512 — Execution-Time Legitimacy Under Scale

This repository documents 512, a discovered constraint governing legitimacy at execution time in large-scale, distributed systems.

512 is not a product, protocol, platform, governance system, or political program. It is a minimal, non-ownable constraint identified through applied systems research conducted in late 2025.

The 512 Kernel (Canonical)

The immutable 512 kernel defines the minimal constraints governing voluntary interaction and the legitimacy of execution.

The kernel text itself is canonical, immutable, and non-ownable. It lives exclusively in the /512-core/CANON/ directory.

👉 Read the canonical kernel here:
/512-core/CANON/README.md

No other location in this repository is authoritative.

Scope Lock

512 defines a minimal constraint kernel for making execution-time legitimacy auditable without creating new authorities.

512 does not provide coordination, incentives, enforcement, identity, governance, or safety logic. Those are explicitly out of scope. See SCOPE_AND_NON_GOALS.md.

Note on terminology: in 512, legitimacy means verifiable consistency between declared rules and observed execution — not moral, legal, or political legitimacy.

Implementation note: 512 does not prescribe implementations. Evidence-Sidecar (maintained separately) is one example of an external witness architecture compatible with 512 constraints.

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What This Repository Is

This repository is a research archive.

It records:

• observed failures of legitimacy under scale
• constraints imposed by physics, latency, and irreversibility
• the identification of a minimal execution-time constraint (512)

It does not prescribe outcomes, enforce behavior, or recommend adoption.

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What 512 Is

512 is a constraint layer, not a system.

It:

• governs how legitimacy may be witnessed
• operates adjacent to execution, not inside it
• avoids identity, enforcement, ideology, and governance
• remains voluntary and unenforceable by design

512 does not determine truth, correctness, or morality.

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What 512 Is Not

512 is not:

• a manifesto
• a constitution
• a governance framework
• a protocol suite
• a standards body
• a movement or ideology

If a system enforces behavior, requires identity, or embeds ideology, it is not 512-compliant.

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Repository Structure

• /512-papers/ — canonical research record
  (discovery history, problem definition, technical constraints, economic implications, explicit non-goals)

• /PROMPTS/ — optional copy‑paste prompts for loading 512 into an LLM workspace (non‑canonical; UX helpers only)

• Meta-documents at repository root define:

  • provenance (PROVENANCE.md)
  • interpretation boundaries (INTERPRETATION_GUIDE.md)
  • terminology (TERMS.md)
  • citation rules (CITATION_POLICY.md)
  • explicit non-solutions (FAILURE_MODES.md)
  • legal posture (LEGAL_NOTE.md)
  • historical freeze (CHANGELOG.md)

Other directories contain exploratory, commercial, or derivative material that does not define 512 itself.

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How to Read This Repository

Start with:

1. PROVENANCE.md
2. INTERPRETATION_GUIDE.md
3. TERMS.md

Then proceed to /512-papers/.

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Status

This repository is a descriptive research record.

Historical documents are immutable. New material may be added only through append-only updates tracked in CHANGELOG.md.

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One-Sentence Summary

512 documents a minimal execution-time constraint required to witness legitimacy in distributed systems without identity, enforcement, or ideology.

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Prompt Interfaces

This repository includes optional prompt interfaces in /PROMPTS/.

These prompts provide a structured way to load the 512 constraint kernel into AI workspaces or analytical contexts. They do not define, modify, or extend the kernel.

The kernel text remains authoritative in all cases.