\section{KFD as a Semantic Kernel}

\subsection{What the kernel must preserve}

In an operating system, a kernel mediates identity, resources, authority, and
transitions for processes that may come and go. A machine organism needs an
analogous semantic layer. It need not be one executable or database. It is a
set of invariants that every conforming component must preserve.

KFD provides such invariants through a sequence of public decisions. Its
foundation begins with non-drifting facts, fact-grounded trust, and
cooperation grounded in trusted value \cite{kfdrepo}. Later decisions describe
causal experience, responsibility geometry, perspective, continuing
direction, bounded authority, consequential settlement, software work, and
project settlement \cite{kfd6,kfd9,kfd10,kfd11,kfd12,kfd13}. In this paper,
the relevant kernel obligations are:

\begin{itemize}[leftmargin=*]
  \item observations and claims do not silently become admitted facts;
  \item continuing direction outlives the actions that advance it;
  \item authority is explicit, attenuated, revocable, and cannot be
  self-amplified by an agent;
  \item claim, assessment, decision, warrant, admission, and effect remain
  distinguishable;
  \item Initiative and Assignment identities survive worker replacement;
  \item causal work is retained as Episodes and eligible history rather than
  undifferentiated chat;
  \item project-level cuts bind evidence and authorities without absorbing
  their independent responsibilities.
\end{itemize}

\factlabel\ These concepts exist as published KFD decisions and schemas.
Several remain explicitly draft-level rather than stable normative claims.
KFD-6, for example, defines a procedure for autonomous discovery while
stating that current evidence does not yet establish a conforming autonomous
implementation \cite{kfd6}.

\subsection{Continuity without a permanent agent}

Treating the agent as replaceable changes the architecture. At each heartbeat,
a scheduler can instantiate a new reasoning process. The process receives:

\begin{enumerate}[leftmargin=*]
  \item the subject and Initiative identity;
  \item current admitted state and bounded authority;
  \item open Assignments and their typed next actions;
  \item a Work History Selector result containing only eligible causal
  experience;
  \item available KFX capabilities and habitat observations.
\end{enumerate}

The agent may be newer, cheaper, locally hosted, remotely served, or specialized
for a task. Because it does not own the subject identity, replacing it need not
constitute death, amnesia, or personality replacement. Continuity resides in
the kernel and admitted lineage. Agent quality still matters greatly: weak
reasoning can waste resources or generate poor candidates. But cognition and
selfhood are no longer forced into one process.

\subsection{Memory as selection over causal history}

A chat transcript is neither a reliable autobiography nor a fact store. It
mixes instructions, guesses, corrections, tool output, and obsolete state.
A Work History Selector should instead compute a bounded view over immutable
or successor-linked work records. Selection may depend on Initiative lineage,
Assignment ownership, causal ancestry, state, authority, recency, and explicit
eligibility rules.

This yields three benefits. First, memory becomes inspectable: another
participant can reconstruct why an Episode was included. Second, forgetting
becomes governed rather than accidental: ineligible or superseded records
remain historically present but do not control current action. Third, a new
agent process can resume the same subject without pretending to possess the
private experiential continuity of an earlier model call.

\inferencelabel\ A verified history selector plus durable Initiative and
Assignment identity can provide a functional analogue of episodic memory
sufficient for engineering continuity, even though it is not human memory.

\subsection{Authority is part of identity}

A system that can edit its authority policy and immediately use the expanded
authority has no trustworthy boundary. The semantic kernel must therefore
make authorization external to the proposing cognition. A candidate may
propose a new organ, a broader network adapter, or a modified scheduler, but
the proposal must be assessed against a warrant whose issuer and scope are
already admitted.

This is not merely a safety restriction placed around life. It is part of what
makes one subject persist. If any agent invocation can redefine the Initiative,
rewrite history, or grant itself credentials, then the putative organism is a
succession of unbounded processes rather than a stable, accountable entity.
