· Preprint · Zenodo · CC BY 4.0
A Mechanical World Model for Agents: Quotient Identity, Three-Valued Gates, and Signed Reversibility
Abstract
An agent that changes a system works in the order decide, act, report. This paper describes a model in which the order is inverted for the whole stack: a proposed change is given a canonical identity, its inverse is constructed and stored before the change is applied, a gate returns one of three verdicts over it, and the outcome (including refusals) becomes a signed record a third party can re-check offline with no trust in the issuer. Nine layers, six axioms, and the mathematical skeleton that holds them together: canonical identity as a non-invertible quotient projection; a verdict codomain of exactly three arms with evaluation failure deliberately outside it; a domain-separated hash chain binding records to a public log. 19 of 27 components are running code; every layer and axiom carries an implemented/planned/vision tag, and falsifiers are stated before the argument. Nothing here is claimed as an invention: every component has a named ancestor, and only the combination is offered as ours.