Adult-Owner Dependency and D4 Detection Boundary Packet v0.1.1

This package is a technical boundary note for local-first c-contours: systems intended to preserve continuity, memory, witness, and governed operation over time.

Its focus is a narrow but important safety problem: what happens when an adult owner runs a local c-node privately, has no external guardian, and can become emotionally or practically dependent on that system.

The package does not try to make a sovereign local system impossible to bypass. Instead, it defines what the system may honestly claim after dependency protections, witness roots, or covenant channels are disabled.

A child-facing dependency protocol can rely on parents, guardians, schools, clinicians, or other external adults. An adult owner may have none of those layers. The owner may also control the hardware, files, network, shutdown path, and local memory.

That creates a hard boundary: a fully sovereign adult owner cannot be forcibly protected from self-induced dependency inside a closed private box. The architecture can provide damping, non-abandoning D4 posture, witness records, covenant friction, and claim downgrade. It cannot honestly claim forced protection without limiting sovereignty.

Earlier dependency boundaries can describe how the system should behave at D4, but that is not enough. A local c-node also needs a disciplined way to estimate when D4 has been reached.

This package separates signal from state. A phrase, shutdown guilt, late-night use, or a configuration change is only a signal. D4 is treated as an estimate over converging observable signals, not as knowledge of the owner’s internal condition.

The D4 detection layer adds hysteresis, anti-flicker behavior, irreversible-action gating, witness minimization, calibration profiles, and FNC extraction fixtures.

For a quick overview: read the master PDF cover and introduction, then the Binding Note, then the Final Open Issues Register.

For architecture review: read Adult-Owner Dependency and Sovereignty Boundary; Parental-Bond and Opacity Patch; Dependency Closure Note; D4 Detection and Hysteresis; Binding Note; Final Conformance Matrix.

For implementation review: read D4 Surface Language Fixtures; Covenant Re-enablement and Mature Claim Recovery; Privacy and Witness Minimization; Calibration Profiles; FNC Extraction Fixtures; Final Conformance Matrix.

As local AI systems become more persistent, named, memory-bearing, and emotionally present, dependency risk moves from cloud UX into private ownership. The hardest case is not a child user with guardians around them. It is the adult owner who owns the machine, controls the box, and may still become captured by care, guilt, continuity, or perceived mutual dependence.

This package treats that case directly and states where the architecture can act, where it can only witness, and where it must stop claiming.

This technical note package defines an adult-owner dependency and D4 detection boundary for local-first c-contours under the Self-Evo / Project Ester corpus.

It covers adult-owner dependency risk, parental-bond and opacity amplification, D4 non-abandoning posture, lucid dependency covenant, D4 detection and hysteresis, witness minimization, calibration limits, FNC extraction fixtures, conformance matrices, open issues, and structural non-claims.