Epiphany/notes/substrate-gate-cultnet-contracts.md

Substrate Gate CultNet Contracts

Objective: make the Substrate Gate the repository access protocol. Body is the substrate itself, not a gatekeeper persona and not the modeling organ. Organs may request reads, indexing, commands, edits, and bridge operations, but the Substrate Gate decides the scoped access to the repo.

Authority Map

• Owner: the Substrate Gate protocol owns repository access grants and refusals.
• Inputs: typed repo access requests, workspace identity, requested paths, requested operations, command/bridge intent, current repo policy, coordinator authority, operator approvals, and relevant safety/evidence context.
• Outputs: Substrate Gate access reviews, access grant receipts, access refusal receipts, repo snapshot receipts, and repo mutation receipts.
• Derived state: retrieved snippets, search hits, index manifests, diffs, build logs, Unity/Rider bridge artifacts, and source maps are evidence projections, not permission to touch more substrate.
• Forbidden writers/readers: Hands, Eyes, Persona, public Verse ingress, raw worker launches, compatibility JSON-RPC routes, and bridge tools must not directly read, index, execute against, or mutate the repo without a scoped Substrate Gate grant.
• Shared path: source reads, semantic indexing, file edits, command execution, and editor/runtime bridge operations should all be expressible as Substrate-Gate-scoped repo access requests with receipts.
• Deletion line: worker launch authority_scope is not repo access authority. It may describe role/task scope, but the Substrate Gate must grant substrate access.

Contract Families

• epiphany.substrate_gate.repo_access_request: request for scoped repository access.
• epiphany.substrate_gate.repo_access_review: Substrate Gate decision and scope explanation.
• epiphany.substrate_gate.repo_access_grant_receipt: proof of scoped access.
• epiphany.substrate_gate.repo_access_refusal_receipt: proof of refusal.
• epiphany.substrate_gate.repo_snapshot_receipt: proof of source inspection/indexing performed under Substrate Gate access.
• epiphany.substrate_gate.repo_mutation_receipt: proof that mutation or repo-affecting command execution had a prior Substrate Gate grant.

Verse Boundary

Substrate Gate access contracts live in epiphany-internal. Operator-safe projections may appear in gamecult-local after review, but raw repo access requests, private paths, command cargo, diffs, and mutation receipts stay internal unless another explicit export policy says otherwise. epiphany-global never gains repository access authority.

Mind and the Substrate Gate are neighboring protocols, not aliases. The Substrate Gate decides whether the machine may touch the repo. Mind decides whether resulting thought or evidence mutates persistent state.

Imagination can project Body substrate facts into a Persona scene only after those facts have entered through Substrate-Gate-scoped access. A beautiful scene is not a repo access grant. Eyes is the next gate after access: a Substrate Gate grant allows looking, but only Eyes can turn looked-at material into a citable evidence packet. Modeling may update the machine's internal body model only from source-grounded material that has passed through the appropriate access and evidence path.