Appendix B — Flagship Mechanisms

Flagship Mechanisms — the deep dives

The online catalogue tells you what each mechanism is. This appendix explains why an experienced engineer builds it, when they reach for it, and what mistakes it replaces — the engineering judgment it embodies. It is deliberately selective and interpretive, not a second copy of the reference documentation: it treats the mechanisms that carry the most weight, one at a time, and points you to the online catalogue for the exhaustive per-mechanism detail.

The stacks in Appendix A adopt whole capabilities; this appendix goes the other way, taking one mechanism at a time — the problem it kills, the shape that kills it, the engineering consequences, and the seam where you wire it in. Read a stack to compose; read a Flagship Mechanism to understand one piece in depth.

The notes are grouped by target zone — Agent, Models-bridge, Product — and numbered straight through, so a cross-reference names a stable locator (§B.1 … §B.29) regardless of which zone it falls in. Every mechanism here also appears as a brick in the Mechanism Catalog (Appendix C), and in full in the online catalogue.

Adopt by capability: the stacks

A stack is a capability you adopt whole — a handful of mechanisms that reinforce each other. These are the reader's first navigable choice: pick the capability you want, then follow it into the mechanisms that make it up.

• The provenance + fidelity stack
• The model-coherence stack
• The specification + verification stack
• The observe → react loop
• The resource-mediation stack
• The governance-of-governance stack
• The context-management stack