Consensus

Consensus is the governance mechanism that prevents unilateral mutations to the concept graph. Any change that could affect other kernels must go through consensus.

When is Consensus Required?

Operation	Consensus?	Reason
Reading a concept	No	Read-only, no side effects
Proposing a new concept	No	Proposal is not commitment
Updating a concept's attributes	Yes	Affects downstream dependents
Merging two concepts	Yes	Structural change to the graph
Unlocking a locked kernel	Yes	Security-critical operation
Overriding a constraint	Yes	Relaxes validation guarantees

How Consensus Works

PROPOSER                VOTERS                 PROTOCOL
   │                      │                       │
   ├─── propose ──────────┤                       │
   │                      ├─── validate ──────────┤
   │                      │◄── constraints ───────┤
   │                      │                       │
   │◄──── votes ──────────┤                       │
   │                      │                       │
   ├─── proof ────────────┼───────────────────────┤
   │                      │                       │
   │◄─────────────────────┼──── commit/reject ────┤

1. Proposal — A kernel proposes a change with justification
2. Validation — The protocol checks the proposal against constraints
3. Voting — Relevant stakeholders (affected kernels, guardians) vote
4. Proof — Votes are aggregated with cryptographic proofs
5. Decision — The protocol commits or rejects based on the outcome

Stakeholder Types

• Agents — Autonomous processes that propose and vote on changes
• Guardians — Designated stewards of specific concept domains
• Participants — Observers with advisory but non-binding input

Deadlock Resolution

When consensus cannot be reached:

1. Escalation — The decision is escalated to a higher governance tier
2. Timeout — After a configurable period, a default action is taken
3. Override — A guardian with sufficient authority can override, with full protocol logging

All overrides are logged with provenance. There is no silent override.

Cryptographic Proofs

Every consensus round produces a proof chain:

• Each vote is individually signed
• Votes are aggregated into a Merkle-like proof structure
• The final proof is stored in the concept's ledger
• Proofs support rollback — you can verify any historical state

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