P0: Implement Causal Spine Gate + CausalBench v0 #111

Objective

Implement the already human-accepted causal-memory rule as a deterministic, fail-closed ContinuityOS capability.

A causal unit is complete only when it has:

1. origin
2. material_correction_or_pivot or explicitly evidenced bounded NO_MATERIAL_PIVOT_FOUND
3. current_physical_state
4. provenance for every frontier

Otherwise emit CAUSAL_SPINE_INCOMPLETE (or a typed incomplete subtype).

Fresh Git baseline

• repository: bitmaster162/continuityos
• default branch: master (protected)
• observed HEAD: 021e2d521efc4df0ce390b38a919bc2f0b675460
• observed tree: 803d89c3e81ea3a83147cd63879a32f8a88c9afe
• observation date: 2026-08-22 Asia/Bangkok

Any implementation must re-run the Git Baseline Gate before its first persistent write; this issue does not transfer authority if master moves.

Required states

• COMPLETE
• INCOMPLETE_ORIGIN
• INCOMPLETE_PIVOT
• INCOMPLETE_CURRENT_STATE
• SEARCH_INCOMPLETE
• CONTRADICTED
• SUPERSEDED

Required artifacts

• versioned JSON Schema for CausalSpine
• deterministic validator (no LLM in the gate)
• source/provenance binding for all three frontiers
• explicit bounded-search evidence schema for NO_MATERIAL_PIVOT_FOUND
• append-only event representation
• readback verification
• fixtures:
  • missing origin -> fail
  • missing pivot -> fail
  • missing current state -> fail
  • complete + provenance -> pass causal gate only
• adversarial fixtures for stale current-state, superseded claims, conflicting providers, duplicate semantic cards
• CausalBench v0

Critical authority boundaries

Passing this gate MUST NOT grant or imply:

• source authority
• merge approval
• deployment authority
• runtime authority
• trading authority
• capital permission
• external-effect authority

Preserve: can_trade=false, capital_permission=DENY, execution_authority=NONE unless separately and explicitly changed through existing governance.

Integration target

The first implementation should remain a narrow ContinuityOS primitive usable by:

• Knowledge Foundry
• HANRI
• Sovereign Cognitive Twin
• Control Center projections
• later Library/Drive/server/agent-history ingestion

Do not build a new top-level OS.

Pandora relationship

Pandora is a graph/visual/simulation projection candidate, not the canonical truth store. Causal Spine should expose a stable graph projection contract that Pandora can render later without owning truth or authority.

Stop rules

• no merge from this issue
• no deploy/runtime change
• no workflow rerun merely to prove a concept
• fail closed on baseline drift, missing provenance, ambiguous current physical state, or schema loss