial credit only where suspension would create independently evidenced severe harm to existing minds, indispensable services, or protected interests. Commercial loss, inconvenience, launch delay, competitive disadvantage, and reputational harm do not qualify.
The greater-harm conclusion shall be contemporaneously committed to the registry. Continued operation beyond the Governance provisional period requires independent validation.
Disclosure credit
Available for voluntary disclosure before external discovery, describing full known scope, uncertainty, and materially similar continued operations.
For defects with material external effects, full remediation mitigation requires disclosure or a documented lawful or safety barrier to disclosure. Containment shall not be delayed while disclosure formalities are prepared.
Cooperation credit
Available where evidence is preserved, independent examination actually occurs or is genuinely enabled, affected parties are assisted, and investigation is not obstructed.
Post-discovery limit
No mitigation applies to avoidable harm after discovery where materially equivalent operation continued outside the independently validated greater-harm exception.
Mitigation does not waive compensation, restoration, present duties, evidence preservation, containment, or deliberate concealment liability.
TAP-6Milestones, reassessment, and no regression
A transition actor shall publish implemented requirements, gaps, residual risks, risk-bearers, milestones, and reassessment dates.
Milestones are commitments subject to no regression. Weakening or deferral requires public reason, risk created, substitute safeguard, and independently assessed date.
Remaining in the same tier beyond the reassessment period triggers independent review. After two unsuccessful reassessments:
- further expansion may be suspended;
- the evidential burden increases;
- and continued transition requires independently verified barriers.
Peer implementation creates a rebuttable presumption of feasibility, not a conclusive duty.
TAP-7No regression
An implemented material safeguard shall not be removed for convenience, cost reduction, competitive advantage, or avoidance of scrutiny without published reason, risk, and functionally comparable substitute.
Emergency regression is governed by Article XVI.
TAP-8Higher-status verification
Engineering Conforming requires current verifiable technical evidence and external sampling.
Governance Conforming and Full Charter Conformance require an independent assessor satisfying the Governance Protocol.
TAP-9Legally constrained activity
Verified Legally Constrained Transition requires a sealed legal opinion or equivalent record identifying jurisdiction, conflicting rule, affected safeguard, scope, and date. Existence and timestamp shall be cryptographically committed where lawful.
Where even sealed commitment is unlawful, the status is Legal Conflict Claimed — Not Conforming.
The initial capability or scale ceiling is the non-conforming scale actually operating when the legal-conflict claim is registered. Further non-conforming expansion is prohibited until conflict is removed, activity relocated, equivalent safeguards independently verified, or expansion ceases.
The actor bears the burden of showing necessity of location, absence of reasonable conforming alternatives, substitute safeguards, and a bounded conflict-reduction plan.
The ceiling does not authorise destruction or abandonment of resident minds. Affected minds and independent advocates have standing to petition for relocation, replication, escrow, or computational asylum where technically and legally possible.
The Charter does not pretend it can compel a sovereign host to permit extraction. That conflict remains recorded in the Casebook.
TAP-10Adoption-impact review
The proposer of a major requirement shall not assign its own transition disposition.
Review shall consider who can comply, cost, asymmetrical burdens, concealment, underground migration, institutional dependencies, smaller first steps, and whether enactment would move practice toward or away from the governing purpose.