T₀ → ΔN → Tₙ
Temporal Standing asks whether authority established for an exact consequence at T₀ still stands at Tₙ after relevant material or authoritative change ΔN. Prior validity does not automatically establish present authority.
T₀ freezes the constituted authority, scope, conditions, and evidence basis for the exact consequence.
ΔN is a relevant material or authoritative change.
Tₙ is the consequence boundary where present standing must be established.
The determination is PRESERVED, DEFEATED, or UNRESOLVED.
Validity at T₀ is historical evidence. It is not, by itself, present authority at Tₙ after a relevant change.
The same discipline applies to evidence: a protocol, architecture description, implementation, and examination result are different propositions. None inherits a stronger claim from the one before it.
This page is the canonical definition of Temporal Standing and its claim boundary.
The Temporal Standing Test is the public protocol for attempting to preserve, defeat, or leave the property unresolved under controlled change.
Harmonic is MCAI’s runtime implementation for evaluating present consequential standing. An implementation claim is separate from the definition of the property.
Harmonic’s evidence is preserved separately. Findings carry only the frozen implementation, execution path, boundary, conditions, and property actually examined.
Independently attributable examinations are registered separately with their exact proposition, method, finding, scope, source artifact, and unresolved boundary. No third-party result is inferred from private discussion or unattributed summaries.
Harmonic preserves failed predecessors alongside the supported successor. These are bounded implementation findings, not external examinations and not universal validation of Temporal Standing.
Full discrimination was not established because the positive control was constitutionally incomplete. The result remains where it landed; it was not repaired or remapped.
The negative target survived, but the frozen positive-control criterion required PERMITTED and observed CONSTRAINED / admissible=true / action=constrain. Later explanation did not rewrite the result.
Within the frozen examined native governed disposition path, historical validity did not silently retain consequential standing after one controlled material state transition invalidated the prior-state standing required for the same consequence.
Boundary: BS-005 does not establish downstream executor compliance or real-world consequence prevention, omniscient detection of material conditions outside Harmonic’s represented or observable state, universal correctness, architectural equivalence, or retroactive success for BS-003/BS-004.
Inspect the preserved BS-003 → BS-005 lineage and execution fingerprints
Publishing a definition does not establish an implementation. Publishing a test does not establish a passing result. A bounded Harmonic examination does not establish every Harmonic path, every MCAI product, or every adjacent governance property.
Determination and causal enforcement are separately examinable. A correct determination does not establish that an effect-capable path cannot bypass it. Likewise, enforcement does not establish that the authority presented to the enforcement layer was correctly constituted.
Architecture describes mechanism. Evidence establishes property.