14.2 The exchange object

Each workflow communicates through a structural packet

consisting of a packet type, prior representational package, proposed package comparison, localized obstruction, uncertainty object, finite-realization record, registered-control record, requested consequence or query, status-bearing admission record, epistemic status, interface contract, and version.

The comparison \(\Upsilon \) is the identity when no package change is claimed. When its presentation changes, the corresponding sketch map \(J\) is stored as one typed component rather than substituted for the whole comparison. The uncertainty object \(U\) may be a posterior, confidence region, equivalence class, or explicit set of unsupported alternatives; its interpretation is declared by \(\kappa \). The record \(\gamma \) states which persistence or integration observer the candidate passed; it is not a substitute for the independent evidence summarized by \(c\). The status distinguishes at least proposed, admitted, rejected, and unsupported. A packet may ask a downstream workflow to construct an experiment or skill without asserting that its motivating explanation is true.

This distinction prevents three common category errors. First, a CLIC nonclosure residual is not automatically a causal mechanism. Second, an OPTIC program that type-checks is not automatically useful. Third, a RELIC reward increase is not automatically evidence for the causal story that proposed an action. The interface transports a question and its provenance; it does not transport certainty for free.

Accordingly, an interface is generally a partial, status-preserving transformation

defined only when the source packet satisfies its registered contract. It must state how uncertainty is transformed under the change of semantics. Copying a numerical confidence value from a causal packet into a skill packet does not calibrate that value for executability. When such transport is not justified, the target packet retains the alternatives and marks the derived claim as proposed or unsupported.

Here status preserving does not mean that the evidential statuses form a numerical ordering. The source packet and its status remain immutable in provenance; the target workflow assigns a new status under its own certificate family. An admitted causal packet may therefore yield only a proposed skill request, and an admitted skill packet may yield an unsupported decision claim. Interface admission certifies the transport, not the source claim under a new name.

Packets also make revision auditable. If RELIC later finds that a skill is useful only in one regime, the system can trace that skill to the causal proposal and intervention evidence that produced it. Retraction can then be localized rather than erasing the entire integrated state.